KING CRIMSON
Mr. Evan Michalski (a.k.a. "Easy", a.k.a. "Nave", a.k.a. "White Heat").
Evan Michael Michalski was born March 4, 1983, making him 24 years old. I met Mr. Michalski as an 18 year-old, within days of arriving in Davis, CA for college. It was late September, 2001, a darker time when there was no direction to look but up, up, up. That feeling of inevitably—that things have to get better—remains Mr. Michalski’s quintessential outlook. He’s a permanently positive force. Seeing him otherwise would be like seeing a bunch of canaries flying the opposite direction through this mine shaft we call “life.” We’d all be screwed.
But we aren’t screwed! I’m not big on exclamation points, but when Mr. Michalski becomes the artist-formerly-known-as Mr. Michalski, this is the symbol most likely to replace his name. That long-ago September begat many better things (though we all have a long way to go). On a personal level, the first great thing added to my life was my band, now a permanent fixture and in it’s sixth year of existence. Less than one month after meeting in a cafeteria, Mr. Michalski and I were exchanging musical ideas and playing each other songs; our first official practice was in December, 2001; our first show 11 months later in November, 2002. The first rock show we saw together was Hella in a light-less Davis basement with 15 other people. Hella played three songs before drummer Zach Hill kicked through the head of his bass drum, which Mr. Michalski and I still have to this day. Autographed!
I can’t think of anyone I’ve listened to more music with, seen more bands with, or discussed more songs with. He is, in this way, the cause and effect of this blog. For us, music is a mutual root. I think we both remain amazed by the sort of foundation music can be. It was nice to sit down for a while last weekend in one of the many places we've lived (in this case, our rehearsal studio) and talk about one of Mr. Michalski's favorite artists, the progressive rock gods King Crimson.
BRILLIANTMP3S: How would you describe the band King Crimson to someone who’s never heard the band King Crimson?
EVAN MICHALSKI: They’re crazy. I guess the thing that initially appealed to me—and there was this long drawn out process where I didn’t really pay attention to them—[was when] I was listening in the car one day and they’re a band that has a really unique take on “the one.” All they’re songs sound like the eight or nine dudes in the band are just completely in their own worlds and it just all lines up some how. It’s pretty unique. It’s just on the verge of anarchy, but a very precise anarchy.
BRLMP3S: That begins to answer my next question. Semi-recently you became a Crimson Soldier, which is a phrase I made up earlier today to describe people that really like King Crimson. Was there some kind of tipping point that made you realize that this was the band for you?
EM: It’s one of those things like the Harry Potter series that was always around and I was real resistant to it. Eventually a combination of things just broke me down. I can’t really describe it. One of my old coworkers had a King Crimson tattoo. He got the cover of [the album] Discipline right on the underside of his wrist.
BRLMP3S: The guy that sold you the scooter?
EM: No. This was the guy I worked with at Guitar Showcase. He got a King Crimson tattoo. We were hanging out with Marfred [Rodriguez], Omar Rodriguez’s brother, and he couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved King Crimson. And when I first got into Hella they were described as a sped up King Crimson. I always heard the name. Noah had an inside joke that involved the word “crimson.” It was constantly around me but it wasn’t until one of those days when I was playing my iPod on random where I just had to go “what the fuck is this” and then discover what I was missing.
BRLMP3S: So its always been in the background?
EM: Exactly.
BRLMP3S: Where do you recommend people start with King Crimson beyond these songs? Which album did you get first?
EM: That’s actually another interesting thing. Another thing I’ve started doing recently is starting this whole vinyl collection, which I really like because it’s allowed me to discover all these classic rock bands for real cheap. They’re hard to pick off file sharing. Also having no real previous history with any of these bands has allowed me to backwards with a lot of these bands. So actually the first album I got into was In The Wake Of Poseidon, which is their second album that wasn’t exactly hated by their fans, but they’re like “oh, it’s just exactly like their first album.” So it’s kind of written off among the true King Crimson fans.
BRLMP3S: The Crimson Soldiers?
