Spread the Social Love:
After 3 years since the release of IF, Mindless Self Indulgence are back on tour and dropping off at our little UK island. I caught up with vocalist Jimmy Urine (at half 1 in the morning his time - hard core, I know) to discuss their live shows, video games and how he almost, almost nearly died on stage.
AltSounds: First of all you're back on tour, how does that feel?
Jimmy Urine: It’s fun, it’s great! We did an American tour just recently this year and that was fantastic and now we’re back out and it’s like nothing ever changed. Now we’re coming over to your neck of the woods where we’re gonna eat all of your food.
AltSounds: [laughs] Do you feel you get different reactions from crowds depending on where you play?
Jimmy Urine: Definitely, I think there’s a huge difference between America and the UK. I think the main difference, and anyone will tell you is that in America there’s a little more violence and in the UK they sing more! Like in America they’ll sing the chorus, so you can put the mic up to the audience and they’ll be like "yeah yeah chorus" but in the UK it’s literally minute one, first fucking word and they know all the words and they sing it all really loud all the way through. It’s like I don’t have to do anything! It’s like why did I even show up?! I don’t even need to be there [laughs] I’ll just send the band... it’s crazy. It’s cool though, it’s definitely different. It’s like a big sing along.
WATCH // Mindless Self Indulgence - Never Wanted To Dance:
AltSounds: I guess it definitely makes the shows different. Is there much difference in mainland Europe?
Jimmy Urine: Yeah it changes from place to place, I mean the UK is the UK and even though you guys have all the different sections like "oh we’re the midlands, oh we’re from up north…" you still are all English, whereas if I go to France and then I go to Germany it’s two totally different cultures. The one thing the UK has that no one else has is they get our sense of humour - Mindless Self Indulgence’s especially, we’re cheeky mother fuckers and you guys pick up on that really well. Even in America I could say something and people are like "what, why did you say that?" and it’s like "oh man it’s a joke. come on mother fucker." With you guys, you just say one little funny thing and its like [in an accent that turns to something similar to Welsh] "aha he’s alright isn’t he, what a little cheeky bastard!"
AltSounds: That was a good accent! You sounded a bit Welsh!
Jimmy Urine: [laughs]
AltSounds: You recently did the music and played the voice of a character in the game ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’, how different was it writing music for a game rather than one of your own albums?
Jimmy Urine: Well I think it would’ve been a lot different if the game wasn’t so gonzo and over the top. I mean my friend, director James Gunn who directed Slither and Super and is now directing Guardians Of The Galaxy was brought in to write Lollipop Chainsaw, and then he brought in his friends to do some of the voices. So I started out doing one of the voices of the characters because he brought me in to do one of the punk rock zombies... and then I started doing the music, so the game was actually geared towards that, and the people and the producers of the game were fans of mine and Mindless Self Indulgence.
So it was a little easier, it wasn’t like I was doing Call Of Duty or anything where it’s a very theatrical score, they wanted me to be myself. The main difference is obviously, because there’s no vocals and there is some sort of guideline, you wanna pace it to the visual, what’s going on and to make that work. With Mindless Self Indulgence there’s zero rules, except just go off and do what the fuck I want, talk about what I want and write songs about what I want. If it sounds poppy one second and totally insane the next minute then that’s fine, you know that doesn’t matter. In this game there was no vocals to deal with and there were some perimeters, so I didn’t wanna go to off the beat... but it was fine.
If you listen to it, it still sounds like music that could’ve been a Mindless Self Indulgence song and, a lot of times I sort of had to hold back and not write melodies. That was the hardest thing actually - to not write vocals over the instrumentals cos I was like "that would make a cool song BUT don’t turn it into a song, because it’s not gonna be used for that, so it’ll be a waste it you know?"
WATCH - Lollipop Chainsaw Zed Theme by Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence:
AltSounds: Is it something you’d do again?
Jimmy Urine: Oh fuck yeh, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
AltSounds: On the gaming note, if you could be any character in any game who would it be and why?
Jimmy Urine: Ooooo that’s gooood…. really good. I think I would do Bowser from Super Mario Bros, just cos it’s kinda fun and everybody knows the character, it’s not too off the beaten path. The other one I would do is the kid from the Rockstar game Bully, cos that’s fun. It’s like going back to school. Bully is like Grand Theft Auto in a boarding school... it’s so much fun! I still play that game 6 or 7 years on. Actually, I still play the shit out of that game! There’s so many things you can do, like 25 missions and they’re all school related, so you can go to science class if you wanted, you can go beat up a kid, or you can try mooch out with some chicks. Either that or you can go off into the town and skip school…. It’s really good, they put a lot of detail into it. So I’d either do that one or if I had to go with a basic I’d do Bowser because he’s such a grouch, over the top character, he’s kinda like Oscar the grouch from Sesame Street but as a giant lizard.
