Interview with The Phenomenauts - Podcast 24

alert alert this is the phenomenots and you're listening to sound scene revolution hey thanks for tuning in to sound scene revolution this fine week i am rich your host and this week we uh have an interview and showcase songs from the local barrier band the phenomenots you may know who they are maybe you've heard of them they've done tours with the aquabats real big fish every band under the sun the epoxies it's my phone because i'm awesome it's my mom i'm not even kidding my mom just called anyhow so they've done all sorts of tours they're pretty well known maybe you'll like them uh we got a whole interview that they did uh in their little bus while they were on tour with the epoxies before we jump into that we're going to play a song of their album available on spring man records the name of the album is re-entry and if you like it we have two copies to give away so tune in at the end on how to win copies of this album because we like to give you free stuff so uh yeah it's called i'm a robot it's by the

♪ song played ♪

sound scene revolution we are hanging out on the transportation vehicle of the phenomenots with a couple of the members of the band if you guys could uh just introduce yourself and i guess we've been doing give a random fact about yourself so yourself give your name and random fact about you deep in thought uh professor greg arius of the phenomenots i was uh born in amsterdam whoa that's cool i'm commander angel nova of the phenomenots i play guitar and sing and i don't know random fact um my shoe size is 11 and a half that's a good random fact not a lot of people have given a shoe size you heard me ladies that's a pretty good shoe size so um how about we just start with uh brief history of the band the origin that kind of story the phenomenots started out as uh playing music on the street myself uh jimmy boom and joe bot uh we played like 80s new wave songs but we changed the like the time signature like we'd make a blondie song country western and we made a billy idol song polka and we kind of changed them all up and we had some cool spacey outfits and we called space patrol and we would get huge crowds but we actually couldn't make very much money at all and it was a lot of work and our girlfriends left us so we decided that we should have a real band to get new girlfriends show them to spite them all and that's so that's where the idea came yeah and then and then we became the phenomenots and and we got captain krihaus and professor greg excellent um i was gonna ask a lot of the stuff i was reading about you guys a lot of people talked about like how you started off with the gorilla style shows you'd play like outside the film or like outside i think you tried to play outside warp tour but you actually managed to get in for that one yeah we we snuck in but that's where that's where that evolved from is that we were playing on the street originally yeah so we had the know-how and the manpower but so yeah so we were gonna play in front of warp tour and they shut us down so we snuck in the back and hid behind a dumpster for about a half an hour which isn't easy when you have an upright bass that's like six feet tall and uh then we you know went in there and started playing two songs in someone tapped me on the shoulder and i thought okay this is it and uh the guy's like hey the band didn't show up if you guys just want to hop up on the stage so i told the audience that was watching us hey we've been upgraded to a stage that's and all the audience helped us move our stuff up there and then we finished out the set on the stage that's awesome so it was just like no one's here you got you guys who just showed up yeah that's cool did you guys like bring your own generators and stuff for like when you do those we our power cell was uh it's like a car battery and inverter and another time when we we commandoed the backstage of the california music awards they were trying to figure out how to unplug us and we saw these security guys running around and they couldn't figure it out and they finally had to say look guys please stop you're you're embarrassing yourself that that was a rock and roll victory and we're in the backstage and they kind of stopped us they didn't couldn't figure out what was going on and and we went and drank a bunch of the beer back there yeah current rehash secured a couple cases of miller for us yeah that's right yeah we actually yeah we we left with a couple of cases it was it was pretty fantastic anytime you can get away with free beer i consider that a success well and let's sneak into the backstage of a show that yeah has thousands of people at it who and we were interviewed actually too we got interviewed that's why we got a cable network tv thing that's awesome now have you guys ever been worried about like stuff like that like getting arrested or getting your gear stole like confiscated or anything like that um it takes courage yeah it's it's way scarier than playing a regular show but you always just have to think that if you do get into some sort of trouble first person you got a call is the media you know yeah you got to turn it into a into a yeah definitely like any press is good any press is good press that's cool if you guys arrested for rocking i want to see that on like the front page of the san jose merc or something we should try and get arrested like to play naked his band was arrested for just rocking too hard do you guys ever like have you ever gotten like any real trouble it all seems like it turned out pretty well for you i mean we have not gotten any real trouble we got the cops said they would confiscate our gear one time but they didn't is that because you guys don't suck like if you if you if you sucked more would people like be more prone to like actually following through are they just like they're pretty good i think it's sort of a a uh an offense that doesn't really hurt anyone so they're just kind of like ah just just get out of here we'll threaten you with some stuff and yeah pretty much just wait till you're all wrapped up um now from that you guys actually played one of the most more interesting shows you guys opened up for uh less claypool on uh new year's right new year's eve was that yeah how'd that like come about that's kind of an interesting match i guess i do know