"by" Stoner Steve Bickner, 1997-ish

Yet another faux-intervew. Actually Andy Smetanka wrote 90% of this and I added to it a bit. We originally had the idea to do a fake interview with ourselves and send it to Maximum Rock-n-Roll, but for whatever reason, never sent it in. Many of the questions in this interview are actually parodies of the types of stupid shit people typically ask in MRR interviews, in case you were wondering.

MRR: Well, before we even get started with the name game...will this interview coincide with any new HUMPY releases?
J: Right now we're mostly waiting for some compilations to come back to us. A Poison Idea tribute CD from Sweden, a 10" on Clean Plate records, and some odds and ends we've probably forgotten about.
Y: We also just finished recording our half of a split with [local dirty rock pigs] the Fireballs of Freedom, and ten or twelve songs for a local compilation, another seven-inch, and a couple of other projects.
J: Hopefully some of that will see the light of day soon, thus making this interview one of exemplary timeliness.

MRR: Okay, then. What are your names and what do you play?
J: Justin, bass and vocals.
A: Andy, guitar and vocals.
Y: Yale, drums and baby dalmatian Trapper Keeper.
[unsettling absence of laughter]
J: Would you ask us a question in all caps to severely vex the shitworkers?

MRR: Okay, sure. Um, WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR INFLUENCES?
[laughter]
Y: We are influenced by whichever bands appear next to us in the record bins. Hunters and Collectors, the Humpers, Husker Du...
A: Human League.

MRR: The name, the name, the HUMPY name....what the hell is it?
Y: Named after a cocker spaniel, no shit.
A: That's right...a cocker spaniel I used to live with on the North Side. The owner of the original Humpy used to keep him pretty well shorn, except for the long hair around his head and neck...so it looked like a mane, and it was like having a miniature lion bouncing around the back yard.

MRR: But what made you want to...
A: We just couldn't be bothered to think up anything else. We were lazy about getting our heads together on a name we really liked, so our old guitar player Dave suggested naming the band after the dog and that's what we went with, although at the time we had some dopey singer who was always trying to replace that ad hoc name with something stupid like Girl Bomb or the Marcia 900.
Y: It sounds kind of strange the first time you hear it, because the word itself doesn't let on much as to what the band might be all about. It's not as obvious as Corrupted something something, or Negative something. Or somehow cleverly appropriating the word "ska" into the band's name. We don't even think about it anymore, but its vague loafishness as a word might work either for or against us with the uninitiated. We thought about beefing up our regional appeal by changing it to Kaczynski or the Treasure State Boys' Choir, but the big switch hasn't come to pass yet. There's about fifty bands called the Unabombers these days, though, which we regard as a blatant ripoff of Montana's intellectual property. Most can't even be bothered to get the spelling right. I've seen it spelled "Unibombers".

MRR: The name has nothing to do with sex, then?
J: Well, no. Although we certainly enjoy sex. Not with each other. Um, not usually.

MRR: [nervous interviewer giggles] You guys have definitely changed your approach, if not your direction, over the past few years. I mean in terms of musical style and lyrical outlook.
A: It's a hell of a lot faster, for one thing. We were actually talking about this just the other day. When we dig through the vaults and play the first songs we ever wrote, they still sound really lumbering and muddy. Back then they were muddy because none of us really new how to play our instruments before we put the band together, but now I see that a lot of the old stuff had and still has an inherent muddiness to it. Like an, um, like an insurmountable crap-core gestalt, if you will.
J: Everything's gotten faster...maybe that's a conscious reaction to bands we must decry for slowing down after their first few ripping albums.
A: Slayer.
Y: Poison Idea. The Doodletown Pipers. We champion any band which smokes pot and plays fast! That's not to say that we endorse such monkeyshines, but...
J: We did it ass backwards. We started off slow and kept getting faster.

MRR: And the lyrics?
A: There have been distinct phases. Our original game plan for writing lyrics was to get really stoned and watch freaky movies and piss-poor TV at my old crib on the North Side. Like some kind of running stoner stream-of-consciousness gigglefest that found its way to paper...
Y: ...which accounts for some of the high weirdness on our first demo tape, way back in 1994.
J: An underground classic!
Y:...with lyrics like "chew your own grave" and "I didn't mean to go and rumple your pulp."
J: "If you're made of skin, rip it off and feel the wind."
A: The classic! That's the classic, that's Dave! None of us could come up with that kind of shit the way Dave could.
Y: Let it not be forgotten that Denis [original bass player] always had his own peculiar vision. Way more introspective and...alienated, maybe.
A: "Why do I feel so weird? Stranger than all my peers."
Y: That's a total Denis line. "So you like the juice...."
A: Denis was kind of a restless feller.
Y: He's definitely on some kind of cosmic quest to find out exactly where he's been and where he's going in the universe at large. It used to baffle the rest of us young hedonists, but now I look back on it fondly.

