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The Gang's Not All Here
06/26/2000 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
S.L. Duff
Combining fourth-generation wigger-rap with punk leanings and a sense of humor that's 50 percent Motorbooty, 50 percent Mad, and 100 percent locker room, the Bloodhound Gang may be an unlikely group of hitmakers, but they've literally sold millions of CDs worldwide, and they've even knocked a homer (or is that a hummer?) with "The Bad Touch," the naggingly catchy ditty with the "do it like they do on the Discovery Channel" chorus. Right, now you know who I'm talking about, because there has been just no escaping that song in the free world as of late.
Though they come across as cut-ups, goof-ups, and f--k-ups, getting the wazzups on these guys could be pretty interesting. They're college-educated, for one thing, and though they're rude, nasty, and politically incorrect (or just flat-out politically irrelevant), they are literate. Just take a look at their bio, written by vocalist/ producer Jimmy Pop--it's hilarious, satirical, self-deprecating, and informative all at once (check it out on the band's self-maintained website, www.bloodhoundgang.com). Furthermore, the Gang combine influences that are such musical oxymorons, most bands would avoid them in order to sidestep the wrath of humorless fans who wouldn't get the joke. For instance, the Gang's tune "Mope" (from their latest, Hooray For Boobies) makes unlikely bedfellows out of musical snippets from Metallica, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and Pacman (!?). So, despite their admittedly lowbrow humor, an interview with chief 'Hound Jimmy Pop ought to yield some interesting discourse. Not only is he the lyricist and vocalist, he's responsible for piecing the whole musical mess together on his Mac, and the quality of the edits, samples, beats, and production reveals that this funnyman is actually very serious about his work. Made me think of Frank Zappa, in a way. Finally, when I learned that Pop, like yours truly, was also a writer for gone-but-not-forgotten anti-pop culture magazine PopSmear, I knew he'd be a good interview...
After writing up some questions that touched on everything from hypothetically producing other artists, favorite '80s metal bands, and what was for dinner, I came to learn that the Bloodhound Gang had apparently become so big that they didn't have the time to do two interviews with the same media outlet. Huh? Turned out LAUNCH's own Darren Davis was already interviewing them in New York, and the Gang refused to do a separate interview with me. How's that for the previously mentioned sense of humor?
The new assignment was to take Davis's Bloodhound Gang interview tape and turn it into text for you, the treasured LAUNCH.com reader. So here are some snippets from Darren's yak with the BHG. He asked different questions than I would have, and Jimmy and his guitarist Lüpüs Thünder were much more polite and subdued than I had assumed they'd be. I tried to imagine how the interview might have been different had I been there as well. Let's see...
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
I think it's kind of cool that you went to college. People would think that you just came out of nowhere, that maybe you finished sixth grade.
JIMMY:
I always tell kids that come up and ask for the CDs to be signed, "Stay in school, don't drop out of school to be in your band, dude." That's bad news. Unfortunately, in this day and age, it doesn't matter what you do in life, you should have a college degree.
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
Do you have any trouble in the Bible Belt?
JIMMY:
Only Oklahoma. Everywhere else has pretty much caught up with the rest of the world, but Oklahoma is a whole different planet. We got off the bus in the morning and we were walking around, and by the catering, by the stage, anywhere you could possibly go as a band, there were these signs that said, "If you say any of the following words, you will be charged $500 by the local police." It was three words you couldn't say: "F--k, goddamn, sh-t." They have a rule in Oklahoma, because it's a public address system, there could be women and small children within hearing distance. You can go to jail for it. For [the Bloodhound Gang song] "Fire Water Burn," which has the word "motherf--ker" in it, we just held up a giant sign every time we got to it, and the crowd screamed, which was great, because we were being broadcast over the radio. Vinnie actually went to jail that night, but they released him two hours later.
S.L./ LAUNCH:
I've been in jail a couple of times. What's your favorite jail story?
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
People are starting to loosen up again. When you guys first came out, I remember how serious artists were. You were one of the first to go out and do this. And now, you've opened the door a little bit for artists like Kid Rock, so people can have fun again.
JIMMY:
Yeah, I mean, the world needs Kid Rocks. I was happy for him and us that when they put together the White Rap Timeline in Spin magazine--we both were in there. That was cool. Again, that's validation. When you do something weird like what we do, or anything that's a little left of center, like Marilyn Manson, you never know. There's no basis to work from, there's no formula to it. You hope that what you're doing people will like.
