1996-06-07
Interview 1996.06.07 for KDVS 90.3FM Davis, CA
[Interview was done for KDVS 90.3FM Davis, CA June 7, 1996 before a Berkeley Square show while on the 1996 leg of the West Coast Tour...]
Interview With BABYLAND by Cruella und Jasminyx
Cruella: How did you get your band name? What does 'Babyland' signify?
Smith: ... you will recognize the sign (laughter)... There is this place in LA that says 'Babyland' in these big red letters and it looks really really cool. We were driving around like back in the 80's and thought 'That would be a cool name for a band'. Then one day we had a band. Wow! It's Babyland... this is it, we found it!
Cruella: The second part of the question is “... is this a baby goods emporium or a black market baby mecca??” So...
Smith: No... it's neither... it's just a weird word... that doesn't bring any kind of like baggage of death and destruction with it or anything stupid like ...
Dan: We wanted a name that we could like shape, instead of have the name shape us. We just wanted a random name. Hey, that's a great name. You just pick something out and then you become that as opposed to a good example we always talk about...
Smith: Who's the example? Uh, Tough Men
Dan: Tough Guys... ya know Fuckin' Crazy Man... you know
Smith: Fuckin' - F-U-C-K-I-N-'- Crazy Man
Dan: We're in for the long-term, not the short-term.
Smith: Actually it's a statement about the condition of America.
Dan: Yes, children...
Smith: Where everyone is just coddled into this sense of just like, they gotta have all of this stuff to be comfortable. We're the babies of the Earth.
Cruella: About the interactive portion of the new CD Who's Sorry Now... No one seems to be able to get that to work...
Smith: Really??
Dan: The interactive part??? I can get the interactive part to work fine.
Cruella: What's the trick to that??
Dan: The trick is when you go and open it up it will ask you 'Where is WSN1 or A' and all you gotta do it go down and click it. I have a Power Mac. We know one person who's got it to work.
Smith: Yeah, the MPEGs... it totally works.
Dan: It does work, it works... everyone we've met says, "Oh, yeah, I can get the interactive track to work but I can't get the MPEGs."
Smith: I think it's tricky because they are MPEGs which is a strange kind of file... it's hard to decompress.
Dan: I can't play them (the MPEGs). They don't work... they start, you see a picture then it goes 'Uhn'.
Smith: It's just a big pain in the ass.
Dan: But of course the whole idea being was, Smith and I kinda fought about it because I was like, well, why don't we just do them on Quicktime and everybody will be able to see them and everything and Smith gave me the valid response of 'Quicktime sucks... who wants to look at this little box... in a year everyone will have things that run MPEGs...'
Smith: If not everyone, everyone's uncle, the accountant, you know...
Dan: It's more of like the kind of thing that we try to plant and people will catch up to I think as opposed to doing something for right now.
Smith: That will get left behind.
Dan: Plus, it takes up a lot less room than Quicktime. Quicktime takes up a shitload of memory. Like how many times more?
Smith: You couldn't fit a full screen full motion of comparable quality... it would be like 900 megabytes... it wouldn't even fit on the whole CD, these MPEGs, each of them are like 30 megabytes so you can get 3 of them on there plus an album.
Cruella: What do you think of people who think electronic music is not real or not art?
Smith: I don't say anything... it's hard to deal with that.
Dan: Wait till you turn 16, then you'll feel differently. It's like all the obvious answers, it's like 'Whatever'.
Smith: The tools are just the tools, they could be anything.
Dan: The biggest problem it that people always ask us things like "How do you feel about electronic music"
Smith: We wish people could just look at it like just any other band. We're just a band that wants to come play, there's nothing different at all about it, just put us on stage, let us come in and set up our stuff, we're gonna make noise and you know, kids tend to like it.
Cruella: Who influences you?
Dan: People who do stuff. People who are actively pursuing what they want and just couldn't care less about what other people are doing. Anybody who has taken something on and wants to see it through till the end. Those are the people who influence us. Anybody who does anything else just whatever, I mean, that's fine, they can do it if they just want to do something to pass the time, great. Just some form of commitment and living up to your word.
