This interview comes from Bunnyhop. Well duh.
Dale: Mike and I did. I met Mike at a mutual friend's birthday party, we played miniature golf.
Mike: That's right.
D: And I won. I didn't know anyone--except for this friend of mine--outside of Bozeman, Montana.
M: I didn't know anyone, either. I spent most of my time alone.
When was this?
M: Sixth or seventh grade, when bullies were really bullies.
D: And you could still play a serious game of miniature golf.
When you were growing up, did you ever wish you were somewhere else?
M: It seemed like anywhere else was better. I always wanted to go to California so I could surf, but that was about it. I'm glad I didn't grow up in California.
D: I spent my formative years in Montana in the basement of my parents' house so I didn't have any real perspective as far as where you could go if you left Montana.
In the basement doing God knows what.
(Laughter all around.)
M: My room was upstairs and I had my own TV and everything.
Judging from some of the things you guys use visually, did you ever have a longing for another era?
M: I've never longed for another era.
D: There are times when it seems like it would be really fun to be involved with early Sixties drag-racing--
M: (Laughing.)
D:--and to be in some gang or something.
M: It would be nice to live in an era where people wore really cool suits.
Like shark skin suits and fedoras?
D: Yeah, and have lots of money to throw around.
M: Yeah, that too.
D: I [wish] I could've been one of the kids in Blackboard Jungle, total Fifties, right around the time when they coined the term "juvenile delinquent." (In a gruff voice) "There's a problem today with juvenile delinquency and hoodlums!" That's when there were these bad-ass trouble kids with x's on the back of their jackets, knife fights with teachers--
M: Right, in the beginning of that despair, like, "Well, we live in the City and we have no money, so we don't care!"
And play rock 'n' roll.
M: That would've been fun to play in a rock band then because you would've been such an outlaw.
You guys appropriate a lot of Forties and Fifties pop culture, mostly starting with Tulip, but also the various sound bites that play a big part in your sound. With Fifties pop culture running rampant, why do you think it is still relevant today?
M: I think that they made such cool stuff then, overall.
D: I think a lot of it, too, is that nothing today can remain underground or undiscovered. If anyone does anything, like if two people make a magazine, USA Today will have a blurb about it. I don't think anything exists for twenty years without anyone rediscovering it. I doubt there's going to be a Jim Thompson where he dies penniless and obscure 'cuz now he's a big cultural icon. Nothing exists in a basement anymore.
M: A lot of stuff has time to develop that way. In Fifties and Sixties culture--not late Sixties 'cuz that's when [youth culture] was being put on a cereal box--with pulp books and such, it was developing over such an extremely long period of time that it actually could become an aesthetic, whereas now things change so fast that it never really has time to sink in as an aesthetic.
D: There's not any regionalism anymore. With technology and media, everything is just smeared across the globe. Things that are happening in New York that you once heard about, now you can just watch it on TV. Things are spread really thin. I guess that's what we could be crotchety old men about--"Kids these days, they don't understand!"
(Laughter.)
Most people tend to appropriate old pop culture on a surface level, mostly out of irony and perversion. How do you avoid such trappings?
M: We were vaguely talking about this a little earlier, about the pervasive nature of Fifties pop culture. It's not something that we think about. It's weird, we just have this knack for it. All of our records--from the covers to the content--all seems to represent itself as a "package" and it all seems to happen inadvertently.
D: And as far as packaging goes, a lot of the coolest advertising packaging came from the Fifties and Sixties when Now, see there's an era that I would long to be in, to work for an ad agency in New York. (In this evil, sinister ad exec voice) "I got an idea! We'll make soap with pumice in it and we'll call it Lava Soap! And we'll put a volcano on the package! We'll use the word 'pumice' to sell it!"
M: It was totally thought of the whole way through.
D: Right. Now, when you see [appropriated ideas], you wonder where it's stolen from.
M: Bands these days just slap a "decal aesthetic" over the top of their records, it's not really thought all the way through. Not that we think it all the way the way through, but I do think that--
D: Oh, we do think it all the way through.
(Laughter.)
M: Like The Miracle of Sound in Motion record, that record has so many sound effects on it. The only reason that it has a sound effects record cover is because I bought this one record and we couldn't decide on the album cover and I thought, "That's pretty cool, why don't we use that?" Actually, the title was swiped from the back of that album.
Did you steal all the text, too?
D: Darren [Mor-X] swiped half of the text. Sam Sulliman is credited with doing the artwork.
M: It could just easily be seen as, "Ooh, we've got a lot of sound effects and this package is about sound effects!"
D: We could pull the, "Oh yeah, we had the concept from the beginning," schtick.
