Poopy Necroponde Interview

Poopy Necroponde Interview

Poopy Necroponde is an incredibly talented multi instrumentalist musician and vocalist. He has played in the bands Sockeye, Tough Skins, Breathilizor, Fossil Fuel, T.V. Watchers and Doktor Bitch amongst countless others as well as solo recordings. We would like to thank Poopy for taking the time to answer our questions and we hope you enjoy the interview.

The Scene

In the mid-80's my friends and I started the first punk band to come out of Ridgecrest California. The only scene there was our giant network of friends, and there were no clubs that would ever dream of having an event like that held in their old time old man drinking holes. We would play in trailers or rent a generator and have shows out in the desert with huge bonfires and the works. I only got to see a few big Los Angeles and San Fran shows, but they were truely amazing. like night and day compared to little old Kent Ohio. There were national bands that toured through Kent, but we pretty much knew everyone at the show. At one time my girlfriend was the manager of 'the' punk bar in Kent... so we had a lot of fun. We went to West Virginny and NYC with Franco from MDC on his solo tour after he flew to Ohio for a few days... we partied with a lot of punkers...

Poopy Necroponde

I come from many generations of deep Ohio inbreeding. My father got a job in California and moved our family there when i was between 9th and 10th grade. A year later I dropped out of high school and wandered around the country for a spell. Back then a greyhound ticket was dirt cheap, and you could still smoke in the back. I knew two of the Sock-guys before I left, and did my first recording with Sockeye on a short visit to Ohio. they were "between bass players". A day or two before meeting Food to record Sockeye, Yum Yums, Kicky and I recorded our one and only band practice/ songwriting session for our group S.P.R.E. (Several Profoundly Retarded Eskimos). The band broke up at the end of the session.

Sockeye

Sockeye was around for 3 or 4 years before I became a bandmate. Their original drummer, scoops, played garbage cans, and I don't believe he had ever hit any real drums prior to that. I saw them play live twice when I was a teen, very moving to say the least. Kindered spirits we were. I recorded with sockeye in 1989 and when I moved back to Ohio in 1990 I just sort of became the next guy... they went through 3 or 4 bass players before me. The term tardcore probably came about after we had been playing for years. It seemed the whole town of Kent started to become like-minded Sockeye enthusiasts or disciples or clots. I think when Seth Putnam started touring A lot he was playing our tapes for people and spewing praises to us, and Food Fortunata really communicated with a lot of punks around the planet, so perhaps tardcore just happened as many thing in nature do, it is a branch of de-evolution.

Probably the last 2 years of Sockeye was just recording sessions and maybe a stray show here or there. I was always recording stuff with Food, but I played in tons of other bands, too. We had all lost interest in Sockeye, because our ideas about bands and songs were changing so much... it was boring doing punk parodies all the time... the first reunion show was to honor our favorite musical artists from Boston who came to Ohio to record a studio album with me (i was an engineer at the time) and the second reunion was this year for my 40th birthday. Just for all the old timers to get together and celebrate life.

The Live Experience

It was wasted. Our shows were wasted. Our tours were wasted. Our memories are wasted. We were complete drunkards. We irritated everyone we ever stayed with on the road to no end. When we got together we just drank until we couldn't stand. We yammered on and on about insane dada nothingness to the point that most folks who were originally intrigued by us were quickly dis-illusioned and had to get out. Not really any average shows. Lots of pants throwing, garbage speading, and barely keeping a tune together. I was always so blown apart, it might be best to ask a concert attendee to highlight details. We would bring dead animals on tour to leave in people's refridgerators: hoist up on flagpoles: hide behind the furniture, stay up all night drawing pictures and hiding them around the apartments. One trip to Raleigh North Carolina had a gang of skinheads looking all over town for us to kill us, simply because we were so goddamn annoying.

Recording

First off, Sockeye was so prolific because they had so many ideas bubbling through their heads 24 hours a day, namely Food and Yum Yums. they were prolific way before me, they did most of their real songwriting when half the band was still in high school. It was also easy to release a lot of material because no-one cared if it sounded any good, nothing ever had to be worked on or re-done. Once I joined the band we did the 'official' LP but mostly I just caused them to all drink too much and fizzle apart.

The "interview" at the end of the "Retards Hiss Past My Window" CD on Mortville

As you might imagine, my voice was the one sounding like a retarded Edith Massey from the John Waters movies. The interview was done for Brent from Nauscopy / Burping Turds, some zine he did I believe. We were too drunk to write a bunch of crap down on paper so we just recorded our answers to his questions. I think we were drawing the pictures for our album cover that night as well. Somehow the tape became legendary and Andy wanted to add it to our CD.. so why not? It's even more irritating than the songs.

