Post by brokenhands on Jul 5, 2008 18:39:11 GMT 1
Hi all, I interviewed Mark a couple of weeks ago and we talked about the new record, the old record, the imminent Green River reunion and pets. Here's some pearls for ya in handy Q&A format. Enjoy!
Did you have to walk the dogs this morning?
"I did not. My dogs are getting kind of old and one of them definitely doesn't even wake up until well after I've left the house for work every day. Usually dogs will get up when you get up and want to get some snacks or something, but he's just like 'fuck it.'
"We actually lost one of our dogs about a year ago (it died), but since then we got another dog from a shelter who's like 14 years old."
I noticed one of your dogs has a cameo with you in the new TAD dvd?
"Yeah, he's a beagle/lab mix. He enjoys sitting next to me during interviews."
He's probably sitting next to you right now.
"I wish."
I suppose we'd better move on from pets to talk about the bands.
"What? You mean you don't want to talk some more about animals?!"
Hey, I'm just making conversation here. The Lucky Ones is a brilliant record - of course, I would say that since I'm talking to the guy singing on it.
"Yeah, way to go out on a limb with that one!"
You did things pretty quickly this time around?
"Well, we had 11 songs when we went into the studio. The original plan was to record over a couple of weekends about a month apart. We figured we'd get down maybe 6 or 7 songs in the first weekend, maybe write one or two more in the meantime and then record those other 6 or 7 that following weekend.
"But it just turned out that we unexpectedly tracked all 11 songs in about a day and a half and then did the vocals and overdubs to finish out the weekend. That was the album pretty much done except for the mixing.
"We just figured 'this is some sort of sign. This is the album then.' There was no point in fucking with it.
The fact it came together so quickly can be attributed to 20 long years of hardened professionalism, right?
"Yeah, I don't know about that. It's kind of funny, like I remember before we went into the studio for Under A Billion Suns, for weeks coming up to that Dan would periodically go like 'you're gonna have to bear with me, I usually get pretty nervous in the studio.' I was surprised to hear that after all this time, but he was like 'if something takes a couple of takes, please bear with me.'
"I think maybe he got that out of his system when we recorded that record because he definitely didn't voice any concerns like that before we went into the studio this time around."
What prompted the move back to being an old school style frontman for this record, with no guitar to protect you from the braying hoardes of Muddites? Can we expect some flashy new stage moves?
"I had a lot of fun touring with the MC5 guys and Steve and Dan saw the show here in Seattle and thought it was really great. After that Dan kept suggesting that we should do a couple of new songs without me playing guitar - which at first I thought was maybe a little bit of an insult! I mean we'd always done a bit of that for our punk covers like Hate The Police and Fix Me or whatever, but it still seemed like a big thing.
"So the next record we did was Under A Billion Suns and I didn't really heed that advice at all. Then when we started working on this one, it kind of seemed like in a sense Since We've Become Translucent and Under A Billion Suns were kind of a pair, with horns on them and stuff, so how could we mix things up a little bit? Dropping a guitar and concentrating on vocals suddenly seemed like a good idea.
"I wasn't sure if I was going to do it for the whole record or not. I figured I could always go back later and figure out a guitar part if I thought one was necessary. But it never seemed necessary."
Usually, when you drop the guitar for Hate The Police it's like a chance for you to cut loose and go crazy at the end of the show. Clearly you'll have to pace yourself a bit what with all the new songs you have to move to.
"Yeah, right! At least Hate The Police was just one song, these days I don't know if I can breathe enough for any more than that!"
Maybe you should hit the gym?
"I'm actually getting in the van on Tuesday to drive out to Chicago for our first show. So there's no time to prepare."
How did Steve feel about taking on sole responsibility for guitar?
"Oh, I think he's totally comfortable with it. And it shows. You know, his guitar playing on the record is great. I love his guitar solos. Y'know, they're really unpredictable and kind of loose and emotional as opposed to being built up around some hot licks. They're not usually that melodic either."
