|
 |
As April 15 approaches, and Clarke deducts Organic Style subscriptions instead of Flipside on aging punks’ tax returns, he’ll also strum an acoustic guitar as he clicks away on your depreciations and amortizations and probes into your possibly-pathetic financial situation. “I don’t do covers, and I don’t sing for many people,” he clarifies, though there’s more time for rocking his clients during “extension season.” Since his first office at Hollywood’s Crossroads of the Worlds building in 1983, Clark has amassed a client base that now numbers approximately 1,500, divided equally among musicians, actors as well as music industry and behind-the-scenes film types. Two of his employees in fact, are singers: Gia Ciambotti counts the E Street Band among her credits, while Sharon Celani plies her vocal trade with Fleetwood Mac.
The drummer/tax guru was not a founding member of the seminal Circle Jerks, but joined the lineup in ‘83, taking the band in a harder direction. Clark last toured with the Jerks in ‘95, and while this father of three doesn’t miss “getting in a van for six weeks,” he still has a creative jones. His own label, Applied Atomic Energy, and band, Ultrasound Explosion (whose upcoming release is entitled “Love, Coffee and Murder”) keep him in tune and in check. In addition to the occasional song, Clark also will dispense “garden-variety psychology” to clients who seem open to it, especially those musicians who hit middle age and haven’t “made it” yet. This, of course, in addition to “telling them how important I am in the scheme of the 2000-2010 music market.”
In his office full of Mars Attacks and Star Trek memorabilia, guitars, Music Connection magazines and framed family photos, Clark is clearly a multi-tasking man on a mission. His company, in homage to tax behemoth H&R Block, is called H.N.R. Clark (“the entertainment industry income tax specialist”) — though it’s unlikely you’d be able to chat about Bad Religion or grill your “Block” tax preparer about songs he’d written. If the only certain things are death and taxes, you might as well have a suitably punk preparation for the latter, and have your money tended to by a “Jerk”; it can only soften the blow of a having to pay quarterlies.
– Katherine Turman