EM: The Crimson Soldiers. So I found that first and then went this backwards way about it. It’s a neat way of discovering the band on your own.
BRLMP3S: Is that a good album to buy though?
EM: Oh yeah. For sure. It rules.
BRLMP3S: Do you think this type of music exists today?
EM: There are elements of it. A band like Mars Volta is obviously real into it. A band like Hella was obviously influenced at some point. They’re kind of one of those bands like the Pixies, when the first time I heard them I could kind of hear all these other bands in it, not in the most direct ways, but you’re like, oh wow this has just existed and people have drawn from this.
There’s a song from the King Crimson album Beat that is literally almost note for note the beginning of a Tera Melos song.
BRLMP3S: : No wonder you like them.
EM: No wonder.
BRLMP3S: Did you read that Robert Fripp has his own tuning method called the New Standard Tuning?
EM: No what is it?
BRLMP3S: I can't remember. You’ll have to Wiki it.
EM: The New Standard Tuning. I like that.
BRLMP3S: He was in a sauna in 1983 and he said it floated past him.
EM: [laughs]
BRLMP3S: Then he started playing everything with his New Standard Tuning in 1984. He started a school of guitar around it.
EM: That’s so funny. The more I discover about this band there’s so much more crap like that that’s just completely absurd. New Standard Tuning. That’s good. I also like how Fripp is the only consistent member through every album, but doesn’t call himself the leader. He just calls King Crimson a way of doing things. Which is so true, you know?
BRLMP3S: Any plans to learn the Chapman Stick?
EM: It’s definitely something if I have like $8,000 sitting around that I don’t know what to do with a part of that will go to a Chapman Stick. They were also really into WAR guitars, which I guess is like a precursor to the Chapman Stick. It was like an eight-string kinda thing. I’m pretty sure Carson [McWhirtner] has one.
One time King Crimson bassist Tony Levin performing the King Crimson song "Elephant Talk" on the Chapman Stick.
BRLMP3S: From Ent. What other music has been impressing you recently.
EM: Outside of the Crimson? I’ve actually been listening to this one Robbie Williams CD that I picked up in a used bin. I don’t even really like the album except this one song that I really like. So I’ve been alternating that and the Audrye Sessions CD as the two CDs in my car that I’ll just switch off.
BRLMP3S: In your mind, what makes a good song?
EM: There’s not like a standard thing, but going back to King Crimson I think what makes their songs good and what makes me actually able to listen to a seven minute song is that it’s constantly shifting. There’s this really interesting play around with all the instruments. It’s kind of like Nightfist. No instrument is really the lead. This section of the song the guitar is really prominent, the next section the saxophone is really prominent, the next section the drums are really prominent. Which is another thing: The drummer on the first two albums, this guy Michael Giles, is just fucking out of his mind. He sounds kind of like a mix of Justin Goings meets Vince from Tera Melos. It’s just completely bananas. Makes no sense.
BRLMP3S: How old were you when you first started playing bass?
EM: I started playing between sixth and seventh grade. I started playing so I could get into the concert band in junior high that all my friends were in.
BRLMP3S: Did you get in?
EM: Yeah. The B Band. Then I was in Jazz Band and the A band in eighth grade.
BRLMP3S: At what point in that process did music start to seem really important to you?
EM: Long before that actually. I had always conceptually wanted to play the guitar. I took lessons for like a month then gave up. My friend Mike Fjerstad who lived down the street and we’d been pretty solid friends since the third grade, we started hanging out a lot. He came from a really musical family. His dad was a trumpet player. His mom played violin and piano. She was a music teacher. He was just around music. Ever since he was born he had a lot of instruments sitting around his house. He was more accomplished at guitar, but I was learning and got re-interested. We must have maybe a hundred tapes that we recorded on a boom box of us writing songs on the spot and improvising and honestly thinking they were really good. It all started there and I was just playing guitar. I switched to bass and I’ve been picking up instruments ever since.
BRLMP3S: Did you play sports?
EM: Yeah until about junior high. I played soccer, basketball, swimming.
BRLMP3S: You came back around to swimming in a major way.
EM: Yeah.