Smith: I don't like smokescreens and I don't like negative.
Dan: Negative is bad.
Smith: We are very positive.
Dan: Believe it or not.
Smith: We're like a positive message. Warm, fuzzy feeling on the inside.
Cruella: What kind of music have you been listening to lately?
Smith: I've been getting into early Latin jazz. Like, from the 50's. Before it turned into TV music, or something. Like, just really raw, you know, out of the jungle, Afro-Cuban like kind of percussion and stuff. Just because it's got like really incredible rhythms that are just totally raw and untainted by any kind of pop culture. Really cool.
Dan: I got a Girls Against Boys record that's really good. Their new record is really good. I never really knew them before. I mean, that's like recently. Last week I started listening to it. Pretty much anything that is not sold to me as being a certain way, like electronic, like "Hey! Let's check out this electronic industrial music!" I just don't want to listen to it. You know? I don't want to be sold on something. We like to find our own stuff ourselves.
Smith: We like to check it out. See how they did it, see what they did. How they put it together.
Dan: 'Cause, things have a longer life than just the 6 months that they push the record. And I think that there's a lot of cool stuff out there that I've overlooked because "Oh, I don't like the way that guy looks!" or "That's a stupid video!" or, you know, I wasn't old enough to really appreciate it. So, I'm trying to search things out.
Smith: Kind of like the day I broke down and bought an Ozzy record.
Dan: Yeah. Ozzy rules!
Smith: Ozzy rules! Ozzy's the best!
Dan: Anyway...
Cruella: So, do you have any trouble during shows, or after shows, with your whole pyrotechnic thing?
Smith: Very, very rarely. Only with extremely ignorant people.
Cruella: Really? Because she wanted me to mention "such as Kiss". They had troubles with that.
Dan: Oh really?
Jasminyx: Yeah, some shows were cancelled. Like in the Mid-West.
Dan: Sure.
Smith: Well, Kiss, I mean, that's kind of ridiculous. I mean, we're not Kiss. I mean, we don't do all that much, actually. It's not that big of a deal.
Cruella: Ok, so do you have isolated cases where there were problems?
Smith: Sure. People just panic and don't know what to do, and they forget what's going on. Part of what we do is supposed to be energetic and powerful and confrontational. And guess what. It's kind of meant to scare you. And for a promoter or a club to forget that and go "Whoa! That scares me!" and overreact, well, that's what we're trying to do. That's why we're there. That's why people came to the show. It's kind of supposed to be that way. Sometimes people, I don't know if they're high or what, but they forget.
Dan: There's like such an absence of energy for the most part in a lot of bands that play for us, that when you come out there and you're like "Come on! Let's go!" and just start making noise, even jumping and making noise, people start to wonder what's going on, like "what are you going to do". And they misperceive the fact that just because there's energy, doesn't mean that it's negative.
Smith: It's the same thing with clubs that like, hate when the audience starts slamming, or jumping around, and they try to stop that.
Dan: They don't understand.
Smith: There was a drunk guy in Eugene, Oregon that came at me with a baseball bat once. He thought I was going to light his club on fire. Other than that...
[Incident occurred at John Henry's in Eugene, OR in 1993]
Dan: No. We're answering too long. Our answers are too long.
Cruella: The song Ramona Moraga, what was that based off of?
Dan: Where we came from.
Smith: Smith equals Ramona. Dan equals Moraga. And these are ultra suburban like type of communities.
Cruella: Yeah, Zima's from Moraga.
Smith: Ramona is more the sticks than Moraga.
Dan: But they are the same thing. Different, different things.
Cruella: Different people and stuff.
Dan: It's in every place.
Cruella: How did you get involved with the Doom Generation soundtrack?
Smith: This guy, Greg Araki, he's a film maker in L.A., he's been at this, doing this for like a decade, just slugging away at it, refusing to stop. Usually goes, when he was doing his first feature, it was literally him, in a shoe box apartment with a movie, just scraping up the cash just to do it, 'cause he loved it. And he'd go to shows and stuff, and we struck up a friendship with the guy, and we've had songs in what, like 3 movies now.