AltSounds: What sort of other games do you play?
Jimmy Urine: Oh I play everything, it’s gotta be a solo game though. I’m not a very big multiplayer game guy, but once in a while I’ll find something I’ll play with a friend. They’re trying to make multiplayer really big, so they want people to be able to join in your game whenever they want. Like I was playing Borderlands and somebody pops up (say a friend - or usually people you don’t even fucking know). They’re on the same mission and they’re gonna jump into your game and I’m like "No they’re fucking not... like I’m in the middle of a fucking mission, I don’t want this guy to jump in I don’t fucking know." [laughs] I don’t even want my friends to jump in let alone some dude I don’t even fucking know.
So that was a weird thing, I had to turn off any online access to my gaming.
AltSounds: Moving back onto the topic of your tour, your live shows always seem to be quite a pretty hectic party, what’s the best thing about playing live?
Jimmy Urine: The best thing about playing live is that we are the show. I think with a lot of other bands, sometimes the band is boring and the show is just them standing there with some lighting and a backdrop, or it’s all LED's or something. Once in a while the band's got something going on, or it’s dramatic and they have sets or people come out in costumes. With us it’s like we normally turn the house lights on and we’re the show, you know? Like jumping in the audience and doing our thing, the death defying fun is the show.
The interesting part for me about Mindless Self Indulgence is, I’m watching the other end of the band and the band is watching me, and we’re watching the audience and the audience are watching us. It’s everybody sort of looking at each other while we all run around, whereas I think it’s very different for other bands.
AltSounds: Do you think the more energy and the more a band does makes for a better show?
Jimmy Urine: And the more that you see aswell, I think! If the lights are off and there’s one solo spotlight on me, you’re not gonna see if Lyn Z jumps off a fucking stack, or you’re not gonna see if Steve goes off backstage and brings a ladder out on stage and decides to hang himself, you’re not gonna see any of that shit. To us the show is also the venue, like when we go to a venue we’re like "let’s see what kinda stage we got, and I think I could make it back to that bar, I’m gonna visit that bar later, or oh there’s a column, I could climb that column so I’m gonna climb that column sometime tonight." So you go in and suss out the place as if you’re some weird kind of hit squad [laughs].
WATCH // "Evening Wear" LIVE @ Ogden Theatre in Denver, CO 3/26/12
AltSounds: What’s your most memorable live show?
Jimmy Urine: It’s funny and I say this answer a lot but it’s totally true, with Mindless Self Indulgence the most memorable live shows are the ones where nothing really happens [laughs]. When we go and do a show and nothing happens we’re like "wow that was bizarre, like the audience didn’t do anything." Cos usually audiences at this point know what our schtick is, and who we are and they're part of it. Going to see Mindless Self Indulgence has more in common with going to see the Rocky Horror Show than it does to going to see other bands. People come dressed up, people bring gifts or stuff they wanna throw on stage, they come with an agenda.
When you go to other shows you go to see the band and the band’s gonna entertain you and you’re gonna listen to their music. When you come to our show you’re coming to get involved, which is very different. So when you do play a show and nothing happens, nobody does anything and nobody’s dressed up, (which happens very rarely, but once in a while we have done shows like that) you’re like... "What the fuck was wrong with that audience? They so were bizarrely quiet, they didn’t do anything."
AltSounds: Do you find it hard to deal with crowds like that or do you just block it out?
Jimmy Urine: No, usually it’s just more work for us. If an audience is boring we’re gonna purposely fuck with them more BECAUSE they’re boring. Whereas there is synergy when you’re crazy and the audience is crazy. You’re both sort of working off each other. Even if you’re a boring band and you play a riff and the audience go "yaaay" you’re like "yeeeh I’ll play another riff." With us it’s a little more violent [laughs], and a little more obvious. But if there’s no one doing anything we’re gonna jump right into the fucking audience and kinda try to fuck with them even more.
AltSounds: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done on stage?
Jimmy Urine: Oh my god I don’t know, there’s so many! The one I can remember off the top of my head we were playing a place in Germany, I think it might have be Cologne or something, and there were fluorescent lights above the stage and a low ceiling. So as I was singing a song and jumping in the audience, Steve pulled one of the fluorescent lights out and I didn’t see him do it. Then I turned to him and I didn’t realise, he was looking at me smiling and he had this fluorescent light behind his back and he gripped it out and smashed it across my chest and it broke, but when it broke it basically turned into a giant knife and he totally cut my arm all the way open! It was just sort of like "oh well" [laughs]. We looked at it, and at each other and were like "ohhhhh man that was crazy!" We continued to play and there was a lot of blood because as I was jumping around the blood was still pumping.
