How do you think Shag Bark Hickory has managed to
stay so popular for so long?
Man, how does the Bible remain popular? Or the Koran? Or Busta
Rhymes?
It's the true word of God, man; the band is just a conduit.
You joined the band after they'd already released a
few albums. Did you find it difficult to fit in, or was it rather natural?
I don't feel as if I actually "fit in" so much as "commandeered the
troops." If you listen to the earlier albums, all the ingredients are
there, but it takes a master architect to bake up a kick-ass pie. And
that's what I did: I made rock 'n' f'n roll pie out of the assorted
ingredients that were SBH. Sure, I only wrote about 1 3/4 songs and
music
for maybe a couple, but I was the noumena, the spark that dates back
before
the band's creation and so animates the corpse. Plus, I did some
kick-ass
fart sampling for the original version of Princess Of Our People, which
was
lost in the 80's dance remix when they brought in Ric Ocasek and Phil
Spector to complete the track after Mr. Hole refused to work with
Circus
Boy, calling him "a dirty Tri-West faggot," which I thought was totally
out
of line.
Why does SBH seem to have a morbid fascination with
Princess Die?
It's not a morbid fascination so much as an overwhelming urge to
revisit
her death and life, to make sense of our times and ourselves through
her.
Caesar Salad also wants to have sex with her in the afterlife, so he's
trying to impress her with tribute albums and such. I think the
Bishop's
hiding a deep love of Elton John memorial songs. Plus, calling it
"morbid
fascination" obscures the groundbreaking journalistic and historical
scholarship done through the Post Mortem Tribute Song Tribute Songs;
for
instance, SBH were the first to discover the true cause of her death
(heroin
overdose), and told the truth too terrible to tell about JFK, Jr.
(eaten by
sharks). Few other bands had the courage to do that. We won a
Pulitzer
Prize for each of those songs, remember.
What was the songwriting and recording process
like? How did the songs develop?
An impertinent question. Wouldst thou demand of a Mason the secret
rites
of his initiation? Wouldst thou endeavour to depict the sweet sweet
lovin'
of Rosie O'Donnell and a cucumber? Asketh thou the rain how it
produces
Morrissey albums? Inquireth thou into the dark secrets of the
midwestern
colon? Would you grab Leo Tolstoy by the nutsack and shout "Hey batter
batter batter!"? This interview is over.
Official word is that the band is on "indefinite
hiatus." Are there any chances for future albums or
possibly even a tour?
It's hard to say. What with the Bishop having surgically
transformed
himself into Elton John's body double, Caesar having ascended to
heretofore
untold levels of Dianetics and Circus Boy's absorption with creating
the
first eschatologically sound on-the-column four-speed transmission for
his
fleet of International Scouts, it is doubtful that the band could ever
be
reconfigured. I myself am currently too busy with certain lay analyses
of
the ontological roots of child beating in Wal-Mart to consider such
projects. With the right inducement and alignment of Reese Witherspoon
box
sets, however, I could foresee yet another tour, but not again in
Dover, our
old stomping grounds. I have, in fact, had inquiries from such absurd
places as Tajikhstan and Akron, Ohio. As yet, however, I have had
little
contact with the other members of the band, chiefly because Circus Boy
insists that all communication be expressed in terms of corn to soy
acreage
ratios, the Bishop indefatiguably assaulting every individual in
Crawfordsville with his "authentic" British accent and the constriction
of
Caesar Salad's vocabulary to -- in total -- "I am the volcano of souls"
and
"Battlefield Earth had its moments."
Can you solve the mystery of why SBH has so many
songs with "shoes" in the title? And why aren't there
more songs about Lionel Richie or that retarded kidfrom Life Goes On?
I'll go in reverse order, Virginia. For starters, the internal
combustion engine was not economically viable until disposable income
levels
and production costs had reached a fleeting, if very real, equilibrium
point
in the early 20's. Napoleon, therefore, had to rely solely on hot air
balloons and multigrain pancakes for his military transport, accounting
both
for his defeat at Moscow and the unutterable silliness of the idea of
"French armed forces." Secondly, it was Trotsky himself, and neither
Peter
Jennings nor Buckminster Fuller who first formulated the concept of
"whimsical socks," a development which led directly to the publication
in
English of O Magazine and the discovery of water on Mars. Let us not
forget
that, at this time, Lebanon Indiana was still a shithole. Skipping
altogether sub-questions a through 1.1 (because they are impudent), I
would
point out that perhaps Corky Thatcher himself contained the seeds of
his own
antithesis (if you will escuse a little Hegelianism) when, in the
Fourth
Aphoristic Canto he pointed out that eating is both fun and serious.
