Standridge: Earlier press coverage didn’t say we were a joke band but talked about joke bands.
Eads: There’s a lot of humor, some of it intentional, some of it not. Zappa, who’s a big influence on Gregg and me, had lots of humor in his music, but you wouldn’t call it a joke by any means. His music was serious. It would put the fear of God in musicians, whereas Weird Al Yankovic does joke song after joke song. We try to go for humor, but most of the time not just jokes.
Standridge: Yeah, I think that’s well said. I don’t think it was like Weird Al Yankovic. It was like Zappa with less talent. (both laugh)
Eads: But it was a joke, the exhibit. The bands were all riffing on the fictional history and making up stuff beyond that.
Standridge: It was hilarious.
Eads: That was kind of an in-joke.
Standridge: There was somebody that actually thought that that was a band. That’s the funny part. There was some girl who was like, “Oh, I’ve never heard of these guys.”
Eads: Yeah, Craig said a lot of people were confused if it was a real band or a fake band, which is kind of cool. You can go out, have a good time, and not be really sure what you saw.
Standridge: The first thing we did [for the album] was “Candy Bar”, and it was just this thing where we were banging on crap. Then we started writing stuff. I think there’s really only one song that we didn’t keep. Everything else, we just said, “hey, we’re gonna make this work no matter what. God, that’s ugly. God, that’s horrible. Awesome.”
The best part about it was the creative flow of “I don’t care! Let’s do it!” And you know, you try to make something that’s good, not just as a joke, but something that is good and interesting and weird.
Never knew this wideopen, funky, eclectic, blocky fun side of Gregg … but it’s outstanding.