AltSounds: Oh my god! So you carried on playing?
Jimmy Urine: It wasn’t that big a cut it turns out, but it seemed way bigger than it was. There was blood EVERYWHERE and we were just like "aaah man if you’d have been like 5 inches up and it hit me in the neck we’d probably be in the hospital right now." We just kept saying between songs "maaaan look how close you were to my fucking jugular, you were like inches away, it’s so crazy!"
So that was probably the craziest thing because he really surprised me and we were so right in the middle of the show that we really couldn’t do anything but laugh at the situation immediately. It’s not one of those things like... you maybe almost fell off a bridge drunk and 3 weeks later you’re like "man I actually could’ve died that’s hilarious" we had to instantaneously be like "man you almost died that’s hilarious" instead [laughs].
AltSounds: You’re playing in October, the month of Halloween, will there be any dressing up at the shows?
Jimmy Urine: I hope you all dress up at the show [laughs] I dunno what we’re gonna do. I’m not sure where the October 31st show is or if it’s a day off. I know we’re not in the UK, for all I know we could be on the ferry to France. Wherever we go there better be people dressed up as something.
AltSounds: On that note what’s the best and worst Halloween outfit you’ve ever worn?
Jimmy Urine: Oooo that’s good! I’ve had a lot of good ones. I’m not a big holiday person, I mean I’ll spend holidays with family and stuff but to me, holidays like Halloween you should be doing something fucked up! The problem is that everybody’s doing something fucked up because it’s Halloween, so you’re more likely to get nicked by the cops, whereas I like to do fucked up stuff on like February 23rd because nobody’s out [laughs]!
There’s never been a lot of Halloween’s where I haven’t dressed up and I haven’t gone out, but the last time I had an interesting costume was when me and my wife both dressed up as Charlie Chaplin with almost identical outfits. That was a good one because that looked really good. It’s always fun when you have a partner to do Halloween costumers with because you can come up with good pairing costumes.
AltSounds: The last big release in the UK was ‘IF’ but you previously re-released the 1999 ‘Tight’ as ‘Tighter’ what reasons did you have for re-releasing this?
Jimmy Urine: When it came out originally it was in such limited supply. We only made 10,000 of them and then we went on to do our major record and the rest of our records and their original printings sold out really quickly. Some were trading on eBay for so much money. Every time I saw it on eBay it was like 250 bucks, 500 bucks or 600 bucks and it would just go up and up. Plus we had all this stuff from eras sitting in boxes and on VHS, cassette tapes and pictures, and we really wanted to have some fun with it, so since we had this giant box of stuff from Tight it was easier to put it together ourselves as we didn’t have to worry about our record label being like "oh well we need a license for this or blah blah blah." We could put it out.
If any record needed a re-issue it was that record. I don’t think you need to reissue Frankenstein Girls Will See Strangely Sexy, they still make it and it is what it is. The more recent records, we knew what we were doing at that point. I don’t think those need to be re-hashed. It was really fun to put together, definitely a couple of months of "awww remember that" you know it’s so cool.
Mindless Self Indulgence - "Tighter" Trailer 1
AltSounds: How do you feel your music has changed and progressed over time?
Jimmy Urine: Funny this, people keep asking me this question and I think it’s really interesting. I think we have a very unique perspective because most bands change and progress and go along with the times, so they sound a certain way when they come out and times change so they adjust, or they adjust and maybe times change. With us when we originally started, the whole idea of the project was "we hate the way music sounds," what do we not wanna do and what would a band from the future sound like. Like a band from ten, twenty years from now. What would they sound like? What would they look like? What would they act like? When we did it that way we created our sound, and we made our look from pretty much minute one.
We have never really changed THAT much. Not as much as everybody else has changed [laughs], so we we're still doing music from the future in the late 90s. We were doing the same kinda crazy, hectic, mashed up, glitched up, electro sex and kinda created hair does and stuff like that, and now that’s the way music is! So it’s kinda interesting because the world caught up to us. We are almost in the year 2013 and you mother fuckers caught up to us! My band is like the movie Looper, it’s like we’re now in the future and that kinda stuff.
AltSounds: It’s good that there are bands like yourself who will do what you want, because that’s what you wanted to do, rather than doing something because someone else wants you to.
