NAKED RAYGUN from SV #16, summer '85
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| PHOTO: ROCCO C. |
SV: Jeff, you have a degree in mechanical engineering. Is that what you do for a living?
Jeff: Yeah, design engineering.
SV: Do you find that this ties in with your music at all?
Jeff: No, it pays for it, that's about it. It has nothing to do with it besides that, really. It's like a 9-5 kind of thing. As an occupation, it pays for the rent and the music thing is supposed to become the occupation, but so far it hasn't.
SV: You've had the band in one form or another for 4 years?
Jeff: Yeah, it's been around 4 years.
SV: Why don't you give me a bit of background on the band.
Camilo: This band was formed in a loft in late 1980. We went through a lot of personnel changes. We lost everybody except Jeff.
Jeff: It happened so gradually, though, it's like no big deal. It's not like all of a sudden everybody left and kept leaving. Some people we were kicking out the same time they left and, to happen really gradually over a period of time--if everyone had left at once, I think it would have completely fell apart but it happened so gradually, it was kind of a normal progression. It was no really big deal. It was more like when someone would leave, we would just write a bunch of more stuff.
Camilo: We were lucky in the fact that we always had some of Chicago's finest talent in this band who have since gone on to bigger and better things.
SV: Has the music changed drastically as the different members have changed?
Jeff: It's still been sort of the same idea. Now I think it does sound a little different, not like the stuff on "Busted At Oz," but basically, we've just gotten a lot tighter and learned how to play and stuff.
SV: Where do you think you draw most of your main musical influences from, because you guys seem to have a pretty unique sound that doesn't really fit in with anything.
Jeff: I think each person in the band has his own influences. I'm influenced by a lot of the late '70s English bands, as opposed to '77-78--Wire, Buzzcocks, Stranglers and, also, Iggy Pop. As for liking bands, I like stuff by Nick Cave these days, and smaller American bands.
Camilo: Lately, I like the slew of new pop that's coming out--Katrina and the Waves, Madonna, Bangles, Smiths, Three Johns.
Eric: Most of my influences are scotch, speedballs and the mysterious hard-ons.
SV: Do I detct a bit of cynicism runnig through the lyrics of "Only In America"?
Jeff: It should be more than a bit. Yeah, there's some pretty weird things that happen in America and I didn't write a whole lots of those lyrics, but a couple of the ones I wrote are "picking your boogers in your car."
SV: That one definitely stands out.
Jeff: Yeah, like a sore thumb. They wanted me to change it for awhile. America has definitely got some strange things happening. I suppose all the countries have some pretty weird things, but I can't speak for them, only for what places I've been.
SV: How do you balance working from 9-5 in a straight environment with what you do after hours with the band? Do you find that they're at odds with each other?
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| PHOTO: ROCCO C. |
Eric: I just wash my underwear and never wear them. They stay cleaner, longer.
SV: What kind do you use?
Eric: I wear Marshall Fields underwear. They're real good. They last a super long time, you really get your money's worth out of them. I hardly wear Jockey now.
Camilo: You can't wear tight underwear, really, or else get testicle cancer.
Eric: You'll actually become sterile, which is kind of like not too bad an idea as long as you don't get the cancer part. I think it's got something to do with having your balls be kind of hot or something. The heat makes you sterile.
Jeff: There are definitely plenty of people who should be sterile.
SV: How did we get on this? Anyway, what do you think about the midwest's music scene as opposed to, say, the East coast?
Jeff: I don't know a whole lot about the East coast, but, from what I see, it's got lots of publications. I mean, Boston, alone, we're all over these charts and there's nothing in Chicago to even be on. The only thing out there was Matter and that moved to Jersey. There were a few other fanzines in Chicago, but they have recently folded. There's hardly anything there now. There's been some good bands all along and some of them fell apart before they even got a chance to get records out, because of lack of intrest at that small of a level. Although we draw tons of people in Chicago, lots of bands still don't. Homestead singing all these Chicago and midwest bands is going to cause a lot to happen over there and, hopefully, some of these smaller bands will feel a little better about hanging around longer and longer until they've become a little more noticed.
SV: It seems right now, especially in Minneapolis, there are a lot of hot bands coming out of the midwest.
John: Hüsker Dü, Breaking Circus, Man Sized Action.
Camilo: It's about time.
John: Those bands have been around. Steve Bjorklund from Breaking Circus was around and, before this band called Bloodsport, there was Trial By Fire, who were absolutely brilliant. Everyone's trying to get ahold of their studio tapes that they did right before they broke up and, before that, there was Strike Under, who released a really poorly-mixed EP, but great songs and that was the guy in Breaking Circus and the guy in Bloodsport now. If these bands had had a label or had their act together a bit more, they just could have kept going. There's a couple of labels in Chicago, Fever Records, who try, but I don't like their taste as much as I do a lot of other people's, but they're a pretty interesting little label. (Bonemen of Barumba, some Effigies stuff, Get Smart).
SV: How did the interview on WBCN go?
Jeff: It was really fast. It seemed like everyone was on speed. They had these huge foam things around the mike so you wouldn't pop 'em and stuff and it was very nice inside and very clean and everyone was kind of nice, but they're really in a rush. The guy was bringing up fades left and right. I didn't even know what the hell he was doing and all of a sudden we were talking and it was over. I think it was pretty neat, though. That's one thing you never see in Chicago. We tried to get this supposedly really hip station in Chicago, WXRT, to sponsor this show and they've played our record once in a while, but the bitch we have about them is they claim to be cool and play the Pretenders and Phil Collins--only major label bands and they're only doing it because they know where their audience is, but they shouldn't pretend to be hip. They're constantly called the Yuppie station because they're trying to get that type of demographic.
SV: That's what BCN basically aims for, too.
Camilo: I'm sure every city has something like that.
Jeff: We have a couple of good college radio stations. One of 'em just got boosted to 15 watts. WNUR is real good, but it depends on who's going to school that year.
Camilo: Plus they play jazz from 4 PM to midnight.
Jeff: It's great until 4:00. After 4 PM, they play light jazz. It's real weird.
SV: Are you satisfied with how your album came out?
Jeff: Yeah, pretty much. We recorded like 19 songs for it. About 5 of them will never see vinyl and we keep getting razzed, too, quite a bit because "Metastasis" is on the Flipside comp--same song, same cut. We recorded 19 songs and put the same things on a number of different records. It just happened that way--all these people asked us to be on these compilations.
SV: Would you say there are any running lyrical themes in your music?
Jeff: Some of it is pretty obvious, but mostly we're just trying to point out things rather than make some huge statement. We've been slagged for writing political songs and then claiming we're not political. We're definitely not a band that preaches, it's pretty obvious and we're just pointing out some things and we're not singing about some semi-love pop shit, either. Things we think need to be brought up. The main thing we want to stress is the music itself and, knowing when the vocals come out, with the music happening, at that moment in time, this little part right here in the song, that's a cool thing happening. This little drop, or whatever, that's what we like to stress...
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