Which is a good thing, naturally?
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
There's some great lyrics on the new album. I particularly like "A geological shift if you get my drift" and "in my fucked up gestalt I'm a slug in salt losing its skin." That's genius, how long did it take you to come up with those?
"Um, the geological shift thing came up pretty quickly and for the other one I think I was playing around with the 'slug in salt' thing and trying to think what might rhyme with it. Suddenly, I was transported back to my philosophy classes in university and was like 'gestalt - oh Jesus, finally I can use that!'"
Glad to see those tutition fees are finally paying off. What about The Closed Mind, was that inspired by anything in particular?
"There's kind of two ideas behind that. The first one goes all the way back to Mr Epp, when we would sit around and come up with catchy slogans like 'if it's a free country, who gets it?' or 'an open mind is an empty mind.'
"Then my wife's new year's resolution for 1987 was that it was going to be 'the year of the closed mind'. She'd had it up to here with trying to be patient and open minded with people she could tell right away from the get-go were full of shit. You'd always hear people saying 'you've got to keep and open mind' so she finally decided to say 'fuck that!' So as a tribute to here I decide to revisit that early slogan and built a song around it."
Tales of Terror is track 9 of 11 (9/11) which will go down well with the conspiracy theroists out there. However, I gather it was inspired by the seminal band of the same name rather than global terrorism?
"Well, they were seminal to those who saw or heard them, which wasn't a whole lot of people. They did one record which has never been re-issued in the digital format and has been out of print for years. They made a huge impact on me and a couple of friends of mine in town. We used to try and put that record on at parties whenever possible right next to Alice Cooper Killers.
"I saw them three times. The first time they played, their record wasn't out yet and actually Dan's band at the time, which was a U2/Joy Division post-punk Anglophilic type thing, opened for them. Then Tales of Terror came out and just destroyed. No one knew who they were but the singer was doing backflips and by the end of the show the guitar players were on the floor wrapped up in everyone's cables.
"They had these great songs and they did a cover of Spanish Castle Magic and I think maybe even Search and Destroy, at a time in the hardcore scene when it was a really rare thing to pay homage to anything that went before Minor Threat.
"They were one of those bands who along with like Black Flag were moving things along to iopen up punk rock and hardcore. They were fantastic players but incredibly sloppy at the same time."
Sounds familiar.
"(laughs), right right. That first show was just insane and then the second show was the next weekend. Apparently, to finance their little tour they'd brought a bunch of acid with them to sell, but they ended up eating most of the profits. And so the second show wasn't quite as good, they weren't quite as 'on top of it' as before.
"Then they came back up a couple of months later. Before the show there was a big party for them with a keg and whatnot. I didn't go to the party but I did go to the show. They came on stage and I remember the drummer just trying to make it to his drums, snaking back and forth from one side of the stage to the other. Finally he managed to sit down behind them and actually played great. It was astounding, but then the singer sang half the first song and fell forward on his face where he remained, passed out, for the rest of the set. The other guys in the band just carried on playing and filled in on vocals when they could.
"So, I saw one really great Tales of Terror show, one mediocre show and one really terrible show - but they were all very memorable."
There's a cool free 7" with the LP of The Lucky Ones, with covers of Gonna Make You Mine by The Troggs and Pere Ubu's Street Waves.
"I think that you can kind of argue that both those songs are indicitive of the influences on the new record. To me, Next Time is very much like that Troggs song."
You're hitting South America again this year, where you've become regular visitors. How come?
"Yeah, we're going back this October. A friend of ours who lives in Brazil and puts on shows periodically said to us that he'd love to do something for our 20th. Luckily it was possible for us to go. Usually it's pretty hard for us to do two big trips in a year, but we made it happen."
Do you think you'll fit in any surfing while you're down there?
"Um, y'know I think we have a day or two in Florianoppolis, which I think is a surf town. Maybe I'll try not to wipe out too hard. But the good thing about surfing is that when you fall, it's water. It's not like skateboarding where there's concrete."