how that happened do we want to do you want to mark that was actually one through the warp tour we got a million things from the warp tour i mean little we got a thing for a compilation on a children's album and one of the things we got was that we uh got taped by somebody who is less claypool's friend and was showing him the tapes from his day at the warp tour oh wow and he said hey those guys are cool where are they from and we ended up being local since he's from around here and so he said hey i got this big show he only plays once a year so it was like this big thing 10 year anniversary or something oh wow major jimmy boom everybody he just showed up you want all the was it was it weird at all because i mean imagine his friends or his fans can be kind of it was pretty weird well it was very psychedelic there was a lot of mist in the air boy when we walked on stage that was it was could you see the audience it was extreme i don't know if the smell was bigger than the the actual site i don't know it was you could cut through it though i don't know if rich took up my fucking spots hold on one thing about the show was there was two gigantic mushrooms on the stage like blow up like what pink floyd would use you know yeah and um that was yeah pretty spacey was it weird kind of feeling like almost no matter what you do opening for like less claypool uh it's probably gonna be like more of a spectacle when he hits the stage i mean at least for his fans because you guys have a pretty i mean raucous live show was it hard it was it was a real different show between i mean you know we're kind of crazy and spacey and earth propaganda and he is definitely was more psychedelic so a lot of his like stonier fans were not sure what to think of us because we're you know we're pretty propagandist we you know we you know we believe in earth and we're definitely yeah propaganda for earth and so you know we look we look pretty square when you come to see giant mushrooms on the stage and so yeah they didn't know what to think and then we just kind of exploded out of the gate and then they pretty much accepted us that's cool yeah i mean i imagine that's got to be no matter who you are when you're standing on stage with giant inflatable mushrooms you're a little out of your element unless unless you're less playful in which case it works out well for you um i liked all the drum solos personally where there are a lot of drum solos lots of drum solos yeah it was like i don't know if they had enough time to absorb our songs because like i think they're used to songs that last 15 to 20 minutes and ours lasts about two to three i think i think les claypool played for like two and a half hours and played seven songs oh my no i'm just not really an exaggeration actually we played like 30 minutes yeah it was like it was like a rush set kind of just every song like kind of flowed into the other one for like 45 minutes at a time type of deal they were kind of they were great if they if you were on acid which most of the audience yeah probably in fact i talked to les at the end of the night and asked him he said he said that it's a tradition for the band to do mushrooms before they go on well i guess yeah wow well that's their thing now we know if i ever talk to him i'll be sure to bring that up um talking about live shows real quick i've seen i was digging through uh like record crates at record stores and i see that there's like a live album of you guys that's available at i think it's it's either rasputin or streetlight in san jose and i haven't seen that on any of your like official discographies do you guys know anything about that or it must be a bootleg we'd be very interested to find out more about that seven inch no it's it's a cd cd live cd a live cd yeah there's two live tracks on our ep pre-entry but yeah other than that we don't have anything officially is it put out by a record label called pirate records maybe i'm just kidding i can't think off the top of my head of it yeah i i don't know you guys no knowledge of that whoever buys it please send us five dollars in the mail yeah well i'll see what i'll try and pick one up and i'll send it to you guys because i looked at it and i was like it's kind of interesting it'd be kind of cool to have and i was looking at your guys stuff and it's not mentioned anywhere and i'm like that's usually not too good of a sign do the pictures make us look good at least on there okay it looks nice it's labeled i think it's labeled under uh like rockabilly or swing but does it look like professional or look like a bootleg it looks uh a little better than uh if you've ever seen the fireside bowl live cds which are all bootleg it looks a little better than that but it doesn't look like right you know and it i thought you know i looked at the back not spring man so i was kind of a little thrown out if the person is out there is listening who who did that please do a better job next time please make you look you make you guys look good you're making us look crappy don't worry no one's listening okay he's not he's not we we have eight people and they're all my mom she listens at work there's literally tens of people listening yeah tens of five maybe at most anyhow um all right so we'll uh take a little break there from the interview for a second uh before we hop back into that we're going to play another track off of the phenomenon's uh record re-entry which is available on spring man records right now if you are interested again we're going to be giving away some copies here at the end so be sure to listen to the end of the interview to uh figure out how you're going to get one of those all right we're going to play the track space fight off of their lp re-entry you should check it out and uh be sure

♪ song played ♪

