An Interview from My Infancy as a Writer: Scaterd Few’s Allan Aguirre

In 1998, when I was twenty, I took a truly awful journalism course in college. It was awful not because it was difficult, but because I paid for an education and did not receive one. The teacher walked into the classroom on the first day and said, “I know you guys don’t like homework, so I’m not really going to assign any. I’m going to make this easy for you.”  It was his first and only semester as a teacher at my university. 

During that time, I did have at least one assignment, and I tried to apply what little I learned to it. I had to conduct an interview and, using the magic of the Internet, I contacted one of my musical heroes: Scaterd Few’s Allan Aguirre, whose vocal gymnastics were (and are) the stuff of musical legend. The resulting article is pretty perfunctory, but it represented my best attempt at journalism at the time. I am posting it here because I find it amusing, and can tell from reading it that I had not steeped myself in musical journalism yet. I wrote music reviews for magazines, but I had not become a student of those magazines. I was still just a reader. Eventually, I realized I could get an education in journalism simply by (gasp) reading journalism.

In truth, I think it’s quite unremarkable, dynamically flat, and ultimately a paint-by-numbers affair. I would give it a C- at best if I were an instructor. It achieves certain obligatory objectives without doing so with any flare. I look at this and see how far I have come as a writer, and I am thankful. I was clearly afraid of doing anything even remotely interesting here, and despite the fact that I was writing about someone who remains immensely interesting. Shouldn’t the interview have been as compelling as Allan Aguirre’s music? I could go on and on.

Without further ado, I give you my interview with Mr. Allan Aguirre. 

Allan Aguirre, a 34-year old musician from Arlington, Texas, has worn controversy as if it were a crowning laurel since the beginning of his career in the music industry.

Controversy, acting as a shadow, has followed him and his bands, Scaterd-Few and Spy Glass Blue, from the moment their records occupied shelves at retail stores.

Perhaps it was the dreadlocks and gothic makeup he wore in the pictures on the jacket sleeve of Scaterd-Few’s 1990 Frontline records punk-rock debut, Sin Disease.

Perhaps it is his voice, at times calm and haunting, at other times manic and frightening.

Perhaps it is the fact that, throughout most of its existence, the Christian music industry has generally displayed intolerance toward lyrics that promote anything other than praise and worship.

With his magnetism for controversy, why does Aguirre consider the Christian music industry his home?

Because he is a Christian, and one who is determined to stretch the boundaries established by those who are decidedly conservative in the industry.

“As an artist, it is my duty make people think.  As a Christian artist, it is my desire to make people think … about Christ. Sometimes I’m not very conventional in my approach and that’s where the controversy begins. I don’t mean to offend. I merely aim to be true to my Lord and to myself,” said Aguirre of his controversial artistry.

“Some people think I’m a Satanist or something like that. But it’s only because they judge me before they even look at the subject matter of the lyrics.”

Being “judged” by other Christians is something Aguirre has dealt with throughout his years as a Christian.

In fact, it is probable that he was perceived as a heretic when, in 1990, he addressed hypocrisy with lyrics like “Pharisitical through and through / what the Hell you gonna’ do? / Tap my insecurity then blame it on society? / I’d rather die than blame it on my God.”

Reading past the controversy, one can clearly see that his focus is ministry.

“I would like to see some sort of worship project on CD. (I would like to be) leading worship around the country,” he said of his current musical/ministry objectives.

According to Aguirre in a recent interview with 7-Ball magazine, his most recent effort, a Scaterd-Few album titled Grandmother’s Spaceship, acts as “bait for a society enthralled with the paranormal, X-Files, spaceships and UFO’s. While a lot of people think God is a God of the past, He’s also a God of the future.”

He is currently at work on a project with his other band, Spy Glass Blue, which expresses spiritual ideas through artful Gothic music along the lines of Bauhaus, David Bowie, and Bad Brains.

Whether he filters the focus of his endeavors through the lens of Spy Glass Blue or the punk-rock of Scaterd-Few, it is apparent that music is an integral part of who Allan Aguirre is.

According to him, it has always been this way.

“I saw a drumset when I was five and I knew then what I wanted to do. By (the time I was) seven, I knew that I wanted to be a rock star.  By (the time I was) 12 I was playing drums professionally.”

To the average person who is an outsider to the music industry, a “music industry” musician is perceived as a celebrated person who does music and only music.

Aguirre’s life is evidence that such a perception is faulty.