What about reefs and sharks?
"Well, you know - sharks are pretty rare."
So, how did the impending Green River reunion for SubPop 20 come about?
"About a year ago, Jonathan was talking about this thing that he wanted to do and asked me if Green River might be up for it. I said 'I don't know, I'll ask everybody.' So I did, and they were."
Which line-up is it going to be? Will Bruce (Fairweather) be playing?
"It's going to be a three guitar army, with Bruce and Steve and Stone playing."
How much preparation is there going to be beforehand?
"That's the sticky thing. You know we had two practices last month before Pearl Jam went on tour. I'm glad we got together for those to lay any fears to rest and let us figure out exactly where we're at.
"When we toured with Pearl Jam in South America 2005 we did a couple of encores where Steve and I joined them for Kick Out The Jams and Rocking In The Free World. The last official Green River show was probably in October of '87."
Not that long before Mudhoney kicked off then?
"Yeah, well you know - things happen quickly when you're young."
With the 20th anniversary of the band, you must be getting a lot of 'how does it feel to be a rock and roll veteran?' type questions?
"Yeah, I never really know how to answer that. Those kind of questions can seem a little goofy sometimes. Remarkably, I've been getting the 'so is it true you're the person who coined the term grunge?' question more than you would ever imagine at this point. I'm so glad you haven't asked that - is it on your list?"
I'll just cross it off. I do remember at one point in the mid-90s you actually made a point of calling yourselves a grunge band.
"That was because it was the mid-90s! We started off thinking of ourselves as a punk band, and then that other term started to get thrown around. Once it became obvious that it was a dead movement in about 1995, we figured we may as well start calling ourselves a grunge band!"
What delayed the Monkeywrench record for so long?
"We originally recorded eight songs in 2001. We had done kind of a lot together at that point, as recorded an album in 2000. We just figured that we could easily write three more songs and complete the record.
"Unfortunately, that didn't happen for like three or four years, by which point Estrus had gotten to a point where they couldn't afford to keep putting out records. So we had to look for a new label and that took a while. There weren't any kind of time constraints since we weren't going to be touring imminently or anything.
"But I'm glad the record is finally out. I think it's definitely the most adventurous Monkeywrench record and I think it's probably my favourite."
The Superfuzz re-issue is great. How come there were no demos for Touch Me I'm Sick or Sweet Young thing on it though?
"Because we used the demos for the single! We went in and recorded those two songs, Twenty-Four, Need, Mudride and In n Out of Grace in our first session. So half the songs came out on record straight away.
"The original version of Twenty-Four was way out of tune, which we didn't realise at the time. We lost the mixed master of it so we went and re-mixed it from the original eight track tapes. The state of the art is such these days that Johnny Sangster could put Steve's guitar track into ProTools and step it up or down to wherever it should have been. So there's a little bit of revisionist history there!"
I can already hear punks spitting with disgust. How about those live shows on disc 2, how did you source those?
"There was a log of all of our stuff that Sub Pop has in storage. Once I saw that the Berlin show was in there I was like 'holy crap, I'd totally forgotten about that.' Though thinking back, they were filming all the bands so it makes sense that there should be a 24 Track recording.
"The only fiddling about that we had to do was right before Touch Me I'm Sick, Matt's bass fries out. So there's this huge gap of like 10 minutes where we're just trying to talk to this foreign audience while someone's fixing the bass amp.
"Right after that that tape roll ran out and the next one picks up 30 seconds into Touch Me I'm Sick. Again it was like 'holy crap, we've just lost the first part of one of our key songs.' But luckily there was an audience bootleg of that show and one of the guys here at SubPop had a copy. We were able to glue in the missing part pretty seamlessly from the bootleg.
"That show in Berlin was our first time outside of the North West. I think we'd maybe played Portland twice at that point, and all our other shows were in and around Seattle."
There's some pretty funny banter with the German audience where you're playing up to the American tourist stereotype.
