m: So what are you working on right now, anyway?  How are the new albums going?  What's the deal with Hive of Bees?

j: It's a concept piece based on the book Hive of Bees, which is a yellow book with black writing.

m: Like bees?

j: Presumably yes, I think.  It's in my car somewhere.  Kind of like the original bumblebee effect we were going for with the If Everyone Were Dead cassettes.  Yeah, but right now I'm trying to work out rap for "When I Get My Hands On Her".

m: Yeah?  A few of the more recent albums have been almost pleasant to listen to.  What kind of thing are we looking at here?

j: It's probably got some of the most pop-y songs so far.

m: Even more than Spikes Go Up; Man Falls Down?

j: Oh yeah.. this song I'm working on right now.. this song sounds like about a mllion other.. actually, it sounds like one pop song in particular.  Can't quite put finger which one.. uhm, can't remember.. or quite how it goes.  I think it's some song from Short Circuit.  Y'know, Johnny?

m: What, some song in the movie?

j: No, yeah, but the song that the robot actually sang.

m: I'm pretty sure Johnny didn't sing.

j: ...
 

m: So, ok, about Machine Falls from Sky, New Leader is Established.  What the fuck?

j: Well, which part?  Because, I mean.. you know what the first part is about, right?

m: Yes, yeah, no I mean the second part.  What the fuck?

j: Well, I mean it's pretty clear that the second part, well the section towards end of first part, that's the part where the uh, the machine falls from sky.

m: Right, got that far.

j: After that, well, uh, I mean.. I don't want to tell you something that is already obvious.. well, it's like, the words in the second part..

m: I mean, it seems like there is some kind of asymmetry there.  You've got the verses, and the rap sections.. don't really know what to make of it.  Regina really liked the line "a perfect 10 in the pussy olympics".  But none of it makes any sense.  What's the rap all about?

j: Well, we don't reall know how to write anything except kinda offensive and vaguely masturbatory raps about pussy and drive-bys and uh.. used to be the day we could rap about other stuff, but not so much anymore.  Though "Great Depression" has a good rap in it.

m: Is that on Bear Food/People Food?

j: No, probably on Naked, Dead and Alone or Cave Man Surfs Ice Age.  Actually, we've got more material for those than Bear Food/People Food, but I'm not sure what the next album will be called yet.  I wanted to call the album Freak-Ass Bitches on my Rooftop.  It opens with "Into Vast Unknowable Seas of Despair" and then a segue into "Into the Shop Where Potatos Are Sold."  It's a good album.
 

m: Must be better than Braniff, anyhow.  What about some of the other COIXT bands?  I still haven't gotten a copy of The Buttmops Get Evicted, just FDA.

j: So you don't even have a copy of "Pumpin' Out the Oots"??

m: No!

j: Shit.  Yeah, they've got a lot of albums out.  The Buttmops have The Buttmops Get Evicted, More Songs About Cars and Dogs, Magical Journey Up Your Ass, The Buttmops en Voiture which is their farewell album recorded by Farley and Chet Buttmop against Chet's will while they were driving around.. they almost get into a wreck at one point cause farley is clapping and singing and playing synths while driving.. I think I lost the only copy of it.  And then the Pulselators have Food and Drug Administration and Tre Belle a la Garage.  The Buttmops used to be the Pulselators, but we made them change their name when they signed, and change their album title to Magical Journey Up Your Ass.  We wanted them to change the song titles to different parts of the digestive system, starting with Rectum.  Then it could end with Mouth.  It would be backwards, you know?  Like, a magical journey up someone's ass.

m: Um.

j: Farley Buttmop also formed Infinito Out of Control.  They're pretty good too.

m: Yeah, it's hard to find material from other COIXT artists.  That reminds me.. what's the deal with Dubok?  I hadn't heard of them before.

j: Danny's side project with Logan.  The video of the last Dubok gig was pretty amazing.  They got a bunch of scrap metal spread around the Bard Gallery spave.  Everyone was supposed to destroy things.  The bass broke pretty early in the show.  Logan smashed it, and everyone was mad..

m: Mad that he smashed it?

j: Er, I mean Danny was mad.  So Farley is following him around but Danny won't talk to him.  Danny locks himself in his room and Farley just stands around being an asshole.

m: Have they released any material yet?

j: One album they released independantly.  It's pretty good, called "dubok dubok".  One good thing is they won't make too many albums.