Jimmy Urine: Yeh that was another fun thing, we never ever did what the radio wanted us to do or the video the label wanted us to do, or what the public wanted us to do. We just did what we wanted to do, and with such an "I don't give a fuck" conviction. We’re not musicians... we hate musicians. We’re entertainers and (sort of) a bunch of art school fags who all got together to sit around and talk bullshit. And so to be able to have that sort of freedom to be like "I’m gonna write about this subject that no-one would write about, nobody writes about this shit, fuck it I’m gonna write it" or "let’s make the music go like this because nobody does that, let’s just do it." It was fun because every time we sort of burned it down and went crazy we would get more fans because people were like "you guys do your own thing and that’s cool and I like that" and I’m like "alright sure if you wanna join the party join the party" [laughs].
AltSounds: Do you feel it gives you more creative freedom because you’ve not got pressures of ‘we’ve got to please’ and ‘we’ve got to fit this’?
Jimmy Urine: Yeah I definitely have no pressure what so ever to please anybody. The only person I want to please is myself, and it actually kinda manifests the name. We came up with the name for fun and didn’t really think too much about it until we actually started becoming like "we never have to do anything for anybody other than ourselves." Mindless Self Indulgence is kinda like being a dick and being like "I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I want."
AltSounds: Can we be expecting some new material any time soon?
Jimmy Urine: Sure, I mean I’m sure I’ll get off my lazy ass soon and do something, and once I do I’m sure I’ll tell everyone about it cos I just love to boast [laughs]! So don’t you worry, as soon as I get my shit together I’ll let you all know. That’s the other thing. I definitely got into this business because I am the laziest person in the world. I don’t think I could get up for a real job even if you were paying me. I have never really had a good "real" job. I worked some really shitty jobs, but I worked them because I didn’t want a "real" job with responsibility. I’d much rather be some fucking guy digging a ditch than a dude with any responsibility, and to be able to sort of parlay that into Mindless Self Indulgence where I have zero responsibility except for myself is very fun.
WATCH // Mindless Self Indulgence - Bring The Pain live in NJ
AltSounds: As 2012 is nearing an end what do you feel is your greatest musical achievement so far?
Jimmy Urine: There’s a couple of things. Doing the video game was definitely a bucket list thing, everybody has their list of things like "I wanna do a video game or a character on a TV shows voice, I wanna do this I wanna do that." The video game like knocked out 3 things in one. Doing like soundtrack type stuff, doing a video game and voicing a video game character was like "ok I’ll do that again, but if I never do it again at least I did it and I did it big."
I think achievement wise, the achievement that I enjoy the most is that we sort of have this thing, that we did what we did and we did it at a certain level. We have friends who are way bigger than us and who got way more successful doing things and that’s good for them, I love them and I think they’re great. But it’s interesting that we sort of chugged along in our own little world. If you go to a Mindless Self Indulgence show you’re gonna see a Mindless Self Indulgence show, you’re not gonna see anyone else’s show or anything remotely close. We are able to sort of stay as this thing people wanna see every year. People go "oh yeh Mindless Self Indulgence, I’d go see them that’s a great show". And to sort of have that way past, I mean we’ve sort of left other bands, millions of bands we knew that have come and gone, and sounds that have arrived and left. We have been lucky enough to stand the test of time, which I really like.
I didn’t expect it to happen [laughs] and that’s something you can’t really appreciate until you’ve done 15 years, done 20 years, you can’t really look back until you’re in the future looking back going "oh shit I’ve been doing this sound since like 96, like that’s nuts." Playing the first couple of shows it was really like people from the future. It was like 2001, going back to cavemen era in space suits and playing for people and having them be like "what the fuck is this?" Now you play it people are like "ah this is cool you sound like a lot of sounds now" and it’s like "ok great…"
AltSounds: Any plans for next year?
Jimmy Urine: Next year’s plans are slowing coming in, we’re going to Australia to do Soundwave, that’s gonna be fun because Soundwave is a great tour and I love playing Australia as much as I love playing a lot of other places, but for a gig so far away it’s a very fun gig. It’s very unique because you've gotta fly everywhere in the country, you can go to the UK and you take a bus everywhere and then go across the channel, there you fly in and you fly to each city cos they’re so far away from each other. It’s a very unique experience. There’s some other things we’re working on, as soon as we know we’ll let you know.
AltSounds: In 3 words what does Mindless Self Indulgence represent?
Jimmy Urine: In three words… that’s another good question, you come up with these really hard questions. It’s too late for hard questions... man it’s 2 in the morning! In three words ermm… I’m such a talking mother fucker how can I not come up with three words…. erm…. Total Fucking Freedom!
