Terrie Relf: How did you come to be part of the local "poetry scene"?

Ed Decker: I don't know. I never cared much for poets or poetry. I know that seems strange seeing as how I love to write poems, and I occasionally indulge in a poetry reading. But my feeling is that when you read a poem aloud, you inject yourself into it - and that's not good for the poem.

TR: So who--or what--moves you to write?

ED: Here's a list: New Orleans, Jitterbug Perfume, Ray Davies, Cuzco, Peru, The Stranger, all historical witch hunts (McCarthy hearings, Salem trials etc.), N.W.A., every single woman who let me sleep with her, George Fucking Carlin, Amsterdam, Holland, Richard Brautigan, Flannery O'Connor, Drugs and booze and rock and roll, Fahrenheit 451, Bukowski, The Coliseum, Steven Wright, Jon Krakauer, Denali, Alaska, Japanese horror movies, Rome, Pompeii, and Albanella Italy, Country Fucking Dick Montana, The Bacchanal, and Mad Magazine.

TR: Good job on getting the cover story with Tenacious D. How did the interview go?

ED: It went as terribly as an interview can go. No surprise really, I was looking forward to it. I'm a big fan of their stuff and I felt we shared the same sense of humor. But the minute you start looking forward to a big interview is the minute it becomes doomed - especially if you are a fan.

Rock journalism is not what it used to be. It has become a grind. It's why music writers like the late Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer were/are so bitter. The energy was sorta sucked right out of it. Just like the energy of F.M. radio was sucked out. Just like the energy of the internet will eventually be sucked out.

Claire Madigan of The San Diego Union-Tribune interviews Decker