m: Why's that?

j: They're limited in the number of songs they can do.

m: ?

j: I mean, they've got a finite list of words, something like 11 words, and all of their songs are just two of the words put together.

m: ?

j: Hang on, I've got the album here somewhere.. [reading titles too fast to transcribe]:

occupy dubok
inspector provided
dubok dontbok
dubok dubok
dontbok dontbok
slide machine
provided machine
toasting machine
slide dontbok
inspector thud
...

m: Yeah, I've got A Good Many.  It's fucking great.  They don't have any new releases, do they?

j: Nobody else seems to like it.  Our goal was to spend less time making the album than it would take to listen to.  It didn't quite work out, but still.. we formed a band, wrote the album, recorded it, mastered it and distributed it in one day.  No!  Less than one day.  Jon had a dinner engagement.

m: I got it at about the same time as Mr Horse, Give Up Those Oats!  It sounds at least as good.

j: Yeah, well, Mr Horse was really poorly produced, but I liked the cover art.

m: See, I really like Mr Horse.  What's so bad about it?

j: "Fuck No, Baby" for starters.  My God.  And uh, what's the other one.. I'm not sure about "Mountain of Skulls"..

m: No, no, "Mountain of Skulls" is really good.

j: "Meanwhile in a Secret Room" needed to be better.  I wanted Danny to do the same riff without changing it but he kept fucking with it.  But you can just skip over that song.  That's what's nice about having a CD.  We thought the best part of having a CD would be that you could fit more music on, but it turns out that the best part is that you can make shorter albums less awkward.

m: Less awkward?  I dunno, I like the longer albums.  Go the Distance! leaves me a little unsatisfied, time-wise.

j: This way we don't have to put filler into the albums anymore.  Well, except for "[filler]" on Go the Distance!.  But that's a really good song.

m: Back to "Meanwhile in a Secret Room".  That's Jeff Bergfalk speaking, isn't it?  What's he been up to?

j: Yeah, that's him.  Nobody has talked to him since the Electric Pancake Saga.  I mean none of us.  Kyle Waugh probably has, but there you go..

m: But he's on Mr Horse?

j: Danny preciently realized he should tape Jeff Bergfalk saying some random things so he could use it in the future.  That's why a lot of the clips just say shit like "yes" "yes" "no" or "fire chief, go home!" or something about a lobster.  The rumor is Jeff Bergfalk broke the lobster's eye off and got it really wet.
 

j: Hey, is that chick you know still selling her underwear on Ebay?

m: No, no, it was a guy.  And I think they're cracking down.

j: Cracking down on used underwear?  Even on adult Ebay?

m: I don't really know what the deal is.

j: I tried looking it up.  There were people selling underwear and shit but they didn't have sexy descriptions or anything.  Shit, if I can't sell underwear on Ebay, how am I supposed to make any money?  That's too bad.. maybe I could start a band.  I've been wanting to start a hip-hop group.

m: Don't you think it's a little overrated?

j: No, no!  I think it's important.  It's a global phenomenon, y'know -- not like this specious, totalizing East/West conflict implies.  Yeah.  Totally.  My group, we were originally going to be called The Boys Inside the Hood.  We also toyed with the names Erroneous Sanchez and Ice Kream.  Thought about rapping to obscure time signatures and calling the album Doin' Time.  Kinda like a throwback to Brubeck's influencial jazz album Time Out.

m: Time Out, eh?  I don't know much jazz..

j: It wasn't very good.  White guy jazz.

m: Like Slug?

j: I don't know that.

m: Some rappers from Minnesota.  The rap about cow tipping and shit like that.

j: Hardly jazz.  Do they have a Minnesotan accent?

m: No, no, rapper accent.

j: Y'know, come to think of it we used to have a couple of hip-hop groups on Cat O' Nine Tails.

m: WILT 10K?

j: Yeah, WILT 10K.  We kicked them off, though.  And we took some of their lyrics.  "Givin' it up for the poops and the wiggles" came from them.  One was named Poops and the other was Wiggles.
 

j: I've been meaning to put together a new demo.

m: The last one seemed pretty good.  Never got any response from Righteous Babe records though, huh?

j: No, that's not true.  We got this snide letter from Ani DiFranco's secretary saying that Ani was too busy and wouldn't actually listen to the tape.  It was some older stuff, though.  Pre-horse.  She might like us better now that we're more sexist.