Mindless Self Indulgence UK/EUROPE Tour:
AltSounds: First of all you're back on tour, how does that feel?
Jimmy Urine: It’s fun, it’s great! We did an American tour just recently this year and that was fantastic and now we’re back out and it’s like nothing ever changed. Now we’re coming over to your neck of the woods where we’re gonna eat all of your food.
AltSounds: [laughs] Do you feel you get different reactions from crowds depending on where you play?
Jimmy Urine: Definitely, I think there’s a huge difference between America and the UK. I think the main difference, and anyone will tell you is that in America there’s a little more violence and in the UK they sing more! Like in America they’ll sing the chorus, so you can put the mic up to the audience and they’ll be like "yeah yeah chorus" but in the UK it’s literally minute one, first fucking word and they know all the words and they sing it all really loud all the way through. It’s like I don’t have to do anything! It’s like why did I even show up?! I don’t even need to be there [laughs] I’ll just send the band... it’s crazy. It’s cool though, it’s definitely different. It’s like a big sing along.
WATCH // Mindless Self Indulgence - Never Wanted To Dance:
AltSounds: I guess it definitely makes the shows different. Is there much difference in mainland Europe?
Jimmy Urine: Yeah it changes from place to place, I mean the UK is the UK and even though you guys have all the different sections like "oh we’re the midlands, oh we’re from up north…" you still are all English, whereas if I go to France and then I go to Germany it’s two totally different cultures. The one thing the UK has that no one else has is they get our sense of humour - Mindless Self Indulgence’s especially, we’re cheeky mother fuckers and you guys pick up on that really well. Even in America I could say something and people are like "what, why did you say that?" and it’s like "oh man it’s a joke. come on mother fucker." With you guys, you just say one little funny thing and its like [in an accent that turns to something similar to Welsh] "aha he’s alright isn’t he, what a little cheeky bastard!"
AltSounds: That was a good accent! You sounded a bit Welsh!
Jimmy Urine: [laughs]
AltSounds: You recently did the music and played the voice of a character in the game ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’, how different was it writing music for a game rather than one of your own albums?
Jimmy Urine: Well I think it would’ve been a lot different if the game wasn’t so gonzo and over the top. I mean my friend, director James Gunn who directed Slither and Super and is now directing Guardians Of The Galaxy was brought in to write Lollipop Chainsaw, and then he brought in his friends to do some of the voices. So I started out doing one of the voices of the characters because he brought me in to do one of the punk rock zombies... and then I started doing the music, so the game was actually geared towards that, and the people and the producers of the game were fans of mine and Mindless Self Indulgence.
So it was a little easier, it wasn’t like I was doing Call Of Duty or anything where it’s a very theatrical score, they wanted me to be myself. The main difference is obviously, because there’s no vocals and there is some sort of guideline, you wanna pace it to the visual, what’s going on and to make that work. With Mindless Self Indulgence there’s zero rules, except just go off and do what the fuck I want, talk about what I want and write songs about what I want. If it sounds poppy one second and totally insane the next minute then that’s fine, you know that doesn’t matter. In this game there was no vocals to deal with and there were some perimeters, so I didn’t wanna go to off the beat... but it was fine.
If you listen to it, it still sounds like music that could’ve been a Mindless Self Indulgence song and, a lot of times I sort of had to hold back and not write melodies. That was the hardest thing actually - to not write vocals over the instrumentals cos I was like "that would make a cool song BUT don’t turn it into a song, because it’s not gonna be used for that, so it’ll be a waste it you know?"
WATCH - Lollipop Chainsaw Zed Theme by Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence:
AltSounds: Is it something you’d do again?
Jimmy Urine: Oh fuck yeh, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
AltSounds: On the gaming note, if you could be any character in any game who would it be and why?
Jimmy Urine: Ooooo that’s gooood…. really good. I think I would do Bowser from Super Mario Bros, just cos it’s kinda fun and everybody knows the character, it’s not too off the beaten path. The other one I would do is the kid from the Rockstar game Bully, cos that’s fun. It’s like going back to school. Bully is like Grand Theft Auto in a boarding school... it’s so much fun! I still play that game 6 or 7 years on. Actually, I still play the shit out of that game! There’s so many things you can do, like 25 missions and they’re all school related, so you can go to science class if you wanted, you can go beat up a kid, or you can try mooch out with some chicks. Either that or you can go off into the town and skip school…. It’s really good, they put a lot of detail into it. So I’d either do that one or if I had to go with a basic I’d do Bowser because he’s such a grouch, over the top character, he’s kinda like Oscar the grouch from Sesame Street but as a giant lizard.