BRLMP3S: What was the first album that you bought?
EM: One of the first musical things I bought was a tape single of Aerosmith’s “Living on the Edge.” That was maybe fifth or sixth grade. I was really into that. The first real vivid memory of a band I ended up enjoying was Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, and Green Day. And Nirvana. Those were all really big at the same time. I remember hearing Weezer at Mike’s sixth grade birthday party on the radio and just being like, "whoa."
BRLMP3S: I didn’t start buying tapes until later on. I bought Weezer's Blue Album and Smash.
EM: Oh yeah. Smash was huge. Jon Roberts made me this mixtape that had Primus' Pork Soda on one side and Offspring's Smash on the other side. We just loved that, what was that song? “You stupid dumbshit godamn mother fucker.” I don’t remember what that song is called. We were screwing around one day and our sixth grade teacher confiscated that and listened to it. That song was cued up and got really mad but didn’t tell our parents. That was cool.
BRLMP3S: Would your parents have cared?
EM: Probably. Me and all my friends were definitely supporters of buying an album and putting the cd booklet facing away so the parental advisory wasn’t showing. So we could buy Adam Sandler albums and our parents wouldn’t know what we were listing to.
BRLMP3S: What was the first concert you went to?
EM: I saw two right around each other and i forget which one was first. I saw Skankin' Pickle and Janitors Against Apartheid at The Edge, which was this club in Los Altos. It was a real unusual place. It was packed. There were like 300 people there. This was when ska was really big and me and all my friends were into it. My mom took us. It was just a bunch of 16 year-old kids smoking cigarettes and we were like 13 or 14. I was completely embarrassed but it was pretty cool that she stuck around until one in the morning. Literally that same week my old baby sitter and her friend to the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in Golden Gate Park. Rage Against The Machine and Dave Navarro [Red Hot] Chili Peppers were the headliners.
Rage Against The Machine perform "Bulls On Parade" at Tibetan Freedom '96.
BRLMP3S: That must have been amazing.
EM: It was really cool. It was nuts.
BRLMP3S: I remember my Hebrew school teacher came back from Tibetan Freedom with a broken arm.
EM: My old nanny was definitely going into the mosh pit and setting a horrible example. Funny story about the TFC. We had a series of nanny’s growing up that usually lived at the house part time or were community college students just to watch after us during the afternoon stuff. They were all really cool, real big characters. One of them was in that movie Killer Clowns From Outerspace. But Kayleen [who took Mr. Michalski to Tibetan Freedom] came over from Utah through this Mormon nanny service that placed Mormon kids in houses. My parents were like Mormons, whatever, sounds safe. So they meet Kayleen, but her boyfriend at the time was in jail and I’m pretty sure she had a tattoo. Totally not what you’d expect based on the service. But my parents were down so they rolled with it. Years later I get an email from her. She’s getting married. She got my email so we're sending emails. I linked her to the band and she totally takes credit for harboring my alt-rock musical tastes by letting us watch MTV when she wasn’t supposed to.
BRLMP3S: What have been some of your favorite shows we’ve played?
EM: Any show in Santa Barbara. Any show in Redding. The ambiance of the towns, the whole experience getting there. Especially Santa Barbara. It’s just such a cool place anyway. It’s one of those places where I got into the school there and I almost went there, but didn’t. The best thing about touring anyway is that you meet all these people where if you lived there you’d be hanging out with them. In Santa Barbara, playing shows there was a lot like, oh, if I'd gone to this school this is what I’d be doing and these are the people I’d be hanging out with and the bands I’d be playing with. Santa Barbara is really unique. Just being able to be there and be a part of it and know a bunch of people is fun. There are a lot of places like that. Omaha has been historically great. On the Compassion tour just playing at the shitty bar in New York was really great, where we played at one in the morning and they kept asking us to turn down.
BRLMP3S: Any plans on bringing the dress back to the live show?
EM: Not for BRL, but anything’s possible for Compassion In Action. Obviously it’s only a matter of time and available income before we start directly copying the Flaming Lips. You know how on the DVD the Flaming Lips are directly copying the Butthole Surfers? We’ll just be the band that’s just directly copying the Flaming Lips. You’ll be going over the audience in the bubble.