The Fans

After we annoyed people with our tapes at parties long enough, they all started to become like us. They all adopted our sense of humor and style of doing terrible things to our surroundings. The out-of-town fans were very diverse. Bands like Fuckface would come through town and we would all treat them like royalty, and they would return the fave when i was in San Fran.
Apparently Sockeye was the favorite band of Eye Yamatsuka of the Boredoms.. and we were trying to line up a Japanese tour with Anal Cunt... but keep in mind that the only person in Sockeye who wasn't a complete blithering, homeless, jobless idiot was Food... so we couldn't arrange for anything, let alone pay for a ticket. I guess Atom and his Package did a Sockeye song?Eugene Chadbourne used to play 'Fuck Your Cat' for a while... not sure who else...

Seth Putnam?

Well I've always loved Seth and his music and lyrics. By all accounts a lot of his inspirations were from colaborations with other boston cats, like Salmon Patties (who Seth credits as a co-writer of many songs) and the Post Mortem guys. At the risk of sounding pompous, I think after hearing my band the Tough Skins, it inspired him to write the oi "Stayin' Alive". In Kent Ohio it was fun and easy for me and Food to make fun of skins.. but in Boston we could have been killed easily... and I think that really spoke to Seth. Seth really pioneered an artform, and the writers of chunklette and most any art nerd post punk jerk owes him a lot of royalties. He lived it, and the rest just reaped the free benefits. One of my favorite A.C. song titles is "I'm glad jazz faggots don't like us anymore"... it was so liberating to hear him say that! Ironically Tim Morse would have been a MUCH better candidate to play with John Zorn than Dave Lombardo!!!
When John and Tim were still in A.C. , they were in Kent for a night on tour and Food and I recorded A 90 minute tape with them. we called it 'Fossil Cunt'. From what I can recall it was completely unlistenable. The next morning Seth, John, Tim, Food and his girlfriend all joined me and my grandpa for breakfast at K-Mart. Somewhere there is a photo of us all together there.

Side projects

One of my old bands, the Baby Shit Yellows, opened up for Sockeye. Our singer had to work so he ended up missing the show. We asked Food if he would fill in, and being on a few hits of acid, he naturally agreed with bells on. We told him the basic concepts of each song, and he went with it and gave it his all. Amazing man he is. Then of course he left the club and came back with a life-size wooden crucifix and a dead squirrel nailed to the top. My band spent the rest of the evening doing summersaults into him while he treid to sing for Sockeye. The guy who wrote much of the great Sockeye stuff, Yum Yums and I tried to do a side project band called 'The Smushed Dads'. we wrote 4 or 5 songs, and couldn't get anyone to play with us, so we just used the material for sockeye instead (boy w/ a bruised butt, facial disc). Food and Yums and I did tons of recording projects--- there is no way to list them all... but the Sluggisha Blogspot has the discography i think.
I mostly do recording projects, but I play bass for Doktor Bitch, featuring Pat from Boulder and Sam from Minch. It's a fun combination of goons and we have a split LP on the way..

Fossil Fuel

Well getting back to a previous question, I think Fossil Fuel came from the creative roadblock of Sockeye, and I wanted to start a project that fit my own format a little better. Sockeye was still fun, but it wasn't "my" band... so i felt like a new project would allow me the comfort to bully my own feelings onto the tapes. I could speak for myself, and not the rest of the band. Food and i would get in our special place (which usually took about 12 beers each along with whatever else) and just let the tape roll. We were in zen for those hours of our lives. Like most jerks who do that stuff... the one night a week we felt comforted and human. We recorded 5 new songs very recently, one for a BP oil spill protest cd, and 4 songs to do whatever with. Anyone wanna put out a record for us?

The Tough Skins

Tough Skins was another me & Food deal. Again, exploring new realms of fake bands to be in. We did 2 tapes I think, and got bored. Little did we know how much later generations would like it. We did a live set in 1993-ish at an A.C. show.. Seth asked us on stage and he got on the drums, I grabbed a guitar and Food sang 'Hippies vs Skins'. then the guitarist from A.C. tried to fight me because I knocked his guitar out of tune. Seriously.

Breathilizor

Breathilizor started right after Tough Skins, maybe 1992. I record all the music myself and Food does all the vocals. I have always loved metal, and I think even when I try to parody a perticular sound you can still hear what I really love inside it all. As A young man I mostly loved the ironic, unintended aspecs of metal. But the riffs for sure. Tommy Accused will still be my all-time hero.

