Velvet Einstein speaks with PC Muñoz in an interview that was originally broadcast over the KALX airwaves on May 28, 2026
Velvet Einstein: Well, I am Velvet Einstein and very excited to have PC Muñoz here with us in the studio. How’s it going, PC?
PC Muñoz: I’m good. Thanks for having me, and shout out to your colleague, Gina, Gina C., who’s been… I think it’s like over a decade now been saying, “PC, when you coming in?”
Velvet Einstein: All right, yeah. So you’re here today because you’ve got a new album that we’ve been playing a lot of here at KALX.
PC Muñoz: Appreciate it, yeah.
Velvet Einstein: It’s called Little Ransoms, and you’ve got an album release party coming up. So why don’t we just get started talking a little bit about the album and the origins? Like, what made you decide that you wanted to do this now?
PC Muñoz: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been 21 years since I last did a purely spoken word record. The last time I did one was in 2005. It was called Twenty Haiku. It had Tammy Hall on it, Scott Amendola, Kevin Carnes, Blevin Blectum, and a lot of really cool people…Anthony Brown. And then over the years I really became focused on drumming and production, working with other artists. And specifically in the last seven years I’ve been really focused on this instrument called a SlapStick, this thing here, which is sort of like an electric berimbau or electric belembaotuyan in my culture.
I got really obsessed with it and I started… you know, to get good at something you gotta focus on it, and I started just sort of devoting my time to that. But in the meantime I hadn’t really stopped writing. I’d been commissioned for various anthologies and different performances, and I started putting together a collection of different pieces, spoken word pieces. I call them kinda like micro-literature pieces.
And at a certain point I realized I had enough for an album, and my mastering engineer, Jessica Thompson, who’s also from here in Berkeley, she’s like, “Yes, I think it’s time to, to do that.” So I ended up putting this record together. It’s a compact 17-minute listen. But it has a lot of different, textures and flavors on it.
Velvet Einstein: Awesome, and then you’ve got this album release party coming up. Can you tell us about that?
PC Muñoz: Yeah. That’s, next Friday, June 5th, at Medicine for Nightmares, which is, on 24th Street in San Francisco. And I’ll be joined by Red Fast Triple Luck. So David Boyce and I, David Boyce from The Broun Fellinis, he and I have a duo called Red Fast Luck, and then when Francis Wong joins us we’re called Red Fast Double Luck. And then when Francis and Chris Trinidad, the bassist and multi-instrumentalist, join us, we’re called Red Fast Triple Luck. So that night, I’ll do some reading and also hop on the drums and play with the group.
Velvet Einstein: Okay, awesome. And I think you said you’d do a reading for us here today. You ready for that?
PC Muñoz: Yes, absolutely. Okay, so I brought a piece, called Rugged Individual. Here it goes.
Spoken word (Rugged Individual):
My ancestors slit the throat of a Jesuit 300 years ago.
Ancestors from a much more recent time came west in a wagon.
Buckshot, bourbon, hardtack.
Became pioneers in Clayton, California, just across the bridge at the foot of Mount Diablo.
Great-great-grandfather George created the Chapman Hotel and sired many a child, including my great-grandmother, Lillian.
Warriors, seafarers, renegade lawmen, poets, target shooters, jilted cuckolds, crackerjack explorers, suicidal depressives, beautiful women, rugged individuals, survivors. But times have changed.
Like Chuck D said, Welcome to the Terrordome.
Duel at high noon, paradigm to paradigm.
No holds barred on the astral plane.
Pack your spiritual six-shooter, you’re gonna need it.
There’s a bounty on your soul, but you get to choose who takes it.
Gotta serve somebody, Zimmy said. It might be that mammon and it might be the heavens, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
So giddy up little doggies, and ready, aim, fire.
The streets of Laredo are piled with dead bodies and signs that say keep out.
Go ahead and cry for me, Susanna.
I ain’t going to Alabama ’cause my darling Clementine is right here.
Rugged back then meant tough, principled, determined, brave, and family first. Go your own way when you have to.
Then barons and flimflam men, charlatans of the spirit, play hocus pocus with reality, change the rules at their whim, calling it bottom line.