Flaming Lips do the bubble thing at Coachella in '04.
BRLMP3S: We should up the ante. We should do a three-prong bubble where we’re all over the audience.
EM: That would be pretty cool.
BRLMP3S: Alright. One more question. What was your first impression of me?
EM: [Laughs] So freshman year, week one, maybe like the third day we’re in college. I was living in a dorm and a bunch of people I knew from high school were close by. My girlfriend at the time was across the street. The whole vibe of the first month of freshman year, at least for me was like, you could just talk to anyone and go into anyone’s room. No one knew what the hell they were doing and these weird friend groups formed. So were at the dining commons and I see you and Jordan [Smart] who we ended up living with later on just sitting at this table. I noticed Jordan because he seemed more like the band type. I sit down and introduce myself and start this really obnoxious conversation about music. At the time I was listening to a lot of hip-hop music because my friends Tom [Bishop] and Anthony [Rowe] in high school were hip hop guys and I spent some time recording them. I was listening to stuff they did. I was talking about how into the Pharcyde I was. They were just looking at me like, yeah awesome. Jordan was more of the talker and you weren’t really saying anything. At some point I mentioned Mr. Bungle and you suddenly started talking, where, like, you hadn’t been there for the last 20 minutes. You were like: I just saw Fantomas on New Year's. This sparked this whole direct conversation that excludes the four other people sitting at the table. Then at the very end of the conversation my girlfriend whispers, ask him if he plays an instrument. Or maybe you asked me. I was like, I play bass. You were like, I play guitar. Oh, sweet. You were like, you should come by my dorm room, it’s this number. A couple days later I called over and was like, I think I’m going to come over and do that. Your dorm was much more frat-guy than mine, because we both lived in six-person suites. My roommates all played Counterstrike all day and it was like a bunch of weird stuff that I put up. But your apartment has a montage of all these cutouts from FHM that his room mates had put up. That was pretty funny. We were hanging out in your room and you played me Thrice, which, at the time, was a real obscure band and you had seen them at Gilman or something and you were talking about how you loved how they combined metal and punk and all these other things and you had this theory about punk music being the intersection of everything. We just talked about music. You had a bunch of Red Meat cartoons up on your closet and we were talking about that. I think you played me that Faraquet song, too, "Cut Self Not". That was like: “Whoa.” You were real serious about music, but it was hard to tell what vibe you had because you never really smiled, you never really gave any indication that you were not just extremely miserable. It was kind of like that for maybe like a month or two. But I just kept inviting myself over and then you’d come over to my dorm room. We’d play music and that was really clicking. You had a couple song ideas that were hold overs from high school that we were still jamming to and I had this recorder and we were laying stuff down just the two of us over a drum machine, which I’m pretty sure Joe Conte must still have. We were like, yeah, fuck it let’s start a band. We put stuff on mp3.com, we named the band before we had a drummer. Then I knew Jon [Roberts] from high school and he became involved too and we had our first practice two months later. But literally until I met George [Zhu], which was maybe like a month into it, it was a real unclear vibe. I was just like, I’m going to keep rolling with it if he hates me then eventually he'll say he’s busy or stop answering his phone. Then I met George, who was really funny. I remember one of the first conversations I had with George was how he wanted to make a movie where Steve Buscemi played a cowboy Jesus or something. He gave a good context and you were looser and more relaxed around him. I remember the three of us started hanging out. Eventually he gave you an afro pick for your birthday.
BRLMP3S: I can’t believe I don’t have that anymore.
EM: That’s your bad, dude. It kept going up from there. It was this whole music listening experience. We kind of appreciated three different kinds of music. I guess the basis of our bond was melding that all together. It came together. It was really weird at first, but then the music brought it together.
BRLMP3S: It’s become a little less weird, right?
EM: [Laughs] I guess.
Performing the song "Lark's Tongues In Aspic Part 1" in Belgium in 1972. You're not ready for this drummer.
BRILLIANT MP3'S OF KING CRIMSON
(Click to download for free!)
