By Frances Reade

Eugene Robinson has been the leader of S.F.'s most dangerous art-rock band Oxbow since 1989. We don’t mean Oxbow is "dangerous" as in "Tipper-Gore-no-likey." We mean "dangerous" like “Eugene is known to lurch into the crowd mid-set and strangle irritating audience members into unconsciousness." "Dangerous" as in "the man strips down and brandishes his pee-pee in a threatening manner onstage." "Dangerous” as in… "awesome."

Besides slinging 18 years of sweet, sludgy blues-metal here and abroad with Oxbow, Robinson's also the product of a Stanford education, a widely published writer (for Vice, Hustler, and GQ, among others), a senior editor at MacLife magazine (der?), star of a hilarious and frightening tour video and a deadly wizard of mixed martial arts. His elegant coffee table book on the latter subject is called Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, set to be released Nov. 13 by HarperCollins. It's a guide to the terrifying/empowering world of human combat, with plenty of info for the murderous fightaholic and the cowardly bar-brawling novice alike. Lots of pretty pictures too!

Eugene is also secretly a total sweetheart who hugs people repeatedly upon first introduction. He was gracious enough to answer a few questions for SFist. Bonus! He will be reading from Fight tonight at SF Camerawork at 6 pm.

So you just returned from touring with Isis. How'd that go?

We were playing to 1,000 people a night, and they didn’t all run to the bar when we played. It was a worthwhile waste of money and time.

This book seems directed at the connoisseurs of fighting and mayhem, rather than toward the novice.

I don’t concur with your assessment -- in my mind there’s a lot of stuff geared for the novice. I see it as a narrative work… about our collective relationship to violence, social decay, and anger. It’s all pretty accessible of you live in modern America, and it doesn’t matter if you know the names of modern fighters.

Do you hope to embolden the weak and uninitiated with Fight? Who would you like to see benefit from this book?

[Laughing] I don’t really expect anyone to benefit except me. I would hope to God that none of the art I produce has anything didactic about it. If you’re answering the call that [fighting] is a lifestyle choice, then I think this is the book designed for you, as I wish someone had written this book for me.

Do you see Oxbow’s music as being related to the violence and mayhem that can happen at your shows, or to fighting in general?

Oxbow is musical art. I don’t know that the music is tied to [the violence] -- that’s just a reasonable artistic response to people who are not fans of art. Klaus Kinski would stop plays in the middle, saying "you are not up this," with the idea that the audience deserved the art it was getting. I’m certainly not the only one in the pantheon of art who says if you don’t like art, then stay home and watch Will & Grace. [Hey! -- SFist ed.]

You’ve been involved in local music forever; I’m curious to hear what you think of the local scene right now, and who you’re into.

I’m disconnected as disconnected can be as far as any local music scene right now, though I do like Function 8 and Quanuum records. But part of the problem when you start talking about a scene is that a “scene” trends toward careerism, which is often the downfall of the S.F. scene: one or two bands do something and make money and that pulls everyone else down.

The thing about Oxbow is it’s a project of surrender. We only argue with club owners because we like to argue; we have no career motivations about making money off of music. That’s never been part of our motivation. There’s a purity to fusing art to making music without making money in mind -- I’m not interested in the kind of communication whereby I’m asking you if you like what I’m doing.

Being that you are a professional Mac authority, I have to ask what you think of Leopard [the new Mac operating platform].

Ha! I don’t think it’s essential. If you’re still wondering "should I get this or not?" then don’t. There’s my qualifying "no:" If you’re still rocking Mac OS X, if you’ve got Tiger, don’t bother.