Your website is hilarious.
Thanks…The website is very graphically driven rather than word
driven. It was done by these people at The Chopping Block, who actually
have a very cool website of their own at www.choppingblock.com.
They're web designers and graphic designers and they have a very
cool sensibility…I started in graphic design and it's always
been very important to me for the band to have a graphic identity
that's a little more distinct than a regular band. We tend to lean
on illustrations of ourselves more than photographs, which has the
added benefit that we can grow old gracefully, instead of autographing
photographs of ourselves when we were 23 years old. There are virtually
no photographs of us on our albums. On a few singles there are photos,
but everything else is just illustration. It's good for us because
it keeps things in the realm of imagination. Keeps our personas
off a little bit.
What inspirations of comedy did you grow
up with?
I grew up with Mad Magazine and National Lampoon. National Lampoon
always captured the essence of an aesthetic. This sort of notion
of perfect parody. Not broad parody. We don't even think of what
were doing as parody.
One of the instruments you use is the
accordion. Educate us on some of the great accordion players of
all time.
We don't know that much about accordions. John (Linnell) and I started
doing a lot of local shows around New York City. When we first started
we had to rent a van which cost forty bucks to get our gear to the
club. After awhile when we were doing gigs twice a week, if we could
just get there on the subway without the van, we could actually
make money. We were getting twenty, thirty people at the shows,
maybe, and making about forty, fifty dollars. So we devised a way
to get to the shows with my guitar and amp and John with his accordion
and cassette recorder for the backing tracks. Now we could take
the subways to the shows. Going to the accordion instead of the
electric organ was basically about convenience. I would like to
say it was a big aesthetic decision. In some ways, the accordion
is aesthetically charming, a beautiful instrument. But if we were
more calculating about the cultural baggage it has and that's it
a punchline for people, I think we might have even avoided it. We
were very ignorant…It was a practical way to keep a harmonic
instrument in the mix.
Maybe to make the accordion more hip you
could smash it on stage. What does an accordion cost these days?
Very few people play accordions these days, so they're very easy
to find. Very affordable, one in good shape. Accordions that went
for a thousand dollars years ago, you can pick up for a couple hundred
dollars now. It's definitely a value.
How would you finish this sentence, when
things are tough and hectic, do you say to yourself, it could be
worse, I could be…
I parked cars for awhile, but that wasn't so bad. I've had a lot
of really, really bad jobs. I worked as a bus boy for awhile and
I HATED that. That really sucked. That soured me a little bit. You
know, for the last year we've been doing this Malcolm in the Middle
music and it's been more than a little bit of a grind. I'm really
happy to be out performing again. Just working, doing creative stuff
on my own terms. As challenging as that job was, it was never-ending.
The show is so thirsty for music, it's hard to ever fill the basket.
When I'm out on the road having hectic days I could be pulling all
nighters for Malcolm in the Middle.
Which of these George C. Scott film titles
would be good alternate names for your band? The Hindenburg. Outcasts
of Poker Flat. Don Juan in Hell. Oklahoma Crude. Hardcore. Cartoon
All-Stars to the Rescue.
(Takes interview notes) These are all George C. Scott? Let me see.
The Hindenburg…that's sort of an interesting…a lot of
baggage. Outcasts of Poker Flat…I don't really know that means…</i>Don
Juan in Hell<i/>…I don't think any of us qualify as Don
Juans…Oklahoma Crude…we're a little bit too Northeastern
for that…Hardcore…I don't know. We're some sort of core,
but I don't know how hard we are. <I>Cartoon All-Stars to
the Rescue? George C. Scott was in a film called Cartoon All-Stars
to the Rescue?
It was a low period in his career. He
was a voice in a cartoon.
If we were to rename ourselves Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue,
that would a low point in our career as well.
Who would you like to play you in a movie
about your band?
To be perfectly honest, just as I was saying about not putting ourselves
on our records, we try to make this project an abstract thing. It's
obviously a personal thing to us. Very much a reflection of our
personalities. In some ultimate way, we don't want this to be about
us. We probably have a greater affinity to songwriters before the
singer-songwriter era. Kind of like Cole Porter. A Cole Porter song
sends you in its own direction. You don't think about what kind
of guy Cole Porter was. We like doing character songs. Songs from
other points of view besides ourselves…I don't really feel
comfortable writing first person, singular songs. Beyond that, we
don't want to peddle ourselves as interesting people…Some people
are fascinating, fascinating performers and their personalities.
People like Little Richard. He's a nut…We're a little bit vanilla.
We write very interesting music and I think that's the best part
of what we do. I would lobby hard to not have a movie made about
us.
So if we were going to make one it would
have to be unauthorized.
Strictly unauthorized. Although I think it would Steve Buscemi playing
John Linnell. I'm trying to think who would play me.
Johnny Depp.
I'm trying to think, who's got a big head? I don't look like a lot
of people. The guy who's the lead singer in Stiff Little Fingers
looks like me. Oh, oh, M.C. Serch from the rap group Third Bass.
He could play me.
The song Santa's Beard may reveal some
hurt from Christmas. What is worst memory from Christmas?
Christmas at my house is an endurance test every year. I love Christmas.
Santa Claus is my only God. Having everybody there can be a little
stressful.
If there were action figures made out
They Might Be Giants, what would they do?
Drink coffee.
In light of the XTC vs. Adam Ant song,
obviously you like 80s music. What are your favorite groups from
the 80s?
I like both Adam Ant and XTC. We've kind of formed in the long and
looming shadow of New Wave. There's a very stereotypical idea of
what punk rock is-The Ramones, English bands. They (all 80s bands)
were all very original bands. Blondie sounded nothing like Talking
Heads. Even though they were an art school band, they were very
different from Television, who was also an art school band. Patti
Smith had a lot of esoteric references in what she did, but she
was very much a rocker. All the sort of secondary bands, like Mink
DeVille…were all very original. They were somebody's very personal
obsession, projected into the world. They weren't copycats. There's
a lot of elements in the punk rock scene that stressed individuality.
That sparked our interested to even starting a band. To that point
people in rock bands were on the superhero side of things. There
was something a little beyond street level about them. 80's bands
were earthbound people and it was kind of amnesty day for people
like me and John. "Hey, you can be in a band too. And if you're
going to be in a band, you have to do your own thing." That
was very cool to be coming up. It's not like there was only one
scene or one kind of momentum…Now, we really seem to stick
out. People say, "You guys are really different." We're
just being ourselves.
I love the fact that you love Planet of
the Apes. Which one is your favorite?
I think the first one is the best one. After that they get kind
of sleazy. When you get to the end, it becomes a wide screen TV
show.
What's your favorite moment?
I think the first half hour is the best part.
Any of your songs even you don't understand.
After you wrote them you wondered, where did that come from?
No. Our songs are pretty plain to us. There are juxtapositions of
ideas in songs that make you wonder what they will communicate…Sometimes
it's hard to know what the effect is going to be. We think of songwriting
as a tight craft. We dwell on very small amounts of text and small
amounts of musical information. We write songs that are two minutes
long but we don't write them very quickly. They're very crafted
and focused. We try to be concise. By the time you get to the third
verse, the initial fuel that drove the song is spent. Might be based
on a metaphor or some idea that was already communicated in other
verses or in the chorus. You've already completed an idea but there's
this necessity to carry on with the song. And sometimes, I think,
we get a little reckless, wondering how this is going to be understood.
That's probably the part that we don't know what's going on. The
reason I think we've been able to do this for over twenty years
so passionately is because it's a creative challenge.