Dan: This is the first soundtrack that they've put out.
Smith: Yeah, it just finally got to the point where his movie is kind of a big deal, and there's a budget for a soundtrack and stuff, and he asked us to be on it.
Dan: He's one of the few people who we've like connected with. He does things artistically, that is actually trying to help us out in a way that he can and it's kinda nice.
Smith: He's really cool.
Dan: I don't know if you saw the movie, or anything.
Cruella: No.
Jasminyx: When is it coming out on video?
Dan: It's a fucking great movie.
Smith: It's a great movie.
Dan: It's a great movie. I don't care. You'll love it.
Smith: It isn't like the cure for cancer, but it is a great movie.
Cruella: Where do you guys pick out your drums and instruments?
Smith: I get most of my junk from a guy named Lupe Bergeno, B-E-R-G-E-N-O and his son Eddie down in Carson, California, on Main Street and Francisco by the drive-in. This guy, they just salvage junk and then re-sell it, and it's totally cool. I just go to the yard and pick stuff out and it's great! I've been going there for years.
Cruella: So, how often do you go through a kit?
Smith: Different drums will last for a different amount of time, depending on what they're used for. Sometimes they last for 4 or 5 shows. Basically what I use, what's one of my standard pieces right now, are things that can kind of go for a little while. There are some things that I've tried to use that I've just like, you know, they just fall apart immediately and it's just stupid. I try to find things and try to make that work and I've got some pretty sturdy stuff going right now.
Dan: It's like when we started, we had no idea what would work, and there are certain things that sound good for about 3 hits and they fall apart. And there are certain things that maybe look cool, but don't sound good. And so, I think eventually we've just kind of... I don't know...
Smith: It's cool!
Dan: It works.
Smith: It's a process that now I've got things that are now sort of a standard, for me, the sounds are consistent over... I can go, you know... basically for several years now with the same sort of sounds.
Dan: And when we record, you know, it's also bringing in those small things that wouldn't last on tour, or something. You know, just anything. Anything that makes noise.
Smith: Recording is a little bit different because you can get in close on something that maybe isn't very loud, but sounds rad. Make strange sounds with it. Something you couldn't do on stage. There'll be much, much more of that.
Cruella: So, you're on a pretty large tour right now?
Dan: It's just starting.
Smith: We're just beginning. This is the first time we will actually hit the east coast. It's only 22 days, it's not that big. But it's big for us, kind of. We'll be going out there, pretty much playing every night. And we're going to go to like, Georgia, North Carolina, to New York and back, and through Ohio, and Indiana, and Iowa, and stuff. We're really excited about Iowa. It should be really cool. 'Cause, touring is rad because it gives you an excuse to go to these places you've had no other reason to ever go to. Like Toledo. Why would I ever have a reason to go to Toledo? Maybe. I don't know.
Dan: To rock out.
Smith: We get to go there and rock out.
Dan: Also, I mean, the coolest thing about being in a band, is being able to... you have an excuse to travel. I think that's one thing that if you ask most people what they want to do in their lives, and they'll want to travel around and they'll want to see things. But, you know, it pays for itself, you meet people that are actually part of the town, and as opposed to staying in a hotel and kind of like watching people and you get to be a part of it. And every time there are people who are like "Yeah, let's go down to the record store" and they always know what's going on, and they introduce you, and you basically meet these friends. They may not last a lifetime, but some of them, you know, you make contact with.
Cruella: So, is this tour in support of the new album?
Smith: Yeah. It's not like our tour tries to push anything so much. But in this tour, the main thing that people aren't going to have is the new album, with which we're kinda having a big snarl at this point with distribution getting it into the stores and stuff. Like, a lot of people in Berkeley have it, and we play up here often. But really, in a lot of these places people haven't even seen it yet.
Dan: All the stuff that we do isn't so much in support of one little thing, but is in support of the whole, you know, big picture. So, we never have a plan, like we're going to shoot a video, and send a video out everywhere, and hopefully call the stations and get this one single played, because it's not what it's about. Eventually, we're going to turn around and have a lot of records out there, and we want to promote all of them because I think people pick and choose what they like. I can't decide that this is what's going to be really good.
