JIMMY URINE:
The Jersey Beat
Interview

by Deborah Draisin

Hailing from right here in New York City (although most of the band lives in Los Angeles now,) Mindless Self Indulgence formed in 1997 and quickly rose to underground darling status. They remained a cult favorite for a decade, with a fiercely loyal fanbase, until Linkin Park helped cast them a wider net by inviting them along on their annual Projekt Revolution tour.

Although the band doesn’t release new albums often, they do tour exhaustively (hence the upcoming hiatus at the end of their current North American run in mid-April,) and last year released their most ambitious product to date, “How I Learned To Stop Giving A Shit And Love Mindless Self Indulgence.” Their shows are reminiscent of a comic convention: lively banter with the audience, who is frequently cosplaying along with the band, dramatizations and animations. If you’re a nerd with a killer sense of humor, it’s nearly impossible not to fall for this band, especially with Jimmy doing things like dropping his drawers to show everyone his pink boxer briefs or running offstage to buy merch, microphone in hand to update the crowd every step of the way, or telling drummer Kitty that the “garbage people” in the audience frighten him when they try to touch him (in actuality, this band is one of the most engaging groups I’ve ever seen – super hands-on with their fans.)

Outlandish stage presence aside, the bandmembers are also wickedly smart and insanely talented. Jimmy was awesome enough to sit down with me as he wrapped up lunch. Not only does he open the eyes to the razor-sharp manner in which his mind works while creating, but he also spent a decent few moments waxing poetic about which comics are super interesting right now,
Q: Hello, this is Deb and a very red Jimmy of Mindless Self Indulgence.

JU: I’m very embarrassed.

Q: Thank you again for speaking with Jersey Beat. We are grateful to you.

JU: Of course!

Q: First and foremost in everyone’s mind has got to be the upcoming hiatus at the end of the tour.

JU: It’s the first and foremost on my mind.

Q: I’m sure it is. You’re probably looking forward to it! (both laugh.) What made you decide to take the break at this particular moment in time?

JU: First off, we’re not breaking up, that’s Number One. Number Two, it’s a break from touring. Number Three, it’s also sort of a “heads up!” because I think people just assume that we’re going to be out on tour all the time, every year. A lot of times, I come to people’s towns, and the day that I leave the town, they’re like “Hey, when are you coming to Jersey?” and I’m like “I just fucking played Jersey!” So, it’s sort of a heads up that we’re not coming back in six months, we’re not coming back in a year – we might not come back for a couple of years. If I get hit by a train, we may never, ever come back.

Q: Try not to do that.

JU: Well, you never know, so you’d better get your ticket now and enjoy yourself and let’s have a nice, fun time.

Q: Fair enough. You and Chantal frequently tour together (she’s right over there, actually,) this time being no exception. How is it having your wife on tour with you – is it comforting, like home, or do you find yourself getting dressed down in front of your friends?

JU: No, no, it’s fantastic – I mean, that’s how we met. So, it’s like a little anniversary for us every time we do it.

Q: Oh, that’s cute! Do you have like a cake, a little celebration?

JU: No, it’s not really our anniversary, but it’s like an anniversary to me. We met on tour, fell in love and got married. Of course, she’s got such a great act.

Q: She really does.

JU: If she wasn’t such a fantastic frontwoman, I wouldn’t be so apt to be like “Hey, I’ll just go put my wife on the bill.” It’s less about it being my wife and more about it being a fact that I happened to marry a really cool person.

Q: You did marry a very cool person. Morningwood was a great band, and she’s doing great by herself. I’m looking forward to seeing that. So, whoever has been running your Twitter right now is friggin’ hilarious.

JU: Oh yeah, with the dead babies?

Q: (laughing) That was my favorite thing in the world (Editor’s Note: MSI’s twitter asked fans to send artwork of imaginary ten baby sacrifices – most were stick figures, which was kind of the point.) Was that you or some other equally talented Mindless member?

JU: It was the equally talented, lovely Bill H. I can’t take credit.

Q: Ah, that’s Bill H’s humor! Very good.

JU: We have similar types of humor.

Q: I think you have to: I don’t think you can work together with somebody who doesn’t.

JU: No, I don’t think he would’ve been into it if he didn’t have that kind of humor.