"Yeah, at one point Steve starts saying 'Yankee Go Home'."
Who provided the tape of the radio show session that forms the second part of the live disc?
"Jay Hindman who did the liner notes worked at that radio station in Santa Barbara. The very first time we went down the West Coast, he and his friends started popping up at shows in California. We just assumed that they were big Sonic Youth fans who also quite liked us - they totally surprised us when they told us they were following the shows *because* of us. We were like, 'you're out of your mind! We've only got one single and an EP out, we barely exist!'
"But they were just really excited by the band and they asked us if we would play at their radio station. We had a day off so we went and did it. Luckily Jay still had a cassette tape of the result."
It's pretty funny how you suddenly become really drunk right before the end.
"Yeah, we played a bunch of songs and then there was a break in the show. When they came back we were really wasted. God, you can hear me trying to talk and I can't even string my words together!"
It ends with a great version of Dead Love.
"That sounds really funny to me, because you can hear that Dan keeps trying to end the song by kind of winding things down, but Steve and Matt and me just keep on going and he has to keep rolling back into it."
So has Matt got his copy of the new record yet and what's he up to at the moment?
"Yeah. He's doing carpentry, his area of expertise is cabinet work and finish work but he also just does construction if he has to."
He hasn't expressed any desire to play music again?
"He hasn't expressed any such thing to me."
What's happening with the long-awaited Mudhoney DVD then? Holding it back for the 21st anniversary?
"The log-jam on that is that there's a lot of live footage and it's just a matter of sitting down and watching that stuff and cataloguing. I would love for someone else to do it because just me looking at myself is just... it's not something that I enjoy doing.
"I'm pretty critical, like I'll be saying oh my god we totally blew that or 'oh my god what did I say that for. Y'know, shit like that."
So anyway, just for some rumour control, you don't really wear gravity boots do you?
"Er... I was trying to come up with some smart ass answer there, but no of course I don't. I guess some people will take anything at face value, like the time we played the School of Oriental Studies and I said 'hey, everybody come onstage.'"
And Steve didn't in fact get Chris Farley back on the blow?
"Definitely not!"
Did you have to walk the dogs this morning?
"I did not. My dogs are getting kind of old and one of them definitely doesn't even wake up until well after I've left the house for work every day. Usually dogs will get up when you get up and want to get some snacks or something, but he's just like 'fuck it.'
"We actually lost one of our dogs about a year ago (it died), but since then we got another dog from a shelter who's like 14 years old."
I noticed one of your dogs has a cameo with you in the new TAD dvd?
"Yeah, he's a beagle/lab mix. He enjoys sitting next to me during interviews."
He's probably sitting next to you right now.
"I wish."
I suppose we'd better move on from pets to talk about the bands.
"What? You mean you don't want to talk some more about animals?!"
Hey, I'm just making conversation here. The Lucky Ones is a brilliant record - of course, I would say that since I'm talking to the guy singing on it.
"Yeah, way to go out on a limb with that one!"
You did things pretty quickly this time around?
"Well, we had 11 songs when we went into the studio. The original plan was to record over a couple of weekends about a month apart. We figured we'd get down maybe 6 or 7 songs in the first weekend, maybe write one or two more in the meantime and then record those other 6 or 7 that following weekend.
"But it just turned out that we unexpectedly tracked all 11 songs in about a day and a half and then did the vocals and overdubs to finish out the weekend. That was the album pretty much done except for the mixing.
"We just figured 'this is some sort of sign. This is the album then.' There was no point in fucking with it.
The fact it came together so quickly can be attributed to 20 long years of hardened professionalism, right?
"Yeah, I don't know about that. It's kind of funny, like I remember before we went into the studio for Under A Billion Suns, for weeks coming up to that Dan would periodically go like 'you're gonna have to bear with me, I usually get pretty nervous in the studio.' I was surprised to hear that after all this time, but he was like 'if something takes a couple of takes, please bear with me.'