this is your what third or fourth vehicle second third um fifth name off the fleet commander yeah uh first there's the phenomenator which is a battle class fighter yeah then there's a phenomena bomber alpha which is a smaller cruiser which was blown up in a horrible accident not with us in it but actually we just made it blow up you blew it up yeah for for uh in the movie punk rock holocaust yeah i'm actually connected to that yeah sound guy nerman knows the guy who made those that movie and he whoa really our beer bong killed someone in that movie it was a man beer bong and and it killed someone oh awesome i think i have the remains of that beer bong at my house yeah i was gonna say they did it did it have a junction and there's like two yeah yeah red cone no way pvc everything that's yours it probably went all the way to philadelphia yeah yeah and then all the way back here that backseat conception guy yeah yeah yeah yeah yep yeah i like this eight degrees of or six degrees of separation from sound guy nerman now only three yeah there we go so we're we're on a uh we're on a compilation with the uh bacon brothers so now you're now you're you're not you're getting about now your degree of kevin bacon is a lot closer to one two three how did you end up on a sound compilation with kevin bacon i don't know that was more like what what possibly that was that children's album jimmy was it was in briefly children's album and it has you and kevin bacon weird al like you guys and weird al i could see making a children's song but kevin bacon all i see is the naked guy in wild things that's what the song is about no no naked guy that i think that would probably be the greatest rock song ever is how he got naked and did a scene with denise richards or was that no that was matt the other guy nobody knows but wild things was a good movie nonetheless what were we oh we were talking about your vehicles oh yeah okay that you blew one up for a movie yeah then there was the pss colossus which was a same a dual band cruiser just like this one then there was the pss temporary which we didn't use for very long what happened to that well we just we had to get it when we were in between vehicles then now the pss titan the pride of the phenomenon fleet yeah this is a really nice like vehicle i'm really impressed by this a lot of bands go out and they have like you know all their stuff loaded in the back of a souped up hugo or something and this is a nice transition from that we've we've put a lot of work into it the phenomenon's build all of our own you know effects and gear and vehicles and command center and uniforms and everything that's awesome what do you guys like i noticed you guys have like a lot of like personalization to this what do you guys have just off the top of your head well there's there's a game system there's playstation there's uh like that there's surround sound dvd player and there's the nav navitron which was built by chief ground crew tim which is knows anywhere we are on the surface of the earth that's right once we leave that we're kind of on our own it's a little bit hard because it's pretty vast yeah you gotta judge by stars it's got a bunch of there's a bunch of uh music on there too on the navitron and has wireless internet and stuff like that wow the best are really the cryogenic chambers though our um our bunking system when you want to sleep on the road and you know at any hour you might just want to go to sleep it's hard to say there's yeah there's six on either side there's starboard one through six and port one through six you've got them numbered too that's really nice that's matching cubby holes in the back drinking confusion down yeah because i imagine there's sometimes if it wasn't numbered someone would like crawl into somebody else's bed yeah and if it's the wrong person that can get awkward and then you're like wait i don't i don't have two pillows where did these come from that's why professor greg is thinking ahead in case someone accidentally this number falls off or something he has an extra pillow okay scoot over just in case tim from the epoxies happens to crawl in my bunk i don't have to kick him out you're like you got that pillow that's the warm one no i'd really kick it out don't worry all right fantastic um so this is how far along are you guys into this tour thus far well this is the second show so you're like day two of it that's why we still look so fresh and handsome i just i assume two more days and we'll look haggard and awful your holes in your clothes we would have more tour stories to tell yeah we'd have a lot more i'm sure uh so how long is this tour going for now i think it's six weeks six weeks i think it's a total of 35 shows if i'm not mistaken oh wow we're gonna go all the way to the east coast and back so wow that's that's pretty impressive um what's probably the most is this the you guys have done bigger tours than this right the biggest one was last year with the aquabats it was about the same length except for we had two legs kind of uh that spanned the whole summer with uh two week break in between so that was the most extensive tour we've ever done is it ever hard like being on the road for that period of time it gets it gets hard after after about a month of living out of a bag it gets starts to get difficult yeah but nothing we can't handle if our ac stays fixed this year we'll be yeah rolling style awesome so um do you guys have any new plans for uh recording or anything like that all of our plans are new oh um fair enough we're working on it we have a bunch of new songs and they're coming along and we're working on it but it's a slow and steady process yeah obviously you guys don't want to crank them out like one after the other without time in between do you guys like practice them on the road or do you guys wait till you get home and then practice them at your headquarters we mainly do it at the command center it's hard to do it on the road yeah because i mean you guys have like what sound check and then kind of wait yeah until you guys go up yeah there's not a lot we we do a little bit on the road but it's not easy yeah sort of get your inspiration on the road and then you know when you get back you have it pent up and i got a new song it's called i hate these guys i hate the rest of my band i don't want to do this again who ate all the food backstage this one's called all right um this one's called next time pee in the toilet i don't like that song i hope not on brian's shoes i would hope to god there's a song titled that i would i don't know how well anyone else would like it i think it'd be really funny yeah so well if you guys ever get the chance um do you guys have any particular process for songwriting or is it just kind of like does one person write all the songs or no different people come in with song ideas and then we all collaborate on make them not suck anymore so that's