SM:When did you guys move from Fargo?
D:Halloween night.
D & M:1991
M:It's been 3 years.
D:No,we moved Halloween 1992.
M:Yeah, we formed a band, lost our guitar player on Halloween of '91, so we left Fargo on Halloween of '92.
SM:Why'd you move to Olympia as opposed to some big city closer like Minneapolis or Chicago?
D:Uh, Minneapolis has all these tough guys and hearing rumors about Tom Hazelmeyer on AmRep you know, about having to arm wrestle and stuff to get on the label. It didn't really appeal to us.
M:Plus we're like a noise-rock band and it could be obvious that we'd be on AmRep, but the mentality didn't click with us. I'm not saying I'm not a tough guy, but our music isn't about being a tough guy. We just like playing rock and roll and the whole attitude that went with the Minneapolis scene is kind of phony.
D:It's like Olympia has the wizard and the plum, and that's the best of both worlds.
SM:So how long have the two of you played together?
D:Three and a half years or something?
M:It'd be about 4 years total. And as a two-piece it'd be three and a half years.
D:Four years total in July. That's when I bought my first drum set.
M:And we've known each other for ten years. We started BMX-ing together just over ten years ago.
SM:What have you used samples from?
M:It's mostly sound effects records and I'll make loops. I'll cut a loop of tape and dump four loops onto a four track. if something's funny from a movie I'll take it out of context or whatever. Heathers is one, "I like to suck big dicks...", whatever. (while Dan talks to the Satyricon person about dinner) This is our first tour with our new booking agent. We got a Ryder, we got our Mountain Dew, it says on the Ryder. We never got a guarantee here and we'd just get %'s at the door. Now we get a real guarantee and they feed us.
SM:What's with your style changes on the album?
M:What do you mean style changes?
SM:Like the piano,etc.
M:Oh.
D:The piano song is a song we had written to annoy these friends of ours.
M:Yeah, just playing around at somebody's house on his piano. I play the low keys and he plays the high keys with just two fingers. And this studio here, at Lastra's there's a piano sitting upstairs and we were just trying. It's such a noisy record and we were trying to put little breaks in it to make it seem more like a concept album(laughter). To make us seem smarter.
SM:When's the next release?
M:It's last Friday it came out (Feb. 10). A 7" with two songs and
then the cd version has 4 new songs, plus our first Kill Rock Stars 7",
plus the song on the Stars Kill Rock compilation. All our KRS
stuff.
SM:And that's out already?
M:Yeah, and value-priced at $7.99 for cd.
SM:So, where are you headed on tour? You're going out for five weeks right?
M:Yeah, from here we head south and hook up with Sebadoh in San Diego then we have to come all the way back up to Seattle, then head east for shows with them for three weeks. Then by ourselves we kind of head through the midwest to Texas to play SXSW and then we have one or two shows after that and then just come home. It's the culmination of the tour, a weekend in Austin for two.
SM:Do you have other jobs or is this enough to make a living off of?
D:We sort of have jobs.
M:Yeah. I just started a t-shirt printing business. I used to always print our own shirts and I had worked in a printing plant in North Dakota before we moved here and I just decided I was going to put all my money into a press and make real live t-shirts. Now I print the shirts for K Records and for Kill Rock Stars and then Al Larsen and his wife Stella make this, I don't know if you've ever seen this Olympia shirt with a yardbird on it, but they make souvenir shirts and stuff and they've been licensing out to some big retailer, but now I get to make their shirts too.
SM:What type of music do you dislike?
D:Dislike? Nothing really specific. There's certain music I like, but I don't like how some people play it.
M:Yeah, there could be a group that make some really lousy punk rock, but could be really nice kids. Do you know what I mean? And you could have a really rad band but they could be total assholes.
SM:What's your favorite 'B-movie'?
D:I don't know. There's so many movies I consider 'B-movies', I don't know if they might be considered classics. I liked Dark Star a lot. That was a John Carpenter film, like a space movie he did. It's kind of a hippie film, but it's really funny. I usually don't like 'B-movies' at all. I can't tolerate 'em. You rent it thinking, "Oh, this'll be really funny," and then you don't laugh once.
M:I like high-budget bad movies better. Things that are supposed to be funny, but just suck. I like movies like Ice Pirates.
D:We rented The Mighty Ducks the other night and I actually fuckin' love that movie. It's so good. I hear D2 isn't as good though.
SM:What was your first concert ever?
M:Def Leppard. It was supposed to be Def Leppard and Uriah Heap and I wish Uriah Heap had played, but it was still great. I went with my dad.
D:I saw Iron Maiden with Ratt and Autograph.
M:Yeah, they were both at the West Fargo fairgrounds. I remember I was 12 or 13 and couldn't get anyone to take me to the Iron Maiden show and my mom had this apartment in West Fargo and I sat on the balcony trying to sit and listen. I was a real big Ratt fan at the time. I couldn't hear shit, I was depressed for weeks.
D:That concert I pretended I was stoned because I thought pot-smokers were really cool. I was like, "Oh, I smoked so much weed."
SM:If you had to choose a movie to represent your generation, what would you choose?
M:Meatballs, Rad.
D: I'd say Rad.