buddyhead.com (02/00)

After catching an amazing performance by avant-garde rockers I am Spoonbender, buddyhead was able to chat with them and find out what they're really about. With a new record out, a ton of equipment, an extensive vocabulary, and a profound interest in extrasensory perception, I am Spoonbender had a lot of interesting things to say. Interview by kathleen catastrophe and dean dean the sex machine.

buddyhead: so tell us your names and your roles.

dustin: i'm dustin, and i play drums, synths, vocals, and produce the albums.

cup: i'm cup, and i play synths, and do vocals.

marc: i'm marc, and i do synths, lights, and engineer the albums.

brian: i'm brian and i play bass and synthesizer.

buddyhead: what is the concept behind the name i am spoonbender?

dustin: ultimately the name behind i am spoonbender is an attempt to get people to pay more attention to details; the things around them that people take for granted. noticing the beauty of every day objects, especially in the time and place we're living in, where everything is really accelerated. i personally think it's interesting to just sit down and take in the subjective beauty of say, a fork. just as an artistic thing, and as a functional object- something that propels our society.

cup: and also to be interested and curious in things, because a lot of people just see something, and they don't even notice what they're looking at! the attention span is just nonexistent.

dustin: i am spoonbender is also about noticing the things that are seemingly coincidental. noticing connections between things. chance, things like that. for example- like when someone calls you on the phone and you'd just been thinking about them...there is some sort of connection that is happening there. (IAS) is a way to set up discussions of what that might mean, how those things are connected, or if it is just truly something that's not related. simply, that is i am spoonbender.

buddyhead: with your studio, do you guys produce your own stuff?

dustin: yes. the studio is the ultimate instrument for us. it's a combination of everything we can do. it's taking the d.i.y. idea to it's end. if we write some music and then go record it at someone else's studio, it gets filtered through their ideas. they may not be in the same place we are; where our heads are at. so we just decided to do it all for ourselves. when we aren't doing i am spoonbender, we do seismic seance, where we mix and master other people's records. we don't have too much free time though. we do everything on our records ourselves; down to the editing and the mixes. it never leaves our hands the entire time, which is really a comfortable place to be. it's really a do it yourself operation, so it's totally pure.

buddyhead: you guys are so punk rock.

dustin: (hahah) we do make a jokes about that, but i really feel this is the ultimate extension of d.i.y. we do everything but put out our own records. that has been discussed a lot, and we would do that too if we had the time, but for me this is a twenty hour a day job. between trying to run a major studio and doing all of the artwork, there is just no time for it. ultimately we would like to have our own label and our own distributor, but I don't see that in the near future.

buddyhead: have you guys ever done any soundtracks or films?

dustin: some. we wish for more. personally, i've been wanting to do film soundtracks for years, because i'm actually a frustrated filmmaker. film is more expensive than doing music. living in san francisco is already very expensive in the first place. that was kind of one of the ideas with starting the band; to make a soundtrack for an imaginary film. or rather make an album that works like a film, which is what "sender receiver" was, specifically. the way we talk about our music is in the same language filmmakers use to describe what they do; scenes, edits, and dissolves. so we do sort of think of it all like a film. i personally would love to do something with david fincher or roman polanski.

buddyhead: what are your plans for new records?

dustin: the teletwin cd will be out february 22nd. we will be having an australian seven inch coming out in a couple months, as well as a japanese seven inch. as far as an i am spoonbender full length, that is on hold . we were going to do some sort of twelve inch with GSL in late spring/early summer, but as far of this year goes, we are simply concentrating on the teletwin c.d. coming out.

buddyhead: what previous bands were you guys in? i know that you (dustin) were in pansy division, and you (cup) were in cub...

cup: yeah, I was in cub.

dustin: and i was in pansy division. it was a really great experience for me in many ways. i moved out here from michigan. i was in a previous band, that was sort of a muscular playing 'musician' type band. it ended in a weird way, and i wanted to do something completely different. i wanted to do something that had the political edge that pansy division had to it. So that was something that i did for a couple years and enjoyed very much.

buddyhead: i notice that you guys have had a much larger following lately...what kind of impression do you want to leave on people?

brian: a total impression. we just want it to be something that people are going to remember, because hopefully, it's something they haven't seen before, or they haven't seen these combinations of things put together this way. basically we just want to leave an etching in their memory.

marc: shows that impress me the most are ones that i come away with not necessarily even having enjoyed at the time, but maybe a couple of days later i realize they affected me profoundly in a way that i couldn't really articulate to myself... until a few days later it processes and ferments a bit....