S.L:
Marilyn Manson and Kid Rock are both platinum acts. Where does "left of center" or "weird" come in?
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
Do you get props from bands that may have shied away from you, and are now coming out and saying, "Hey, I love you guys"?
JIMMY:
Never heard of anybody that ever said that they didn't like us [who] has come around and said that they liked us, but there's people that come out of the woodwork, that for me, I'm just shocked. I don't know if you're familiar with Queens Of The Stone Age...
LÜPÜS
They've even gone so far as to invite me out to their studio in the middle of the desert. They put out these records called "Desert Sessions." They were like, "Yeah, you should come out one weekend and hang out." I'm a crappy guitarist; these guys are geniuses at what they do. I was like, "Really?"
JIMMY:
Bands that we started with that we can say we came up with were Sugar Ray, Limp Bizkit. We did a show that no one came to, it was us and Bizkit in Jacksonville, Fla., September 1995. There were three people there. One was Fred's girlfriend. It was pretty horrendous. I think the fact that the other night we found out that 'N Sync were fans...They came out to the show and hung out with us. They asked to come out to the show, so we gave them their own balcony to hang out in. While we were playing, our tour manager said, "Well, you know, they do this thing where they push out a trunk that says '''N Sync' on it, and they all dress in the same outfits and they do a dance routine and sing 'Tearin' Up My Heart.' Would you guys like to pull out the trunk?" They said, "Sure." So we ended up hanging out with them until 3 or 4 a.m., to the point where we might do a song with them. They were pretty cool to it. They're great people. You meet a lot of artists, and I have to say, I've never met anybody...for being the biggest band ever on the charts, they're by far some of the nicest people. I think it's cool, because they're proud of what they do, they're making a killing as far as cash goes, they get laid, I'm sure, where they want when they want, and they have a great time.
S.L./ LAUNCH:
But, given your satirical and comedic stance, you don't consider a joint venture with such a crassly commercial outfit sort of demeaning, or that it at least could be perceived as something of a sellout? Or, is that in itself the joke?
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
It's great that even though you have had chart success, you're not afraid to get out there and do the work, to tour.
JIMMY:
Well, I think that at the end of the day, those are the people that make or break a band. There's very few nights that the five of us aren't out there in the crowd meeting people or hanging out with people. It's kinda cool, because I know that most of them think like me; if they're at the show, then I probably have a lot in common with them. So that's one thing, besides all the bush, can't be bad. People are the same everywhere--they like to drink and they like to screw, whether they're Russian or German or Australian or American or Canadian or whatever. I think that's important, that's part of the deal. In touring, you get to see the world for free.
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
I understand there is a censored cover [of Hooray For Boobies] featuring only the cow, and it's just called Hooray.
LÜPÜS
I get angry emails every once in awhile, like, "Dude, what's up with your record, it doesn't have any swear words on it! Everything's cut out." Oh, well, you're stupid enough to have bought your records at Wal-Mart, can't help ya. But then I always tell them what's going on, so they can go buy the real one.
JIMMY:
It's funny, it's such big business, a record company, especially the Universal Music Group--which is part of Seagram's--they actually give you the option: "Do you want to put it in the stores, or don't you?" We never did. The last two, we never made one of those [edited] records for Wal-Mart. This time we said, "Sure, why not? Let's see what happens." It's very funny.
S.L./ LAUNCH:
What are the results? How has the censored version sold in comparison to the regular version?
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
Have you ever had problems with the police on tour?
LÜPÜS
Our bassist [Evil Jared Hasselhoff] blows fire, so we had Fire Marshall problems in New York. But in Switzerland...
JIMMY:
What happened was, we played in November in Zurich, and the bassist and I started throwing up in each other's mouths, just back and forth onstage. Word got around, and we were going to play again in February, and they were giving us a hard time about it. They were trying to close the show down the day of the show. The Swiss people are very uptight.
S.L./ LAUNCH:
In Copenhagen, they openly display "caviar" pornos. I don't think they're too uptight about vomit over there...
DARREN/ LAUNCH:
Do you really watch the Discovery Channel?
JIMMY:
Oh yeah, yeah. That one, it was like "The Life Of The Dung Beetle." The dung beetle was getting a lot of action. I thought, "Well!"
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