Q: My boss does not have my sense of humor, and goes really badly. Okay, what made you decide to release an EP of all “Fuck Machine” remixes? Not that they’re not awesome, but why that particular song?

JU: Why not a song with the word “fuck” in it? It’s hilarious, with that many remixes, it must be like “fuck” all over the place. We didn’t even have to do all that much, it’s just like (demonstrates pushing a button repeatedly) “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” So much fun.

Q: That’s really funny that you should say that, because at one point, we had had a tally going of how many songs had “Shut up” in them. It was like “Oh, this band had to have a shut up song” (both laugh.)

JU: “Just shut up!” (mimicks a rapid drum machine noise.)

Q: Yep, exactly - most of them sounded like that.

JU: Those are the favorite ones, right?

Q: Most every one. Talk about the video for a minute, which was majorly kickass. Whose concept was that?

JU: That was my concept. I wanted to do sort of an animè -style cartoon opening, as if we had had a cartoon show. I’d been kicking around the idea around in my head for a while, and then I reached out – just on a whim – to a company called MoreFrames ( http://moreframes.com/ ,) whose work I had been seen previously and thought “Wow, this probably could lend itself to what I’m seeing in my head.” It turned out that they knew who we were, and they said “We’re big fans, we’d love to do it” and I said “Great.”
So, we got together to do it, and then I reached out to this girl, BiteyTheVillain (http://biteythevillain.tumblr.com/ ,) who we’ve known for a long time, to help me with the character design. I told her that I wanted Steve to look like this, and Kitty to look like that, and she helped me get it tightened, and then gave them to MoreFrames. I gave them sort of an animatic of how I wanted everything: Kitty’s section to look like this, and Lyn-Z get burned at the stake, and blah blah blah.

Then they came back and it was perfect, it looked really great as a video, except maybe like one section where I said “Oh, that should be green instead of red.” Then they sent it back to me and it was done, and it had been synced up to “Fuck Machine.” I was like “I want more cartoon, less video.” So, since I wrote everything and had all of the separations, I went back in and took away some of the music to put in the falling and the sound effects. Steve destroys the skull and there’s a huge explosion. I just put in all of those particular things so that Steve was doing it, so that it would be more of a cartoon show opening and less of a music video that’s animated, you know? To me, that’s fun. I like that idea, I don’t really care about a music video as much as I care about a viral video, or something that’s kind of interesting.

Q: I think it is more interesting. You know, how many times can you stare at people playing a guitar?

JU: I mean, if you have the most amazing idea for a four-minute video, bravo to you if you’re going to keep people’s attention spans for four fucking minutes, but if you don’t get someone’s attention within the first thirty seconds, they are one click away.

Q: Yep.

JU: There’s a whole row on the side “If you like this, you’ll probably like that.” It’s really about the first thirty seconds and what kind of wacky idea that you have. So, whether it’s the “I’m On Crack” video that we did with Mike Diva - which was a very amazing video - or we did another couple with Jhonen Vasques, which was really great, and I like all that, because it’s all interesting. Well, it’s interesting to me, so it might be interesting to you.

Q: It’s absolutely interesting. Are you going to release the cels that you drew up?

JU: Oh, I don’t know if we’re going to do that. I have to talk to MoreFrames about that, but that I definitely want to keep a bunch. I’m a big animè and animation fan. There are tons of references to animè that we watch and everything like that. A nice thing about our fans is that they got all of those references immediately. The comments on YouTube went up as soon as it started: “Oh, he pulled that off: I see Sailor Moon, I figured he was going to do that” and I’m like “Yes, you do.”

Q: It’s great when you have people that stay with you that long and know what you’re into.

JU: Also, with our band, there’s a nice thing where if I like something, they probably like it – we’re on the same wavelength. If I’m watching animè or I’m playing Mindcraft all day, they’ll be like “Yeah, me too!”

Q: That’s actually really cool, to have that. What titles are you reading right now, by the way?

JU: I’m not reading Manga right now. The Luna Brothers are one of my favorites (they did “Girls” and “The Sword.”) I think they split up to do two separate ones. One of them is doing a thing called “Whispers” and the other is doing a “Ada.” It’s like a weird sort of robot thing that’s super fucking cool. I’m reading that. Anything by Howard Chaykin I love. I don’t usually pick up too many mainstream comics. Somebody gave me the “Hawkeye” one, which is fantastic.

