New Feature!

I've always thought it would cool to have an interview feature on the blog, and now there is. I'm going to try and get a hold of some people I admire, being musicians, writers, artists, skaters, or whatever, and have them answer a few simple questions. In fact, I'm asking them the simplest journalistic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? And, How? I'm leaving it up to the subject to decide how they want to answer. Some people will probably give us the most basic answers, others may rant, and others may take an entirely different path. The point is, these are creative people, and I want that to shine through. Personally, I find most interviews to be a little boring, because the questions are always the same. I'm hoping that by providing these questions, in their naked, most Basic form, the subjects will be able to express themselves without constraint. Who knows if it will work, but I'm looking forward to the results.

Our first guest is Todd Pot, of one of my all time favorite bands, Apocalypse Hoboken. If you're unaware of this band, I highly recommend you go back to my first post and check them out. Todd's got a totally unique voice, and his lyrics are an art on their own. Here is his interview:


Who .....What .....When.....Where.....Why.....and How..............first things first. I hate doing interviews. Back when Hoboken was in full swing I was the first to curl up in the fetal position and fey sleep when it came to interview time in the back of the van, some crappy bar, or some dudes shitty living room next to his shitty record collection, smack dab next to the shitty litter box that I was to surely curl up next to and try to get a couple hours of shitty shut eye......I was about seven years old when my uncle had given me two cassette tapes: "Computer World" by Kraftwerk and "Wild Planet" by the B-52s. Both of these albums shaped how I felt about music. There was more to music then the stuff that I heard on the radio.......four years would go by and that's when things really started to change... skateboarding made it's way to the Midwest... Nash and Variflex were the only decks we had to choose from, unless you went the mail-order route......I chose the latter. What came with skating was the marriage of music......skate rock......MRR.....Flipside.....Suburban Voice....and a slew of bedroom zines .......I was a sucker for American punk and heavy metal.........i never got on the whole Sex Pistols or Ramones kick....I could give a fuck about dressing a certain way ...I truly just dug the music......so years of stuffing my ears with as much as I could went by.....lots of drugs....lots of pussy.....and more drugs....my favorite local band was a band called Apocalypse Hoboken.......I tried to see them as much as possible, which was an easy feat. During 1987 to 1992 the band played what seemed like every weekend.....during that time the punk scene in Chicago and suburbs was a full fledge scene.....your usual gaggle of misfits and miscreants made up the scene and shit was cool.....I graduated highschool in 1991, floated around for two years, and stumbled upon a flier in a record store called The Turntable. Not only did The Turntable supply us with our records, but the kind owners supplied half the northwest suburbs with weed ....if you were lucky enough to be cool with the owner's son he would pull out his Trapper Keeper of Damned and Psychic TV photos......the whole Manchester thing was really big at the time, so this dude was all up in that shit, ya know Stone Roses ...Primal Scream...Loop.....you get the picture, and I digress....the flier that caught my eye "APOCALYPSE HOBOKEN is looking for a singer"......I tried out with a handful of lyrics and a gutfull of want, and for fuck's sake I became the singer!
The band tried hard to make a dent.....Fireside Bowl was in full swing....Elgin and the Third Floor was wiping the suburbs ass ...shit was good. Hoboken set out from the get go to be different than the bullshit Fat....Doctorstrange.....Epitaph shit that oozed through Chicago....Naked Raygun was another curse. I dont like Chicago styled anything ...keep it outta my music.........our need to be different only alienated us even further......the band toured a great deal, we signed to a horrible label out of California called Kung Fu, run by horrible people that play in now horrible bands......we were stuck and pigeonholed.....made it to Europe with a band called the Ataris, another fart in a dixie cup band.......had a blast though.....went out with At The Drive-In and Murder City Devils which proved to be a complete kick in the nuts....they don't like to share cocaine. Our best tour was with The Candy Snatchers - we finally found comrades!!!! needless to say Apocalypse Hoboken ran its course. Personal strife and band bullshit inevitability tore us apart....it was a good run though!!! Now to today.....I'm kept busy with a plethora of bands:
The House That Gloria Vanderbilt ...... Tongues....Vicelords......Jewsteeth......He-man.....and the occasional Apocalypse Hoboken reunion for all those "Chicago style hot-dogs" write me if ya want @ penistubes@yahoo.com xoxotpot

Todd also asked me to link you guys to God's Balls Records and Litter Box Studio, and so I did. Thank you Todd, for taking time to answer The Basics.