SBH
were more of a serious band and so a certain circumspection is to be
expected when approaching so great a cloud of witness as Corky
presented us.
As for Lionel Ritchie, rumor has it that, upon entering a certain
public
drinking establishment at the same moment as a talking horse was being
ejected, said literate equine was heard to address him directly, saying
"well, I guess you and I are out of here." The problem Lionel Ritchie
presents, therefore, is not so much a paucity of potential material,
but in
fact such great mass of inspiration and reflective depth (matched only,
perhaps, by the very Baghavad Gita in its obscurity) as to frustrate
all
attempts to begin the journey of a thousand miles. Shoes, however,
offer to
both examples the possibility of a higher synthesis and more adaptable
symbolic logic, wherein the shoe can in fact be provided by every
individual
listener, even as they surely wear their own shoes into the dark night.
In
exceedingly poor countries as well as most of Portland, Oregon and the
Jesus
People USA building in Chicago, such abstracted yet immediate rendering
in
discrete and comprehensible forms of concepts -- nay, modes of being
and
approaches to the infinite -- break down in their immediate stage,
shoes
having long since been discarded. A similar problem confronts the
message
of SBH in third world countries, where the catalogue, much like the
Roman
Mass, is hailed and venerated in what could best be described as
Anterior
Sacral (or at least Wikked Good) Cognizance, an a priori status of
preliteration, an initial or even pre-verbal awareness that this is
Some Hot
Shit. It awaits the full flowering of its educational and antiseptic
power,
as the proper scribe has not yet emerged from those roiling masses.
Referring back to a previous question, it could well be that, like
Christ's
appearance in South America during his three days of death, SBH shall
be
reconstituted in central Africa, Vancouver, a Big Boy restaurant or
areas of
similarly stunted humanity, as their accession to full existence in a
condition of, to put it shortly, Psychopodiatric Impregnation will wash
the
world in a sea of bliss and understanding describable only by
approximation
with that nectar of the Titans, that WD-40 of the heavenly spheres,
Chaos
fruit-flavored beverage.
What were your personal favorite songs to record?
What are your fondest memories from the recording
sessions?
My favorite songs to record were undoubtedly "Nookie" and the
Linkin
Park cover album, both of which we did prior to their major label
releases.
Most of the rest of the songs (barring, of course, the Reload trilogy,
for
which I was primarily responsible) varied widely between "evening shit"
and
"intestinal scraping" in the pleasure they brought.
What bands or artists do you think have been
directly infulenced by SBH?
SBH created music. We are also responsible for those shoes that
light
up when you walk, Shaquille O'Neal's speech impediment (which is to
say, his
thinking that he is capable of speech), the 128 disc cd wallet (they
said
you could never go above 96), electrical power and the countertop food
processor. Not to mention Islam. We founded that also.
Do you attract a lot of girls by playing or singing
some of your "saucier" songs such as your "Barry White
Thing" or "Here Come Tha Homewrecker?"
First of, princess fuckwit, it's "Black Titan" and second, yes of
course
I do. If, by "attract a lot of girls" you mean "beat back the howling
void
within" and by "playing some of your saucier songs" you mean smacking
young
women in the nose with my penis. I do fuck a lot, if that's all you
mean.
Is it true that you guys turned down a $44 million
offer from MTV to do an "ass rockin' reality series?"
Yes, this is true, and I stand by that decision. The basic
concept was
sound, but it had to be presented as "An f'n rock ass reality series"
or it
just wouldn't work. Circus Boy attempted a thirteenth-hour compromise
with
the idea of calling it "The Musical Toilet," which I favored, but the
Bishop
would not budge on his absurd demand that every viewer first be
certified as
having bathed in tapioca pudding and Caesar Salad had, at the time,
begun
hurling himself at parked cars as if he were a boulder, and so the
required
16/13 vote could not be obtained, Caesar Salad accounting for seven of
the
"yes" votes, three "no's" and an abstention. The math just wasn't
there.
Besides, would you have Dante re-release the Divine Comedy under the
title
"Things to Do In The Afterlife When You're Dead"? Because I would have
(I
was unable to arrange a suitable meeting with his agent, however), and
that's why I'm the most brilliant thing ever.
And finally, didn't your brother do an "O.P.P."
video?
Fuck you.