MRR: And the next [air quotes] "distinct phase?"
A: A brief Montana pride phase, with songs about growing hemp in the Jocko Valley and rich hippie assheads who move here to slum. And wake up in their own puke after passing out at parties. Well, I guess that wasn't especially Montana prideful but it was on the same record. Hmm, fuck this answer.
Y: And then came "Pentium Rock" and "America OnLine," which got us labeled as a pack of Amish-beard-sporting neo-Luddites. "Pentium Rock" was actually Dave's reaction to the 1920's Italian futurist shit he'd been reading.
A: Well, I'm really no fan of the entire online revolution, or anyway I can't get behind the idea that the Internet is going to rejuvenate a nation of couchbound lardasses. Remember those ads from a few years ago, with old French codgers chatting about Windows '96, Belgian nuns talking tech about how to download kiddie porn. Linking up the global village. It's all bullshit.

MRR: But you're not going to try and tell me that you lead a computer-free life?
A: Of course not. All three of us use computers to some extent for business or pleasure. I just think it's stupid to think that these fabulous new developments will forge a new nation of geniuses out of people who don't even know how to use the Dewey decimal system.
Y: We have a website, for pete's sake. Isn't that a trifle contradictory?
J: And I just gave you that computer for free, Andy.
A: Yes, Dad, I realize that. Did anyone notice that I'm not trying to argue this point? I'm just saying it's not the brave new world that everyone thinks it is. Anyway, now that our modern primitive stance has been debunked, most of our new songs have something to do with drinking and taking pills. Highly original.
Y: I like that formula real bad.
J: A red-blooded Yankee good time. If it ain't broke....

MRR: Before we stray too far off the topic....lineup changes.
Y: Just two, really. Denis moved to Portland in January of 1995, and Justin cowed his way into the band by buying a bass just for the occasion and feeding us a sack-of-shit sob story about some "no returns" policy.
[mild laughter from everyone but Justin]
J: You guys needed me.
A: Just kidding, Dad. This band might have fallen apart if we'd gotten anyone less "rock" than you.
J: I know.
Y: And we never would have had a song about the Cleveland Browns.
J: Not a word, Yale. Not another word.
A: Who among us could forget Karl Stetson?
J: We made reference to him earlier in the interview.
Y: When I first signed on with Dave, Denis and Andy in late '93, they had a singer, Karl Stetson. I recall our first show, he was doing all these rock-star moves with the mic stand, all while reading lyrics out of a notebook. That was his first and last show, thank God.

MRR: And then Dave left, right? Is this topic fair game?
J: Dave officially quit in July, 1997. Two days after Bernie's and my wedding.
Y: But he'd already quit the band on a provisional basis two or three times before that.
A: Yup, so we got used to playing shows as a three piece between his assorted temper tantrums and maybe got the sneaking suspicion that it might be about eight million times as fun that way. Then he came back into the fold long enough to play at Justin and Bernie's wedding, our last time as a four-piece. The rest of us were too drunk to stand up. Yale kept falling off the drum throne into a rose bush!
[laughter]
A: I don't think we finished a single song. That drunken blow-out was the last straw for Dave. Our friend Dennis Lynch says that Dave handed him his guitar at one point and said, "here, you might as well be doing this" or something like that. I don't remember that at all. Then there was some kind of shoving match by the trout pond between Dave and I, but I don't remember that either. The Monday after that he brought a bunch of records and shit over to Justin's and that was basically that.

MRR: Rather a dramatic departure....
Y: On the face of it, sure. But the debacle at the wedding was incidental to a lot of other factors.