KING CRIMSON on WIKIPEDIA.
KING CRIMSON on MYSPACE.
KING CRIMSON on LAST.FM.
KING CRIMSON on YOUTUBE.
KING CRIMSON on AMAZON.
But we aren’t screwed! I’m not big on exclamation points, but when Mr. Michalski becomes the artist-formerly-known-as Mr. Michalski, this is the symbol most likely to replace his name. That long-ago September begat many better things (though we all have a long way to go). On a personal level, the first great thing added to my life was my band, now a permanent fixture and in it’s sixth year of existence. Less than one month after meeting in a cafeteria, Mr. Michalski and I were exchanging musical ideas and playing each other songs; our first official practice was in December, 2001; our first show 11 months later in November, 2002. The first rock show we saw together was Hella in a light-less Davis basement with 15 other people. Hella played three songs before drummer Zach Hill kicked through the head of his bass drum, which Mr. Michalski and I still have to this day. Autographed!
I can’t think of anyone I’ve listened to more music with, seen more bands with, or discussed more songs with. He is, in this way, the cause and effect of this blog. For us, music is a mutual root. I think we both remain amazed by the sort of foundation music can be. It was nice to sit down for a while last weekend in one of the many places we've lived (in this case, our rehearsal studio) and talk about one of Mr. Michalski's favorite artists, the progressive rock gods King Crimson.
BRILLIANTMP3S: How would you describe the band King Crimson to someone who’s never heard the band King Crimson?
EVAN MICHALSKI: They’re crazy. I guess the thing that initially appealed to me—and there was this long drawn out process where I didn’t really pay attention to them—[was when] I was listening in the car one day and they’re a band that has a really unique take on “the one.” All they’re songs sound like the eight or nine dudes in the band are just completely in their own worlds and it just all lines up some how. It’s pretty unique. It’s just on the verge of anarchy, but a very precise anarchy.
BRLMP3S: That begins to answer my next question. Semi-recently you became a Crimson Soldier, which is a phrase I made up earlier today to describe people that really like King Crimson. Was there some kind of tipping point that made you realize that this was the band for you?
EM: It’s one of those things like the Harry Potter series that was always around and I was real resistant to it. Eventually a combination of things just broke me down. I can’t really describe it. One of my old coworkers had a King Crimson tattoo. He got the cover of [the album] Discipline right on the underside of his wrist.
BRLMP3S: The guy that sold you the scooter?
EM: No. This was the guy I worked with at Guitar Showcase. He got a King Crimson tattoo. We were hanging out with Marfred [Rodriguez], Omar Rodriguez’s brother, and he couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved King Crimson. And when I first got into Hella they were described as a sped up King Crimson. I always heard the name. Noah had an inside joke that involved the word “crimson.” It was constantly around me but it wasn’t until one of those days when I was playing my iPod on random where I just had to go “what the fuck is this” and then discover what I was missing.
BRLMP3S: So its always been in the background?
EM: Exactly.
BRLMP3S: Where do you recommend people start with King Crimson beyond these songs? Which album did you get first?
EM: That’s actually another interesting thing. Another thing I’ve started doing recently is starting this whole vinyl collection, which I really like because it’s allowed me to discover all these classic rock bands for real cheap. They’re hard to pick off file sharing. Also having no real previous history with any of these bands has allowed me to backwards with a lot of these bands. So actually the first album I got into was In The Wake Of Poseidon, which is their second album that wasn’t exactly hated by their fans, but they’re like “oh, it’s just exactly like their first album.” So it’s kind of written off among the true King Crimson fans.
BRLMP3S: The Crimson Soldiers?
EM: The Crimson Soldiers. So I found that first and then went this backwards way about it. It’s a neat way of discovering the band on your own.
BRLMP3S: Is that a good album to buy though?
EM: Oh yeah. For sure. It rules.
BRLMP3S: Do you think this type of music exists today?
EM: There are elements of it. A band like Mars Volta is obviously real into it. A band like Hella was obviously influenced at some point. They’re kind of one of those bands like the Pixies, when the first time I heard them I could kind of hear all these other bands in it, not in the most direct ways, but you’re like, oh wow this has just existed and people have drawn from this.