"I think maybe he got that out of his system when we recorded that record because he definitely didn't voice any concerns like that before we went into the studio this time around."
What prompted the move back to being an old school style frontman for this record, with no guitar to protect you from the braying hoardes of Muddites? Can we expect some flashy new stage moves?
"I had a lot of fun touring with the MC5 guys and Steve and Dan saw the show here in Seattle and thought it was really great. After that Dan kept suggesting that we should do a couple of new songs without me playing guitar - which at first I thought was maybe a little bit of an insult! I mean we'd always done a bit of that for our punk covers like Hate The Police and Fix Me or whatever, but it still seemed like a big thing.
"So the next record we did was Under A Billion Suns and I didn't really heed that advice at all. Then when we started working on this one, it kind of seemed like in a sense Since We've Become Translucent and Under A Billion Suns were kind of a pair, with horns on them and stuff, so how could we mix things up a little bit? Dropping a guitar and concentrating on vocals suddenly seemed like a good idea.
"I wasn't sure if I was going to do it for the whole record or not. I figured I could always go back later and figure out a guitar part if I thought one was necessary. But it never seemed necessary."
Usually, when you drop the guitar for Hate The Police it's like a chance for you to cut loose and go crazy at the end of the show. Clearly you'll have to pace yourself a bit what with all the new songs you have to move to.
"Yeah, right! At least Hate The Police was just one song, these days I don't know if I can breathe enough for any more than that!"
Maybe you should hit the gym?
"I'm actually getting in the van on Tuesday to drive out to Chicago for our first show. So there's no time to prepare."
How did Steve feel about taking on sole responsibility for guitar?
"Oh, I think he's totally comfortable with it. And it shows. You know, his guitar playing on the record is great. I love his guitar solos. Y'know, they're really unpredictable and kind of loose and emotional as opposed to being built up around some hot licks. They're not usually that melodic either."
Which is a good thing, naturally?
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
There's some great lyrics on the new album. I particularly like "A geological shift if you get my drift" and "in my fucked up gestalt I'm a slug in salt losing its skin." That's genius, how long did it take you to come up with those?
"Um, the geological shift thing came up pretty quickly and for the other one I think I was playing around with the 'slug in salt' thing and trying to think what might rhyme with it. Suddenly, I was transported back to my philosophy classes in university and was like 'gestalt - oh Jesus, finally I can use that!'"
Glad to see those tutition fees are finally paying off. What about The Closed Mind, was that inspired by anything in particular?
"There's kind of two ideas behind that. The first one goes all the way back to Mr Epp, when we would sit around and come up with catchy slogans like 'if it's a free country, who gets it?' or 'an open mind is an empty mind.'
"Then my wife's new year's resolution for 1987 was that it was going to be 'the year of the closed mind'. She'd had it up to here with trying to be patient and open minded with people she could tell right away from the get-go were full of shit. You'd always hear people saying 'you've got to keep and open mind' so she finally decided to say 'fuck that!' So as a tribute to here I decide to revisit that early slogan and built a song around it."
Tales of Terror is track 9 of 11 (9/11) which will go down well with the conspiracy theroists out there. However, I gather it was inspired by the seminal band of the same name rather than global terrorism?
"Well, they were seminal to those who saw or heard them, which wasn't a whole lot of people. They did one record which has never been re-issued in the digital format and has been out of print for years. They made a huge impact on me and a couple of friends of mine in town. We used to try and put that record on at parties whenever possible right next to Alice Cooper Killers.
"I saw them three times. The first time they played, their record wasn't out yet and actually Dan's band at the time, which was a U2/Joy Division post-punk Anglophilic type thing, opened for them. Then Tales of Terror came out and just destroyed. No one knew who they were but the singer was doing backflips and by the end of the show the guitar players were on the floor wrapped up in everyone's cables.
"They had these great songs and they did a cover of Spanish Castle Magic and I think maybe even Search and Destroy, at a time in the hardcore scene when it was a really rare thing to pay homage to anything that went before Minor Threat.
