Psycho Depot Issue 351 May 23, 2003 Current # of subscribers: 195 (daily and digest) Subjects in this issue: "Bucket Goes to Florida" Jammin' Enquirer review Jammin' program Cincy Post Jammin' review Troublemakers gig "Bucket, Blankets & Fetters" We hope you like Jammin' too Dark Mommy? The Raisins in reverse 2002 Fetters "Cosmik Debris" interview Jammin's pictures...... The Bears Are Back? ++ psychodots ++ Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 23:06:15 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: "Bucket Goes to Florida" This just in.... BUCKET Fri., July 25th and Sat., 26th @ Soleil et Luna ( Destin, Fl.) Guess we picked the wrong year to go to Destin ('02)! Pretty cool though..... :-) BTW, Destin is a great place to vacation at...... Mary ++ psychodots ++ Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 08:38:37 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: Jammin' Enquirer review Cincinnati Enquirer Monday, May 12, 2003 http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/05/12/tem_12jammin.html New talent, local faves best of Jammin' By Larry Nager Cincinnati's annual weekend of beer, funnel cakes and rock 'n' roll is over, but 10 years after it started, Pepsi Jammin' On Main remains a baby festival. No one asks who's playing New Orleans' JazzFest or Memphis' Beale Street Music Festival anymore - the fests themselves are the stars. But Jammin' still sinks or swims on the strength of its headliners. This year, it sank, drawing barely 20,000 people over two nights, way down from 2002's 50,000. Last year had John Mayer, the Roots and O.A.R. This year's biggest names were Joan Jett, Dennis DeYoung and moe. But even if Jammin' couldn't field that one headliner who could bring people downtown, there was plenty of great music scattered around Main and Central Parkway. Saturday is traditionally the big day for Jammin' but the early massive storms, tornado watches and hailstorm warnings made a trip to the video store seem a better option. By the time the music started at 4 with the high school band battle, the day was beautiful, but by then, it was too late. Those brave souls who came heard some fine new talent, from the all-woman rock band Antigone Rising to R&B diva-in-the-making Vivian Green. They both played on Hamilton County Courthouse stage, the smallest of Jammin's three stages. That stage consistently had the day's best music, including young singer/songwriter Jason Mraz, who seems to be following the same path as Mayer, but without the heavy Dave Matthews influence. Saturday's closing set by moe. was state-of-the-art jam-rock - rhythmic and danceable, but filled with a rich, mature musicality that sets the four-man group (which includes Cincinnatian Chuck Garvey) apart from the jam pack. The psychodots were the best of Saturday night, showcasing the megastar singing, playing, songwriting and manic energy that has made Rob Fetters, Bob Nyswonger and Chris Arduser local heroes under various band names for more than 20 years. It was a quintessential Cincinnati experience, hearing 'dots faves like "Moaner" and "Mattress," as spotlights bathed the skyline. Things then went from sublime to smarmy, as ex-Styx crooner Dennis DeYoung closed Saturday's main stage with a Vegas-style show that made Neil Diamond sound like Kurt Cobain. His tenor is as strong as in the late '70s, but his delivery has gotten even oilier. Things quickly turned into DeYoung and the restless, as much of his audience abandoned ship long before his "Come Sail Away" encore. Friday's closer, Joan Jett, was a far better fit to the fest. Bleached and black leathered, she rocked the crowd hard with her '80s hits. Brit-rockers Gomez were Friday's other highlight, in a strong, diverse set at once modern and retro. But not every Jammin' act was fest-ready. Many performers, including John Prine (in excellent voice after chronic throat problems), a solo Ben Folds and Edwin McCain, would have sounded better in an intimate, indoor venue. The local scene did well on Jammin', from the fine high school bands that kicked off Saturday (though the best that could be said of Ozzfest wannabe Train of Thought is that they scared away the pigeons), to veteran banjo picker Taylor Farley. The latter led his Blue Rock band through a hard-driving, hard-rocking set that included bluegrass standards and covers of the surf instrumental "Wipeout" and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." There was fine original rock from Anonymous Bosch, Dayton's bluekarma and Premium, the last of whom got their start at the 2002 Bogart's High School Band Challenge. The Light Wires, led by singer/songwriter Jeremy Pinnell, did their superbly moody roots rock. But there's more to the Cincinnati sound than rock. Jake Speed & the Freddies did Woody Guthrie-style folk, while Salsa Caliente turned things tropical and the Sidecars gave classic western swing a new spin. Reggie Calloway was another local Friday highlight. His hit-filled R&B revue touched on the songs he did with his multiplatinum band Midnight Star or wrote and produced for others, including Levert's "Casanova." The 2003 Jammin' had its local bases covered, but it really needed that "oh wow" national act to seal the deal. After downtown's boycott problems (none of which were in evidence this year) and other woes, it's become too easy for people to bypass the heart of Cincinnati. The 2004 Jammin' needs to offer folks in the 'burbs a headliner they can't refuse. ++ psychodots ++ Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 20:55:26 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: Jammin' program Jammin' on Main Program 'dots description: Psychodots Modern-day Cincinnati Pop/Rock legends psychodots are a thick branch of a local music family tree that is one of the most fruitful in the region. Guitarist Rob Fetters, bassist Bob Nyswonger and drummer Chris Arduser have had a hand in some of the most successful and endearing bands of the past quarter of the century from the Queen City, from The Raisins and The Bears (the trio's nationally renowned project with guitar master Adrian Belew) to solo projects, Bucket, The Graveblankets and innumerable side-men gigs, it's unimaginable what the local scene would be like with out this terrific threesome. 