AltSounds: What sort of other games do you play?
Jimmy Urine: Oh I play everything, it’s gotta be a solo game though. I’m not a very big multiplayer game guy, but once in a while I’ll find something I’ll play with a friend. They’re trying to make multiplayer really big, so they want people to be able to join in your game whenever they want. Like I was playing Borderlands and somebody pops up (say a friend - or usually people you don’t even fucking know). They’re on the same mission and they’re gonna jump into your game and I’m like "No they’re fucking not... like I’m in the middle of a fucking mission, I don’t want this guy to jump in I don’t fucking know." [laughs] I don’t even want my friends to jump in let alone some dude I don’t even fucking know.
So that was a weird thing, I had to turn off any online access to my gaming.
AltSounds: Moving back onto the topic of your tour, your live shows always seem to be quite a pretty hectic party, what’s the best thing about playing live?
Jimmy Urine: The best thing about playing live is that we are the show. I think with a lot of other bands, sometimes the band is boring and the show is just them standing there with some lighting and a backdrop, or it’s all LED's or something. Once in a while the band's got something going on, or it’s dramatic and they have sets or people come out in costumes. With us it’s like we normally turn the house lights on and we’re the show, you know? Like jumping in the audience and doing our thing, the death defying fun is the show.
The interesting part for me about Mindless Self Indulgence is, I’m watching the other end of the band and the band is watching me, and we’re watching the audience and the audience are watching us. It’s everybody sort of looking at each other while we all run around, whereas I think it’s very different for other bands.
AltSounds: Do you think the more energy and the more a band does makes for a better show?
Jimmy Urine: And the more that you see aswell, I think! If the lights are off and there’s one solo spotlight on me, you’re not gonna see if Lyn Z jumps off a fucking stack, or you’re not gonna see if Steve goes off backstage and brings a ladder out on stage and decides to hang himself, you’re not gonna see any of that shit. To us the show is also the venue, like when we go to a venue we’re like "let’s see what kinda stage we got, and I think I could make it back to that bar, I’m gonna visit that bar later, or oh there’s a column, I could climb that column so I’m gonna climb that column sometime tonight." So you go in and suss out the place as if you’re some weird kind of hit squad [laughs].
WATCH // "Evening Wear" LIVE @ Ogden Theatre in Denver, CO 3/26/12
AltSounds: What’s your most memorable live show?
Jimmy Urine: It’s funny and I say this answer a lot but it’s totally true, with Mindless Self Indulgence the most memorable live shows are the ones where nothing really happens [laughs]. When we go and do a show and nothing happens we’re like "wow that was bizarre, like the audience didn’t do anything." Cos usually audiences at this point know what our schtick is, and who we are and they're part of it. Going to see Mindless Self Indulgence has more in common with going to see the Rocky Horror Show than it does to going to see other bands. People come dressed up, people bring gifts or stuff they wanna throw on stage, they come with an agenda.
When you go to other shows you go to see the band and the band’s gonna entertain you and you’re gonna listen to their music. When you come to our show you’re coming to get involved, which is very different. So when you do play a show and nothing happens, nobody does anything and nobody’s dressed up, (which happens very rarely, but once in a while we have done shows like that) you’re like... "What the fuck was wrong with that audience? They so were bizarrely quiet, they didn’t do anything."
AltSounds: Do you find it hard to deal with crowds like that or do you just block it out?
Jimmy Urine: No, usually it’s just more work for us. If an audience is boring we’re gonna purposely fuck with them more BECAUSE they’re boring. Whereas there is synergy when you’re crazy and the audience is crazy. You’re both sort of working off each other. Even if you’re a boring band and you play a riff and the audience go "yaaay" you’re like "yeeeh I’ll play another riff." With us it’s a little more violent [laughs], and a little more obvious. But if there’s no one doing anything we’re gonna jump right into the fucking audience and kinda try to fuck with them even more.
AltSounds: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done on stage?
Jimmy Urine: Oh my god I don’t know, there’s so many! The one I can remember off the top of my head we were playing a place in Germany, I think it might have be Cologne or something, and there were fluorescent lights above the stage and a low ceiling. So as I was singing a song and jumping in the audience, Steve pulled one of the fluorescent lights out and I didn’t see him do it. Then I turned to him and I didn’t realise, he was looking at me smiling and he had this fluorescent light behind his back and he gripped it out and smashed it across my chest and it broke, but when it broke it basically turned into a giant knife and he totally cut my arm all the way open! It was just sort of like "oh well" [laughs]. We looked at it, and at each other and were like "ohhhhh man that was crazy!" We continued to play and there was a lot of blood because as I was jumping around the blood was still pumping.