To each one’s own for every single living creature.
Oh, and here’s some raggedy bootstraps.
If you can’t pull yourself up with them, maybe you can cook ’em up for stew.
The last campfire might be made from the remains of your home, if you have one.
There is no going back. There is only going forward.
And to paraphrase John Donne, no person is an island, no matter how rugged you think you are.
So ready, aim, end.
Velvet Einstein: Very nice. PC Munoz here, on your KALX, Berkeley. What a wonderful piece. So that-
PC Muñoz: Thank you …
Velvet Einstein: that one, so that one wasn’t on the album.
PC Muñoz: No.
Velvet Einstein: So, so how did you decide what to include and what not to include?
PC Muñoz: I knew I wanted to call the album Little Ransoms, and that’s based on a piece that I’d written, and today I think I will read some of those small little pieces, called Little Ransoms. And I knew I wanted to have a really simple sonic aesthetic and just pair my voice with one other element. So you’ll notice on the record it’s usually myself and one other element, a flute player, sax, a singing voice, which is Vicki Randle in this case. And there’s, there’s one piece where it’s loaded up with percussion that’s called Ma & Pa. There’s another piece called The Rapture in Reverse where I used RZA’s app to program some stuff, and also used played the SlapStick and stuff. But the sonic aesthetic is very simple. So the way I chose the texts were what would best be rendered in that style. I went through and thought, “Okay, I know I can pair this with this.” You know, whenever you’re producing, you’re thinking about what sort of context a given piece can live in the best. So I just selected pieces that I knew could stand on their own with a spoken voice and just one other element.
Velvet Einstein: And so then you must be thinking about the next release. Do you have, like, some stuff queued up for us?
PC Muñoz: Yeah … There are, there are actually… there’s a few things that are queued up for the next release. Um, just sort of storing them up, writing them, demoing them. A little later this year I think I’m going to release a piece that’s been in the can for a while, and it’s from 2006, 20 years old. In 2006 I put together this kinda supergroup of sorts. It was myself, Kevin Carnes from The Broun Fellinis, Kai Eckhardt, the great bass player, Dave Worm from Bobby McFerrin’s group, and Danny Zingarelli. And, we did a version of my song called All Out of Everything at The Warfield. And it was recorded, and I never really put it out.
There is a studio version of that song with the oboist Kyle Bruckmann playing on the studio version, really cool. But we never put out that, that live version…oh and Dr. Fink from Prince and the Revolution was on the live version, too. So, it was a definite supergroup that we had at The Warfield, and I’ve always loved the arrangement we had, but never properly released it. So that’s one thing that’ll also come out a little later this year.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. Cool. And then what can people expect when they go to Medicine for Nightmares for the release? Is it going to be the pieces from the album? So you talked a little bit about who would be there, but, but what are you gonna be performing?
PC Muñoz: Yeah. I’m gonna do quite a few pieces from the record. But they won’t sound anything like on the record ’cause Red Fast Triple Luck is an improvising group. So, um, I will read the pieces and probably read them differently. There might be some changes, and then the group will respond, which is my favorite thing really in working with text and music, is to have, a set text and have really, really good musicians respond to it. So that’s what you’ll hear. And, and in some cases you know, I’ll jump behind the kit and play and then I’ll come back out in front of the mic. So it’ll be a mix of me reading pieces, sometimes just solo voice, sometimes with one instrument joining in, sometimes with the whole band providing a bed. And then other times just pure instrumentals as well.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah. One, one thing I always wonder about is, like, what’s been the impact of audio recording and even, like, the printing press on poetry and-
PC Muñoz: Yeah …
Velvet Einstein: in storytelling? So it sounds like you are actually going to use the base text, but you’re gonna…You will modify it.
PC Muñoz: Yeah. Okay. I’m constantly… I mean, kinda like with modern recording, you can tweak forever, right? Like, even what you put something out, it’s not quite done. It’s just what you’ve called finished at the moment. And then it comes to life, really, in front of a crowd and with a group of people rendering it in that way. It’s, it’s ever-evolving, really.