'Dots shows are few and far between these days, so their Jammin' set should be savored. www.psychodots.com ++ psychodots ++ Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 08:30:06 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: Cincy Post Jammin' review Cincinnati Post Monday, May 12, 2002 Jammin' a good show, but crowd small By Rick Bird Post contributor Below is an excerpt, for the entire article go to: http://www.cincypost.com/2003/05/12/jamm051203.html Saturday's great local acts included: The psychodots may have been the best act of the entire weekend with a searing set of their power pop anthems like "Master of Disaster" and "Moaner." The trio of Fetters, Bob Nyswonger and Chris Arduser attacked their instruments with wide grins on their faces most of the time making you wonder if it was legal for three 40-something guys to be having this much fun. ++ psychodots ++ Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 22:49:35 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: Troublemakers gig This just in....... Bam Powell and The Troublemakers Sat., May 17th @ Shady O' Grady's ( Loveland, Oh.) ++ psychodots ++ Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 16:29:47 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: "Bucket, Blankets & Fetters" This just in, more dates, reminders, etc....... BUCKET Sat., May 24th @ Stanley's ( Cinti., Oh. ) Lee Rolfes /solo Sun., May 25th @ Stanley's ( Cinti., Oh. ) Bucket w/ The Graveblankets and Rob Fetters Fri., June 6th @ Canal Street ( Dayton, Oh. ) ++ psychodots ++ Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 20:09:24 -0400 From: "David Ash" Subject: We hope you like Jammin' too Wow, no commentary from the peanut gallery on the Jammin' On Main show? I guess I don't have much to say other than it was one of the more fun hours I've spent recently. I enjoyed hanging out near the front of the stage with other grizzled dot-head veterans, with only the occasional group of drunken revelers interjecting themselves in the mix for a song or three before moving on. The guys had an evident blast performing, especially Bob. The crowd looked pretty large from what I could see and they seemed quite into it. It was great that the band was on the big stage, in a prominent time slot. Rob managed to mention that Dennis DeYoung was coming up next with a straight face. Still, I long to hear some new tunes. If they could do a cover (King Crimson's Red, powerful though it was), they could have slipped in one new one. Not that I'm complaining, just countering the apparent perception that Dots fans only want to hear the "hits". ++ psychodots ++ Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 21:07:25 -0400 From: "David Ash" Subject: Dark Mommy? The Raisins in reverse There was some recent discussion in the Yahoo Belew Group concerning backwards messages in songs, and I brought up the backwards phrases in Fear Is Never Boring on The Raisins album. I think it's fairly common knowledge that the backwards singing at the very beginning of the song is just "My whole life flashed before I crashed" in reverse, but more elusive is the backwards spoken phrase that plays twice towards the end of the guitar solo. I recorded it digitally and reversed it but still couldn't make it out exactly because it's relatively low in the mix. Rob Murphree, webmaster to the stars (well, Belew and the Bears anyway), emailed Rob and Bob to get to the bottom of this critically important issue. Here are their responses (with a bonus update from Bob on Bears activity): =========================================================================== >From Fetters: rob 1, on the raisins 'fear' the beginning is "my whole life flashed before i crashed" and during the solo - "we worship dark mommy!" on the bears version it's - "bears like to eat at ralph's!" i think.... rob 2 ============================================================================ >From Nyswonger: Rob - We did that when backwards masking was very much in the news, with alleged Satanist messages, which we thought was funny, thus the line "we worship dark mommy". Hope that clears it up. We're just patiently waiting for Adrian to wrap up his KC responsibilities before we can be Bears...the latest news I have is that he will be free late summer - early fall. We're all anxiously awaiting the DVD... - Bob ============================================================================ I searched the Depot archive and there actually was some discussion of this before, around the time of the 2000 Raisins reunion shows. In issue 258, Ashley Morris, webmaster to the stars (well, to the psychodots anyway) wrote about the Jammin' On Main show that he was blown away "when Bammy sang the backwards-masked lyrics in the middle of Fear is Never Boring. I don't know why we started talking about it, but Bam only knew