m: Have you heard her new shit?  She's got this album.. double album or.. it's fucked up, like a fold-out album?  She sings about being married and shit.

j: She's such a bitch.  I really don't like her.  Danny always wanted to make an album called Little Plastic Asshole.

m: I bet Kerry Northcutt [digeredoo-ist on early Flowers albums] would have been into that.

j: I haven't talked to her in awhile.  She's always hanging out with the lesbian choir.  You know how they are.  It's like, one of them says one of the others isn't gay enough or something and then they won't speak for weeks, and.. well, I don't really know exactly how it works.  I think Kerry was in a fight with Denise for awhile because Kerry was talking to Denise's girlfriend and said Denise was "older than them".  Which was true!  But Denise took offense or something.  Bunch of hens.. which reminds me.  Did you get a load of the new president of N.O.W.?  How did she get elected?  Not very pretty at all.
 

m: So now the Flowers have 10 albums, discounting Braniff for obvious reasons.  Let's just talk about the albums, starting at If Everyone Were Dead.

j: I think it's stood the test of time.  I'd say I'm still a huge fan of If Everyone Were Dead.

m: I haven't listened to it start to finish in awhile.  Mostly been playing the newer stuff, like Cat Farm onwards.

j: I don't listen to it that much either, but the album's really got an energy at points that we've never really been able to capture again.  That along with a total lack of any sort of skill or production, man.  It's really amazing.  I mean basically all the innovative elements of Viking Barbershop Cyberthrash are right there in that album: the unrelated B-sections, the revitalization of the Rondo, the ill barbershop.  Then we go from that to Diggin' for Gold, basically a shitty album.  Y'know, it's..

m: Wait, wait, what?  I've always liked Diggin' for Gold.  It was really a breakthrough record for the Flowers.

j: It's cute.  A lot of people like it.  The whole album, it's pretty embarassing.

m: How's that?

j: Like "Dance Song". Even the new one on Go the Distance! is pretty embarassing, but at least the new version sounds nice.  I don't really like the lyrics much.  We should have worked "bitch" in at some point.. I guess we weren't really into that yet.

m: Diggin' for Gold has some good stuff on it, though!  What about Burrito #3?

j: I dunno, it was mostly Jon and I fucking around with an antique drum.  Danny threw a spoon at it and it broke.

m: ..and "The Death of Bradley Bailey".  It's good stuff!

j: Oh my god that's a terrible song.  I guess Bradley Bailey ended up hearing it and got pretty offended which was the point.  I've never liked Bradley Bailey.  It's definitely good that it offended him but didn't need to end up on an album.  I mean, take the Corey Fast album.  It was pretty offensive, and nobody save Corey Fast had to hear it.  I don't think I even
have a copy anymore.

m: Ok, next on the list.

j: The Viking Trail I don't like very much.

m: No shit?  The Viking Trail was big.  A lot of people came to the Flowers through that album.  It was probably the real focal point of most of your 1999 concerts, too.  You don't like it?

j: I like the first half, and I guess the second half is pretty good, too.  I don't like "Geri".  I don't like "CatFishMan" much either.  It was pretty good played live, though.

m: Yeah, that and "Shineth Not the Sun" were amazing.

j: "Shineth Not the Sun" is just a great song, one of my all time favorites.

I'm not a big fan of Secret Friends.  Parts of it are pretty strong, and I do like "Continental Breakfast".  Besides that, "Dip Boys, Dip the Oars is fucking AMAZING".  That song took about an hour to record and four hours to agree on what to call it.

m: So what didn't you like about the album?

j: It's hard to know where to start.  So much material.. it's too bad the Sosland's thing didn't work out.  The Soslands album wasn't supposed to just be the Flowers of Disgust, it was supposed to be a compilation of COIXT "artists".  Jon made another song called "Joey Sosland", and I think Greg Zilm made some song about running over a Sosland with a monster truck, and it somehow involved a vacuum cleaner.  It was very good.  The whole thing, it was a good idea, but.. the main thing was we wanted to ruin the Soslands Christmas but in retrospect I think they were Jewish.  I guess we could have ruined Passover, but it seems pointless.. sounds like such a miserable time to begin with, what with the lamb's blood and shit.  Joke is on them, I guess.
 

j: I like Cat Farm.

m: It always suprises me, but some people are really into "Truck Driving Over Rough Terrain".

j: Comes as no suprise to me.  You should listen to it when you're driving.  It sounds like you're in a truck driving over rough terrain.  Y'know, over a bunch of scrap metal or something.  Cat Farm was.. yeah, we were really happy when we got Cat Farm done because it was the first album we'd made where there wasn't any crap on it.

