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Do you want to eventually leave Earth to return home?

Good question. Of course we want to leave; we miss the Grid Sector. But we're totally behind schedule and we're not all that concerned with it. We'll probably just end up astro terra-converting the entire surface of the Earth to be more like where we're from — that'll probably be quicker than trying to get our ship back together, since the manufacturing methods just don't exist to manufacture the parts necessary for our ship. But we would like to go eventually, for any of the reasons someone would want to return home. Sometimes they say that you can't go home, but we're gonna try, just not very hard.

Man...or Astro-man? circa 1999: Blazar, Birdstuff, Coco (with flaming helmet), and Trace Reading (L-R)

How did the clone project go? Would you consider it a success?

Oh, absolutely.

What was the thought behind it? To popular the earth with more astro-men?

No no no no. We do have finite life spans as astro-men, and not finding any life forms that we could easily reproduce with — and we tried, we definitely did our experimentation — none of the organisms here would bear a pure astro-man offspring (laughter). So the only way to continue the line of pure astro-men was to get down to the genetic level and do it ourselves. Forget about sexual reproduction, let's just get down to duplication. We did it to look out for ourselves in the future, and to carry on Man or Astro-man's work here in taking over the planet.

Right.

So we developed several different versions of the band — the Alphas and Betas — and sent them on the road. We got mixed responses, of course — any time you're on the cutting edge of both music and science you can expect a little bit of static. The only real problem we had was when some promoters decided it would be more beneficial to them in the short term to advertise the show as a Man or Astro-man show and not as a Clone Project show. So some people thought they were deceived into paying the huge amounts of money that was required to witness such profound scientific phenomenon. What people don't realize is that they paid probably an average of 6 to 8 bucks to go to one of [the Clone] shows and this was like, you're seeing genetics and rock & roll fused (laughter).

Pretty cheap.

Yeah. I mean, look at any government research project, think of money spent on those kind of things, and we were charging like 8 bucks. But it actually went over fantastically well, so we decided to take it a step further: instead of just duplication, let's see if we can improve the astro-man, let's see if we can do modification: let's develop the all-female astro-man. And we did, and that was the Gammas, and they did about four weeks on the road, and that was successful as well. And we have saved every single email that we got concerning the Clone Project, which runs the entire spectrum of "Oh my gosh, this was the most amazing thing I've ever seen, what an awesome concept" to "Oh my gosh, you guys are the biggest scam artists, I can't believe it, I threw all my Man or Astro-man CDs out the car window the way home from the show" (laughter).

I was actually talking to a friend of mine about that, saying that if it is a scam deal where they're just trying to get more versions of the band out there to make more money, I say good for them for coming up with something like that.

Well, that's good that you can appreciate that. It totally was an idea that we had to try; I don't see the idea working for any other band.

Birdstuff beating the crap out of his drums.

No, I don't either.

Well, first of all, we have to let people know — not that it's really an issue — that if they thought it was a financial gain, that Birdstuff and I were sitting back smoking cigars and collecting the money (laughter) they're crazy. Because we had to generate three sets of equipment — 'cause we were on tour as well — so that's three times the duct tape, three vans and trailers to get everybody around. We had to set up all the same kind of stuff you'd have to for one band, but for three. Of course all the proceeds went to the individual clones to support them, so it actually turned out to be a very conceptual project, and financial motivation was definitely not the primary concern.

Is it true that Star Crunch left the band?

Yes, that is true. There is a long, long story, and I'll try to give the shortest possible version, so as not to drag this out too long.

Okay.

When Man or Astro-man initially crash landed, everybody assumed that there were four members. But this is, of course, an assumption, and you know what assuming can do. There were only four members at the time that were in "visual optical phase" — that you can see. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of sound where two identical sound waves with one 180 degrees out of phase of the other one, the two will cancel each other out and you won't be able to hear them.

A similar thing happens in the optical spectrum, and this allows Man or Astro-man to exist in any point 360 degrees optically in a space, you humans only being able to see those in what would be in phase with your current optical alignment. So the scoop is that over time Man or Astro-man has had, visually, probably like 9 members optically in phase since the initial crash landing point to now. There have definitely been changeovers in optical phase.

Well, one of the big shifts occurred when Blazar the Probe Handler, who existed 180 degrees out of phase so no one really knew he existed, built a phase modifier which enabled him to shift phases at will, in relation to the rest of us in Man or Astro-man. What he didn't realize is that every astro-man is to some degree linked, and by shifting one you suddenly shift everyone. So what happened is he threw the switch and threw himself into optical phase, and it shoved Star Crunch 180 degrees out of phase and moved Dexter-X approximately 162 degrees out of phase (laughter). And it also brought this guy Trace Reading — who we didn't even know existed — to within 1 or 2 degrees of optical phase. And that left us with the current setup; effectively there's been a phase shift.

One final question: what's the best thing about Earth?

Ooohh... (thinks) We've come to learn to love gravity (laughter). Not so much gravity — because of course it exists outside the planet — but the subtle balance of the exact 9.8 meters per second per second acceleration of the planet Earth — at sea level, of course. So that's definitely something that I personally have grown to become fond of. I had a real hard time with it initially, but...

It really grows on you, doesn't it?

It does grow on you. It's kinda nice; I'm getting used to it.

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