MRR: Like?
A: Well, for starters, I think he got his nose out of joint when we didn't just curl up and die after he quit the first few times. We actually got better, so it wasn't some kind of Spinal Tap scenario. I think he was basically just burned out on the whole thing, running short on ideas for new material, who knows? I always thought that out songwriting partnership [heh!] was a good one, mutually beneficial. But in retrospect I think there was some definite rivalry coming from his end, which I either didn't catch or opted to ignore. Another big factor was the van.
J: Ouch.
A: Dave was the transportation man. He had the Toaster, the '69 or '70 Volkswagen bus that was our mainstay for in-town transport and out-of-town shows. And then he sold it to buy us a real van, but the one he got was basically damned to hell from the get-go. Broke down in Spokane twice on one road trip.
Y: Once coming and once going.
A: I guess it ran well enough for Dave and I to get in a fistfight while I was trying to drive back to Spokane from the Tri-Cities. I've got kind of a phobia about driving and Dave, who'd been drinking Full Sails since around noon, was pretty relentless about me having to take my turn. Then he started in on me as soon as I got behind the wheel, like yelling "Where you going, asshole?" when I took a wrong turn out of this parking lot. I turned around and took a swing at his face...well fuck, man. There's really no point in airing all of our dirty laundry here, but those are basically the facts.
Y: I had to laugh when that fight happened.
A: Well it burned my ass but hard. I was fucking fuming all the way back to Spokane. And then the clutch slipped and the van dropped into some fiendish low gear and I got another explosion of shit about that. "Hey, Andy, if you want to drive backwards to Missoula, go right ahead." Hey, fuckwit, I didn't ask for this favor!
J: Easy, tiger.
Y: And then we dropped the driveline twice in ten miles the second time we tried to take it on the road. I think he felt sort of guilty about buying such a piece of shit, even with his own money. Man, that was a black couple of hours waiting for Bernie to come get us in Alberton. I could almost feel him quit the band again right then. I guess he waited a day, though.
J: Well, that was the last test quit before the Big One.
Y: What a rotten road trip that turned out to be. I'll never drive past Alberton the same way again. Bonner is still acceptable, though.
A: I'm not trying to come off like a whiny bitch about it. I still consider Dave my friend, although I never see him anymore and really have only a vague idea about what he's doing these days. He's not part of the band picture anymore, but I wish he'd come around and get all fuckered up with us like old times. It's just not quite the same pouring beer down each other's pants without him.

MRR: But you like it better as a three-piece?
Y: Oh, hell yes. If nothing else, Fewer people in the band means fewer people to round up, get to one place and get on task. Fewer conflicting work schedules...
J: Fewer conflicting personalities....
Y: That, too. I don't know how nine-piece ska bands can stay together and/or get a fucking thing done.

MRR: No real practical problems?
A: No quarter for me. With only one guitar left, I can't let up for a minute and I still have to sing.

MRR: Why don't you guys get a lead singer if it's so hard?
Y: Speaking on a personal level, bands with lead singers generally gross me out. Sure there are exceptions, but 9 times out of 10, the lead singer is some loser who fakes his way through the whole show and really adds nothing to the band but cacophony. Lead singers are today's greatest affront to punk rock.

MRR: So, what's it like without Dave?
A: Dave wrote longer and more complex songs, so now we lack the sort of symphonic quality which offset the shorter, faster songs about drinking and taking pills. Dave always added his own stamp to songs the rest of us wrote, but if he didn't like a particular song it would often get shelved indefinitely. At least now we don't have to pass the Grand Inquisitor.
[halfhearted chortling]

MRR: Sick of talking about this yet?
A: Yes, thank you. I would, however, like to add that I thought I'd get to be the bossy one in the band when Dave left, but Justin has filled those shoes quite admirably.
J: Thanks. Wait a minute...
Y: Which is why we've taken to calling him "Dad."

MRR: I hear about plans for a concept album from time to time...
A: A fond daydream, but I don't think it'll ever happen.

MRR: Why not?
A: About a year ago I got the wild hots to do a concept seven-inch all about labor unrest and IWW radicalism in Butte, but I think I'm the only one who would be even remotely interested in either recording or listening to such a thing.
Y: You and the Young Pioneers.
A: Yeah, I suppose they'd be super into that. Unless I forsook labor and wrote songs from the capital point of view.
Y: I was gunning for ombudsman.
A: Justin, what was your idea? Middle Earth core?
J: Yeah. After one long stretch of reading in the van I thought it would be a fresh move to write some songs about hobbits, orcs..all that. Epic in scope, you know... "Twilight at Cirith Ungol," "Into the Mines of Moria," "Blood of the Fighting Uruk-Hai (slight return)."
Y: And how stoned did you say you were?
J: Quit.

MRR:Well? What's the problem?
J: Same as with the labor and mining record. Whoever writes the music generally sings the song, so either way it would be sort of lopsided if only one of us wrote and sang all the music on one record. Either all Andy singing or all me singing, in the case of "Rock for Middle Earth" or whatever I was thinking. I can't realistically expect to hand Andy a sheaf of lyrics about the Lord of the Rings and say "okay...sing these."
A: Hey, I think I can hack it, Dad.
J: Well, who would want to hear that one?

MRR: The Young Pioneers?
Y: What? Look at how much critical and popular acclaim "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" enjoyed!
[laughter]
MRR: I suppose I should ask the standard scene questions...um, what are your thoughts on, um, the scene?
[laughter]
J: Oh, Christ.
Y: Steve, please. Could you go ahead and not digress from your prepared remarks?