what Rob was singing backward, and didn't know what it was forwards. Now I forgot what Rob said it was....but anyway, it was hysterical to hear Bam singing the backward part live while Rob was jammin away." In issue 260, Fanskii commented on the forwards translation: "My recollection is, 'we worship Dark Mommy', a slap at Tipper and her ilk who were hell bent at the time on proving that popular music was awash in satanic messages. The inspiration, i was told, was a bottle of Aunt Jemimah pancake syrup close at hand." Thank goodness, you're saying to yourself, that we've gotten to the bottom of this burning mystery. Hey, I'm here to help. Don't blow that moment away, Dave ++ psychodots ++ Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 21:19:36 -0400 From: "David Ash" Subject: 2002 Fetters "Cosmik Debris" interview Kevin McKeehan posted a web link (http://www.cosmik.com/aa-may02/rob_fetters.html) in the last Depot issue to an interview with Rob Fetters about a year old. Here's the text of the interview, with the introductory paragraphs omitted. It's very long, but I wanted to post it so it will be preserved in the Depot archive, since you never know how long any particular web site will be around. Thanks to Karl Cable who wrote the piece and to Cosmik Debris magazine from whom I "borrowed" without permission. ============================================================================ Cosmik: As I understand it you're originally from Toledo. Rob: Yeah, I grew up in a suburb of Toledo called Sylvania just, like, far west Toledo just a suburban type community and I went to high school there of course. That's where I met Chris and Bob and I've played with them since we were, um, you know, I think the first time I ever played with Chris Arduser, he was ten or eleven. It might be longer, maybe he was eleven or twelve, and I was maybe sixteen at that point. Bob I played with, we played in high school bands together. So we really essentially grew up together, and that's one of the coolest things about being the Bears. Cosmik: Yeah, my impression has always been that first the Raisins and then the Bears were firstly an aggregation of friends, and that playing together was just about your favorite thing to do. Rob: Yeah. I think that's a correct surmise of the situation. I think music is certainly one of the greatest things I'm capable of doing. I don't know if it's the greatest thing in the world, but it's all I've ever wanted to do or be since I was old enough to think about a career or anything. Cosmik: I'm a person who believes that music is one of the crowning achievements of humankind. Rob: Well, I have to say that I think that being in a group, to me is like the opposite of war. As far as human beings interacting with each other. You're just... you're doing something together that creates this... quantum energy. Especially in a band like ours where although one or the other person's more famous than the others, it's a band in that it's really a band. It's different when the four of us are together than any of us individually, or even any two of us. Something happens. Cosmik: Yeah, I saw King Crimson when they played at Bogart's last summer, and it's like Adrian's a whole different guy with that band. He's still the most animated guy in the band, but that isn't hard with Robert Fripp sitting in the darkness off to the side. Rob: Yeah. Cosmik: It seems like he's just a bit more restrained onstage, whereas with you guys, it's more whatever comes into your minds when you're onstage, and that's a blast. I think that's one of the things that comes across in your music is just how much fun you're having together. Rob: Yeah. Cosmik: So you and Bob and Chris came to Cincinnati. How did that happen? Rob: Well, in high school we all played in bands together, and then after high school we all experimented with college. Cosmik: (laughing) You say that that way other people say when they were in college they experimented with drugs. Rob: Oh, we experimented with drugs all the time. I wouldn't say we were experimenting with drugs; we just took drugs. Cosmik: Sure, and who hasn't? Rob: Yeah. So we formed bands. We decided, "Gee, we can make money doing this." We liked to play; we didn't like to study. So we played in bands, and eventually one of them was called The Raisin Band at first. At that time we had lots of different members. Guys came and went through the band, but I was in the first Raisin Band, and then I think we convinced Bob to join, and, you know, going through drummers, singers, people quitting and keyboard players that were junkies. We had the experience of all musicians trying to get a band together. But we wouldn't play original music, and when we did play original music, it was bad. We were learning how to write songs, and trying to hide them between, oh, I don't know, Doobie Brothers songs or something like that. Eventually... Chris was in high school, and he was going to quit high school. He was having a miserable go of it. We actually went to his dad, who was a dentist, he was from an affluent family and seemingly intelligent, too, but I managed to convince his dad that it would be better for Chris to go on the road with the band. At that time we were playing a lot in the South, you'd play, like, five nights in Raleigh, North Carolina, have a day or two off, and then go to Pensacola, Florida, and then on to New Orleans, or... I called it the Chitlin Circuit. That's what we were doing, and it sounded good to Chris, of course, being stuck in high school. So I convinced his dad that maybe