cup: ferments. (laughs) i don't know if i like that word.

marc: like wine!

cup: ferments like cheese.

marc: okay then, coagulate. (laughter)

dustin: what i'm hoping to achieve with the band is to give people that feeling of when they see some sort of magic act happen...this thing that happens before your eyes. you're forced to accept it that it happened, but it seems like it was something beyond supernatural. part of the band for us is trying to explain in sound the experiences that we have with extrasensory episodes. we're trying to put that feeling across, of what it's like to have those bizarre instances. we try and capture that little moment of life, and make it 45 minutes of audio.

brian: and then that happens to you five times a day for six months straight.

dustin: exactly. we live it. you'd have to be there to understand.

buddyhead: what was the best show you ever played?

dustin: personally, i think the show that was the most fun was when we played up here (san francisco) with mogwai. also the first show we played at the che cafe (san diego) for the che fest. there are a lot of reasons for us why we would say a certain show would be a better one; stuff that the audience wouldn't even know, such as technical things and such. but as far as my personal favorites, those two are.

buddyhead: how long does it take for you to prepare for one show?

dustin: our whole lives. it is A LOT of work to do i am spoonbender. we consider everything; the records, the live show, the stuff that people can have such as the shirt or the button. we all want it to be integrated in this concept. so it is thought about constantly, and we work pretty hard at it. for example, for this show we rehearsed seven or eight days straight every day.

brian: which is usually how we do it. we don't play that frequently, so when we do, around two weeks before the show , it's every night. We run the set exact.

marc: we build up the sets over a long period of time. we really flush them out in great detail in advance, before we really start committing to a rehearsal schedule.

dustin: there is a lot of advanced preparation before we cram for the big test.

marc: we don't just show up with a set list on a napkin made right before the show.

buddyhead: yeah, you can tell you guys have it all memorized, like a movie basically. you all watch and read each other during the set.

brian: yeah, there is no set list ever on stage at our shows. the set is just one song.

dustin: just like the albums. the individual pieces can be taken out. once again, i'll make another film reference; there is the whole movie , but then there are specific scenes. it seems that we do a lot of different things, and listeners will pick up on that scene that they like, or that certain texture or mood. i don't know what people like. it seems like people like a lot of different things about it.

buddyhead: do you memorize what you do in between the songs as well?

dustin: there's really no space between songs.. we know when we go on stage exactly what's going to happen.

buddyhead: do things always run smoothly?

brian: they didn't tonight, at least from our perspective. it's very hard for us to pull it all together, but we mostly do. sometimes things go great. sometimes they don't, and we'll just try to make it seem as though things went as well as possible from the crowd's perspective. they don't need to know something went wrong. that's our thing.

dustin: there's a weird thing that people ask about us a lot; that our set is totally rehearsed and that there is no room for chance or whatever. i've had people say to me, "that doesn't sound like any fun." like hot hot heat tonight...they are a totally cool band, but they change their set up every night. they turn around and ask each other, '"what song are we going to play next?'" i find a freedom in the discipline in never having to think about what's next what they're playing next. that kills momentum. if we know exactly what's next, then i'm free to enjoy the music. like when you're having a discussion with somebody that you don't know really well, and you're thinking ahead about what you're going to say next. that's not very comfortable. but if it's somebody you know really well, it just flows.

cup: and then it also leaves room for subtle additions and changes that you might want to do right then. if you know exactly how it's supposed to go, then you can embellish.

brian: that's a good word. there are definitely embellishments.

buddyhead: so tell us the whole story about the "metallica drummer" video.

dustin: for a long time we didn't know what the genesis of it was really. it all started when one of cup's old roommates gave her a video. she brought it to san francisco and we started making copies of it for friends that would come over. then as a joke we decided to press some up for aquarius records. we sold ten, then twenty, then thirty, and eventually we sold fifty copies to wfmu in new jersey for a giveaway. i started doing interviews with npr and spin. it just became this huge thing. the whole time everyone was dying to know who the guy in this video was. sure enough one day i got an email from him saying: "Dear dustin Donaldson, fuck face, I'm going to sue your ass to the wall; i'm going to get you for everything you got...just kidding, it's the metallica drummer." he was actually completely stoked. it was through him that i found out the exact story. what happened was, his parents were gone for the weekend, so he set up a video camera and played air drums to metallica in his underwear. the best thing about it was that he does the drums perfect on this imaginary "lars" drum set. it is fucking hilarious. to make a long story short, I just received an email from him a week ago, and MTV just bought the rights to the master tape from him for $3000, so now it will be everywhere.