Q: I have been wanting to read that one.

JU: It’s really good. He’s a regular, normal dude who lives in Brooklyn. He’s got this little ward who’s like a bratty, bitchy girl who runs around on him all the time. They’re running around through Superstorm Sandy and stuff like that, it’s really cool. The other one that was really cool was the new “Miss Marvel.”

Q: Is that good?

JU: They took her and they made her into a young thirteen year old Muslim, and it’s kinda cool. I like comic books, but I really like when the art and the story are good. I’m not one of those guys who’s like “Oh, it’s an Alex Ross cover” and then you open it up, and it’s some bullpen dude, big fucking deal – I don’t give a shit. I won’t buy a title just because it’s a Bendis, yay.

Q: You won’t buy it because of a cover?

JU: I won’t necessarily buy it just because of the cover, or who it is. If it’s Wolverine, great, there are a million really good Wolverine stories, not only by Frank Miller, but by somebody else. You don’t have to always get every Wolverine story. The things that do pop up in Marvel and DC, where they’re a little more about the character, they’ll pop up. Somebody’ll do a cool Wolverine story or a cool “Avengers” story. With “Miss Marvel,” they got a really good artist, it’s a cool idea that’s fresh in comics, the way that they flipped it. First of all, she’s a young girl, and second of all, she’s a Muslim, which is very edgy, and they really go into it in a cool way. I picked up the first issue and I really love it.

Q: I’ll check it out. You guys actually put out a comic.

JU: Yes, we did: “Adventures Into Mindless Self Indulgence.” It was drawn by the wonderful comic artist Jess Fink, who does “Chester 5000.” He also has a new book out called “We Can Fix It,” which is this hilarious time travel thing. She’ll go back in time and tell her young self “Don’t make out with that guy, make out with this guy!” and hilarious hijinks ensue. She’s a really great artist with great timing. She had approached us a long time ago, saying “Hey, whenever you guys want to do a comic.” Then we decided it would be really cool if we took all the stories that we tell all the time on the bus – maybe somebody comes on, a friend or family member, whatever – and we keep rehashing the same stories like a bunch of cavemen at a fire. So we figured, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we just gave her a couple of the better stories?”

Q: Fuck it, let her run with that.

JU: That’s what we did. We came up with the best stories and she illustrated it all out, then me and her edited it a little bit down, and then we had our little comic book, and it’s great.

Q: How cool is that to have?

JU: Yeah, it’s fun. I want to do another one at some point soon.

Q: You guys should – you should do a panel at Comic Con, even. That’d be fun. You mentioned that the fans who follow you on Twitter have no idea what you’re up to, and it makes you insane. I feel the same exact way about interviewers who don’t do their homework, and it’s annoying as hell.

JU: (groaning) Come on, you can’t even look at Wikipedia?

Q: Google is your fucking friend.

JU: You’re gonna just show up at an interview and be like “So, who are you and how did you get together?”

Q: Ooh, I love that one. That sneaky little move “Oh, identify yourself for the camera?” Come on!

JU: That’s a good one, yeah.

Q: Go back later and do it! So, home shows are always nuts for you guys. What’s the most special part about playing here – besides the pizza?

JU: Besides the pizza? Well, first, we get to be home for a minute, and if you have the day off, that’s always good. It’s cool, because when you do play the home town – and you see this a lot in the U.S., but you always see it in the home town – you’ll see people who haven’t been to shows in a long time. We’re basically like high school teachers. We’ve had this very fortunate thing where our fans, from when we started out in the late nineties, the demographic was twelve to eighteen. Around twelve, you’re like “I’m getting sick of pop music: The Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears and Katy Perry. I want something that says ‘fuck,’ has a bit more energy to it, is still kind of crazy. Hey, this thing’s kinda cool” and then they get into Mindless Self Indulgence.

Then around college, they’re like “Hey, Man, peace out. I’m gonna go listen to Arcade Fire and read Plato and Chomsky grow up and be a little more mature.” Then, when they hit their forties, they’ll reminisce and be like “Oh, Man, remember when we used to go to punk shows? That was a lot of fun!” Those are the guys who will show up again, which is kind of interesting, but whether it’s 1998 or 2003, we’ve always had a high school class. Twelve to eighteen is a major portion of our audience.

