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Going back to what you said as far as your responsibility for some of the tracks on the album, you know... I thought "Shove" was actually an outtake from Dark Side Of the Spoon , right?
No, that one, "Broken" and "Leper" were the other ones that basically started at my house, were worked on, or pre-produced at Barker's house and then really fleshed out and produced by Al and us at Sonic Ranch. "Animosity", "Lockbox" and "Stolen" I also helped to write, but they didn't start with me, if you see what I mean.
"Dead Practice" from A.I. later went on to become "Lockbox". Was there any other material specifically written for A.I.?
No, just "What About Us?" Only "What About Us?" was actually written at that time for the movie. "Lockbox/Dead Practice" is one of those songs that was like "Piss", "Unsung" and "Impossible" - songs that maybe started during the Spoon record. That's what my guess is.
That would be really cool if that was the case, especially as a contrast between both of their sounds. Was there any songwriting credit you didn't get credited for that maybe you'd like to clarify with us?
I don't wanna get into that kind of thing. [laughs] I do have songwriting credit on "Lockbox" because I did some rearranging. That was the first time that I had taken one of their sessions, made a copy of it and remixed it, or rearranged it in some ways. I brought it back to them and they liked my version, so I got some songwriting credit from that. I did do some live drumming on the album version, like cymbal and tom accents on it and stuff like that, but there's a lot of Rey on that one, too.
There's a big debate online about the high-frequency mixing of the music featured on the past three releases, not including the upcoming release. This also carries into the drum sounds on those releases, the treble usage. It's hard to tell if that is the sound they are going for or not. Do you know anything about that?
Are you talking about the crispiness of the mix? Yeah, I dunno what to say about that. That's Al's department, he does the mixing. I have nothing to do with it, I just play the notes.
Tell us about what you remember about the FornicaTour. Anything in particular, the openers, the experiences?
There's lots of great things that stand out on that tour, I had a really great time. That was another really crazy tour due to the fact that we kept having problems maintaining a bus. I dunno how it all started out, but we had a bus that was then taken away from us, then we got another really nice, super-new bus. Maybe it was because the first bus was such a piece of shit, because it kept getting flat tires and stuff and smoking. Then we got a third bus but it had been rented out by somebody else, so we were forced to give it back... I lost track of how many buses we went through. There came a point in the tour where we didn't have a bus at all and we got from gig to gig in all kinds of crazy ways. A bunch of vans... at one point, the entire band and crew got into two limos, and that's including all our luggage on top of us... very uncomfortable. And driving three to four hours to get to a ferry boat, so we could walk on board and boat over to Dublin. It was retarded! We stopped at least two times along the way so people could get out and hurl. Riding a Love Boat-looking thing to Norway... We were calling it the 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' tour, because we did\u2014we took planes, we took trains, we took buses, cars, boats, everything but skateboards! I've got some really great memories of huge crowds, like the Donnington Festival. I don't even know how many people were there. It was huge. And then there were a bunch of them down in Germany that were just... enormous. I think one of my favorite shows from that tour was when we played with Slayer. After a shit-load of other bands, it was us, and then Slayer was the headliner. It was the um... Full Force Festival, right? And when we got done playing, as soon as we got off the stage, the whole crowd started chanting "SLAY-YUH!" for like a whole 20 minutes, straight-through until they started playing, when the whole place went apeshit. It was really impressive. I was standing up on the side of the stage, watching Slayer and was stunned at how incredibly kickass those musicians are. I mean, I had listened to Slayer here and there and stuff, but I wasn't a fan until that night. I was absolutely floored. The drummer just makes me feel like I don't know the first thing about playing drums. Hanging out with him [Dave Lombardo] backstage, I mean, he was super mellow, and then he goes out onstage and it's like... holy shit! [laughs] Anyway, the stories could go on and on, really... every day was, like, both boring and epic or something.
There was a song from Twitch called "We Believe", it was the only song that you guys played besides "Burning Inside" with Ogre of Skinny Puppy, on the tour. Was there any specific reason behind it, did Al just decide to throw it out for old times sake? Also, were there any songs that were going to be performed on the tour, but didn't make the cut?
Oh yeah, we did play that one! I think we only played that for a few shows. I don't remember why it got brought up... other old ones, though? Well, I remember learning "The Land Of Rape & Honey". We were so close to playing that so many times, but we never did it! Really bummed me out. I mean, it's a real simple drumbeat, but... hey, I was excited about it. We were also gonna do "The Missing" and "Deity" and I was gonna play some horn parts on it, but we never did that either. We played it at sound check in London a couple of times. "Burning Inside" I was pretty happy to do. Although Al went into a tizzy and broke a guitar that night in New York\u2014there were some sound problems and he blew a gasket or whatever. It is a very tiring song to play, like "Stigmata". We also did a couple of shows with Jello, and did some Lard songs. I remember they kept talking about a Ministry/Skinny Puppy tour though for a long while, but I don't know why it never materialized.
It's one thing after another. A lot of people online mostly were questioning who would open, or even headline, in that situation.
Whoever can pay the most money. It would go to the highest bidder.