If rock ’n’ roll has one authentic exponent it’s Jennifer Herrema aka J.J. Rox of Black Bananas /RTX/Royal Trux. Herrema is a singer, artist, poet, model, and couturiére whose ouevre is too cool for the Louvre.

Like Dylan in the ‘60s, Royal Trux were the “ur group” that provided the aesthetic , musical, and style template for every band of their era. Herrema’s records with BLACK BANANAS continue the artist’s prophetic journey through the semi familiar sound swamp of mud & mystery.

BLACK BANANAS new LP — “BAD BUNCH” —is a new classic— a sprawling masterpiece of fun and confusion.

IFS: What genre is Black Bananas?

JH: Black Bananas! I don’t know that there’s an existing genre that accommodates all the stuff we like. Genre is more useful for people selling records than people making them. Although I suppose if somebody absolutely needed a category, I’d be happy to invent one.

IFS: Any particular inspiration when making the record? (Film, record, book, place, event?)

JH: Not one particular thing. The record was assembled over such an extended period of time that it contains all sorts of different environments, experiences, sounds and circumstances. Some of the material goes back more than ten years. Every time we reopened a session, we were different people in a different moment, and the songs would absorb some of that. It’s almost geological. We didn’t sit down and say, okay, we’re going to make a record inspired by this movie or that artist. Things accumulate. Some stuff stays with you for years without you necessarily understanding why. Then it comes out in some completely different form. A lot of this record was actually about removing things rather than adding them. We had accumulated so much material that the real revelation was discovering what was underneath it all. We had accumulated so much material that the real revelation was discovering what was underneath it all.

IFS: You’re a deejay — where can we hear you?

JH: I do The Banana Question on dublab with Kurt, and we also do Bad Bunch Radio on NQRA. I’ve been doing The Banana Question for years. I like the idea that you might hear something you’ve never encountered before, followed by something you’ve heard a thousand times but suddenly hear differently because of what came before it. That’s kind of the point of radio for me. It’s not about establishing good taste. It’s about putting things in proximity to one another and seeing what happens.

IFS: You make clothes — what’re you making now?

JH: I’ve been putting together a Bad Bunch shop, kind of a junk shop, really. A lot of it comes out of my Royal Trux archive — old stage clothes, photo shoot wardrobe, things I’ve saved for decades, altered, repaired, maintained, dragged around and somehow managed not to lose. Some of it goes back 35 years. There’s clothing, artwork, objects, all sorts of stuff. It’s not really a conventional clothing line. Everything’s got its own history, and a lot of it has been through several incarnations already. The shop will be part of a larger archival gallery show I’m putting together for Tokyo in 2027. The clothing and pieces from the collection will be for sale. I like the idea of all this stuff getting another life instead of spending the next 35 years in boxes.

IFS: Favorite surfer?

JH: Alex Knost. He’s a friend. Years ago I made a conceptual flip- book film for Flaunt with Alex in it. Ariel Pink and I did the soundtrack. Later Alex and Kim Gordon formed Glitterbust, named after the Royal Trux song. Funny how things circle back.

IFS: Tell us a little about the cover art.

JH: The artwork was done by Darren Beck, a fan I connected with on the internet. Those characters are actually me, Brian and Kurt, transformed into these strange mythological warriors against a nighttime cityscape. It’s got elements of comics, fantasy illustration and heavy-metal iconography. I love that collision. There’s something slightly absurd about it, but also something heroic. It’s us, but in some alternate universe where we apparently have other things to take care of.

IFS: Tell us about the order of the songs and the flow of the record. Is this an album? Should it be listened to as an album? Or is it a bunch of songs?

JH: It’s absolutely an album. The funny thing is that the songs came from all these disconnected periods of time, but eventually they developed a relationship with one another that wasn’t necessarily obvious when we were making them. Sequencing is a huge part of creating that relationship. A song changes depending on what comes before it and what comes after it. It’s almost like editing a film. You’re manipulating the way somebody experiences time, tension, release, repetition, surprise. There are things you can accomplish through sequence that don’t exist within the individual songs. So yeah, you can listen to any one of them by itself, but you’re not going to have the same experience. The whole thing is its own environment. That’s the reason to make an album in the first place.

IFS: Is there an overarching theme or concept to the album?

JH: Not a concept in the sense of a predetermined narrative. I don’t generally work backward from some big idea that everything has to illustrate. But I do think there’s an internal logic that develops, even when you’re not consciously directing it. Bad Bunch is the accumulation of a lot of different moments that ultimately became one thing. Some things were recorded twelve years apart but now occupy the same space, as if they’d always belonged together. I like that. Time isn’t necessarily linear when you’re making things. The past isn’t finished just because it happened already. Time isn’t necessarily linear when you’re making things. The past isn’t finished just because it happened already. You can go back into something and discover that it has an entirely different future. So maybe that’s the theme, if there is one. Nothing is ever really finished until it is. And sometimes not even then.