Interview
(Progressive Newsletter Nr.10 09/96)
excerpts from an interview with
Dave O'Neal (Keyboards, bass, random babblings, toilet, car horn) +
Erik Swenson (Drums, percussion, harmonic vocals, coconut) +
Dennis Rossman (Stories, personality, tirades, dead cat, coconut)
Actually, it would probably be better for us to ask you that question. We definitely had things in mind when we put together the cover art, but we wanted to leave it a little on the vague side so the listener can read their own meaning into it. So, Kristian, what do you think the significance of the cows on the cover is? Did you see the other niftiness on the cover as well? There are the lyrics from an up and developing song called "Snooze Alarm" printed very faintly in the background on the front cover. See if you find that. The use of a cow on the cover does have some history dating back to an off the wall conversation had over a Guinness after practice one evening. Erik mentioned that cows explode when they are hit by lightning, but humans do not. Why? Being the student of computational physics that Erik is, he started to hypothesize about the potential difference across the cow as the lightning bolt strikes it's head but its hind legs are still grounded. If, for some reason, the cow behaved more like a capacitor, contrary to humans which would behave as resistors and burn, it would build up a huge amount of charge across it's body, then the dielectric - the cow - would break down and explode. So this is all fine and dandy to sketch out on the back of a napkin, but the real solution lies with a much more mundane artifact of nature. Cows, with their four stomachs, produce much more methane than humans, and this explodes when sparked. So this is the type of topic that plagues our conversations, we figured we should somehow capture it on the album somewhere. But that is only really scratching the surface...
What are the music experiences and influences?
Dennis played a little bit of trombone in his high school marching band but never thought of being in a band. His real instrument in the band is "personaliy" to which he has many years of experience just being a tortured and deranged individual with one and a half engineering degrees. Once Erik and Dave clubbed him over the head and had him read a few sets of lyrics along with our tunes, he started developing his style, influenced by: Kermit the Frog from the Muppets, Mike Patton from Faith No More, John S.Hall from King Missile and a variety of other people incorporating spoken words in their stuff.
Dave started playing at 5 because it was the only thing he didn't wreck in the house when he was a kid. He got a Dave Brubeck piano book at age 10 and that kept him enthused about the piano when most other kids start to fade off into soccer or baseball. In college, Dave worked in the electronic music studio, quenching his fascination with synthesizers and electronics, while pursuing an electrical engineering at the same time. He was conductor of the school's pep band, playing at the hockey games. After graduading and moving to California, he tried to work into a few existing bands, but nothing seemed to work due to his electric musical leanings. Thus was born Industrial Soup, so Dave could write what he writes and learn how to play it, and live out his own musical fantasies. His influences include Dave Brubeck, Keith Emerson, Frank Zappa, Les Claypool from Primus and James Hetfield from Metallica.
Erik started playing drums at age 10, but soon became bored with the Blondie 8 track tape he played along with all the time, that and The Eagles. Therefore, he started playing the typical off-color brass instruments that people play at that age - baritone. Then someone handed him a Rush tape, "Grace under pressure", and nothing seemed to matter but drums after that. He spent years out in the garage playing along with every Rush album he could find, then moved on to playing various death metal albums as his roommate fed them to him. Erik went on to discover a life in physics when Dave found him air drumming Rush's "Witch hunt" perfectly, even with the cow bell switching hands as Neil Peart plays it, and convinced him to contiune working the drums.
So where the hell do you come up with these really bizarre lyrical ideas?
Bizarre? We thought they were pretty normal. Of course, as Erik wakes up to his navel trying to mime works of Shakespeare, specifically Hamlet, I suppose we don't our perception of normal doesn't translate to the experiences of others. Actually, Dave dreams up all kind of weird stuff and writes several rambling pages on really off-the-wall topics. This stuff gets filtered down to some of the songs, "Burrito of love", "What's the point?", etc. Others, we come up with a concept like "Tiny bladder", and just let Dennis spew out whatever improv stuff comes to his mind, some of the best of which comes out in practice or live and never makes it to tape. Sometimes Dave and Erik sit down and read the dictionary for a while and make lists of cools words, then try to use them intelligently like in "Evolve or die".
What are the reponses of fans and media?
Fear, confusion, inarticulate babblings of a positive nature but can't explain why... Actually, we never set out to make anything really different, we just wrote the music we wrote. We did try to chock it full of all kind of subtleties so people could listen to the album many times and still hear new things. I think we succeeded in doing this, but it had also made it a bit of an acquired taste. The people who like it, really like it. Others just don't get it, I guess it isn't for everyone. But the fact that it isn't an easy album makes it a lot more enjoyable for those who do get to know it. Empire magazine put it pretty well saying something to the effect of "This album has no commercial value. It is great, you should buy it".
What can one expect at an Industrial Soup live show?
This depends on the venue, the bands we are playing with, our moods, and all kinds of other inarticulate factors. It usually boils down to a good excuse to have a beer. Let's see if we can dredge out a few of the antics we have pulled off over the years: We have never done the middle of "Communication" the same way twice, on the album, that is the "Home Shopping Network" section. Once, we put a cardboard box on Dennis's head with lights in it so it looked liked he was on television, then he spewed forth all kinds of half wit TV commercial ideas while Dave sat in the audience with a remote control flipping through the channels. Once, we mocked a popular diamond merchant radio commercial by pondering how to buy an engagement ring for a burrito. We faked Julia Child cooking show, bitched about not getting a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and imagined an Adrian Belew guitar solo, amongst other stunts all in "Communication". Then there is the Albert Einstein story... "Itch" is too difficult to play live without sequencing any of the keyboard parts. Since this is the only song, we sequence when we play live, we wanted to attract attention to the fact that is was sequenced. Therefore we made a 2 meter high cardboard cutout of Albert Einstein playing bass and set him up on the stage to play the bass line for the song. Since he starts the song, it is pretty obvious what we are doing. So that works all fine and dandy, Al beating the bass, Dave flailing on the keys, Erik pounding the drums, and Dennis pacing all around the stage nervously scratching himself, as the title would have you believe. In a complete fit of itch induced frustration, Dennis "accidentally" bumps into Albert, knocking him over, at exactly the time the sequence sounds like someone with a bass guitar just fell over. Erik and Dave stop, we set Al back up, he goes into a screaming bass solo, then we join back in and finish the song. Just for laughs, we sequenced the bass part of "Itch" on the album and credited Albert Einstein as an extra musician. Then there is just the look of the Soup playing live - usually in some small dive bar, because prog is not that big in the Bay Area, where Erik sets his 13 piece behemoth drum set on a dinky stage, taking up so much space that Dennis, the dorky looking 6ft 5in guy with bright red hard and Dave, Mr. Sweatmaster rocking his two keyboards back and forth all night, must stand on the floor in front of the stage to play.
Kristian Selm © Progressive Newsletter 1996