Velvet Einstein: Do you get a sense that with the way technology’s going with, like, streaming and social media that maybe there is a chance that things will loosen up so it’s not like there’s one set definitive version? That now artists such as yourself might just say, “Okay. Well, that was the poem a year ago. I’m just gonna release a new one.” It’s the same poem but just slightly different.
PC Muñoz: That’s, it’s an exciting premise, and I do think we are somewhat heading in that direction. I mean, Kanye West did that with a couple albums, you know, a few years ago where it just kept changing, changing the sequence. We’re in that situation, and frankly, I kind of practice that myself already with Bandcamp ’cause on Bandcamp, which is a great vehicle for musicians, you can change the album sequence. I can go in right now and change the Little Ransoms album sequence if I wanted to. I could add a track if I wanted to. Different than, like, on the streaming services like Spotify and Apple and Amazon and stuff. On Bandcamp, there’s a lot of artistic freedom to do those kind of iterations and tomorrow there’s a whole different album. You know, it would confuse the listeners, but it’s kind of exciting as a creator.
Velvet Einstein: Wow. I gotta keep an eye out for that. Yeah. I usually download the songs myself and then I never go back. But yeah, maybe I should now.
PC Muñoz: Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: Cool. Well, do you wanna do another piece maybe?
PC Muñoz: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll do this piece called Ricochet, which is from, a chapbook I put out about 10 years ago called Inside Pocket of a Houndstooth Blazer, and this, this piece was also used by the choreographer Robert Moses for one of his dance pieces.
Spoken Word (Richochet):
At least in the old days, they would look you in the eye when they killed you.
They might cut you, shoot you, chop you up, bust your kneecaps, throw you in some river, hang you, stone you, drag you through town by your boots, punch you right in your mouth.
But you could feel the earth when your body hit the ground.
You could taste blood when it crept onto your tongue.
You could suck on your own dislocated tooth and know what it was and who it was that hit you.
This other thing is binary, zeros and ones.
Can’t see it coming, won’t see it going.
The ricochet victims of deception, double cross, surprise attacks, and proxy assault are forging a hellified battle plan.
Beware the day they decide to haunt.
Velvet Einstein: Very nice. Again, we’re talking with PC Muñoz here at, The KALX. So that piece you said it was from, what, 10 years ago you did that chapbook?
PC Muñoz: Yeah. It was, it accompanied an album called Physical Science, which actually Rugged Individual is on. It’s only available on Bandcamp, but I’m thinking about putting Rugged Individual onto the streaming services, ’cause it’s, seems to be one that people respond to quite a bit.
Velvet Einstein: Okay, cool. And then so you mentioned that you’ve also got another event coming up over at The Freight.
PC Muñoz: Yeah. Yeah. So – I’m the Director of Programming at The Freight, and we just teamed up with The Jazz School. Like, they’ve been doing these Brown Bag Jazz Hangs for a bit. And during the summer, we’re teaming up for some of these things, and I’m kicking it off with the first one, which is about… I’m really excited about this, so those of you who are free jazz drum lovers or just free jazz lovers, I hope you come out for it. It’s just a listening session and with me kinda, talking about different free jazz drummers who’ve contributed a lot to that particular style. And that one’s on June 17th, free at The Freight.
Velvet Einstein: Okay, cool. All right. Well, we’ve been talking about your album, so let’s go ahead, and, you know, we’re gonna have a listen to it. So we’ve got a, a track cued up here. This is, um, the song Parallel. Do you wanna introduce it at all? I should. Or should we talk about it afterwards?
PC Muñoz: Yeah, actually, let’s talk about it after.
Velvet Einstein: Okay, here we go. This is Parallel by PC Muñoz..
Spoken Word (Parallel):
Researchers have discovered that in a parallel universe currently being lived out just two dimensions away from us, everything is the same as ours.
You are you, and I am me.
A star is a star, and a tree’s a tree, except for a blip in 1977.
In the parallel 1977, it was not Star Wars that launched a cultural phenomenon, but another popular American-made visual product, The Love Boat.
In this parallel universe, Captain Stubing is the most popular Halloween costume of all time.
