by Ed Furniture, December 2, 1995
I must apologize for not making this interview available for such a long time. I originally transcribed it from microcassette into an Atari computer, printed it on dot matrix
paper, lost the original file, and the printout ended up buried under piles and piles of junk in my closet for three years. I recently got a computer, so I typed it all in, and am
just now uploading it. How's that for procrastination?
This was conducted just before soundcheck. During the entire interview, Trey was sifting through an enormous trashbag, containing his personal belongings (comic books,
socks, etc.) It was one of the highlights of our three-day roadtrip following them, second only to their cover of Loverboy's "Working For The Weekend" the previous night.
Overall, it was an extremely enlightening conversation...
What made you want to start playing music?
Did you go to school for music?
You why you play a bunch of different instruments?
What other musicians influenced you the most?
When you come up with your music for the Mr. Bungle albums, what methods do you use?
I notice you use tritones a lot in your playing.
How much time do you spend composing?
What do you do when you're not with Mr. Bungle?
Does Mr. Bungle do much sequencing?
Is the rest of the band pretty easy-going about playing what you tell them?
How do you decide who is in control of what songs?
It's pretty rare though, that you get that many people together to play that type of music...
Do you all get along well?
What keyboards do you have up there? You have two Yamaha's?
I have that exact PSR.
Yeah, it was good for the price...to start out...
It's got a good piano sound.
How much did it cost you to do Disco Volante?
How does the record company fit into that?
How much did you guys spend on this one compared to last time?
A lot less?
Do you plan to stay with Warner Brothers?
Have you thought about releasing
your music independently?
I know what that's like.
Is it sort of like...you break
even on it?
I noticed a lot of people at the last two shows really enjoyed themselves...they were saying that they hadn't had a good
band come though in a long time.
How many people do you have going
around on tour with you?
You're not going to have him in
the band permanently?
Why didn't you come to Florida?
A question about the first
album...Who wrote the lyrics? The style of the lyrics were completely different
between the two albums...
What plans do you have for the
next album?
It's kind of vague - it was so long ago. I started playing the trumpet when I was in third grade...it was to get out of class. And then it kind of stuck. By the time I got to about 7th grade, I was a REAL, REAL nerd...and I tried to find some way to gain the acceptance of my peers. Since I couldn't be strong and tough, and boss people around, I started learning how to play guitar.
Which was ill fated, because it didn't really succeed in making me very cool. But I stuck with it because I liked it.
Yeah, in high-school, actually I had a few music classes and by chance I had this
fuckin' AMAZING teacher who would even during the summers set time aside and play in jazz
combos. I'd meet a couple of other guys. So in addition to getting a head start on music
theory that you would learn at college and stuff like that we also had hours and hours of
experience of playing in a jazz sort of combo environment... a couple summers straight of
doing that shit with this guy who could really play was REALLY great, so he taught us lots
of jazz chord theory, and on top of that, Trevor and I had a music theory class also. Then
we got to college, and we did the college music thing, which was kind of different. It was
kind of ridiculous. That was at Humboldt State University. I liked it fine, but everything
we were learning was pretty straight stuff aside from the jazz, and finally got into what
I really wanted to pursue, which was 20th Century composition. We had a really good class
in 20th century classical music, had some good ear training teachers - drill sergeants and
stuff. And that was pretty much the extent of it. I didn't take any classes on the guitar,
I never really learned how to play an instrument. All of my personal training was in
theory. Trevor is a different story. He learned the bass.
Yeah...cuz I'm not competent at any one thing. (laughs)
I could start at the beginning and say Devo was the first tape I ever had, and it's
the only thing that I have consistently liked my entire life. But that was a long time age
- it's like saying Van Halen or something. 20th century composers - that would be number
one. I was really blown away years ago when I first heard Leghetti's Requiem piece. You
might have heard it because it was used in 2001 when the people are standing outside and
staring at the monolith, there're all these voices going bizarre...and it's an excerpt
from that piece and his use of microtonality - like between the notes B and C, there are
notes that you can't hit on a piano keyboard. He uses a system that allows for exact
quartertones, things like that. He created his own musical landscape with microtonality.
He wasn't the first to do it, wasn't the last to do it, but he used it so poetically and
effectively, it just FUCKIN blew me over when I first heard it!
