This interview has been over a year in the waiting. (I won't bore you with the excuses...) About the time Man or Astro-man's CD EEVIAC came out, I had the chance to interview one of the founding members of the band, Coco the Electronic Monkey Wizard. If you don't already know the entire story of how Man or Astro-man crash landed on Earth (specifically, Alabama) from outer space and now travel the world disguised as a surf-rock band looking for parts for their spaceship, you should read about it online.
This was definitely one of the more interesting interviews I've ever done. I already got the impression from reading other interviews that these guys either don't ever break character, or they're really from the Grid Sector. So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Here's my interview with an alien-turned-musician.
Coco: And over a standard GTE pay phone, no less! We're trying to break ourselves in and get used to this planet, so we like to use standard communication methods.
I'll skip the usual questions about how Man or Astro-man ended up on this planet, but I want to ask you what is the purpose of the band? Is it eventual global domination, or do you just have fun playing music?
All that stuff is included. When you crash land from outer space, global domination is sort of like a default — you don't really have a choice, it just goes with the territory. You've seen all the movies — when aliens come to earth, you gotta take over. It's just something you gotta do, so we're doing that. We are actually enjoying ourselves playing music, which is a side effect. But what we're trying to do is slowly bring you Earthlings up to speed with the music of the future, which we will of course be providing you. We can't unleash it on you right now at this time, because humans aren't quite ready for it. So we're in a transitional period trying to bridge the gap from the past and present of music to the future, what we call the Next Phase music.
I think you just answered my next question, which was that each Man or Astro-man album moves a little farther away from the pure sci-fi surf rock of the early records.
Yes.
I was going to ask if this was a natural progression of the band, or are you slowly moving towards your "true" sound gradually so you don't damage human brains and ears.
You are catching on. It's a little bit of both. It's all part of the grand scheme of bringing you up to speed with the future sounds of Man or Astro-man. So you've already noticed that the early records had an Earthly idea and vision of outer space — of course the 60's vision of the future and of space and of science was way more exciting than it turned out to be. But we started with that maybe naïve sort of approach to the future as the initial groundwork of Man or Astro-man, and now we're slowing evolving that into the actual Man or Astro-man.
Well, we're looking forward to that.
(laughing) Excellent. We've been doing this over the course of many years so far, but we have expedited the process by releasing slightly more records than the average band does, just to kind of move things along.
Right (laughter). I noticed that you use a Mac to create the Man or Astro-man we bsite.
This is true.
Are Macs better than what you used to fly your ship?
Well, I'll tell you what. Macintosh has allowed us to create the web site which has been a very beneficial thing to the band. Our ship's computers, although good, ended up bringing us here to this planet by complete mistake. So, it's kind of a toss-up. In regards to making web sites I think the Macintosh is better; in regards to flying our ship you would think that the onboard system would be better than a Macintosh, but at this point we're stuck on planet Earth.
Maybe you should look into one of those new G3's.
Well, you realize that we've developed a whole new computer platform recently.
Yeah, which leads me to my next question: are Macs better than the EEVIAC?
Well, of course there's the new G3VIAC (laughter), that's not out yet.
Is that also translucent blue?
Exactly (laughs). Translucent blue mainframe supercomputer. I mean, Macintoshes are great, but whatever happened to the day when computers took up entire rooms? Computers that generated more heat than data. That's the golden age of computer technology right there! (laughter)
That's just another 60's view of the future not coming true.
Exactly! And they parallel Man or Astro-man beautifully. I mean, the EEVIAC supercomputer is, in a strange way, a metaphor for Man or Astro-man: the concept of this enormously inefficient, lumbering machine that seems like it takes constant input and constant energy in, for a tiny little bit of output (laughter).
How does one earn the title "Electronic Monkey Wizard," and what does it mean?
Well (laughs), that's a good question. You gotta understand that when we crashed here we knew very little about the planet Earth. I mean, the Earth is cool and everything, but it's not the most prominent planet out there, so we didn't know all that much about it. So when we crashed here and we took on Earth form — which, I have to admit, we did a pretty good job.
Not too bad.
Thanks. But the whole language thing was a little complicated, and we were inundated with all the sci-fi stuff we had collected very quickly, kind of assuming that was an accurate representation. It was kinda like our names are really kind of a mistake — we picked them with very little knowledge of the planet, just to get by initially, not realizing how ridiculous these names were.
They seemed okay at the time, right?
They seemed fine. We were looking at all kinds of television and radio and movies, and plus we're running into people in Alabama who of course have funny names. Looking back, though, if we had studied that up a little better we would've picked names like "Joe" or "Rob" or something like that.
Did you watch old Devo footage for choreography tips?
Of course. Absolutely.
I'm sure you agree that duct tape is among the most versatile and useful items in the universe.
Absolutely.
How much duct tape do you go through on a tour? What's the most unusual use for duct tape you've found?
Let's see...we were actually approached by a duct tape company (laughter) and we never really followed through with it, but we need to kind of work out some sort or arrangement. You see those pictures of bands holding up guitars in magazines, we were gonna have a duct tape sponsorship (laughter). We probably go through...a standard roll is, I believe, 90 yards by like 2 1/2 inches wide — I don't know how many square inches that boils down to be. But we end up going though approximately 3 or 4 rolls a day (laughter), so if you multiply that out on tour it adds up very quickly.
Oh yeah.
Uses for duct tape ranges from holding various parts of the spaceship — that's cleverly disguised as a van — together. We use it for all the standard sort of things that duct tape would be used for. I actually had at one point an entire jumpsuit made of duct tape (laughter). We have several flight cases — if you want to call them that — that are nothing but duct tape at this point...you know, drum cases and stuff that are solely 100% duct tape; the original fiber no longer exists.
If you have regular stuff and it breaks, you have to put duct tape on it. But if something is made entirely of duct tape, theoretically it shouldn't break.
I know. The theramin that I play, the strap that I hold it on — kind of like a guitar strap — is made entirely of duct tape as well. Duct tape folded over onto itself makes a very, very strong material. Why don't they distribute that fabric in sheets so you could easily make clothing and everything else out of it? I noticed the Beastie Boys did an experiment in making duct tape wallets, which is pretty clever. I think there's endless applications out there for it.
You used a sample from "Battle of the Planets" on Experiment Zero. What were some of your favorite TV shows? Did you watch all those Japanese robot cartoons like Voltron and Force Five?
Oh yeah, all that G-Force stuff is totally awesome. The early Japanese animation stuff is totally cool — Tranzor-Z, all that stuff totally rocks. So we watched all that stuff and all the standard stuff you'd see after school. Of course, we watched television in a way that would simulate if we grew up on this planet.
What's your favorite non-MST3K TV show?
That's a good question. Non-MST3K show. (thinks) Well, there are so many awesome cartoons.
Is it mainly cartoons that you dig?
Well, there were shows like "The Prisoner" that were on for a while but are no longer on — that one definitely ranks high with Man or Astro-man. Collectively, that's probably one of Man or Astro-man's favorite serial shows that was ever on.
Who would win in a fight: Frank Black or the guy from Blues Traveler?
(laughs) I don't know, the guy from Blues Traveler has all those harmonicas strapped to his chest like a bullet-proof vest, or he could hurl them as weapons (laughter). But Frank has been known to wear like eight guitars at one time. So I don't know; it'd be an interesting battle.
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.
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.
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.
URL: http://www.kieranchapman.net/winter2000/moam/
eWire: I've never spoken to anyone from outer space before, or even Alabama for that matter.