buddyhead: has anything interesting or out of the ordinary happened to you guys lately?

marc: we came straight down here from san francisco, so there wasn't a lot of room for event.

dustin: there is a ridiculous level of retardation in this band. we have a really idiosyncratic sense of humor that most people probably wouldn't think is funny and probably wouldn't even enjoy. we're just about focusing on some little thing, and blowing it up and making it our whole world. there is a lot of cynicism and irony involved, but it's not necessarily negative. it's just absurdity really. that's sort of what it's all based around, absurdity. interesting things happen to us all the time, but i wouldn't say today.

brian: we listened to judas priest.

marc: being in this band, we're constantly encountering things that are serendipitous and coincidental, almost so much that it's a wash. it's kind of ridiculous and it's almost like something to shrug at this point. the frequency with which weird coincidences pop up every time we're together and there is no seeming explanation... that's just kind of what happens to us.

dustin: nothing is ever real until it is right there in front of you. you can believe it exists somewhere, but it's not the same as interacting with it. such as, i woke up the other day and i had had a dream about a yellow submarine, and she (cup) turns to me and says, "hey i got you this yellow submarine poster yesterday." i had just literally woken up and those were the first words out of her mouth. what are you supposed to make of that? or the time i had come back from a tour, and he (brian) picked me up at an airport... we hadn't seen each other in months. he said, "oh, while you were gone i got you something." and i said, "is it a heath bar?" and he goes, "it IS a heath bar.'"

brian: of all the things it could have been. ..

dustin: it could have been anything in the world. a new pair of socks, who knows. and after a while you start to notice that there is a pattern of those kinds of incidental things. it happens in our lives. it's not particularly important that people know that these things happen to us. But if people are really interested in us as people, there is a lot to talk about. that is what really defines the concept of i am spoonbender.

brian: the point is- this isn't just something we're into. we think these kinds of things tend to happen to everybody, some people just don't notice.

dustin: just don't notice. that's exactly it.

buddyhead: kind of like the song, 'hair is real', how about that?...

dustin: it's funny, but i generally title all of the songs, and i didn't really realize until afterwards that almost every single song is dealing with the subjective nature of reality. everything is about perspective. some sort of artifice is always present in our song titles. ya know, "ears are merely human". all these things that are somehow dealing with the nature of reality.

brian: a lot of body parts in the titles. lips, teeth, and hair.

dustin: yeah. i've always found dolls just really intriguing and strange. and mannequins too. just the idea that there is this image of a person, but it's not alive. a lot of people think mannequins are weird. freaky.

buddyhead: do you guys find tour tedious?

brian: we haven't really done a major tour. we've done a lot of out of town trips, up to vancouver or down here, but we haven't done a full tour yet.

cup: it's a really big thing for us to actually take this show on the road.

buddyhead: is that why you don't often?

brian: part of it is..

cup: if we're going to do it, we want to do it right. we want to make sure that it's worthwhile to the people that are coming to see us, and that it's worthwhile to us in terms of performing, and that we'll be at a place that's suitable for us. you saw all of our gear... we can't play on a tiny stage. it's impossible. all these little things that add up. we just want to make it right.

dustin: this (che) is by far the smallest stage we've ever played on. not that it's less important to us...actually the two shows we've played here are the some of my favorite shows i've ever played in my life. today was tough, but the other one was more fun and easier for me.

buddyhead: at che fest you guys were incredible. seeing you guys perform is definitely a whole different experience as opposed to listening to the album.

dustin: that makes us feel really great. we spend a lot of time on this, and we're the kind of people that are interested in things that are multifaceted. i think that i am spoonbender is just that. if you just want to rock out to the band, that's cool. but there are also other things that you can get into if you want to. you don't have to, and it's not necessary. but people like yourself, when you do spend more time with it, it really is for you. people like you are what i like about people that like our band. there are people that come to the shows...maybe they enjoy it, maybe they don't. it could be just another band they saw, i don't know. we get so many people saying so many different things about what we are, and what they think it is, and how it affects them. everybody has a different perspective on IAS. that's good. people say, well "it's this to me" or "it's that to me". of course with most bands, there are no layers at all. there's no mystery. a sense of mystery should be an essential ingredient, we think.