There is a Love Boat doctoral program offered at Yale.
Month-long conferences are held all over the world to discuss plot lines, the unexpected import of Carol Channing’s guest spots, the implied semiotics of Purser Gopher’s white gloves.
Anyone can walk into any bar in the world and order The Isaac, and receive a cocktail personally designed by Ted Lange, the Oakland-born actor who played The Love Boat’s affable bartender.
The most popular Lego set in most parts of the world is a 60,000-piece replica of the titular cruise ship.
As for Star Wars, it’s considered an underground cinematic gem created by a peculiar Californian upstart.
There are occasional midnight showings in Fresno attended by dozens of hardcore fans who lament the fact that the masses never really understood it.
These fans regularly petition George Lucas, a retired lumber salesman in Modesto, for a sequel.
“That movie doesn’t even exist,” George Lucas reportedly said in 1989.
Velvet Einstein: All right, and that was the track Parallel from PC Muñoz.. And PC’s here in the studio. Do you have anything you wanna say about that? Or just let it sit on its own?
PC Muñoz: Yeah. That was a fun one. I mean, that was commissioned by Mosaic America, it’s an organization in the South Bay, and we were doing a performance for Google for May the fourth- Star Wars Day. I was a kid when Star Wars was happening, so at first l wrote a piece about John Williams, and I liked that quite a bit. But then I started going down this rabbit hole of, “Well, what if Star Wars wasn’t this phenomenon?
What if some other random you know, American media product became the same phenomenon that Star Wars did?” And I landed on The Love Boat because I genuinely liked it when I was a kid. And I just sort of let that quantum exploration take my imagination where it went. And, I’m glad people are enjoying it. It’s supposed to be fun.
Velvet Einstein: Yeah. It definitely is. And you have the local connection there with… the actor whose name always escapes me.
PC Muñoz: Ted Lange.
Velvet Einstein: yes.
PC Muñoz: Yeah. I was, I was just looking him up because…I swear I was walking around, downtown Berkeley, and I swear I saw his, like, a poster of his, at the Marsh, or there’s something he’s doing locally.
Velvet Einstein: Okay.
PC Muñoz: I didn’t know about that when I wrote the piece, but glad to see it, and glad to see Ted’s doing stuff, and I hope he hears the piece.
Velvet Einstein: Awesome. And then the percussiveness on that, so how did you generate those sounds?
PC Muñoz: So on Parallel, that was done with an app called Werkbench, W-E-R-K bench. And that one, it’s all sample generated. You sample a small sound, and then you build a track from it. It’s a good question, ’cause it was an unusual construction for this piece. I was messing around with Werkbench…I remember I was in Minneapolis doing a performance there, and I started working with Werkbench for the first time on an iPad, and I was sampling bottle caps and finger snaps and weird stuff…
And, and I had that snaky little track going, and I just shelved it. I was like, “Okay, I’ll use that at some point.” And then when I was working on Little Ransoms, I was pulling the texts out, I was starting to pull out different things that I had shelved, and that one came up. I was like, “Oh, it’s cool.” And that’s perfect, like, it doesn’t get in the way of the words. It allows the words to breathe. You can hear the story. And I ended up slowing it down a little bit before I brought it to the studio. And then Kevin McCann, who’s the great engineer who worked on it, he started messing with the effects during it to kinda go with the text, and it worked really well.
Velvet Einstein: All right, cool. Did you wanna do another reading or-
PC Muñoz: Yeah …
Velvet Einstein: you’re good? Okay.
PC Muñoz: Yeah. I have a few others. This one’s called The Doctor Failed to Cut the Umbilical Cord.
Spoken word (The Doctor Failed to Cut the Umbilical Cord):
The doctor failed to cut the umbilical cord.
He wanted to see what would happen to the boy.
He devised a clever chart to monitor the deterioration of the umbilical cord.
The umbilical cord, however, was of a contrary nature.
It grew stronger, longer, firmer
Mother was there every time the boy used the bathroom.
Mother was there for every spelling test and schoolyard fight.
Mother was there upon his teenage discovery of glamour photography.
Mother was there on the first awkward date, helping him assemble his outfit.