he could go after his GED or something, because he was a fabulous drummer. He was good from the get-go. Actually, I think everybody in our band were natural musicians. Somehow we coerced him into giving permission for Chris to join the band. So, then it was Bob and Chris and I, and eventually we started forcing people out of the band who didn't want to play original music. Chris quit for a while, quit the band, went to college. Bob and I just kept forcing our hand with original music. And what happened, the move to Cincinnati was really a move of convenience. We were playing here enough, and we were staying in hotels, well motels, out in Sharonville [a suburb north of Cincinnati] mostly. It was just cheaper to rent an apartment here. We were playing here so much. It was kind of the hub of our activities. So that's how we started growing roots in Cincinnati and becoming a Cincinnati band. We hit a point where we just refused to play other people's music unless we really liked it, and we were doing a version of it, and just wanted to play it. By that point we had Bam Powell [drums, vocals] in the band and Rick Neiheisel [keyboards, vocals], two longtime Cincinnati musicians. Cosmik: I went to high school with Rick Neiheisel. Rob: Yeah. Rick actually squeezed his way into the band; he actually demanded to be in the band. He was going to school at Berklee in Boston, and he just said, "I wanna be in your band. You need me." And he was right; we needed him. So he was in the band. And we basically just took a vow of poverty, and played our own music. We could only get one gig a week doing that, at one club in Clifton [the area of the city where the University of Cincinnati is located]. This is really getting detailed. But we did that, and we got the backing to make a record. Along this time, we'd been playing in Nashville a lot, even years before when Chris had still been in the band. Adrian had come to see us a lot. We really didn't know who Adrian was then. We became friends with Adrian in the late 70's. There was a point when I went out to L.A. I had a girlfriend out there - I thought - and I went out there and we broke up, and Adrian's there, rehearsing for his first Frank Zappa tour. He'd just snagged that gig. He was kinda lonely, and didn't know anybody out in L.A., and I was in my own private hell, so we just hung out and had a blast. We played guitar together. That's when I realized "Ohmygod, this guy can play guitar," because until that point, I didn't really know that much about him. He was really a fan of our band before we even knew what he did. But I ended up listening to the demos he was making, and after that I became a huge fan of his songwriting and of course his guitar playing. And we just kept in touch. And when it was time for the Raisins to try to make a record, he stepped in to produce us, which was a hugely educational experience. We had some success with "Fear Is Never Boring," a song I wrote. And a year and a half later, it was time to make another record, and two of the members of the Raisins at that point didn't want to make another record the same way we had already made one. They wanted to do something different, and I disagreed. We had a fundamental disagreement on direction. So I quit the Raisins. I told Adrian that I had quit the Raisins, and he said in the next breath, "Well, why don't we form a band? We know what we want to do." And I said "Okay." At that point we didn't think Chris Arduser would play drums with us. Adrian was friends and had toured with Larry London, who's a major Nashville session drummer. Fantastic musician. And he was interested in doing it, and we actually did some demos with him, but he couldn't commit to going on the road. He's a first-call Nashville session musician, and just has a great life there. And much older than us. So we called up Chris Arduser, and coerced him to play with us. Everything just clicked. That's the foundation of the Bears. Cosmik: That's beautiful, because it takes in the top part of this sheet very nicely. In the Bears first incarnation, you all had a certain way to dress onstage, and only you and Adrian sang. Was that some sort of publicist's idea? Rob: We didn't have anybody telling us what to do. But we had enough experience on our own, knowing that we had heard so many times that our music was "unfocused." I mean the Raisins did stuff that was R & B-ish to... I don't know what you'd call it, kinda punk. I think it was at that point that someone actually called me a "yuppie punk." But I've always thought, "Yeah, that's what I am. I'm a Yuppie Punk!" Fuck. You. You're just a punk, you know? But we were all over the map, and we decided we were not going to be successful unless people could focus on something. And we thought "Well, let's just keep it to two singers." Because we love the sound of two-part harmonies - not three. In the sense that the Beatles would do a lot of two-part things that we really liked a lot. You can just do a lot with two-part harmonies. And we wanted to focus visually on the two singers - two singer/guitar players. Not that we weren't using creative input from the other members of the band. But we thought about that. As far as dress, you know basically, I'll just say that Bob is just a slob. You just never knew what Bob was going to show up at a gig as. One week he'd look, oh, I don't know, like he was in the back yard, you know, grilling for the kids. He looked like Ozzie of Ozzie and Harriet or something. Sometimes he'd look like he was in The Clash. He was schizo. And really what it was