There’s a song from the King Crimson album Beat that is literally almost note for note the beginning of a Tera Melos song.
BRLMP3S: : No wonder you like them.
EM: No wonder.
BRLMP3S: Did you read that Robert Fripp has his own tuning method called the New Standard Tuning?
EM: No what is it?
BRLMP3S: I can't remember. You’ll have to Wiki it.
EM: The New Standard Tuning. I like that.
BRLMP3S: He was in a sauna in 1983 and he said it floated past him.
EM: [laughs]
BRLMP3S: Then he started playing everything with his New Standard Tuning in 1984. He started a school of guitar around it.
EM: That’s so funny. The more I discover about this band there’s so much more crap like that that’s just completely absurd. New Standard Tuning. That’s good. I also like how Fripp is the only consistent member through every album, but doesn’t call himself the leader. He just calls King Crimson a way of doing things. Which is so true, you know?
BRLMP3S: Any plans to learn the Chapman Stick?
EM: It’s definitely something if I have like $8,000 sitting around that I don’t know what to do with a part of that will go to a Chapman Stick. They were also really into WAR guitars, which I guess is like a precursor to the Chapman Stick. It was like an eight-string kinda thing. I’m pretty sure Carson [McWhirtner] has one.
One time King Crimson bassist Tony Levin performing the King Crimson song "Elephant Talk" on the Chapman Stick.
BRLMP3S: From Ent. What other music has been impressing you recently.
EM: Outside of the Crimson? I’ve actually been listening to this one Robbie Williams CD that I picked up in a used bin. I don’t even really like the album except this one song that I really like. So I’ve been alternating that and the Audrye Sessions CD as the two CDs in my car that I’ll just switch off.
BRLMP3S: In your mind, what makes a good song?
EM: There’s not like a standard thing, but going back to King Crimson I think what makes their songs good and what makes me actually able to listen to a seven minute song is that it’s constantly shifting. There’s this really interesting play around with all the instruments. It’s kind of like Nightfist. No instrument is really the lead. This section of the song the guitar is really prominent, the next section the saxophone is really prominent, the next section the drums are really prominent. Which is another thing: The drummer on the first two albums, this guy Michael Giles, is just fucking out of his mind. He sounds kind of like a mix of Justin Goings meets Vince from Tera Melos. It’s just completely bananas. Makes no sense.
BRLMP3S: How old were you when you first started playing bass?
EM: I started playing between sixth and seventh grade. I started playing so I could get into the concert band in junior high that all my friends were in.
BRLMP3S: Did you get in?
EM: Yeah. The B Band. Then I was in Jazz Band and the A band in eighth grade.
BRLMP3S: At what point in that process did music start to seem really important to you?
EM: Long before that actually. I had always conceptually wanted to play the guitar. I took lessons for like a month then gave up. My friend Mike Fjerstad who lived down the street and we’d been pretty solid friends since the third grade, we started hanging out a lot. He came from a really musical family. His dad was a trumpet player. His mom played violin and piano. She was a music teacher. He was just around music. Ever since he was born he had a lot of instruments sitting around his house. He was more accomplished at guitar, but I was learning and got re-interested. We must have maybe a hundred tapes that we recorded on a boom box of us writing songs on the spot and improvising and honestly thinking they were really good. It all started there and I was just playing guitar. I switched to bass and I’ve been picking up instruments ever since.
BRLMP3S: Did you play sports?
EM: Yeah until about junior high. I played soccer, basketball, swimming.
BRLMP3S: You came back around to swimming in a major way.
EM: Yeah.
BRLMP3S: What was the first album that you bought?
EM: One of the first musical things I bought was a tape single of Aerosmith’s “Living on the Edge.” That was maybe fifth or sixth grade. I was really into that. The first real vivid memory of a band I ended up enjoying was Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, and Green Day. And Nirvana. Those were all really big at the same time. I remember hearing Weezer at Mike’s sixth grade birthday party on the radio and just being like, "whoa."