There seems to be a degree of consistency, especially since that record followed Tulip's pulp theme with the cover and the song "Myrna Loy," but I can see how that could come in retrospect.
D: I don't think we're that into the Fifties, we're not like American Graffiti.
M: Actually, in terms of packaging, the early Sixties is what I'm more into, like the cars, the clothes--
Who was it that said you guys always seem to catch onto something--like drag-racing--before it's big?
M: It was this ridiculous interview and he was kinda stupid, actually. Again, it's another example of what happens in retrospect, like [our Marcia Brady cover] and the Brady Bunch coming back in full force. It's not so much catching on to something as it is doing what you do.
D: I can't support that statement, that's like, "My head is so big, I can't take my shirt off!"
(Laughter.)
M: I don't think that we influence things that way or that we catch on, I think it's just more like--
D: We receive the signal. We do what they tell us to.
Wow, it comes through your cable channels, huh?
(Laughter.)
D: Yeah, we spearheaded the whole drag-racing revival.
M: Right, exactly.
Well, an interesting thing about the drag-racing thing is that Adam Ant has retooled his image around that.
D: Really?
It was just awful. I saw him at this live acoustic performance inside Tower Records and it was just pathetic. I expected more from a guy who pioneered a lot of interesting music in the early Eighties.
D: Too bad he wasn't still dressed up like a pirate.
(Laughter.)
D: He did that Indian / pirate thing a while back.
He was onto the space thing ten years ago, even though it never caught on.
D: But then he got into that lying-in-a-barn phase where he was like, "I'm lying in hay!"
(Laughter.)
Right, his whole romantic Renaissance phase.
D: New Romanticism, that'll make a big comeback.
M: Prog-rock.
D: They need to combine Prog-Rock and the New Romanticism.
Seems like the perfect marriage, doesn't it?
D: Right, frilly shirts with Flock of Seagulls style haircuts.
Why did you guys never think it was important to have a rock / theatric image?
M: But we do!
(Laughter.)
You're image is completely normal.
D: It can get quite complicated.
M: I'm just too lazy to be quite honest.
I think it's just funny seeing this Time-Life commercial for their "Guitar Rock" collections and they'll show Quiet Riot with their big hair, striped spandex, and pseudo-evil imagery. The worst part about it is that people still do that.
D: A bunch of people talk about the return of Hair Rock and I guess it makes sense. People who'll be running out of stuff to pay attention to will be like, "Wait a minute! There were three guys at that Denny's with big rock hair! It must be back!" Then there'll be an article written and a bunch of kids in Kansas will--
M: Grow all their hair back.
D: --go, "Oh, okay," and steal all their brother's Poison and Warrant records.
(Laughter.)
It's disgusting how people in these so-called hipster circles are so reactionary that they'll go so far as to immerse themselves in really bad metal music from the Eighties. I mean, even Krokus was a band that metalheads hated.
M: They're the worst!
D: At least you've got to listen to what they were ripping off, you don't want to listen to Ratt.
(Laughter.)
D: At least buy a Blue Öyster Cult record.
M: Get to the core of the matter.
D: Get to the root of the problem.
M: Even Beavis and Butthead didn't like Krokus.
(Laughter.)
D: I'm hoping that it doesn't happen.
M: There are droves of people out there just waiting for it to come back.
Exactly. It's just weird, Eiso was talking about this the other day, how none of the guys in Bakamono look or dress similarly and how people could be confused by that as if there should be this singular image.
M: That kind of goes back to the Fifties. TV wasn't quite as prevalent in music so they weren't packaging bands quite that extremely. That's what it comes down to, something that people can see on TV and go, "Oh, it's that band," or, "It's that kind of music." Then they go out and buy a shirt, cut their hair the right way, and they're a part of that. It's that easy.
Do you think anything in the Nineties will have any staying power? Like, in the year 2030, people might look back and go, "Wow, the Nineties had some great packaging!"
(Laughter.)
Like Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth cover, someone might look at that and go, "Whoah! It really looks like neon lights!"
D: When we were in Seattle, we saw this minute-lube place with this big banner that said, "You'll Be Out In a Minute," and it looked like it was cut-up punk rock letters. Even the punk aesthetic is used to sell oil changes because they figure all those people in Seattle who are in grunge bands need to get the oil changed for their van!
(Laughter.)
D: The next big thing will be becoming a farmer; "We own land and raise cattle and we have a zine about it!"
(Laughter.)
D: It will always be worse than what we could sit around here and try to make up.
The funny thing is that just in the past five years, all of the past three decades have been revived.