was he didn't care. So we thought immediately, "Let's put him in a tux and tails. He will always look good; he'll always be the sharpest guy in the band." I don't remember telling Chris to wear anything. I don't think you can tell Chris Arduser to do anything. Period. Adrian and I just both have fun with clothes, so we... I forget what we ended up on. I think we looked like we were somewhere between Maui and London. Musically at that point we were... Adrian will say... he got the focus on us. We were just trying to figure what our favorite stage of the Beatles was. You know the point where they really changed, and we kind of ended up on Revolver. Revolver was where... well, it wasn't the first time they had used Indian influences, or world influences in their music, but Revolver was where they were really using a lot of that stuff, and we were aware of world music, and loved Middle Eastern sounds and Indian sounds, and were trying to get those kinds of sounds out of our guitars. Especially Adrian, who's just a soundmeister. And we heard something happening that we were calling East Meets Midwest. Adrian had some guitar sounds - we were using guitar synths to create the stuff... And percussion-wise, Chris opened up a lot. He was using a lot of wood drums and other things besides just the standard drum set. We felt we had a focus at that point and used it. And it evolved from that point. Cosmik: On the new album, though, there are times when you use three-part harmonies, like in Waiting Room and it sounds gorgeous. Rob: Well, this record - if you can just fast-forward over the next ten years or so. I don't know if it was exactly ten years until we started working on another record, but call it ten. Chris and I were the main singers in psychodots. Chris is a prolific songwriter, and made a handful of discs with The Graveblankets, and grew in confidence as a vocalist. He has excellent pitch; he has a very good range, and when it was time to be the Bears again, we just threw out all that stuff. I think we just focused on "Let's just do songs we all like, that we love and really believe in." And when we play them together, they just sound like the Bears. That they sound different than the demos we showed up at the session with... It just becomes Bear music, and we didn't feel slaves to using exotic sounds. As the songs were taking shape, we tried a lot of different things and it just became a little simpler. I don't think there's any focus on this record or any consideration other than we want to be able to play this stuff live. We didn't want to overproduce the record. We're all fully capable of putting all the ear candy you want on a record, but we wanted to be able to pull this stuff off live, because we love playing live, and we didn't want to miss something. We didn't do it on this tour, but I think probably the next time we go out, we'll do everything on the record. Cosmik: You personally, as a guitar player. Some of your influences, your background, how you came to like to play the guitar? Rob: I grew up in a family where my dad enjoyed jazz music - I didn't. It kind of bored me. My mom listened to classical music. So that's what I heard. I didn't really think or plan to be a musician until I was one of the millions of people who saw the Beatles play. I saw these guys really enjoying themselves. I'd never seen adults look like they were having so much fun, and weren't acting. The Beatles were not pretending. They were really having fun. Unlike the other people in show business who might have a fake smile. They were so natural and funny, and that looked good to me. That was at the point where there was a guitar in the house. My sister Wendy had a guitar, and I just kind of borrowed it from her and never gave it back. Took a few lessons here and there. After the first, like, year of "Gee my fingers hurt," it just was easy for me to play. I was abetted in that I had a lot of allergies when I was in my early teens, and literally in the summer I would get hay fever so bad, I was allergic to everything growing, so I'd just stay inside an air conditioned house, and either masturbate or play guitar. That's what I specialized in as an early teen. Most men I talk to can relate to half of that equation. Cosmik: With me it was masturbate or play the drums. Rob: Yeah, right. And my parents, when I got into it, they were really supportive. I have a cousin that's a professional musician, that was older than me, and my aunt and uncle on that side said, "Well, if he's showing aptitude with that, then get him a guitar." So my parents made sure I had a good instrument. They bought me a Fender guitar, which was solid and held together. And then I just listened to records. I wore through Axis: Bold As Love, and started playing in bands. When I could barely play, I started playing with other musicians, and most of them were really bad musicians. So when I finally got a chance to play with somebody like Bob, who is good and smart... I was into the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Bob was into the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, so he opened up this whole other world to me. But as a guitar player, I never feel like I practiced. It's just I was lucky and I was good. I don't think I'm that much better a musician now than I was when I was fifteen. Cosmik: Really! Rob: Yeah, really. I was pretty good; there are tapes to prove it. I hadn't found my own style, but I was just a real good young blues guitar player, the way kids are. I just played constantly. Cosmik: Well, you sure