Q: So you keep getting new, younger fans, that’s good.

JU: Yeah, that’s like seventy-five percent of the crowd, but it’s fun, especially when you come back to an old-school location like New York, you will get a lot of people coming out of the woodwork, being like “Man!” walking on crutches and stuff like that. “Back in ’99, Man, when you guys played, I was right there in the front row.” And that’s kind of a crazy thing to see, especially when they’re like “I’m a lawyer now, and this is my kid.” You’re like “Whoa, holy shit.”

Q: “I’m getting old.”

JU: That’s the thing, is that I don’t see that. All I see, whenever I’m in Australia or the UK or America, I look down and it’s always some thirteen year old kid saying “Oh Man, this is my first show ever.”

Q: That’s fucking cool as hell.

JU: Very cool. It’s a very interesting and cool thing that we’ve somehow been able to keep this sort of youthful, cartoony Spongebob Squarepants act, and it’s gotten that kind of a following too. You know what it reminds me of (and I say this all the time?) It reminds me of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Q: Ah, that was the story of my life for a few years.

JU: That’s what I mean: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is always the story of your life for a certain amount of time in high school.

Q: And then you go back.

JU: And then you go back a few years later – and there’s always a “Rocky Horror” in your town. If you go to one right now, the people in the audience will be like “This is my first time and I’m thirteen” and you’ll be like “Wow,” and they will love it and they get into it. It’s a similar thing to that lineup of kids outside right now, and they’re all wearing makeup and crazy stuff. There’s probably someone dressed as fucking “Monsters, Inc.” or Eyeore or a fireman, or who the fuck knows? So, it’s good to see that when we come back to a hometown show.

Q: Good energy too. Okay, so whose blank set space call is it tonight?

JU: Oh, it’s everybody’s. The context of it is that we do is we go out and play some new songs off the new record that we haven’t played ever, like “Stalker” and “Anonymous” and “Jack You Up.” Then, there are a couple of oldies that we like that we want to bring back all the time, like “Animal” and stuff like that, but then there are four places that we leave blank in the set. One is Steve’s choice, one is Kitty’s choice, one is my choice and one is Lyn-Z’s choice. Everybody gets to pick, and whatever they want to pick, like, let’s say, Steve wants to play fucking “Shut Me Up” twice in a row, it’s Steve’s call – he can do whatever the fuck he wants.

It’s been great, because it’s made every single show on this tour absolutely unique, because Steve will be like “I want to play fucking ‘Keeping Up With The Kids’” and I’ll be like “I don’t fucking remember ‘Keeping Up With The Kids!’”

Q: I was gonna ask what if somebody picks something that nobody remembers?

JU: Yeah, it’s hard, it’s hard, but it’s been fun, and we’ve always got a cacophony type of set anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. If I jump off the drums, I’m not always going to land perfectly right in the middle of the stage. I may land perfectly, and people will be like “Wow, he’s Jackie Chan!” or I may run slam right into Lyn-Z and they’ll be like “These people are fucking Charlie Chaplin.”

Q: I would so do that.

JU: You never know what you’re going to get, and I like that spontaneity.

Q: Spontaneity is the best.

JU: Yeah, it’s fun.

Q: Alright, Jimmy, anything you want to add?

JU: Um…no, it was great to talk to you again, and Jersey Beat. You asked great questions and I always love good questions.

Q: Thank you so much, I appreciate that.

JU: We will definitely see you guys as we keep going through this tour, and we get to the end of it in a couple of weeks.

Q: This is it! Have you got some plans? Do you know what you’re going to do?

JU: Yeah, I’m definitely going to work on some side projects like I did last time. Actually, we took a hiatus already, but we never did tell you (both laugh.) Like I did the Lollipop Chainsaw; I want to do more stuff like that. Video games and movies and things of that nature.

Q: Plus, Lyn-Z’s got her art, and you and Steve also have the Left Rights.

JU: Yeah, that’s right, plus there are definitely going to be some more Mindless releases. If I’m at home and I’m in a studio, and I put something together, it’s a Mindless release, you know? It’s just the touring stuff that I want to take a breather from for a second, but everything else is still moving forward as usual.

Read up, listen up, watch a vid or catch them live
http://mindlessselfindulgence.com/

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