Mother was there for his first heavy petting experience, coaching him on location and pacing.
Mother was there on his first night in the dorms, knocking back beers with the roommates.
Mother was there when he proposed.
Mother was there when the grandchild was conceived.
The doctor won several prestigious awards and appeared on television numerous times before eating a poisonous mushroom in Philadelphia in 1991.
Velvet Einstein: Wow. That’s a fun one. Is it based on a true story, I assume?
PC Muñoz: No. But possibly. Yeah, a friend of mine.
Velvet Einstein: Okay.
PC Muñoz: I can also read, some of the actual Little Ransoms pieces, which aren’t on the Little Ransoms album, but they inspired it.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. Yeah, let’s go for that.
Spoken word (unreleased from Little Ransoms):
She runs in concentric circles around the trees, satiating the spirits.
If her parents are attacked by invisible forces tonight, she will not hold herself responsible.
He is preaching a heartfelt sermon to the village with his fingers crossed.
If a man, woman, or child turns from God this afternoon, his hands will be clean.
She checks the burner five times and searches the floor for stray sin.
If someone dies in the shack tonight, she will feel no guilt.
Velvet Einstein: Very nice. What is your interpretation of, like, Little Ransoms? Like, what, what’s the idea there?
PC Muñoz: I think it’s these…someone else asked me this. I think it’s the idea of these little offerings that we make throughout our lives to keep going. You know? There’s, there’s always some, there’s always some little payment that, that you’re making in one form or another to continue going. Like, in this, in this particular case, these ones I just read, they sound sort of obsessive, right? They sound like there’s some kind of compulsion going on. And I think that’s the idea… they’re not all necessarily as extreme as these ones I just read, but we’re all sort of paying these little ransoms throughout our lives.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. Hmm. And then, are we freeing up something as a result? Is that the idea? So you pay out the ransom and then…?
PC Muñoz: Yeah, you pay out the ransom, then there’s, there’s, you’re psychologically free.
Velvet Einstein: Okay.
PC Muñoz: I think we, we all do that a little bit, right? There’s you know, whatever kinda trade-off you need to make to, to feel okay. To me, those are, those are the little ransoms that we’re all paying.
Velvet Einstein: Okay. Did you wanna do a piece with the SlapStick?
PC Muñoz: I don’t need to do a piece, but I will play it a little bit. So yeah, as I mentioned, here it is. I do play this instrument called the SlapStick. It was invented by a guy named Andy Graham. He’s a local instrument maker based in, based in Fairfax. And this won, I think, best instrument, best new instrument in, like, 2017 or something at NAMM.. And I didn’t see it till 2020, during the pandemic. And I was immediately taken with it because, you know, as a drummer, I like the idea of being able to bend a note, which I usually can’t do with a drum kit or other types of percussion, and I got obsessed with it. I think one of the main reasons I became obsessed with it is because it resembles, an electric berimbau, the Brazilian instrument, or, in my culture, which is an indigenous culture from Micronesia, from the Marianas Islands, it’s called a belambaotuyan. A single string and a gourd to resonate. And to me, this is like the turbocharged version of it, and it’s awfully fun to play. I’ll play just a little bit of it. Let’s see… That’s just a little taste of it.
Velvet Einstein: All right. And I think, so that’s on at least one of the pieces on the album, right?
PC Muñoz: Yeah. Yeah It’s on The Rapture in Reverse. It’s the only thing with my voice on Gio is Cheating on Vanessa, which is a really, really short piece.
Velvet Einstein: Let’s have a, a listen then to The Rapture in Reverse.
PC Muñoz: Perfect.
Spoken Word (The Rapture in Reverse):
Imagine the rapture in reverse.
Scores of righteous bodies falling from above.
Sent by God to elevate the place.
Their undeserving counterparts left behind.
Didn’t make the grade.
Stuck in the sky doing nothing.
One goes down, one stays up.
One for heaven. One for earth.
Suddenly we’re overrun with all these virtuous people.
All the angels and saints. Nursing the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the downtrodden, giving voice to the voiceless, bringing joy to the elders, and guidance for the young.