have found your own style, and it really works. Rob: But as far as influences, I was the kind of guy who would listen to records and learn it, but I'd never completely learn it exactly like the record. So therefore I would become like a combination of Clapton and Jimmy Page and Jeff Back. Cosmik: And in the process of doing that you find your own... Rob: Because I can always tell you who I'm ripping off, or who it sounds like. And then when I actually became a songwriter, it was kind of the same thing. I got to the point where I just didn't want to bother learning licks exactly, and I would do my version of a song and then it eventually became... my song. I was trying to ape other people, but I couldn't do it exactly, so I kind of became my own ape. Cosmik: And now people are trying to ape you, so... Rob: Yeah, occasionally... Cosmik: The Bears are two sides of a coin in some ways. Lyrically, take a song like "Robobo's Beef"(from Rise and Shine), which is so idealistic, and then take a song like "You Can Buy Friends" (also from Rise and Shine), which is just as cynical as hell. Those two elements somehow work together and become part of the Bears. Rob: Yeah. I think they both temper each other. You know, a cynic is - I didn't invent this, but I know somebody said, "A cynic is just a disillusioned optimist." I don't know, I'd just have to say that our songwriting has mood swings, just like a human being, and it [announcing] LACKS FOCUS at points. It just depends on where people are at. You can hear the development in the band. The first album is very "We were going to be kings," you know? We were very confident that we were making the best pop record in the country at the time. I don't know if we thought of it that much, we just felt that this was going to be as good as anything else. And on the second record, I think you begin to hear some disillusionment. Adrian had a family, and it was really hard for him to be on the road as much as we were on the road. We were making not very much money. We were making money, but our percentage of it was pretty small. And it was kind of strangling us. And we came up against the record machine in the mid-80's, which was no prettier then than it is now. And I think we were showing some signs of exhaustion, actually, because we toured so much. We just played all the time. Our record company... you could just kind of feel steam leaking! And things just going, "Oh, god, this isn't turning out the way we had planned." And I think Car Caught Fire is really "This is what happens. We survived." We had maybe six or seven songs done for Car Caught Fire; I just thought it was so heavy. And spiritual in content. Not necessarily "Christ is king," or "Allah is god," or anything like that. Not religiosity, but spiritual. It just had this fatness to it. I could feel it coming, and I just remember saying to the other guys, "Is it just my warped perception, or are we doing something kinda heavy here?" We all felt it. We only made Car Caught Fire because we wanted to make the record. We had no idea that it would even pay for itself. We could hope that it will pay for itself, but we've all been in the music business and survived in the music business long enough to know there are no guarantees, and it's fickle and it's dirty, and there's really nothing good about the music business except the music, occasionally, and some of the people who are in the music business are there because they just love it so much that they don't have a choice. And we are amongst those. We have no choice about being musicians and doing this. So I feel like we made the record for good reasons. Good healthy reasons. Cosmik: And it shows. Rob: Yeah. The quality of the music is, I think, really high. Cosmik: I don't think there's a false moment on the whole disc, myself. Rob: Well, we go through a very painful decision-making process. Presenting your song to the Bears. The way we recorded it, we'd go down on a Friday night; we'd take a three-day weekend usually, a long weekend. Then on Friday night, you play, like, your four best songs. And look at a bunch of blank faces. You know? "They're not getting it." (pleading) "Please just listen to it one more time, I'm sure you'll like it." "No, what else do you have?" Cosmik: Is it that ruthless? Rob: It is utterly ruthless for the Bears. I mean, it is the worst A & R situation imaginable! The only reason we don't kill each other is because we trust each other. I wish I could stack the cards in my favor more the next time. Because we're already talking about doing some more recording. Cosmik: Excellent. Rob: I've gotta present these in the best light possible. Should I buy them dinner first? Cosmik: But you know that won't matter. Rob: Maybe burn a disc and put a fifty-dollar bill in each one. Tape it to the lyric page. Yeah, they go through a horrid gauntlet before we even start working on them. Cosmik: That filtering-out process, though, makes everything better, right? And the fact that everybody contributes makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts, and that's one of the hallmarks of listening to the Bears, is that your talent, Bob's talent, Chris' talent, Adrian's talent, somehow just adds up to something that's really, really infectious. On to another topic, when you sing, I hear what sounds a little bit like there's a smirk in your voice. Rob: Hmm. Cosmik: It goes as far back as I can remember, in the Raisins or anything, but it always sounds like there's a little bit of a smirk in your voice when you're singing, and I enjoy that, but