AltSounds: Oh my god! So you carried on playing?
Jimmy Urine: It wasn’t that big a cut it turns out, but it seemed way bigger than it was. There was blood EVERYWHERE and we were just like "aaah man if you’d have been like 5 inches up and it hit me in the neck we’d probably be in the hospital right now." We just kept saying between songs "maaaan look how close you were to my fucking jugular, you were like inches away, it’s so crazy!"
So that was probably the craziest thing because he really surprised me and we were so right in the middle of the show that we really couldn’t do anything but laugh at the situation immediately. It’s not one of those things like... you maybe almost fell off a bridge drunk and 3 weeks later you’re like "man I actually could’ve died that’s hilarious" we had to instantaneously be like "man you almost died that’s hilarious" instead [laughs].
AltSounds: You’re playing in October, the month of Halloween, will there be any dressing up at the shows?
Jimmy Urine: I hope you all dress up at the show [laughs] I dunno what we’re gonna do. I’m not sure where the October 31st show is or if it’s a day off. I know we’re not in the UK, for all I know we could be on the ferry to France. Wherever we go there better be people dressed up as something.
AltSounds: On that note what’s the best and worst Halloween outfit you’ve ever worn?
Jimmy Urine: Oooo that’s good! I’ve had a lot of good ones. I’m not a big holiday person, I mean I’ll spend holidays with family and stuff but to me, holidays like Halloween you should be doing something fucked up! The problem is that everybody’s doing something fucked up because it’s Halloween, so you’re more likely to get nicked by the cops, whereas I like to do fucked up stuff on like February 23rd because nobody’s out [laughs]!
There’s never been a lot of Halloween’s where I haven’t dressed up and I haven’t gone out, but the last time I had an interesting costume was when me and my wife both dressed up as Charlie Chaplin with almost identical outfits. That was a good one because that looked really good. It’s always fun when you have a partner to do Halloween costumers with because you can come up with good pairing costumes.
AltSounds: The last big release in the UK was ‘IF’ but you previously re-released the 1999 ‘Tight’ as ‘Tighter’ what reasons did you have for re-releasing this?
Jimmy Urine: When it came out originally it was in such limited supply. We only made 10,000 of them and then we went on to do our major record and the rest of our records and their original printings sold out really quickly. Some were trading on eBay for so much money. Every time I saw it on eBay it was like 250 bucks, 500 bucks or 600 bucks and it would just go up and up. Plus we had all this stuff from eras sitting in boxes and on VHS, cassette tapes and pictures, and we really wanted to have some fun with it, so since we had this giant box of stuff from Tight it was easier to put it together ourselves as we didn’t have to worry about our record label being like "oh well we need a license for this or blah blah blah." We could put it out.
If any record needed a re-issue it was that record. I don’t think you need to reissue Frankenstein Girls Will See Strangely Sexy, they still make it and it is what it is. The more recent records, we knew what we were doing at that point. I don’t think those need to be re-hashed. It was really fun to put together, definitely a couple of months of "awww remember that" you know it’s so cool.
Mindless Self Indulgence - "Tighter" Trailer 1
AltSounds: How do you feel your music has changed and progressed over time?
Jimmy Urine: Funny this, people keep asking me this question and I think it’s really interesting. I think we have a very unique perspective because most bands change and progress and go along with the times, so they sound a certain way when they come out and times change so they adjust, or they adjust and maybe times change. With us when we originally started, the whole idea of the project was "we hate the way music sounds," what do we not wanna do and what would a band from the future sound like. Like a band from ten, twenty years from now. What would they sound like? What would they look like? What would they act like? When we did it that way we created our sound, and we made our look from pretty much minute one.
We have never really changed THAT much. Not as much as everybody else has changed [laughs], so we we're still doing music from the future in the late 90s. We were doing the same kinda crazy, hectic, mashed up, glitched up, electro sex and kinda created hair does and stuff like that, and now that’s the way music is! So it’s kinda interesting because the world caught up to us. We are almost in the year 2013 and you mother fuckers caught up to us! My band is like the movie Looper, it’s like we’re now in the future and that kinda stuff.
AltSounds: It’s good that there are bands like yourself who will do what you want, because that’s what you wanted to do, rather than doing something because someone else wants you to.