Interview With BABYLAND by Cruella und Jasminyx
Cruella: How did you get your band name? What does 'Babyland' signify?
Smith: ... you will recognize the sign (laughter)... There is this place in LA that says 'Babyland' in these big red letters and it looks really really cool. We were driving around like back in the 80's and thought 'That would be a cool name for a band'. Then one day we had a band. Wow! It's Babyland... this is it, we found it!
Cruella: The second part of the question is “... is this a baby goods emporium or a black market baby mecca??” So...
Smith: No... it's neither... it's just a weird word... that doesn't bring any kind of like baggage of death and destruction with it or anything stupid like ...
Dan: We wanted a name that we could like shape, instead of have the name shape us. We just wanted a random name. Hey, that's a great name. You just pick something out and then you become that as opposed to a good example we always talk about...
Smith: Who's the example? Uh, Tough Men
Dan: Tough Guys... ya know Fuckin' Crazy Man... you know
Smith: Fuckin' - F-U-C-K-I-N-'- Crazy Man
Dan: We're in for the long-term, not the short-term.
Smith: Actually it's a statement about the condition of America.
Dan: Yes, children...
Smith: Where everyone is just coddled into this sense of just like, they gotta have all of this stuff to be comfortable. We're the babies of the Earth.
Cruella: About the interactive portion of the new CD Who's Sorry Now... No one seems to be able to get that to work...
Smith: Really??
Dan: The interactive part??? I can get the interactive part to work fine.
Cruella: What's the trick to that??
Dan: The trick is when you go and open it up it will ask you 'Where is WSN1 or A' and all you gotta do it go down and click it. I have a Power Mac. We know one person who's got it to work.
Smith: Yeah, the MPEGs... it totally works.
Dan: It does work, it works... everyone we've met says, "Oh, yeah, I can get the interactive track to work but I can't get the MPEGs."
Smith: I think it's tricky because they are MPEGs which is a strange kind of file... it's hard to decompress.
Dan: I can't play them (the MPEGs). They don't work... they start, you see a picture then it goes 'Uhn'.
Smith: It's just a big pain in the ass.
Dan: But of course the whole idea being was, Smith and I kinda fought about it because I was like, well, why don't we just do them on Quicktime and everybody will be able to see them and everything and Smith gave me the valid response of 'Quicktime sucks... who wants to look at this little box... in a year everyone will have things that run MPEGs...'
Smith: If not everyone, everyone's uncle, the accountant, you know...
Dan: It's more of like the kind of thing that we try to plant and people will catch up to I think as opposed to doing something for right now.
Smith: That will get left behind.
Dan: Plus, it takes up a lot less room than Quicktime. Quicktime takes up a shitload of memory. Like how many times more?
Smith: You couldn't fit a full screen full motion of comparable quality... it would be like 900 megabytes... it wouldn't even fit on the whole CD, these MPEGs, each of them are like 30 megabytes so you can get 3 of them on there plus an album.
Cruella: What do you think of people who think electronic music is not real or not art?
Smith: I don't say anything... it's hard to deal with that.
Dan: Wait till you turn 16, then you'll feel differently. It's like all the obvious answers, it's like 'Whatever'.
Smith: The tools are just the tools, they could be anything.
Dan: The biggest problem it that people always ask us things like "How do you feel about electronic music"
Smith: We wish people could just look at it like just any other band. We're just a band that wants to come play, there's nothing different at all about it, just put us on stage, let us come in and set up our stuff, we're gonna make noise and you know, kids tend to like it.
Cruella: Who influences you?
Dan: People who do stuff. People who are actively pursuing what they want and just couldn't care less about what other people are doing. Anybody who has taken something on and wants to see it through till the end. Those are the people who influence us. Anybody who does anything else just whatever, I mean, that's fine, they can do it if they just want to do something to pass the time, great. Just some form of commitment and living up to your word.
Smith: I don't like smokescreens and I don't like negative.
Dan: Negative is bad.
Smith: We are very positive.