Some of it hasn't withstood the test of time.  I don't really like Pride of the Buttflower anymore.  The Buttflower songs never really matured..  we never went back to the Buttflower idea.  For awhile we were talking about a whole album, like Butthouse, having to do with the Buttflower.  I do like "Bloom of the Buttflower".  It's much louder than the rest of the album, it's got good lyrics, it's not enjoyable to listen to.  I think the beat was stolen from Kraftwerk, too, though we didn't mean to.  What else.. "Rainy Day in Hot Dog City" just gets better and better.

m: It's true.  Oh, re: "Lo, A Reed Has Grown, Piercing the Leg".  What the fuck?

j: What the fuck?

m: I mean, it just kinda ends in the middle and doesn't make much sense.

j: I thought it had gone on long enough.  Yeah, I recorded that song at Danny's house when no one was there.  I didn't know if they were coming back and I didn't want to be there when they got back because I had broken in.. anyway, I thought it was time for the song to end.  It's pretty infectious, but what really makes it worthwhile is that it leaves you wanting more.  After the first verse.. well, no, the second verse is good too.  A lot of the words are stolen.  I think the second verse is from.. ah, I can't remember.  Something German maybe.  I returned the album to the store, it kinda sucked.

m: "He is a very fat person" is from a German album?

j: I changed the translation a little.
 
m: Ok, how about The Three Fanciful Daydreams of Chef Paul Prudhomme?

j: Good album, except for Gentleman's Music.

m: No shit?

j: I don't really like "Bicycle Built for You" or "Sir, I Greet You".  I do like "The Croquet Match", though, and "Criminal Haze" isn't terrible.  The Power of Love is good, too.

m: What about Roofers?  A lot of people who otherwise dislike the Flowers still love Roofers.

j: I like a lot of Roofers.  Yeah, "glide down slowly".. I love that one.  We didn't want to just remake Butthouse but we wanted to capture some of what people liked in it.  Still, we wanted to show them where the band has gone to.  John Dubure liked Butthouse but not Roofers because "[Roofers] is mean for no reason".

m: Butthouse was mean for a reason?

j: It's not very clear.  But with Roofers, well, Logan thinks the Flowers have always had kind of.. we've always been into the labor movement and the proletariat.. what's that.. y'know, socialism and stuff?  You can kinda get that from Roofers.  Is the plot clear enough?

m: Hell yeah!

j: You realize it takes place in early 1900s  in England and the year 2120 simultaneously, right?  And there's this Roofer union, and a Roofer Tony who is accidentally killed by Dalton Trombone, and his girlfriend Rosetta lives for 200 years and can't get over it..

m: I didn't really catch the girlfriend part.

j: Uh, I really forget.. Roofers was like Butthouse in that it wasn't completed during the recording of the album.  The plot kinda.. well, we recorded it before we were enitrely sure what it was about.  Kinda like automatic writing or some form of divining like that.  The Roofers idea was an offshoot of my brother's idea for a movie.  It was about some stalker, and there were roofers in it.. y'know.  She was afraid it was the stalker calling and.. ahh, i'd hafta ask him.  And then the roofers came in and were going to sing a song about roofing, but then we realized that this was really too large an idea for only one song.

m: But you never really came back to the Roofers idea afterwards.

j: We said what we had to say, and then were done with that.  Roofers are basically resolved as far as I can tell.
 

m: Seems like Jon's been doing less and less.  What's the deal, anyway?  Is this the end of the Flowers?

j: Well now he's not so interested in the band anymore.. the last few albums have mostly been me and Danny.  I mean, well.. I mean it's like you could say the Rza, Method Man, the Red Man, ODB, the Gza.. I mean, I've heard anything from 14 people to a whole block on Staton Island is in the WuTang Clan, and a lot of them don't really do anything but smoke blunts and so forth.  But when they're all together it's like.. a totally different thing even though most of them don't really seem to be doing anything but it's like they still have influence.. well, no, it's not like that.  Jon doesn't really have any influence.