BRLMP3S: I didn’t start buying tapes until later on. I bought Weezer's Blue Album and Smash.
EM: Oh yeah. Smash was huge. Jon Roberts made me this mixtape that had Primus' Pork Soda on one side and Offspring's Smash on the other side. We just loved that, what was that song? “You stupid dumbshit godamn mother fucker.” I don’t remember what that song is called. We were screwing around one day and our sixth grade teacher confiscated that and listened to it. That song was cued up and got really mad but didn’t tell our parents. That was cool.
BRLMP3S: Would your parents have cared?
EM: Probably. Me and all my friends were definitely supporters of buying an album and putting the cd booklet facing away so the parental advisory wasn’t showing. So we could buy Adam Sandler albums and our parents wouldn’t know what we were listing to.
BRLMP3S: What was the first concert you went to?
EM: I saw two right around each other and i forget which one was first. I saw Skankin' Pickle and Janitors Against Apartheid at The Edge, which was this club in Los Altos. It was a real unusual place. It was packed. There were like 300 people there. This was when ska was really big and me and all my friends were into it. My mom took us. It was just a bunch of 16 year-old kids smoking cigarettes and we were like 13 or 14. I was completely embarrassed but it was pretty cool that she stuck around until one in the morning. Literally that same week my old baby sitter and her friend to the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in Golden Gate Park. Rage Against The Machine and Dave Navarro [Red Hot] Chili Peppers were the headliners.
Rage Against The Machine perform "Bulls On Parade" at Tibetan Freedom '96.
BRLMP3S: That must have been amazing.
EM: It was really cool. It was nuts.
BRLMP3S: I remember my Hebrew school teacher came back from Tibetan Freedom with a broken arm.
EM: My old nanny was definitely going into the mosh pit and setting a horrible example. Funny story about the TFC. We had a series of nanny’s growing up that usually lived at the house part time or were community college students just to watch after us during the afternoon stuff. They were all really cool, real big characters. One of them was in that movie Killer Clowns From Outerspace. But Kayleen [who took Mr. Michalski to Tibetan Freedom] came over from Utah through this Mormon nanny service that placed Mormon kids in houses. My parents were like Mormons, whatever, sounds safe. So they meet Kayleen, but her boyfriend at the time was in jail and I’m pretty sure she had a tattoo. Totally not what you’d expect based on the service. But my parents were down so they rolled with it. Years later I get an email from her. She’s getting married. She got my email so we're sending emails. I linked her to the band and she totally takes credit for harboring my alt-rock musical tastes by letting us watch MTV when she wasn’t supposed to.
BRLMP3S: What have been some of your favorite shows we’ve played?
EM: Any show in Santa Barbara. Any show in Redding. The ambiance of the towns, the whole experience getting there. Especially Santa Barbara. It’s just such a cool place anyway. It’s one of those places where I got into the school there and I almost went there, but didn’t. The best thing about touring anyway is that you meet all these people where if you lived there you’d be hanging out with them. In Santa Barbara, playing shows there was a lot like, oh, if I'd gone to this school this is what I’d be doing and these are the people I’d be hanging out with and the bands I’d be playing with. Santa Barbara is really unique. Just being able to be there and be a part of it and know a bunch of people is fun. There are a lot of places like that. Omaha has been historically great. On the Compassion tour just playing at the shitty bar in New York was really great, where we played at one in the morning and they kept asking us to turn down.
BRLMP3S: Any plans on bringing the dress back to the live show?
EM: Not for BRL, but anything’s possible for Compassion In Action. Obviously it’s only a matter of time and available income before we start directly copying the Flaming Lips. You know how on the DVD the Flaming Lips are directly copying the Butthole Surfers? We’ll just be the band that’s just directly copying the Flaming Lips. You’ll be going over the audience in the bubble.
Flaming Lips do the bubble thing at Coachella in '04.
BRLMP3S: We should up the ante. We should do a three-prong bubble where we’re all over the audience.
EM: That would be pretty cool.
BRLMP3S: Alright. One more question. What was your first impression of me?