Dan: Believe it or not.
Smith: We're like a positive message. Warm, fuzzy feeling on the inside.
Cruella: What kind of music have you been listening to lately?
Smith: I've been getting into early Latin jazz. Like, from the 50's. Before it turned into TV music, or something. Like, just really raw, you know, out of the jungle, Afro-Cuban like kind of percussion and stuff. Just because it's got like really incredible rhythms that are just totally raw and untainted by any kind of pop culture. Really cool.
Dan: I got a Girls Against Boys record that's really good. Their new record is really good. I never really knew them before. I mean, that's like recently. Last week I started listening to it. Pretty much anything that is not sold to me as being a certain way, like electronic, like "Hey! Let's check out this electronic industrial music!" I just don't want to listen to it. You know? I don't want to be sold on something. We like to find our own stuff ourselves.
Smith: We like to check it out. See how they did it, see what they did. How they put it together.
Dan: 'Cause, things have a longer life than just the 6 months that they push the record. And I think that there's a lot of cool stuff out there that I've overlooked because "Oh, I don't like the way that guy looks!" or "That's a stupid video!" or, you know, I wasn't old enough to really appreciate it. So, I'm trying to search things out.
Smith: Kind of like the day I broke down and bought an Ozzy record.
Dan: Yeah. Ozzy rules!
Smith: Ozzy rules! Ozzy's the best!
Dan: Anyway...
Cruella: So, do you have any trouble during shows, or after shows, with your whole pyrotechnic thing?
Smith: Very, very rarely. Only with extremely ignorant people.
Cruella: Really? Because she wanted me to mention "such as Kiss". They had troubles with that.
Dan: Oh really?
Jasminyx: Yeah, some shows were cancelled. Like in the Mid-West.
Dan: Sure.
Smith: Well, Kiss, I mean, that's kind of ridiculous. I mean, we're not Kiss. I mean, we don't do all that much, actually. It's not that big of a deal.
Cruella: Ok, so do you have isolated cases where there were problems?
Smith: Sure. People just panic and don't know what to do, and they forget what's going on. Part of what we do is supposed to be energetic and powerful and confrontational. And guess what. It's kind of meant to scare you. And for a promoter or a club to forget that and go "Whoa! That scares me!" and overreact, well, that's what we're trying to do. That's why we're there. That's why people came to the show. It's kind of supposed to be that way. Sometimes people, I don't know if they're high or what, but they forget.
Dan: There's like such an absence of energy for the most part in a lot of bands that play for us, that when you come out there and you're like "Come on! Let's go!" and just start making noise, even jumping and making noise, people start to wonder what's going on, like "what are you going to do". And they misperceive the fact that just because there's energy, doesn't mean that it's negative.
Smith: It's the same thing with clubs that like, hate when the audience starts slamming, or jumping around, and they try to stop that.
Dan: They don't understand.
Smith: There was a drunk guy in Eugene, Oregon that came at me with a baseball bat once. He thought I was going to light his club on fire. Other than that...
[Incident occurred at John Henry's in Eugene, OR in 1993]
Dan: No. We're answering too long. Our answers are too long.
Cruella: The song Ramona Moraga, what was that based off of?
Dan: Where we came from.
Smith: Smith equals Ramona. Dan equals Moraga. And these are ultra suburban like type of communities.
Cruella: Yeah, Zima's from Moraga.
Smith: Ramona is more the sticks than Moraga.
Dan: But they are the same thing. Different, different things.
Cruella: Different people and stuff.
Dan: It's in every place.
Cruella: How did you get involved with the Doom Generation soundtrack?
Smith: This guy, Greg Araki, he's a film maker in L.A., he's been at this, doing this for like a decade, just slugging away at it, refusing to stop. Usually goes, when he was doing his first feature, it was literally him, in a shoe box apartment with a movie, just scraping up the cash just to do it, 'cause he loved it. And he'd go to shows and stuff, and we struck up a friendship with the guy, and we've had songs in what, like 3 movies now.
Dan: This is the first soundtrack that they've put out.
