Mid 2002 Australian Interview with Dale

Here's a transcript of an interview with Dale around the time of the Australian tour with Tool in April of 2002

• TL: Hi, how are you going today?
• DC: Hi, good. How are you doin’?
• TL: I’m pretty good myself. So, you’re in Brisbane at the moment?
• DC: We are, yeah.
• TL: And what’s going on down there?
• DC: Ahh…just walking around. It’s really nice.
• TL: You’ve just played a couple of gigs in New Zealand. How’d they go?
• DC: They were really good. Audience was really receptive to us.
• TL: Good. Have you got any crazy stories to tell us about what happened over there?
• DC: I could make one up…
• TL: Alright, make one up. I want to hear something outrageous.
• DC: Ah…I can’t think of anything good right now…not enough coffee yet (laughs).
• TL: Hostile Ambient Takeover was released here a few weeks ago, as was the Melvins/Fantomas Big Band Live CD. So, we’ll talk about HAT first, just ‘cos I like the title. That’s great, btw.
• DC: Thanks.
• TL: What was the atmosphere like putting that one down?
• DC: That one was really great. We recorded it at studio near my house in North Hollywood and spent like three weeks in the studio…kinda a little place, one room. It was very relaxed and very easy to do, it didn’t really take us that long to finish the whole thing, and we’re really happy with it.
• TL: You tend to work quite quickly, though…
• DC: We do.
• TL: Three weeks is a longer time for…
• DC: It is a long time considering that the first records we ever made were done in four days. So, that’s a long time for us. I think in general, bands spend way too much time in the studio, nitpicking over things and worrying about things, instead of just letting a good performance come out of the whole thing. I mean, I think I probably made mistakes on almost every song…not necessarily mistakes but just…not necessarily things that I had planned to play…
• TL: Little things that you could corrected.
• DC: Yeah. And we just left it ‘cos it sounded good, anyway.
• TL: Do you have everything planned out before you go into the studio?
• DC: No, not everything. I mean, there’s maybe about 75% of it that we had down really well, and then maybe the rest of it we let the chips fall were they may and just see what happens. And I think it works fine. I really like this record a lot. I think it came out really good. It’s one of my favourites so far.
• TL: It’s one of mine, too.
• DC: Great!
• TL: I read that ‘Brain Centre at Whipples’ is actually the title of a Twilight Zone episode.
• DC: I think it is.
• TL: Is that where you got it from?
• DC: That’s where Buzz got it from.
• DL: You guys big fans then, of the Twilight Zone?
• DC: Oooh yeah.
• TL: The album, as always with Melvins releases, has some pretty complex drum parts. How do you go about re-creating that intensity live?
• DC: Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait and see! But we just manage to work it out.
• TL: Is it totally exhausting for you?
• DC: Yeah. Well, when we work out a set live we work out some little breaks here and there for me. But, actually, the set that we’re playing right now is pretty full on as well; there’s a lot of drumming so I have to be on my toes.
• TL: I always wanted to hear Cow live, just to see how you manage the drumming for that. How do you memorise drum parts like that?
• DC: Just play them over and over and over again…
• TL: Do you try to hit every beat, exactly how it is on the record?
• DC: No. Things definitely change live, too. Plus, almost all the songs on the record were songs that we hadn’t played live yet, so that turned out different.
• TL: Is there a bit of improvisation then?
• DC: Oh yeah.
• TL: While on the subject of live drumming…how did you find the Melvins/Fantomas Big Band experience?
• DC: Oh, it was great. It was amazing playing with Dave Lombardo; he’s such a good drummer.
• TL: Was it difficult to synchronize the drumming, then?
• DC: No, not at all. It was really easy…
• TL: Especially with something like Fantomas, which is so meticulous…
• DC: That stuff’s really complicated, but we manage to work everything out in about a week and play a show.
• TL: So you rehearsed for a week, then. That’s all it took?
• DC: Yeah. We’re kinda surprised how quickly that whole thing came together. We were just gonna do it for New Years Eve, and Fantomas had their own show booked when we where rehearsing, and since things were going so well, we decided to do a kinda one-off show in LA. I actually think that show was maybe a little better than the one on NYE. I really like the NYE thing a lot, too. That came out pretty good. That whole record was recorded with an audience mic and from the (sound) board. Each one on it’s own really didn’t sound that good. With the audience, you get a lot of yelling from people…
• TL: Yeah, “play Slayer”.