"They were one of those bands who along with like Black Flag were moving things along to iopen up punk rock and hardcore. They were fantastic players but incredibly sloppy at the same time."
Sounds familiar.
"(laughs), right right. That first show was just insane and then the second show was the next weekend. Apparently, to finance their little tour they'd brought a bunch of acid with them to sell, but they ended up eating most of the profits. And so the second show wasn't quite as good, they weren't quite as 'on top of it' as before.
"Then they came back up a couple of months later. Before the show there was a big party for them with a keg and whatnot. I didn't go to the party but I did go to the show. They came on stage and I remember the drummer just trying to make it to his drums, snaking back and forth from one side of the stage to the other. Finally he managed to sit down behind them and actually played great. It was astounding, but then the singer sang half the first song and fell forward on his face where he remained, passed out, for the rest of the set. The other guys in the band just carried on playing and filled in on vocals when they could.
"So, I saw one really great Tales of Terror show, one mediocre show and one really terrible show - but they were all very memorable."
There's a cool free 7" with the LP of The Lucky Ones, with covers of Gonna Make You Mine by The Troggs and Pere Ubu's Street Waves.
"I think that you can kind of argue that both those songs are indicitive of the influences on the new record. To me, Next Time is very much like that Troggs song."
You're hitting South America again this year, where you've become regular visitors. How come?
"Yeah, we're going back this October. A friend of ours who lives in Brazil and puts on shows periodically said to us that he'd love to do something for our 20th. Luckily it was possible for us to go. Usually it's pretty hard for us to do two big trips in a year, but we made it happen."
Do you think you'll fit in any surfing while you're down there?
"Um, y'know I think we have a day or two in Florianoppolis, which I think is a surf town. Maybe I'll try not to wipe out too hard. But the good thing about surfing is that when you fall, it's water. It's not like skateboarding where there's concrete."
What about reefs and sharks?
"Well, you know - sharks are pretty rare."
So, how did the impending Green River reunion for SubPop 20 come about?
"About a year ago, Jonathan was talking about this thing that he wanted to do and asked me if Green River might be up for it. I said 'I don't know, I'll ask everybody.' So I did, and they were."
Which line-up is it going to be? Will Bruce (Fairweather) be playing?
"It's going to be a three guitar army, with Bruce and Steve and Stone playing."
How much preparation is there going to be beforehand?
"That's the sticky thing. You know we had two practices last month before Pearl Jam went on tour. I'm glad we got together for those to lay any fears to rest and let us figure out exactly where we're at.
"When we toured with Pearl Jam in South America 2005 we did a couple of encores where Steve and I joined them for Kick Out The Jams and Rocking In The Free World. The last official Green River show was probably in October of '87."
Not that long before Mudhoney kicked off then?
"Yeah, well you know - things happen quickly when you're young."
With the 20th anniversary of the band, you must be getting a lot of 'how does it feel to be a rock and roll veteran?' type questions?
"Yeah, I never really know how to answer that. Those kind of questions can seem a little goofy sometimes. Remarkably, I've been getting the 'so is it true you're the person who coined the term grunge?' question more than you would ever imagine at this point. I'm so glad you haven't asked that - is it on your list?"
I'll just cross it off. I do remember at one point in the mid-90s you actually made a point of calling yourselves a grunge band.
"That was because it was the mid-90s! We started off thinking of ourselves as a punk band, and then that other term started to get thrown around. Once it became obvious that it was a dead movement in about 1995, we figured we may as well start calling ourselves a grunge band!"
What delayed the Monkeywrench record for so long?
"We originally recorded eight songs in 2001. We had done kind of a lot together at that point, as recorded an album in 2000. We just figured that we could easily write three more songs and complete the record.
"Unfortunately, that didn't happen for like three or four years, by which point Estrus had gotten to a point where they couldn't afford to keep putting out records. So we had to look for a new label and that took a while. There weren't any kind of time constraints since we weren't going to be touring imminently or anything.