what we can actually yeah it's like one guy come in he's like i got a great song and you're like that's really terrible yeah oh no come here what if we yeah no yeah it's it's a it's actually wait we wait for a comet to actually come down hit the earth and then for some reason all of our songs have come right from those comets right they're just laying in it yeah just that's got to be hard though because i mean there's got to be dry spells in between there is you'd be surprised how many comets actually hit they're unreported yeah i have but sometimes you know some months you just get showered like inspiration is just raining and that's yeah sometimes it doesn't that's when all the colts kill themselves is when you guys get really inspired we don't mind you don't feel any guilt science band yeah yeah that oh there we go that was a question i was actually going to get to you guys are really science-based and you guys have the you use the phrase science and honor right science and honor is our motto and we find that it actually works pretty good for just about everything the science is the search for truth yeah and honor is don't be a dick and those you put those two together yeah and what more could you want that's awesome i was gonna i mean i've been wondering about that for a while and it seems you guys do seem very you know honor bound by things yeah we don't we don't steal or don't screw people over or anything like that you ever had your gear stolen at all not here yeah any of your stuff boy i don't know uh we were missing a little foot switch for a guitar after one after the boston warp tour a couple years ago but that's the only thing i can remember that's really good wasn't necessarily stolen what are you trying to make us believe in karma or something no no i'm just kidding i think you guys yeah no we've we've been we've done pretty good we're also from oakland so it's not as easy to steal stuff from us it's probably being from oakland you're more used to people trying to steal stuff at your home than out on the road well yeah we're we're more streetwise probably than other bands we have you know security protocols and stuff to keep our stuff safe awesome well hopefully i mean it's just been i don't want to say bad things about earth's capital oakland california though it's a wonderful town but it's tough but yeah you know you don't survive in oakland by being a wuss that's right that's clear all right well i think we are going to start wrapping this up do you guys have uh anything that you'd like to plug websites any of that i mean you guys have this tour coming up for the next you know six seven weeks however long but well you can check out our website phenomenons.com which has our brand new video game yeah oh that's what i forgot to ask you guys have a fucking video yeah and it saves your high score so just like if you think you're really that good then you go in there and you freaking put your high score up and then like it saves it so ever the whole world can see how did the video game come about one of our awesome cadets built it oh because super hyper cadet like a lot of flash games are really lame and i was playing that like last night and i was like this is really fun i had to like turn it off that's so great and that's that's on your website right yep yeah everyone's got to play that that's a fun game that's a great way to kill time at work not that i also mentioned there's a rumor about a cartoon i didn't i didn't hear nothing i didn't even hear you mention it in fact what am i talking about what well did you say something everything went black for like the last 15 seconds what now all right so uh check out your website you guys are on uh myspace i think yeah everyone's on myspace myspace.com slash the phenomenons all right is there like just a phenomenons out there that's ripping you guys off without the um i don't think so there's a band called the phenomen nuts really yeah but they're actually uh we're in the midst of suing them right now actually ouch one of their members not really maybe a couple of them are in the band that's getting ready to play on stage here i think yeah so we have to get out of here and go throw stuff at them yeah they were they were truly amazing they put us to shame they played once at the command center when we were supposed to play and they snuck on the stage and started playing right when we were supposed to be killing and the audience wasn't sure what to think at first but it was amazing i had to i had to watch the whole show and then we're a little bit late getting on the stage but it was great that's awesome cool well we weren't expecting it i'm a weird ally yankovic does yeah they certainly did that sounds like it'd be really hard to do to you guys instead of rocket roll they had pocket pool and instead of gravity they had gravy yeah gravy that's uh any chance they're going to be uh around sometime again i sure hope so just go check out your guys's show and hopefully yeah all right awesome all right well i'd like to thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk to us i really appreciate it thank you and uh good luck tonight when you guys play cool science and honor thanks all right so that's the little conclusion of our interview song thingy segment i hope you guys enjoyed it i hope you like the phenomenas there's some really good people so uh next time they're in your area be sure to check them out like i said we have some copies of their cd uh re-entry if you want some uh you want to win one of those copies of the cd what you're going to do is send in an email to soundscenerevolution at gmail.com and the subject line put phenomenas contest and somewhere in that email with your pertinent information your name address all of that include the name of the phenomenas record label that's easy you don't even have to like listen to the podcast to figure that one out you can just like google that shit because i know that's what all you kids are doing nowadays you're using the google and the myspace and the friends i don't know the other awesome website so that's it uh we're gonna wrap it up play one last track from the phenomenas lp re-entry we're gonna play giant asteroid and uh yeah be sure to enter to win call us email us find out where we live it's all good so we'll see you guys next week have a good one

♪ song played ♪