Breathilizor songtitles?
Miskatonic Of U
Tattoos of Doom
Call of Cthulhu
Stabosaurus of Rex
Time Traveller of Acid
Brain of Psycho
Necronomicon of Flames
Fangs of Ghoul
Metal of Breathilizor
Castle of the Sinister Brain
Vacuum of Satanic Space

Because that's how we roll in our chaotic world of sick mayhem of gorgrindiconic doom.

Hep Z

Everything is easy writing and playing with Pat from Boulder. We laugh more than we sings and play-- the project was more out of making each other laugh than it was the songs themselves. Pat worked with Sloth back in the day, he's a great session drummer. He is the kind of guy that still remembers how to play every single song he's ever heard. Photographic memory.

As a solo artist

I find the genre to be so self-indulgent and disgusting. The very idea of a 'solo' artist makes me sick. 99 out of 100 times the solo artist has lots of people behind the scenes doing all the real work. But I did the 80's cover tunes because i got so sick of punk rock elitism, too, and the notions of tough guy nonsense. It's 30+ years old. I don't care about your brand new bl'ast t-shirt. I saw them in 1986 and they were very great, and not very popular. Social Unrest was even better, and none of the kids are talking about them...

Instruments

Believe it or not I like drums the best. But it changes with each year. I'm a self taught dingdong. I like playing anything I can get my hands on. These days my time for music is so limited, I go for the instant gratification of smashing the shit out of drums. I think if I would have stuck to music instead of sound engineering I might have become a great guitarist, but my dextarity has weakened over the years. I need an hour or 2 per day if I want to play how I'm capable of. So I guess I'll stick to 3 chord skinhead tunes.

Equipment

I would only kill for Traci Lords. or Dyanne Thorne. I went from a 22 year old using borrowed gear, smashed shitty gear, unknowing about anything electrical or mechanical... to a 40 year old sound engineer who can hear the make of the guitar on the record (unless someone is using those rotten stinking amp modelers). I have a 1988 les paul custom, a Laney amp, and i'll never need or want another set-up. I still keep beater guitars. I love Ted Falconi and Thor from the Cows. Inspirational guitar sounds for sure. John Wetton's bass sound sticks out. I like lots of crap.

Music

After years working in a recording studio, I really got to appriciate 'good' music... especially working with the older people. So I realized that I like all forms of music and sound. I am an anal snob about lots of it, but most genres have great soul to empart. I think I mostly like outsider art, though. The tough-to-describe stuff. I know I'm mid-age now, but I can hear it when someone is shootin' from the hip, or the heart, or the dick... and when someone is just blowin' stale air. I have become very particular about vocalists as I age. There's been so much music made by so many immitators and clueless doofs (I was one once, too!) that I feel like you gotta do something pretty fucking cool to impress me. BUT- I don't always listen to music to be impressed. Half the time I just want to hear somebody make me laugh. I do hate most of the recordings I have done in my life. And I hate most of the songs I have written. Except for 'Steve Albini fucked Pac Man'. that is my arch de triumph.

Devo

I would have loved Devo no matter what city or state they hailed from. The music was killer, but the videos are what really got me into them. The styles, the clothes, the merch, the mission staement: they just had such an amazing concept to their works. I don't organize the DEVOtional, but I play in a diffrent band every year to pay homage to the de-evolution band and movement. the DEVOtional is a gathering of butants who all celebrate being Devo through music, art, film, and fellowship. The Disney thing i don't want to see that. I do like their new record a lot though. I hadn't really liked an album they did since 1984's 'Oh No it's Devo'. If you don't know the truth about de-evolution, you owe it to yourself and your society to figure it out.

Politics

My attitudes flux from day to day, month to month, year to year. I have had political phases, anarcho phases, and lots in between. Usually I work through a set of variables troubling my head for a while, and then I move on to the next mind set. Over all, for the record, I think human history is simple in it's nuance and we are doomed to repeat it always. Sadly this might be the last great empire, as our weapons and attitudes are too powerful now. As far as rascist/homophobe/sexist bands go, I find A lot of them more insightful and entertaining than bands who share my socio-political beliefs. 30 years of crying about the government still adds up to more dudes trying to live the band life, and putting their band before any actual action against the oppressors. Jello Biafra still said it best, and most fierce, and evoked the most change in american culture. The rich and powerful are still rich and powerful, but Jello got more people to see it for what it is... and to think critically about their circumstances.