• DC: And from the board you mostly get drums and vocals. So we had this friend of ours, who’s a computer genius, to combine the two and it came out great…really good. I think that when we went to master the record, this guy that does the mastering thought that the drum sounds were better than most of the studio recordings that he gets from people. We were really happy to hear him say that. And it’s a true live record than what some bands will do when they go in and record the whole record in the studio.
• TL: It’s the real deal.
• DC: Yeah, the real thing.
• TL: Do you see yourselves working in a Big Band situation again. I mean, not necessarily with Fantomas, but…
• DC: I think there might be some Fantomas stuff coming out pretty soon. In fact, we’ve been talking about touring it for a pretty long time. Pretty much, we just have to wait for those guys to get it together.
• TL: Okay…I was under the impression that it was a one off thing, bur if you’re thinking of touring it…
• DC: Yeah, definitely. We’d like too. Like I said, if everyone can book it, then we’ll do it. So, we’re ready to go, anytime.
• TL: Let’s go off on a completely different tangent for the moment…I just wanted to mention the official Melvins web site. ‘Cos, I often check back there to see something cool, and you had this transparent baby and then the floating Melvins’ angels, but the latest is amazing…in a creepy kinda way…
• DC: I haven’t seen it yet…
• TL: You haven’t seen it? Oh…It’s got this crazy pen knife, Village of the Damned inspired thing….in lime green.
• DC: (Laughs) Oh great. Is there any text there yet?
• TL: It’s just got the Melvin’s name there.
• DC: Okay. There will be something there soon. But it will be different than other people’s web sites because we’re not necessarily going to give like a big band history or news or anything like that. We’ll just let people check out either the record company’s web site or other people’s web sites.
• TL: I guess there’s not really a need for it…
• DC: We just figured, if you want to find out band history, talk to these people, ‘cos if you get it from us, it’s not necessarily going to be the truth. It might not be the truth on their’s either, but…(laughs) We definitely wanted to do something different than everyone else’s web site.
• TL: Is that Mackie’s work on there?
• DC: No. It’s this other friend of ours that’s doing it. I don’t know, she may have contributed some artwork here and there, but we just kind of left it up to this friend of ours to it. He does a really good job. I think he shares our same sense of humour and that kinda thing, too.
• TL: You should definitely check out the new one; it’s great.
• DC: I’ll have to. Just need to get on-line here…
• TL: You’ll be here performing with Tool….which is kinds tough in that there’ll be a lot of screaming Tool fans…
• DC: Well, we’re used to that kinda thing.
• TL: How did you deal with it on the New Zealand leg?
• DC: They were really receptive to us, moreso than here in the States. We’re usually so loud that they can scream all they want and we won’t hear them; they’ll reverberate in their own heads.
• TL: I’ve heard that you’ve been doing a bit of live percussion with Tool on Triad…
• DC: Yeah.
• TL: How’s that, doing live guest spots?
• DC: It’s been going great. It’s really cool. I’m really glad that they asked me to do something like that. I get to stand up where Maynard stands; push him in the back a little bit. Yeah, it’s been really fun playing with those guys.
• TL: Will you record anything with them in the future. I know you did the collaboration on Crybaby with Tool.
• DC: Yeah. I don’t know. You never know…
• TL: Just to finish off then….are there any plans for the Melvins after the Australian and US tours?
• DC: At the moment there’s nothing really, but we want to come back here soon. There’s talk of us possibly coming back out because Kevin’s other band that he’s in with Mike Patton, are coming down here to play. So we might just team up with them…and once they’re done, we might actually do some touring. It could be really good, we haven’t been here in five years, so we really wanted to come back. Sorry it’s take so long.
• TL: That’s alright. We might have you back twice in a row.
• DC: That’ll be great, especially since we have a label her now to help us out.
• TL: You’re distributed though Shock.
• DC: Yeah. Now people can buy our records and they won’t be forty dollars. Be a little bit cheaper.
• TL: Melvins’ past releases are up about the $40 mark… now they’re about $30, something like that.
• DC: That sounds a little bit better.
• TL: Yeah, it is.….Thanks for speaking with us today.
• DC: Okay. Bye.