Sonic playground BY IAN DONNIS

With his thick-framed glasses, black jeans, Black Sabbath T-shirt, whimsical humor, and plans for an imminent road trip to San Francisco, Ben McOsker seemed like an archetypal indie rocker during a recent interview. But it’s on the other side of the business — as an energetic promoter of the local musical underground — that the 35-year-old West Warwick native has made his mark. Self-effacing enough to sometimes describe himself as the janitor of Load Records (www.loadrecords. com), McOsker has struck the balance right in helping to preserve the anti-commercial worldview of some of Providence’s most creative bands while also bringing their sounds to the wider world.

It seems a happy calling for McOsker, who launched his record label in 1993 while snagging a master’s in library science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and his partner, Laura Mullen, another active supporter of the local arts scene. Operating from their CD-and-vinyl-laden home on Providence’s West Side, the couple has helped to rally support for bands like Lightning Bolt, Arab on Radar, and Forcefield, whose distinctive aesthetic — a fair emblem of the idiosyncrasy of Load’s acts — was aptly described by pitchforkmedia.com as "a cryptic combination of urban paranoia, suburban acid damage, and Sid and Marty Krofft."

Q: How would you describe the state of the Providence music scene these days?

A: It’s really diverse — a lot of people doing a lot of things. There’s definitely various people over here on the West Side doing things, there’s clubs downtown, there’s just a lot going on. I think it’s an exciting time. People are recognizing it on a national level. It’s good. I’m very excited, so I think it’s a pretty vibrant scene.

Q: How did you start your label and what was it like starting it?

A: I’d started it on a whim. I wanted to put out music because I did not feel it was being put out — bands, while I was living in New Jersey, that had come down [from Providence] to New York to play. I continued to come up to Rhode Island almost every weekend. [I] had just wanted to contribute to putting out music, and got involved in a few local compilations. So I always really tried to focus on the community of Providence and surrounding area.

Q: What did you hope to accomplish when you started the label?

A: I don’t think I really, when I first started, knew what I was getting into, didn’t really have a grandiose goal with it. It started with [records that were] seven inches. My first full-length was a seven-inch I’d done by Von Ryan Express. The band broke up and reformed to be Thee Hydrogen Terrors; did that as my first full-length. [I] had always for whatever reason began to identify myself as yes, I have a record label, and continued to do that. [I] later did another compilation, called The Repopulation Program. [I] always felt that there was a lot to give around here in terms of what people were doing musically, and felt I could put this compilation out, and, you know, people could be very excited and it would keep things moving.

I started booking shows around that time. So I was just trying to help out, create an atmosphere of collaboration, fun, people putting on shows, all the things that I think music should include. It should be fun, and there should be places to play shows, and records should come out — all the things that you can usually identify as a scene — those are the key elements.

Q: You were a graduate student when you started the label, and graduate students often don’t have a lot of money. How did you go about doing it?

A: That was about 1993. We were coming out of Bush the first’s recession. By the time I graduated, I had been working in Nutley, New Jersey, at Hoffman-LaRoche, doing vitamin research. Basically, it was a Swiss company that did a lot of wholesale vitamin manufacture, and I was doing cataloguing of vitamin information. I had worked in a lot of special/technical libraries at that point. I had worked in the peanut butter library over at Skippy; I had worked over at Tums library over at SmithKline Beecham.

Q: How did you choose what you were going to release, and in what form and quantity?

A: I had been focusing, pretty much primarily, on my friends, as most people do, and people I went to Providence College with, essentially. It included people from Six Finger Satellite; later, Boss Fuel was my first seven-inch. The Von Ryan Express, which later mutated into Thee Hydrogen Terrors.

Q: How would you say the Providence music scene has changed in the 10 years since you started the label?

A: I think there has always been a somewhat freewheeling attitude here in Providence, for good. There were shows over at the Renegade Gallery, which was over at the Atlantic Mills. There was the Terrorstock Festival that happened there. I believe that was 1995, ’96. I had done some shows over there. After Thee Hydrogen Terrors, I started to take some more chances, putting out records by Six Finger Satellite and the Scissor Girls, both relatively abrasive acts. Scissor Girls being from the Midwest, out of Chicago. [I] had really decided I needed to start an aesthetic that was more closely in line with the way I thought; to try to include local bands in that as well.