Well, for example...in Techno Allah, there's a riff, and riffs get layered on top
of riffs, and what usually happens - just by coincidence, riffs that we have made up are
stacked up this high in tapes from all the years that we have been playing together. We'll
come up with something, and then maybe a week later, it fits perfectly with this other one
that you can layer it with. And then you can use one of those riffs on top of another one,
and another one to give it a sense of continuity - so it's sort of like multiple riff
stacking. I think it stops being riff oriented and it becomes more of a superimposition of
different elements. So it's a kind of long process. It takes a while to finish a song,
because then a set of riffs that all work together that you can stack on top of each
other, but you haven't made music yet, you haven't arranged it into a structure that makes
any sense so then that's the major time consuming part.
On the first record I'd say that was a little more true than on this record. But
usually it's more than one tritone. One of the more favorite chords we were using a few
years ago was the tritone here and then half-step down but an octave up so it's like a
tritone, then a seventh, and then another tritone. It would be a 1 b5 7 sus4. We used that
a lot on the first record. For whatever reason. Just trying to hide from playing barre
chords.
On tour we don't have time, we're just trying to work up new cover tunes we wanna
do. I spend EONS making music up.
I'm working on a vast range of other musical projects, but a lot of the time I just
work on Mr. Bungle. We have to be prepared...we can't just go into the studio - there's a
LOT of preparation that goes into it. And everybody else has to agree on the arrangements,
getting it all shaved, and a lot of the time someone won't have any idea what instrument
should play a certain part, so I'll have to spend a lot of time programming synthesizer
voices or finding organ voices and voicing chords.
No, none at all, actually. Sometimes when I'm writing - like Ma Meeshka Mow
Skwoz...you can actually tell that it was written on a sequencer, because it's little
four-bar chunks. But on the recording, I just teach it to the rhythm section. They don't
even have to know exactly what is going to happen with the rest of the song. As long as we
can get the drums and bass together, I can go back...
Well, it's in two stages, usually...The first stage is having a four-track
recording of it that's semi near wheat it should sound like. Second stage is teaching the
rhythms section the parts. But of course, there's so much to remember, there's no way
they're going to remember everything that was going on in the song at the time...so you
have to keep beating them, telling them exactly what to do. Then, after that you just go
back and overdub everything on top of it. Sometimes, like Danny our drummer will not be
excited about how it sounds - cause it's just drums and bass and it's just a stupid vamp.
After like two days, I'll go back and record all the keyboard parts and it makes more
sense, and he's like, "Oh, OK! That's what it's supposed to be..." and then we
start gelling as a band after that.
It's a matter of ideas; whoever has the ideas is responsible for bringing it to the
band and rehearsing the band.
Yeah, it's actually NEVER. It's me and Trevor and Danny...and Mike when he's
around...getting together and working that stuff out. And Bar, when he can be around, too.
Bar is getting more into writing, which is really good, too. There's a lot of people
writing.
Yeah. We've known each other for a really long time. If there are some aspect where
we don't get along together we know how to deal with it.
Yeah...the Yamaha's we don't really use the sounds on, we just use them to trigger
the sampler.
The PSR? That's the fucking greatest thing! You like that?
Absolutely!
I think just all around, man...the background patterns that it has for writing pop
songs - are the greatest! You can just churn out, you know ...Neil Diamond quality music
at the snap of a finger! It's really good! I've come up with some real nice stuff that I
REALLY like on that thing!
Final figure: I'm not really sure, but I know that it was less than $100,000 and
more than $80,000.
How it works is: you get...whatever...12% royalties off of every unit sold. They
lend you like $120,000. And they'll pay themselves back that exact amount, $120,000 out of
YOUR 12%, not out of the whole profits of the record. They're making a profit when the
record sells, and then paying THEMSELVES back out of YOUR royalties. And then AFTER you've
paid them back out of your royalties, then you start getting money. That's why it takes so
long to get paid, and that's why so many bands DON'T get paid. Cuz it seems like maybe in
the beginning, "Wow! All this money! We can have this huge record, and spend all this
fucking money on it," and YOU'RE UP SHIT CREEK. You'll never get paid.
Less.