Lovecraft

Food and I both became huge fanatics after the early 1990's 'Cacophony' LP was released by Rudimentary Peni. They do an homage to various horror writers, Lovecraft specifically.

Links

Poopy Necroponde:
http://www.myspace.com/hellopoopy

Sockeye (unofficial Myspace pages);
http://www.myspace.com/sockeye
http://www.myspace.com/sockeyefromkent

Tough Skins (Unofficial Myspace page):
http://www.myspace.com/oimemates

Doktor Bitch:
http://www.myspace.com/doktorbitch

Sluggisha Blogspot:
http://sluggisha.blogspot.com

100% Zero Records:
http://www.myspace.com/100zero

Mortville Records:
http://www.myspace.com/mortvillenoise

Sludgesiclle Records:
http://www.myspace.com/sludgesiclerecords

Mentally Ill

The Mentally Ill

Skitz Phrenic - Bass, Saxophone
Special Ed - Drums
Sado Marquis - Vocals
Klaus Trofobic - Guitar

Chicago based sick fiends and killed by death punkers.
Interview with Sado Marquis.

When did the Mentally Ill form? Is it true that you all met in a mental institution?
The Ill formed in the Winter of '78, although our first record was not released until early '79. We all knew each other through attending an institution, although was are not allowed to specifically comment on the nature of the institution or its unusual practices. Needless to say, a great deal of mind control and discipline was part of the program.

To what extent was the use of electro shock therapy and heavy medication an influence on the fucked up sound and lyrics you had? What medication did you use and do you still use it?
To say medication influenced us understates the role it played in the musical content of the band.The Mentally Ill always has been product of modern pharmacology, we don't deny its role....as to shock therapy,we have no recollection of any thanks to our current med regimen.

Do you think tardcore would be a good description for the Mentally Ill?
No, do you?

Do you remember if there were any particular records or bands that you could say influenced you as a band when you started?
Yes, there was a John Cage recording of a toilet flushing in reverse that we used to play for hours on end....It still gets my fingers snapping even today.

Did you play live much? How big was the punk scene in Chicago at the time?
We never played live...the punk scene in Chicago was about as excitng as a cancer ward...it was quite pathetic actually.

Did you have a similar sound to the records when you played live, all distorted to hell and fuzzed out? What did people think of your sound at the time?
Since we never played live we never had to endure anybody's worthless opinion of our sound.

Can you tell me about the “Gacys place” EP? Did you release any other singles?
We only released one single: Gacy's Place with Tumor Boy on the B side.



Did the song “Gacys place” provoke any form of reaction from people in the Chicago area, how long after the murders was the song written? What was the reaction to the lyrics in general?
The song was written as John Gacy was in prison awaitng death. It was right after the murders, and Gacy's actual home where they occurred was located a short drive from where we recorded the single. Pretty much everyone who heard Gacy's Place shared the same reaction, anger, disgust and a general urge to want to kill the people who made the record. That reaction by the way, still continues to this day, something we are quite proud of.

How many recording sessions did you do and how many were included on the Undiscovered Corpses cd? Do you have any particular memories of the different sessions? When were the vocals for the second two demos recorded? Was it difficult to remember the lyrics, or did you write the lyrics more recently? How did it feel going back and recording the vocals?
The Ill had many recording sessions, we were under doctor's orders to get as much out of our system as we possibly could, so we recorded often. Usually, in basements, crawl spaces, sewage plants, but some in recording studios. Upon recently re-recording the songs, some additional vocals were added. I recently wrote some new verses and tried to add them in. However, every time I tried to sing them just jibberish came out. I think the Gods of punk rock were standing on my tongue.

How did the CD on Alternative Testicles come about?
Jello Biafra contacted us and said he wanted to release our old tunes on CD. At first we said no, but eventually we agreed as long as he would release some of our more offensive songe with them. Jello had some issues with the lyrics on some of the tunes (especially Aryan Rock), but we shamed him into adding them, quite fooloish Jello was.






One of your songs was included on the Killed by Death 2 compilation album, was that an official release? What do you think of that compilation? Did you know of any of the other bands at the time and what did you think of them?
Killed By Death was released without our permission or knowledge. We actually are included on two Killed By Death Compliations...we are one of I believe only two bands to share this dubious honor.I knew many of the bands that were included on those records,most of them were a bunch of posers.

Do you still listen to punk or hardcore?
I only listen to punk and occasionally Ukranian bluegrass.

The Mentally Ill reformed in 2007 to perform at a DVD launch party, do you have any more plans to play or record?
Yes and no.

http://www.myspace.com/mentallyillband