MRR: No, really. Most people reading this have never been to Missoula, Montana. Show some regional advocacy! Sound off about the Missoula scene!
Y: Okay. Remarkably free of assholes. No real factionalism. No "crust" camps, no "emo" camps. Everyone's in the same boat and Missoula bands are notoriously incestuous when it comes to loaning members out, side projects and splinter groups. I reckon it's the same in any small town. Twenty rockers and thirty bands.
J: And everyone plays on the same bill. I can't think of a lineup that would shock me at Jay's Upstairs [local rock bar...basically the only local rock bar]. A hardcore band, and emo band, a metal band and someone's dad performing acoustic numbers. It's not like Jay's tries to assemble special "variety nights," it just kind of turns out that way.
A: Well, this thing with Cornershop was pretty odd.
Y: Tja. Cornershop is this big British pop band touring the US with Oasis. They had a night off and were supposed to get on this bill with us and the Helltones, but they never showed up. That would have been a pretty shocking bill, at least for them.

MRR: And they never showed up, right?
A: Right. Instead we got to tell War of 1812 jokes and squeeze in a lot of witty on-stage banter about how much we hate simpering British pop groups. We should have sued their dumb asses for breach of contract and used the money to outfit the bar with La-Z-Boys. I was also secretly hoping that Oasis would pop 'round for the gig and we could get on MTV news by handing a whoop-ass to those sissy Gallagher brothers.
J: [wheezing a smash pop hit] "where were you while we were getting high?"
Y: In the gym, getting ready to kick your ass.
[laughter]

MRR: Any problems with violence at your shows?
J: I wish.
A: No, just the usual "get drunk and run into people" plan of action. People occasionally get riled up, but there's no organized skinhead kind of violence, if that's what you mean. Jocks aren't especially into us either. People are generally too bagged out on beer and pills to really get terribly excited about anything.
Y: Lots of "no nazis" patches on the teen-punk set, though. I'm sure all those patches are singlehandedly keeping the nazis out of Missoula. What a hollow party line that is. Another graphic to stick on your record.
J: Who would dispute that? It's not exactly a radical stance. It's almost like having an "anti-child abuse" sticker on your record. Who's going to fight you on the streets for that controversial opinion? "Listen, you! More child abuse! NOW!"
A: Of course, we do have fully-armed packs of real American nazis right across our border with Idaho. But I guess we won't see them until they liberate our besieged community during the inevitable race war. Apparently, they're not big hardcore fans.
J: Or keen show-goers, anyway.
Y: I think they have their own bands to tell 'em exactly what they want to hear.
A: And special record clubs for encircled fascists. The Race War Records singles club.
Y: And everything on white vinyl.
A: There aren't any bands with a really political bent in Missoula. Unless you count the Sputniks, who have some kind of nebulous anarcho-syndicalist propaganda campaign but who also sing songs about cars and girls and what they read in the National Enquirer. Strange, since Missoula is smack in the middle of Earth First! Territory, and also the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Clark Fork Coalition...a million environmental groups. Almost every band in town has played multiple benefits for these groups, benefits for homeless shelters and sustainable living collectives like the Missoula Urban Demonstration Project. In a sense, our association with these groups in terms of raising money for them is a fortunate by-product of what we'd be doing anyway....rocking and drinking beer. It's to everyone's benefit, but there's not much direct action in the music scene here. We're one big pack of good-time Charlies.

MRR: What can touring punk bands expect in Missoula, Montana?
Y: Eclectic lineups, loads of free beer and the unbridled adulation of a handful of punks and dope-addled derelicts. If you rock in any sense of the word, you will get laid while you're here.
J: Unfortunately, our adulation often spills over into heckling the bands and leaping onstage to sing along. Some of us, anyway. I like to think we mean well.

MRR: When Humpy is history, do each of you have a unique skill with which to make a living in today's job market?
J: I hope to somehow forge a living out of collecting KISS memorabilia.
A: I'm really into the Latin nomenclature of local flora, much to the annoyance of Yale and Justin. Especially after the idle hours when we were broken down on the road. Alberton was a hotbed of interesting species in Brassicaceae and Lamiaceae, and I made sure they never heard the end of it. I'm also hell at washing dishes.
J: Yale, tell him about the license plate thing.
Y: Oh, now....
J: No, really. Yale knows almost every county seat and corresponding license plate number in the state. He also knows the individual license plate numbers of every rocker and pretty girl in Missoula. It's uncanny.
A: Katie so-and-so, 4P7127....
Y: It's a craft.
A: It would almost be worth getting mildly injured in a hit-and-run accident if Yale was there, since he would catch the offender's number...

MRR: Do you think you can make a career out of that?
Y: No. It should prove to be quite amusing in my golden years.

MRR: Has it ever come in handy before?
Y: No, not a once.