on Dave you play it totally straight. That song obviously meant a lot to you. Rob: Yeah. Well, the reason we kept that vocal through the end was just that it was terribly... I wasn't really thinking about singing in tune or anything like that, it was just that I was trying to get it out without crying. That song is a true story. A friend of mine committed suicide. I wrote it really fast, and I recorded the basic tracks really fast. I just presented that as a demo. So maybe there was no time to get cynical about it. Although the last verse, I think, is extremely cynical and bitter. "I heard the minister mumble." Cosmik: It's a powerful song. Rob: I was really just disillusioned with the... one of the first, but certainly not the last time I was really disillusioned with the church. I know it really works for a lot of people. Cosmik: It certainly works for me. That bit combined with the song from Rise and Shine, "Holy Mack." Rob: Yeah, "Holy Mack." Adrian wrote that song, and most of the words, actually. We... yeah, I think we wrote that together. Yeah, that was just a good prayer. That's really what "Holy Mack" was, a prayer. Cosmik: And a great song. What was it like working with Robert Fripp? Rob: Well, I've only met Robert Fripp socially. I don't know him very well. What happened with "Dave" was we recorded tracks and added some guitar parts, and the instructions were "Put a guitar solo here. Here's where the guitar solo goes. Have fun." And we were trying a bunch of sound styles, and I said, "A real nice legato, Robert Fripp-y thing would be perfect." Robert lives at Adrian's house, right next to the studio he has in the lower half of his house when he's in town, and Adrian called me a few weeks later, and just said, "You know, Rob, I had an idea." And he didn't finish the sentence, and I just said, "Robert's there, isn't he?" And he said, "Yeah." And I said, "Do you think he'll play on it?" It made sense. That whole song is just kind of a hair-raising experience. Number one, it just came out so fast. I mean in like ten minutes it was all there, lyrics, melody, bridge, it was just together and finished. And then my friend, Dave Gauthier (pronounced "go-chee"), who is the subject of the song, and I were just huge King Crimson fans. We listened to In the Court of the Crimson King all the time, so it was really neat that a guitar player that Dave loved - we thought that band was so cool - we were "Twentieth Century Schizoid Kids." We just loved King Crimson, so it's really so cool that Robert Fripp played on the song. I just exchanged a couple of letters with Robert. Cosmik: So you weren't there when he recorded the parts? Rob: No, no. Robert, you know, he doesn't need anybody around producing him. Adrian was staying being quiet, and Ken, our engineer just recorded, and I think their main job was just to make sure that everything worked. That they captured it. I think that there was some kind of technical glitch or something, and they were worried that Robert would get off the path. But Robert wrote me that it really meant a lot to him, that he understood the circle that things had gone in. And King Crimson fans have said that it's one of his most beautiful solos. Cosmik: It really is. It's a gorgeous solo. It fits the song perfectly. Rob: We're just thrilled by it. King Crimson, you know, has a huge fan base, and they try to create a lot of conflict in the band that isn't there. The band's gone through so many changes, and god knows somebody who was in the band fifteen years ago might say something crappy about Robert, or something like that, but Adrian and Robert are really great collaborators together. And as far as the Bears go, we love King Crimson. We saw many versions of the band well before Adrian was in the band, and when we found that Adrian was going to be in King Crimson, we were just overjoyed! "Gee, maybe I could shake Bill Bruford's hand!" And I did! And we got to go and see them play. We just love King Crimson! I think on almost every tour we've played a King Crimson song. Cosmik: You cover "Red" now, right? Rob: Yeah, we're playing "Red." Cosmik: It must be a lot of fun. Rob: Oh, yeah, it's very cool. Cosmik: Which part do you play in it? Rob: I guess I play the Robert Fripp part, the main, slashing part. Cosmik: That would fit you well, I think. Rob: Well, our initials are the same. When we did "Elephant Talk," I of course did the Robert Fripp part on that one, too. And when we did "Matte Kudasai," I think I did, too. No I didn't do the Robert Fripp part; I played Adrian's part and he played Robert's. Cosmik: Some people lament that you play some Belew solo songs and King Crimson songs, and of course Bears songs, but no Raisins songs ever filter their way into the Bears' repertoire. Rob: Well, I think the reason we do Belew songs is some people come to us because it's "Adrian Belew and the Bears," and I think you'd be cheating them if you didn't play some of that stuff. People are paying a lot of money to see us play. All I can say to those people is that you've got three Raisins slash psychodots in the band, and these are our songs... I know what you're saying, because people who believe in the psychodots and the Raisins are huge supporters, and our music's important to them. So I guess you just can't make everybody happy all the time. Cosmik: Well, I'm not sure they're unhappy... Rob: Yeah, but I know what they mean, and I'm not sure how we could overcome that. This tour, of all the tours we've done, we did the least amount of Adrian's songs. I don't think we did anything