EM: [Laughs] So freshman year, week one, maybe like the third day we’re in college. I was living in a dorm and a bunch of people I knew from high school were close by. My girlfriend at the time was across the street. The whole vibe of the first month of freshman year, at least for me was like, you could just talk to anyone and go into anyone’s room. No one knew what the hell they were doing and these weird friend groups formed. So were at the dining commons and I see you and Jordan [Smart] who we ended up living with later on just sitting at this table. I noticed Jordan because he seemed more like the band type. I sit down and introduce myself and start this really obnoxious conversation about music. At the time I was listening to a lot of hip-hop music because my friends Tom [Bishop] and Anthony [Rowe] in high school were hip hop guys and I spent some time recording them. I was listening to stuff they did. I was talking about how into the Pharcyde I was. They were just looking at me like, yeah awesome. Jordan was more of the talker and you weren’t really saying anything. At some point I mentioned Mr. Bungle and you suddenly started talking, where, like, you hadn’t been there for the last 20 minutes. You were like: I just saw Fantomas on New Year's. This sparked this whole direct conversation that excludes the four other people sitting at the table. Then at the very end of the conversation my girlfriend whispers, ask him if he plays an instrument. Or maybe you asked me. I was like, I play bass. You were like, I play guitar. Oh, sweet. You were like, you should come by my dorm room, it’s this number. A couple days later I called over and was like, I think I’m going to come over and do that. Your dorm was much more frat-guy than mine, because we both lived in six-person suites. My roommates all played Counterstrike all day and it was like a bunch of weird stuff that I put up. But your apartment has a montage of all these cutouts from FHM that his room mates had put up. That was pretty funny. We were hanging out in your room and you played me Thrice, which, at the time, was a real obscure band and you had seen them at Gilman or something and you were talking about how you loved how they combined metal and punk and all these other things and you had this theory about punk music being the intersection of everything. We just talked about music. You had a bunch of Red Meat cartoons up on your closet and we were talking about that. I think you played me that Faraquet song, too, "Cut Self Not". That was like: “Whoa.” You were real serious about music, but it was hard to tell what vibe you had because you never really smiled, you never really gave any indication that you were not just extremely miserable. It was kind of like that for maybe like a month or two. But I just kept inviting myself over and then you’d come over to my dorm room. We’d play music and that was really clicking. You had a couple song ideas that were hold overs from high school that we were still jamming to and I had this recorder and we were laying stuff down just the two of us over a drum machine, which I’m pretty sure Joe Conte must still have. We were like, yeah, fuck it let’s start a band. We put stuff on mp3.com, we named the band before we had a drummer. Then I knew Jon [Roberts] from high school and he became involved too and we had our first practice two months later. But literally until I met George [Zhu], which was maybe like a month into it, it was a real unclear vibe. I was just like, I’m going to keep rolling with it if he hates me then eventually he'll say he’s busy or stop answering his phone. Then I met George, who was really funny. I remember one of the first conversations I had with George was how he wanted to make a movie where Steve Buscemi played a cowboy Jesus or something. He gave a good context and you were looser and more relaxed around him. I remember the three of us started hanging out. Eventually he gave you an afro pick for your birthday.
BRLMP3S: I can’t believe I don’t have that anymore.
EM: That’s your bad, dude. It kept going up from there. It was this whole music listening experience. We kind of appreciated three different kinds of music. I guess the basis of our bond was melding that all together. It came together. It was really weird at first, but then the music brought it together.
BRLMP3S: It’s become a little less weird, right?
EM: [Laughs] I guess.
Performing the song "Lark's Tongues In Aspic Part 1" in Belgium in 1972. You're not ready for this drummer.
BRILLIANT MP3'S OF KING CRIMSON
(Click to download for free!)
Download “21st Century Schizoid Man,” from the album In The Court Of The Crimson King by King Crimson.
Download “In The Wake Of Poseidon,” from the album In The Wake Of Poseidon by King Crimson.
Download “Frame By Frame,” from the album Discipline by King Crimson.
Download “Pictures Of The City,” from the album In The Wake Of Poseidon by King Crimson.
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