The end times would be the beginning.
The empty heaven would make a blessed earth with the rapture in reverse.
Velvet Einstein: The Rapture in Reverse there. PC Muñoz from the album, uh, Little Ransoms and PC’s here in the studio. And you’re gonna do a few more readings, but I think first we just remind people that there is a performance coming up. You have an album release party.
PC Muñoz: Yes, June 5th at Medicine for Nightmares, 7:00 PM. It’s free. Oh, and if you come, you’ll get a Little Ransoms wristband, which I brought for you, Velvet Einstein.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, nice.
PC Muñoz: Yeah. There you go. Yeah.
Velvet Einstein: All right. I’ll hold it up to the microphone here.
PC Muñoz: Yeah. Can you, can you hear it? Can you see it? That’s on June 5th, next Friday, Medicine for Nightmares, which is on 24th Street in San Francisco. And then if you come to the Freight on June 17th at, I think it’s at 12:30, I’m doing a one of the JazzSchool’s Brown Bag Jazz Hangs. And it’s about free jazz drum heroes.
Velvet Einstein: Cool. All right. Well, you’ve got a, a few more pieces for us. I’m excited to hear these.
PC Muñoz: So I have a piece called Where Should I Land? which is on my first album called The Trouble I’d Bring You, which is now out of print. I’m not sure if, KALX has it. But it’s a cool piece. It is just kalimba and a drum machine and, and voice and a little bass.
Spoken word (Where Should I Land):
I’ve been soaring and swooping above your nest for days, looking down my nose, smirking.
I’m an eagle, baby. You should love me.
I’ve got feathers and strong, strong wings, shifty eyes and fighting claws, yet without a home, without a home.
I’m resting on this branch momentarily. Do not think I will stay.
I will, however, make arrangements to mate with you whenever you like.
You should love me. I’ll make you smile, make you laugh even when you’re trying not.
You’ll kiss me sweet, and I’ll fly away with nowhere to go, nowhere to go.
My darling, my darling, sweet love of my life, where should I land?
pc munoz: And for one last one, I’ve got this one called On the Occasion of the Quarter Century, which is in a old chapbook of mine called Half Truths.
Spoken word (On the Occasion of the Quarter Century)
On the occasion of the quarter century: synchronicity,
steam from your coffee
my wanderlust
the death of a loved one
some spiteful injustice.
In chambers, I’ll smile sideways and offer mechanical help.
The choir will sing, “We’ve come this far by faith.”
Children will snooze during the lecture.
This, the passing of time, the romance of reality.
Velvet Einstein: Nice. Thank you, PC, so much for coming in today. A reminder to our listeners, the album release performance will be at Medicine for Nightmares on June 5th. The, the bookstore art gallery down on 24th Street.
PC Muñoz: Thank you. Yeah, and Little Ransoms is available on my Bandcamp page, pcmunoz.bandcamp.com, and it’s on all the streaming services now. And the piece we’re about to hear is called Archery. It’s from a record called Grab Bag, and it features my great musical partner, Joan Jeanrenaud, the composer and cellist from the Kronos Quartet. She’s responding to this sort of wild surrealist text in this piece called Archery.
Spoken word (Archery):
I did rope tricks for a dollar at the yearly carnival.
You sculpted a bust of Hemingway in the parish parking lot.
I made great escapes from vilified carnage boxes.
You performed a one-woman play behind the neighborhood Lucky’s.
I filled six Doughboy pools with the fat of a three-toed sloth.
You sold handmade earrings at a friend’s garage sale.
I did somersaults on stage in Wichita.
You published an essay on vaudeville comedians
I stuffed my socks with cotton candy.
You had an elegant meal with C. Dolores Tucker.
I snuck into an underground bar to watch videos of university professors defiling nubile aliens
You had a walk-on part in a Gregg Araki film
I winced when tobacco boy didn’t finish his job.
You painted your dad’s name in nail polish on the side of your building
I drilled holes in oversized encyclopedias
You dipped yourself in olive oil as a thesis
I slipped and fell to the the feathery mess my lover had made
You sighed and made a decision
BULLSEYE!