Chris still sends a lot of stuff from Japan, so he's still involved with things.  He and I did most of Three Fanciful Daydreams.  Danny did nothing on Power of Love or Gentlemen's Music, and only did about half of Roofers.

m: It sounds like him on guitar in most of Roofers.  Alright, end of discussion on Roofers.  What about the next album?

j: Mr Horse?  Well.. it's a long album.

m: And Stink Rock Island?  A lot of fans aren't so keen on that one.

j: Oh, you know I like Stink Rock Island.  Sometimes I can see where people are coming from, but I just think.. like, "Nothin' Going On".  It's one of our best songs.

m: What about the Stink Rock Island Suite?  It seems pretty low quality.

j: I really like the first part where I'm playing the trumpet and the trombone at the same time, but it kinda drags in the middle.  If it weren't for "round and round goes the old machine" I would like it fine, but, y'know, it's kinda like.. it's just that kind of song.  Anyway, I think it's real nice to listen to when you're distracted.  You can be doing something else and forget you're listening to it and before you know it "Stink Rock Island Suite" is done, and then "Nothin' (Going On)".. it's much more gratifying.  We did a similar thing more successfully on Go the Distance! with "My Fellow Americans".

m: It's much more unpleasant to listen to, though.

j: Right, and then it goes into "Leave, Attractive Girl" which is another real pop-y song, kinda uncharacteristically pop-y.

m: There's been a lot of misogyny on these last few albums.  Where'd that come from?

j: Wait till you hear the new album!  I was trying to count how many times we said "bitch", and I kept losing track.  One song starts off

"Took my baby to the psychotherapist
because the bitch wouldn't get out of bed."

"of course you realize this bitch is pregnant though she hides it mighty fine.."

As we've begun to explore hip-hop we've gotten more into mysogyny.. I mean, hip-hop is a global phenomenon so there's obviously a lot more to it, but that's just how it worked for us.  Have you heard the song "Domestic Violence"?

m: No, no..

j: You should look that one up.  You'd enjoy it.

m: Alright, I do that.  You going to look up Slug?

j: Fuck yeah!  Do they rap about hitting mailboxes with baseball bats?  I always wanted to get into that.
 

j: Haven't said anything about Butthouse yet.

m: True.

j: Maybe that's best.

m: Well, I am curious about why Deceptichrist never made it onto the album.

j: Well, Deceptichrist.. was that going to be a song?  A character?  Well, we were going to have a song called "Jesus Christ is a Decepticon", but it didn't really fit in.  I mean, well, the album talks about killing Jesus but it's not very Judeo-Christian.  Kinda Hindu.. maybe you could read some Buddhist, some Tantra stuff.  Really it's kinda pagan.

Cuz in the end, like.. well, you know it really depends.  Everyone comes at it from.. y'know, I really don't know what it's about.  Everyone has to find Butthouse for themselves.

I always felt like Mark Beard, I mean.. he never really went to the Butthouse, he just finally realized he was there.  It's kinda like when that prince left the palace and saw old people.. oh, he was gonna be the Buddha, right?!  Yeah!  Oh, but it wasn't like he went into this confined place called Butthouse, its just the world was the Butthouse, and later when Mark Beard reconciled with the monkeys and touched the glove and becomes the buttmaster for a short time maybe and saves the Scab-Eat Woman (or not, I don't really know) and he doesn't get out but it's like.. he's always been in the Butthouse and it's not so bad and that's why it's kinda Tantric because they weren't talking about the lotus blooming in the mud, but the mud, like, is the lotus flowers.  Or that's what my teacher said.  But I actually was in that class after Butthouse came out, while we were working on the next few albums.

m: Like Cat Farm?

j: Yeah, Secret Friends, Cat Farm.  A lot of those songs, like "King Mu of Chou", "Lo, A Reed Has Grown Piercing the Leg", "The Mouth is the Gate of Woe".. we got into Eastern philosophy about that time, you know.  It's just what you're supposed to do in a rock band.

I wanted to call that album "Torque" or "Music For and Inspired By the Film ..." shit, what was it?  Girl, Inter/rupted or something.  Oh!  "Music For and Inspired By the Film Chairman of the Board", starring Carrot Top.  The cover art was just going to be the movie poster.  It's got Carrot Top in this office building, and there's this huge wave, right?  And all these people in cubicles looking shocked, and Carrot Top on a surfboard with a briefcase or something.  It's really amazing.

m: So is that it for the interview?

j: You aren't going to ask me about John Candy?