There was an angularity to the music that I identified with, and concurrently there was a number of other bands in town, coming from a variety of disciplines, doing a lot of similar things, like Drop Dead, longtime political hardcore band. And, you know, here we are. It’s just the net gets cast wider and wider, and I think a lot more people have been included. It’s good. I can’t say I represent everybody, but I represent a lot of somebodies.

Q: How many different bands are with Load now?

A: That is a good question. I’ve had 58 releases as of, it’s going to be November, including now two DVDs and one that’s been out for awhile.

Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your label or what you look for in a band?

A: I think fun, just fun. That’s what I’m going for, yeah. I probably should have something a little bit more developed for that. But I have a sense of humor; I expect music to have a sense of humor, not necessarily in the same way as "Weird Al" Yankovic or anything like that, but I think music should be fun. There should be quality to it — try to record and spend enough money so that it sounds good, no matter where it’s coming from.

Q: It seems like a lot of the more interesting stuff in Providence music these days goes on kind of beneath the radar. How would you describe the advantages and disadvantages of that?

A: Well, a disadvantage that I see — a perception, but not necessarily a reality — is an exclusive nature to it: You know, you can’t find out about it, it’s in this weird section of town, and it’s going to be tough to find it. That is not necessarily true. If you just go down to Olneyville on any given weekend, there’s just tons and tons of things happening. Of course, I’m really, really protective and paranoid about any mention of it and anything that you can do to preserve that — just because of Fort Thunder being a very good example of things that can happen with attention. Towards the end, a Providence Journal article really brought the fire inspector calling. Whether that was right or wrong in light of recent events [like the Station fire] is definitely still valid. Fire inspectors — they’re necessary. And nothing happened, but who knows? That’s a potential negative I can see.

On the positives, it’s a completely unjuried [scene], but on the same token, it attracts a certain caliber. You know, people from all around the country come and are really excited to play Olneyville. Dirty concrete rooms, barely PAs, and people are like, it’s their dream come true. They’ve been sitting in San Jose, California, or wherever they’re from, just thinking about playing with some goofy band with masks on, and it really pumps up their imagination, or just not even. [It’s] just like music without rules and they think it’s some free land here. And it is. It is, for a lot of that.

Q: Lightning Bolt is one of the best-known bands on your label. They’ve gotten some really positive press in establishment newspapers like the New York Times. Why do you think they’ve struck such a chord and gotten that kind of attention?

A: It’s somewhat confounding to me. Why they have? I think there’s definitely a certain quality to the music that is both a) a classic rock kind of sound, and [b] a completely off-the-rails take on it to just crazy music. It’s rhythmically based, so I think it’s easy enough for people to understand, but on the same token, it’s somewhat extreme. I can’t say I don’t try to garner press. It’s a large concern of the label, and any labels — promote your records. And I’m not going to say I’ve made no effort; I make a constant effort to try to get people to enjoy Lightning Bolt, enjoy all the other bands. You know, I have a Pitney Bowes [postage] machine over there. I have an active relationship with all the postal workers at the downtown postal station.

There’s been a lot of international press, from like, [the music magazine] the Wire and [radio host] John Peel over in the UK, and lots of magazines I can’t read, because I can’t speak Portuguese, or all these other international magazines. It’s been gratifying on a lot of levels.

Q: You described how there’s this tension between the underground scene and concern about the scene being jeopardized if the authorities get too concerned about shows going on in certain areas. Is the scene accessible enough for newcomers to latch on?

A: Yeah, there’s a local music Web site that’s pretty well known, that I don’t even feel I could mention. I’m sorry about my own level of paranoia about this. I don’t want to be the guy that brings the curtain down. It’s a concern of mine. I’m an enthusiastic participant. I don’t play music myself, but I enjoy the atmosphere that’s happened because of it. I don’t book shows anymore, but I did for years. A lot of people have stepped up to the plate. There are so many different players in a music community. There’s people that put together shows, there’s people that do flyers, there’s people that play music, there’s people that work doors, people that have technical expertise that can help out. There’s just so many different people that help out. It makes it pretty exciting.