Smith: Yeah, it just finally got to the point where his movie is kind of a big deal, and there's a budget for a soundtrack and stuff, and he asked us to be on it.
Dan: He's one of the few people who we've like connected with. He does things artistically, that is actually trying to help us out in a way that he can and it's kinda nice.
Smith: He's really cool.
Dan: I don't know if you saw the movie, or anything.
Cruella: No.
Jasminyx: When is it coming out on video?
Dan: It's a fucking great movie.
Smith: It's a great movie.
Dan: It's a great movie. I don't care. You'll love it.
Smith: It isn't like the cure for cancer, but it is a great movie.
Cruella: Where do you guys pick out your drums and instruments?
Smith: I get most of my junk from a guy named Lupe Bergeno, B-E-R-G-E-N-O and his son Eddie down in Carson, California, on Main Street and Francisco by the drive-in. This guy, they just salvage junk and then re-sell it, and it's totally cool. I just go to the yard and pick stuff out and it's great! I've been going there for years.
Cruella: So, how often do you go through a kit?
Smith: Different drums will last for a different amount of time, depending on what they're used for. Sometimes they last for 4 or 5 shows. Basically what I use, what's one of my standard pieces right now, are things that can kind of go for a little while. There are some things that I've tried to use that I've just like, you know, they just fall apart immediately and it's just stupid. I try to find things and try to make that work and I've got some pretty sturdy stuff going right now.
Dan: It's like when we started, we had no idea what would work, and there are certain things that sound good for about 3 hits and they fall apart. And there are certain things that maybe look cool, but don't sound good. And so, I think eventually we've just kind of... I don't know...
Smith: It's cool!
Dan: It works.
Smith: It's a process that now I've got things that are now sort of a standard, for me, the sounds are consistent over... I can go, you know... basically for several years now with the same sort of sounds.
Dan: And when we record, you know, it's also bringing in those small things that wouldn't last on tour, or something. You know, just anything. Anything that makes noise.
Smith: Recording is a little bit different because you can get in close on something that maybe isn't very loud, but sounds rad. Make strange sounds with it. Something you couldn't do on stage. There'll be much, much more of that.
Cruella: So, you're on a pretty large tour right now?
Dan: It's just starting.
Smith: We're just beginning. This is the first time we will actually hit the east coast. It's only 22 days, it's not that big. But it's big for us, kind of. We'll be going out there, pretty much playing every night. And we're going to go to like, Georgia, North Carolina, to New York and back, and through Ohio, and Indiana, and Iowa, and stuff. We're really excited about Iowa. It should be really cool. 'Cause, touring is rad because it gives you an excuse to go to these places you've had no other reason to ever go to. Like Toledo. Why would I ever have a reason to go to Toledo? Maybe. I don't know.
Dan: To rock out.
Smith: We get to go there and rock out.
Dan: Also, I mean, the coolest thing about being in a band, is being able to... you have an excuse to travel. I think that's one thing that if you ask most people what they want to do in their lives, and they'll want to travel around and they'll want to see things. But, you know, it pays for itself, you meet people that are actually part of the town, and as opposed to staying in a hotel and kind of like watching people and you get to be a part of it. And every time there are people who are like "Yeah, let's go down to the record store" and they always know what's going on, and they introduce you, and you basically meet these friends. They may not last a lifetime, but some of them, you know, you make contact with.
Cruella: So, is this tour in support of the new album?
Smith: Yeah. It's not like our tour tries to push anything so much. But in this tour, the main thing that people aren't going to have is the new album, with which we're kinda having a big snarl at this point with distribution getting it into the stores and stuff. Like, a lot of people in Berkeley have it, and we play up here often. But really, in a lot of these places people haven't even seen it yet.
Dan: All the stuff that we do isn't so much in support of one little thing, but is in support of the whole, you know, big picture. So, we never have a plan, like we're going to shoot a video, and send a video out everywhere, and hopefully call the stations and get this one single played, because it's not what it's about. Eventually, we're going to turn around and have a lot of records out there, and we want to promote all of them because I think people pick and choose what they like. I can't decide that this is what's going to be really good.
1996-06-03
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