"But I'm glad the record is finally out. I think it's definitely the most adventurous Monkeywrench record and I think it's probably my favourite."
The Superfuzz re-issue is great. How come there were no demos for Touch Me I'm Sick or Sweet Young thing on it though?
"Because we used the demos for the single! We went in and recorded those two songs, Twenty-Four, Need, Mudride and In n Out of Grace in our first session. So half the songs came out on record straight away.
"The original version of Twenty-Four was way out of tune, which we didn't realise at the time. We lost the mixed master of it so we went and re-mixed it from the original eight track tapes. The state of the art is such these days that Johnny Sangster could put Steve's guitar track into ProTools and step it up or down to wherever it should have been. So there's a little bit of revisionist history there!"
I can already hear punks spitting with disgust. How about those live shows on disc 2, how did you source those?
"There was a log of all of our stuff that Sub Pop has in storage. Once I saw that the Berlin show was in there I was like 'holy crap, I'd totally forgotten about that.' Though thinking back, they were filming all the bands so it makes sense that there should be a 24 Track recording.
"The only fiddling about that we had to do was right before Touch Me I'm Sick, Matt's bass fries out. So there's this huge gap of like 10 minutes where we're just trying to talk to this foreign audience while someone's fixing the bass amp.
"Right after that that tape roll ran out and the next one picks up 30 seconds into Touch Me I'm Sick. Again it was like 'holy crap, we've just lost the first part of one of our key songs.' But luckily there was an audience bootleg of that show and one of the guys here at SubPop had a copy. We were able to glue in the missing part pretty seamlessly from the bootleg.
"That show in Berlin was our first time outside of the North West. I think we'd maybe played Portland twice at that point, and all our other shows were in and around Seattle."
There's some pretty funny banter with the German audience where you're playing up to the American tourist stereotype.
"Yeah, at one point Steve starts saying 'Yankee Go Home'."
Who provided the tape of the radio show session that forms the second part of the live disc?
"Jay Hindman who did the liner notes worked at that radio station in Santa Barbara. The very first time we went down the West Coast, he and his friends started popping up at shows in California. We just assumed that they were big Sonic Youth fans who also quite liked us - they totally surprised us when they told us they were following the shows *because* of us. We were like, 'you're out of your mind! We've only got one single and an EP out, we barely exist!'
"But they were just really excited by the band and they asked us if we would play at their radio station. We had a day off so we went and did it. Luckily Jay still had a cassette tape of the result."
It's pretty funny how you suddenly become really drunk right before the end.
"Yeah, we played a bunch of songs and then there was a break in the show. When they came back we were really wasted. God, you can hear me trying to talk and I can't even string my words together!"
It ends with a great version of Dead Love.
"That sounds really funny to me, because you can hear that Dan keeps trying to end the song by kind of winding things down, but Steve and Matt and me just keep on going and he has to keep rolling back into it."
So has Matt got his copy of the new record yet and what's he up to at the moment?
"Yeah. He's doing carpentry, his area of expertise is cabinet work and finish work but he also just does construction if he has to."
He hasn't expressed any desire to play music again?
"He hasn't expressed any such thing to me."
What's happening with the long-awaited Mudhoney DVD then? Holding it back for the 21st anniversary?
"The log-jam on that is that there's a lot of live footage and it's just a matter of sitting down and watching that stuff and cataloguing. I would love for someone else to do it because just me looking at myself is just... it's not something that I enjoy doing.
"I'm pretty critical, like I'll be saying oh my god we totally blew that or 'oh my god what did I say that for. Y'know, shit like that."
So anyway, just for some rumour control, you don't really wear gravity boots do you?
"Er... I was trying to come up with some smart ass answer there, but no of course I don't. I guess some people will take anything at face value, like the time we played the School of Oriental Studies and I said 'hey, everybody come onstage.'"
And Steve didn't in fact get Chris Farley back on the blow?
"Definitely not!"
