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or Cecil Taylor plays. Forget it. I mean that's tradition that's their whole life. And we've never involved ourselves in that kind of music. We come out of that somewhat, anybody can come out of it, just playing music.
LR: Daydream wasn't really all that much improvised. I mean, it's loose because we played it a lot and we had a feel.
TM: We're not technicians and we don't play like structured music as of a technical entity. But yeah, it is part of that, you take from that history.
LR: Its like there's a certain point when you get a tight arrangement, where you've played it so much that you can get loose with it and still have it be effective.
TM: Yeah, a lot of that music, the only thing you can take from it is its' temperament from it. Ya know, it's that kind of quality. You can't really take the skill and ability of it because it's so... it's so sophisticated.
SS: (returning) Will the tall genius move aside, so that the shorter genius can sit down.
ALL: (laughter)
TM: (grabbing microphone) I HAVE SPOKEN.
SL: So then, what kinds of contemporaries affect your music?
LR: Revolting Cocks.
ALL: (laughter)
LR: Not.
ALL: (more laughter)
SS: Like the bands that we tour with.
LR: Wayne's World has a big effect on our music.
SS: Ya know, touring with STP and Nirvana. Ya know those are bands that we get off on.
LR: Those are bands that we diiiiig!
SR: That's why we ask them to play with us.
LR: And bands like Babes in Toyland, These Immortal Souls, and Nick and uh... Dino and Jesus Lizard. Those are bands that we like groove to.
SS: Galaxie 500.
LR: Yeah, Steve and I like Galaxie, more than the others.
SL: And Thurston and Kim don't?
SS: Well, that doesn't matter. You're talking to us right now.
SL: That's true.
LR: No, we don't all like the same things. We're not like mutant clones.
SL: I guess that makes it better on the road.
LR: Yes and no. Yes and no.
SL: Do you guys travel in the same van?
SS: No we each have our own van, which is really cool. We don't have to see each other until its like time to play. (laughter) No, we travel in the same van. We have two vans, one for all our equipment and it just drives itself around.
SL: That must be nice.
LR: We each have our own Walkman with headphones on and blinders. (more laughter)
SS: No, we haven't even graduated to the buses yet and I hope we don't pass that test.
SL: Do you have any personal favorites to play?
SS: Yeah, "Cinderella's Big Score" is high on my list for playing.
LR: But that song is on like the bottom of my list.
SS: Really? It always happens that way too. Like we always...
TJ: Are you guys still obsessed with Madonna?
LR: We're just kinda horrified by Madonna.
TJ: Has it graduated? Is she less horrifying now?
SS: I think she's more horrifying.
LR: Yeah, in the normal scheme of things, it's amazing what she is now. We don't relate to it on the levels of like... we don't listen to the albums to find good songs anymore like we use to and really liked those songs. Now it's more just like she's this incredible pop icon. Ya know, she's nearly a god. We just read the articles and look at these incredibly over stylized photos and see what it's all about.
SS: Yeah, we're more fascinated with like how mutated her life and lifestyle seems to be now.
LR: Yeah, it's much more like that. Sort of American Dream/Nightmare.
TJ: Don't you think she was kind of an icon from the very first moment she appeared?
LR: Yeah, but early on, it was based on the fact that her music was really good. And now it's based on all these other factors. Like magazines, the media, and manipulation. Yeah, and it has nothing to do with music anymore. That's basically what happens when you get... well, I feel that to some small degree that we're now on a major label. The music isn't the top priority on a major label's list of things about a band. It's all about: How do the photos look? What's the album cover like? When are we gonna see the posters? Finally somewhere down around number five: Well, what does the album sound like? So...I don't know...When you move into these bigger circles you have to sort of fight to...I mean if what your interest in doing is being musicians.
SS: That's what I was saying earlier. We're a live band and we don't have any interest in playing stadiums. Like the only people playing stadiums now are like video stars. Its like people go out to see someone act out the video in a live situation. But we're a band who like just plays music together and that's what our act is. It's like playing live. We don't reenact the video and we're not these pop characters. We're just people playing.
TJ: You seem to have a lot of reservations about moving into a bigger sphere right now.
LR: We don't have any reservations, its just not what's on our minds. We'd rather work on movies than playing stadiums.
TJ: You make movies?
LR: Well, soundtracks.
DW: Have you done any of that?
LR: We did one soundtrack in '86 for this movie called Made in USA that went straight to video like last year. It's got Sean Penn's younger brother Chris Penn, is in it. This girl Lori Singer is in it who has been in a bunch of movies.
SS: Adrian Pasdar.
LR: Yeah, he was kind of up and coming. So we did the whole background score for that. That was really cool. It wasn't a very great movie as it turned out.
SS: It was a great learning experience for us though.
LR: We've a song in this new movie that's coming out next week with Christian Slater called Pump up the Volume.
TJ: What do they do? Do they screen the movie while you sit there...
LR: They give you a videotape of rough cuts and you sit there and look at it and then you jam to it and you keep rewinding it. Then after you do all that, you go to the studio and they give you a final cut on video and they lock it up with the tape recorders so it's all synched together. So you can put note in exactly the right places. It's really cool.
SS: It's a neat experience.
LR: Yeah. We're being invited to do some soundtrack stuff for this new David Lynch TV show, I think, his documentary show on the Fox network. Not Twin Peaks, this other one he's doing. And he's someone we all really like a lot. We just saw that new movie...