A little bit less. The next one we'll spend a lot less on. Because we did this ADAT
syncing this time, where we could actually work on some of it at home, but we still ended
up doing vocal comps and vocal shit and a lot of keyboard stuff in the studio and it's
very time consuming, so that ran the price up. But now, since then, we've bought all of
the organs that we use on the record with the leftover budget money that we had on this
record so that we have all of that stuff at our disposal. I run a small recording studio
that we can record at, it'll be the same quality. (The door started squeeking really loud,
and someone stuck their head in the room and said something to Trey. -Ed.) Where'd that
food come from? I'll get some in just a sec. I gotta put my shoes on.
That's a good question! (laughs.)
We'd love to. It's hard. We have good distribution. That's the main thing. It's
really nice to reach - the record gets to the most bungfuck places in the world, and there
are a lot of people who hear it, and I get the feeling that they don't get the chance to
hear very much else, people who are starving for...you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, so do I. And I feel like, there are zillions of great record companies in the
world that are independents...but the distribution is one thing. I kind of talk
half-playing devil's advocate here, because we would rather be going it on a level that's
more proper to us. The record company has no promotion for us, doesn't do anything...but.
I've got to back off and say that I'm really glad that they don't care about us, because
if they did, then we'd have to work for them. If they promoted it, then we'd owe the
record company for it. So we're in kind of a good situation. We get enough money to put
out our fucking records, they don't care WHAT we do on the record. We don't get censored
at all. They put it out, send it around the world, and they don't expect anything from us.
It's kind of a good situation. I'm not sure how long it will last, but if it changes,
yeah...we'll definitely start shopping around and see what else is available. I do more
underground records and independent releases, so we definitely have some options there.
But as far as the time being, it's a pretty good situation. But we did get some complaints
about the artwork. Here's the main thing: We'd love to do more interesting packaging.
Believe me, we tried to do a lot on this record. We did a bit, but we had a lot of bigger
ideas. We'd love to go further on it, and every deviation you do is money coming straight
out of your pocket. If there was some A&R person who could really grab the torch on
that we could probably do it without having to pay for it, but there's no one there
willing to do it. So we end up having to be on the phone...SERIOUSLY...for three months
straight, to get anything remotely different to happen - it's pretty nerve-racking.
Last record, I think we made something like $8,000 each - so that's pretty good.
Not much, you know, but it's better than nothing. I'm happy with that. On the tours, we do
alright. The shows are pretty well attended. We don't have final tallies until the end of
it.
It seems to be a weird time in music where there's nothing
interesting going on at all. I think we're getting the benefit of that. People are really
sick of fucking music as I am. So I get the feeling that there's people that wouldn't even
like us normally, but they're so sick of everything else in the fucking world that they'll
go and probably have a good time, just because it's different. I'm happy to see that there
are a few people who are relating to the music and who really understand it. Or at least
attempt to hear the music instead of projecting all this goddamn bullshit on top of it.
It's better than it was last time for that.
12, all together. 7 band members - with Will, the percussionist, who we're bringing
on tour.
No, he's just a hired gun. He's got a job and everything. He's a teacher at a
college and stuff, whatever other shit he does.
That's good question. Tampa would be fun to go to. We didn't like playing
Hollendale, though, driving all the way down. Tampa was a cool show, I liked the people
and the town, it was really fucking crazy, but Hollendale left a really bad taste in our
mouths, and we got pulled over as soon as we went across the border - it was a bad scene.
We had a certain amount of days to do the entire United States, and Florida is one of the
places that got jipped. In retrospect, it seems like we should have played 2 shows around
the Atlanta, GA area, cuz there's so many people who had to drive so FUCKING far. I talked
to people who where there (Georgia) last night who were from Nashville. How are people
gonna find out about a show in Athens fuckin' Georgia? Think about all the people who
never heard about it.
Yeah, Mike wrote more on the first album. He wrote Travolta, Squeeze Me Macaroni,
Girls of Porn...the smash hits that people keep screaming for. Trevor wrote Slowly Growing
Deaf, Love Is A Fist...those were different times. We're printing lyric sheets. That's
part of what people will get when they send in that two dollar thing - part of what will
be in that is the lyric sheets of some of the made up languages (from Ma Meeshka Mow
Skwoz). There's a bunch of other shit that comes with that, too.
Well, we've got a good bit of it recorded already, probably 15 minutes...I think
there's 30 minutes all together; but 15 minutes of it will definitely be on the next
record. We recorded that much to avoid wasting all that time again. We pretty much know
what we're going to do for the next record. So it's probably a matter of booking some
studio time probably in late summer, I would guess. This coming up year. We should have
another album out by March of 1997 probably.