Here's a typically inane question: What are your views on the current state of popular music?5: Not trying to sound too hip or with-it, but I dislike most of it. Great pop music died in the '80s, of course, and grunge sounds the same to me. Side one of Nirvana's Nevermind is a great album side, but I cannot listen to grunge or its bastard offspring, alterna-grunge. Is that even a fucking word?
TF: Mockumentary. Infotainment.
CM: Edutainment. Infomercial.
5: Dramedy. If you wanna pout and piss and moan about the futility of it all, listen to Joy Division or The Smiths. Those guys were manic.
TF: Let's see who's "really popular" nowadays, shall we? Garbage? It sure is. [Much facetious laughter] Smashing Pumpkins? Billy Corgan has had a chip on his shoulder since grade-school. Typical "Geek Makes Good" bullshit. He says he feels vindicated now that their double-CD is the best selling double-CD of all time. Vindicated from what?! Being called a nerd in high school?
CM: I like Foo Fighters. That's a catchy little album, especially "Weenie Beenie." Great song.
DH: Thinking hard now... Bush? Sponge?5: Oh, yeah, the Flaming Lips suck. But it's hip and cool with the kids, so what do I know? Pearl Jam may possess musicality of a quality which is substantially greater than that of a Bush or a Sponge...
TF: Or a Paw...
5: ...But I don't like it.
TF: But Bush and Sponge? Never really listened to either...probably a good reason for that.
Rap? Hip-hop?
CM: Don't listen to it. I like the word 'hoochie,' though. A lot.
5: I like old Doug E. Fresh and Run-DMC. Digital Underground is cool. I liked some George Clinton I've heard, but then that's funk, right? I suppose rap and hip-hop decended from the Mothership...or Los Tomato Spaceship.
CM: But a lot of that old rap and hip-hop was considered pop music back in the '80s.
TF: Most of the music I listen to was recorded before the last seven or eight years.
5: How haughty!
CM: And naughty! I like Primus and Beck. We've been compared to Beck, among numerous others too embarrassing to mention.
5: Flavors-of-the-month don't interest us. We dig bands who transmogrify as they age...like the Beasties. Brilliance.
CM: I'll admit I still have a fondness for Rush.
TF: Mike Keneally has been around for a while, but he and his band, Beer For Dolphins, has only recently come into their own...own, uh, own thing. Recognition? [Laughs] What the fuck am I trying to say here?
5: Keneally is a Zappa alum...was in Zappa's '88 touring band. He's a genius.
I hear Zappa in DWD's music. A tune on Floss Fer Phus ("The Tender Age of 37") reeks of the kind of "Black Page" Zappa polyrhythms that titilates other musicians, and makes just about everybody else sick.
TF: Yeah, we get that. Most of our fan e-mail comes from other musicians. Who knows who we'd rather have dig the sounds? Other musicians or regular folks with taste?
Maybe both?
CM: Oh, shucks. All right.