D: Yeah, there's that great Dan Clowes line, that in the future you'll be into the Seventies, but not the Seventies of the Seventies but the Nineties rehash of the Seventies.
(Laughter.)
D: Nothing new will be thought of.
M: It's like the Nineties version of Seventies punk, in 2010 people will be into that.
I think that the Nineties will come back in the Nineties, but it won't represent the Nineties since it's a decade living in the past.
D: The circle is getting smaller and smaller.
M: I think that the corporate logo is one thing that will remain later on. Everybody has to have their own corporate logo.
D: That'd be great if all individuals had some logo designed for them. That's another thing, there's so much logo appropriation, that no one can actually sit down and create a logo anymore. It's like, "What if we take the Texaco logo and put our name across it? Wait, our band's name is too long."
M: (Laughing.)
D: Me and Mark Brooks from Foreskin 500 took a vow never to appropriate another logo, it all has to stop. It's not too far from when everyone will have trademarks after their names. The new Jack In the Box [ad campaign] is amazing.
That's related to the bomb phenomenon I was talking about. When they did that, they just totally erased their past.
D: Nobody remembers the fact that all these people died eating their food.
M: McDonald's has done a really good job with the recycling thing, like, "Oh, we're not destroying the rainforest," even though they've been basically destroying our planet.
D: Then they hired some earthy graphic artist to do some wood block-like artwork to make people think that, "Oh, this was hand-printed down at the community center or something!" when in fact it was all done on a computer and made to look cheap.
(Laughter.) I know if my mother ever caught me listening to Steel Pole Bath Tub, she'd wonder what's wrong with me. Why do you think that is?
D: My dad had the best line when I was listening to this P.I.L. record once when I was 15 or something. He said, "If that guy came into my house, I'd loan him a shotgun to kill himself!"
M: (Laughs.) Right!
That's a Ted Nugent endorsed sentiment.
M: People used to be so surprised about the normal thing, like, "You guys look so normal, I thought you guys would be INTENSE!!"
D: On our first tour, people expected us to look like White Zombie or something.
M: I've never really thought of our music that way, I've always had this sense that it was very cartoony. No one ever seems to pick up on that. I guess it isn't like the Smurfs.
D: I like the Smurfs.
M: Oh, I love the Smurfs.
I think that'll be the next wave: Smurf Rock. Maybe Fraggle Rock.
M: (Laughing.)
D: Cuddly but slightly perverse and frightening. I think that we have a very good sense of humor about it all. I was cracking up when we played the Warfield the other night, it reached a point where I was laughing so hard I thought I'd have to lie down. I'd see a girl holding her ears, waiting for Mike Patton, her boyfriend standing behind her, comforting her. A whole bunch of people were like, "Why?! Just stop! If you'll stop now, we'll get to hear Faith No More." Then I think, "How did I get here?" When I was in seventh grade hiding in the basement, would I have imagined that I'd be "rockin' out" and--
Frightening children.
(Laughter.)
D: I don't think that the average Steel Pole Bath Tub fan has $17.50 to see us in some huge place. I see the crowd and think, "Yup, just another slough of stoned 15 year old boys from the suburbs who want to watch Mike Patton," and that we're just this obstacle. In this way, it reminds me of when we first started playing shows where you think, "I don't care if anyone hates us, they're just gonna have to deal with a whole slough of screeching noise,"and now it's kinda gone full circle. It's like, "They're trapped! They don't want to give up their spot on the fence!" They can put their fingers in their ears, but that's just about it.
I wonder if looking normal will become a huge hip trend.
D: Maybe "nice" will be the next thing, just market it, package products really well.
M: Anything you can think of will be chewed up and spit out as quickly as possible.
D: With a nice logo and all.
M: And you can read about it on the Internet.
(Laughter.)
M: I feel like a grumpy old man when I talk about MTV, but they really do take in visual culture and two weeks later it's barely relevant nor seen as innovative. You can't be original now if everything looks like Ray Gun.
"MTV: Gatorade and Ray Gun."
(Laughter.)
M: With bands like Smashing Pumpkins and all that "alternative" stuff, they've created this non-aesthetic aesthetic, this kind of--
D: Mush.
M: Right, and if it's mushy enough and lacking any flavor, it fits right in.
From Cocktail Nation to Tofu Nation.
M: (Laughing.) The first time I saw the t-shirt for the new Jack In the Box campaign--where it says "(Jack's Front)" with the clown head on the front side and "Jack's Back" on the back side--I thought it was just the perfect indie-rock shirt. All the indie-rockers should have one.
(Laughter.)
M: Whoever thought of "Jack's Back" wakes up smiling in the morning.