Jimmy Urine: Yeh that was another fun thing, we never ever did what the radio wanted us to do or the video the label wanted us to do, or what the public wanted us to do. We just did what we wanted to do, and with such an "I don't give a fuck" conviction. We’re not musicians... we hate musicians. We’re entertainers and (sort of) a bunch of art school fags who all got together to sit around and talk bullshit. And so to be able to have that sort of freedom to be like "I’m gonna write about this subject that no-one would write about, nobody writes about this shit, fuck it I’m gonna write it" or "let’s make the music go like this because nobody does that, let’s just do it." It was fun because every time we sort of burned it down and went crazy we would get more fans because people were like "you guys do your own thing and that’s cool and I like that" and I’m like "alright sure if you wanna join the party join the party" [laughs].
AltSounds: Do you feel it gives you more creative freedom because you’ve not got pressures of ‘we’ve got to please’ and ‘we’ve got to fit this’?
Jimmy Urine: Yeah I definitely have no pressure what so ever to please anybody. The only person I want to please is myself, and it actually kinda manifests the name. We came up with the name for fun and didn’t really think too much about it until we actually started becoming like "we never have to do anything for anybody other than ourselves." Mindless Self Indulgence is kinda like being a dick and being like "I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I want."
AltSounds: Can we be expecting some new material any time soon?
Jimmy Urine: Sure, I mean I’m sure I’ll get off my lazy ass soon and do something, and once I do I’m sure I’ll tell everyone about it cos I just love to boast [laughs]! So don’t you worry, as soon as I get my shit together I’ll let you all know. That’s the other thing. I definitely got into this business because I am the laziest person in the world. I don’t think I could get up for a real job even if you were paying me. I have never really had a good "real" job. I worked some really shitty jobs, but I worked them because I didn’t want a "real" job with responsibility. I’d much rather be some fucking guy digging a ditch than a dude with any responsibility, and to be able to sort of parlay that into Mindless Self Indulgence where I have zero responsibility except for myself is very fun.
WATCH // Mindless Self Indulgence - Bring The Pain live in NJ
AltSounds: As 2012 is nearing an end what do you feel is your greatest musical achievement so far?
Jimmy Urine: There’s a couple of things. Doing the video game was definitely a bucket list thing, everybody has their list of things like "I wanna do a video game or a character on a TV shows voice, I wanna do this I wanna do that." The video game like knocked out 3 things in one. Doing like soundtrack type stuff, doing a video game and voicing a video game character was like "ok I’ll do that again, but if I never do it again at least I did it and I did it big."
I think achievement wise, the achievement that I enjoy the most is that we sort of have this thing, that we did what we did and we did it at a certain level. We have friends who are way bigger than us and who got way more successful doing things and that’s good for them, I love them and I think they’re great. But it’s interesting that we sort of chugged along in our own little world. If you go to a Mindless Self Indulgence show you’re gonna see a Mindless Self Indulgence show, you’re not gonna see anyone else’s show or anything remotely close. We are able to sort of stay as this thing people wanna see every year. People go "oh yeh Mindless Self Indulgence, I’d go see them that’s a great show". And to sort of have that way past, I mean we’ve sort of left other bands, millions of bands we knew that have come and gone, and sounds that have arrived and left. We have been lucky enough to stand the test of time, which I really like.
I didn’t expect it to happen [laughs] and that’s something you can’t really appreciate until you’ve done 15 years, done 20 years, you can’t really look back until you’re in the future looking back going "oh shit I’ve been doing this sound since like 96, like that’s nuts." Playing the first couple of shows it was really like people from the future. It was like 2001, going back to cavemen era in space suits and playing for people and having them be like "what the fuck is this?" Now you play it people are like "ah this is cool you sound like a lot of sounds now" and it’s like "ok great…"
AltSounds: Any plans for next year?
Jimmy Urine: Next year’s plans are slowing coming in, we’re going to Australia to do Soundwave, that’s gonna be fun because Soundwave is a great tour and I love playing Australia as much as I love playing a lot of other places, but for a gig so far away it’s a very fun gig. It’s very unique because you've gotta fly everywhere in the country, you can go to the UK and you take a bus everywhere and then go across the channel, there you fly in and you fly to each city cos they’re so far away from each other. It’s a very unique experience. There’s some other things we’re working on, as soon as we know we’ll let you know.
AltSounds: In 3 words what does Mindless Self Indulgence represent?
Jimmy Urine: In three words… that’s another good question, you come up with these really hard questions. It’s too late for hard questions... man it’s 2 in the morning! In three words ermm… I’m such a talking mother fucker how can I not come up with three words…. erm…. Total Fucking Freedom!
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