from Adrian's solo records. We just played Bears stuff, and one King Crimson song. Cosmik: You still don't have a U.S. distributor for Car Caught Fire. Rob: As we speak, three companies are calling me and want to distribute the record. To do that, we would have to act more as a record company, and really you need a staff for a record company. We don't have it. Because it's just me. And it ain't me! So we're still trying to hook up with a smaller label, that can deal with it. I don't think any major label would want our band. We're just not... I don't know what it is. We're just too fucking good for a major label. We're the Bears. We're a unique American band, and I think we need a unique label to deal with it. Cosmik: Well, how's it going just selling it yourselves? Rob: We've sold thousands of records on our own. I don't have an exact count. We haven't sold ten thousand on our own, or we haven't received money for that. We've sold enough to pay for making the record, put some money in our own pockets, pay for the manufacture of it, and pay our expenses. The band is in the black. And I would kind of look at the band as: we're not trying to hit home runs; we're just trying to hit a single and keep a flow. If we can make an investment here, you have a chance of hitting a home run, and I know that if we put all of our capital into some long shot and blow it, we will not be able to afford to make another record. And we want to play together. We want to be able to make music together, and by getting rid of a lot of ten-percenters, we can afford to do that. It would be a lot easier if we had people collecting commissions and things, but we're trying to do it on our own. I think if we make our jump, somebody's going to have to jump with us. Cosmik: You do have a distributor in Japan, right? Rob: Yeah. Pony Canyon signed the record, licensed the record, and they're selling it there. And that really was a catalyst. We were just going to shop our disc and not put it up, but Pony Canyon actually had a release date. We just figured, "god, people are going to buy this, or bootleg it actually." Cause they didn't have the rights to North America or Europe, so we better just make it available. So people could actually buy it. And then bootleg it! Cosmik: Why all the Rickenbackers on the front cover? Rob: Well, they just look good! We had 'em all. There's really just three and the other's a Washburn acoustic. But Adrian brought his. It was really just kind of serendipity. We had the guitars with us at Michael Wilson's photo studio, and we're all sitting there. We're all thinking, "We're all just middle-aged guys. Is there any way we can dress up this photo? Oh, I got it! Let's cover our faces." I thought it worked great. Michael's a good friend of ours. Everybody involved in this, in the Bears, there's a friendship that goes beyond any sort of business dealings. People really dig the music. Cosmik: And I'm one of those people, too! And I was just overjoyed to hear that after fourteen years there was another Bears album out. It was worth the wait. Rob: Well, we think so, too. All along, we've stayed friends, and I toured with Adrian on his solo tour, psychodots appeared with him on another tour. So we've always stayed in contact, and been fans of each other's music. Adrian made some records in the 90's that were sort of lost in the shuffle, like Op Zop Too Wah, and there's just some incredible music on that. Cosmik: I have The Guitar As Orchestra, which is mind-boggling. Rob: Oh, yeah! Everybody's churning the stuff out. None of us ever stops. I can't imagine ever stopping. (C) 2002 - Karl Cable ++ psychodots ++ Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 08:17:28 -0400 From: Mary Bosken Subject: Jammin's pictures...... FYI, Tara O'Donnell/streetjester has posted Jammin' on Main pictures of the psychodots' set, on the cincymusic.com message boards. You can view them at: http://boards.cincymusic.com/ index.php?act=ST&f=46&t=5332&s=645f5716bbdb8d1a898343efcd071b4e Thanks Tara! Mary ++ psychodots ++ Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 20:06:56 -0400 From: "Jeffrey A Burroway" Subject: The Bears Are Back? Saw these tidbits posted this week at http://thebearsmusic.com: FALL PLANS FOR NEW BEARS SESSION 05/19/03 Rob, Bob, Chris, & Adrian will be gathering together this fall to work on their fourth Bears' studio album. No title, track listing, or tour dates have been announced at this time. BEARS DVD ON IT'S WAY 05/19/03 It looks like the long awaited Bears DVD will finally make it's way to your players by late Summer 2003. The DVD will consist of a live performance from their 2002 Car Caught Fire tour. We hope to announce the features of the DVD very soon. ++ psychodots ++ End of Psycho Depot 351 May 23, 2003 Comments, suggestions, postings, and administrative or the switch between digest and daily versions of the Depot (or be on both!): Mike Brown depot @ psychodots.com To order psychodot merchandise: contact Stan Hertzman of Umbrella Artists and Strugglebaby Records shertzman@cinci.rr.com 513 871-1500 Voice 513 871-1510 Fax and Hal Bernard Enterprises, Inc., 2612 Erie Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45208 For back issues (2 ways): Email: Tony Nowikowski tony@nowikowski.com or Web Site: http://home.insightbb.com/~p-dots/ Check out the psychodot Home Page at: http://www.psychodots.com Check out the graveblankets Home Page at: http://graveblankets.com Check out the Bears Home Page at: http://www.thebearsmusic.com Check out the Ricky Nye Home Page at: http://www.rickynye.com