It's all about the vibe by Mitch Kramer (cuinsideonline.com) Follow the white rabbit to the 2 Skinnee J's. Before hyperactive rap-rock quintet take the stage, Stage Bunny Bob, a roadie dressed in a white bunny suit, checks chords and stands. He's a fitting attendant for the J's, an eclectic, diverse band with many unifroms, the most symbolic being matching red skintight suits from Orson, a yellow inverted triangle emblazoned on their chests, neon hair poking out from under reflective silver half-helmets. Their live show creates the distinct impression that they're not another crossover band, but a crack squad of interplanetary stormtroopers picking up where P-Funk and Devo left off. This time around, though, they're on the down-low, masters of disguise. One night, they blend in, appearing to have emerged straight from the 70s, tight brown courdoroy pants, ringer t-shirts, paisley collars. The next night, from the 80s: skinny ties, two-tones, arms cut away from button-down shirts. One of the more high-energy bands on the planet, 2 Skinnee put on live shows that are a relentless flurry of synchronized motion, from tap dancing to windmills to flying leaps, their moves polished through constant practice, but still raw. Most bands go through entire tours without sweating this much. 2 Skinnee J's were set to take over the world, or at least launch an assault on it. And then, as is often the case with the most carefully laid plans, things went wrong. Their new CD, Volumizer (Napster), was in the can. Advance copies were out. Press kits were released. The public reaction to the disc was going to be a cultural Groundhog Day, an omen for the decade ahead. Would good vibes and progressive notions continue to dominate pop culture, or would commercial teen sensations and state-of-the-art new adult contemporary reign supreme? Groundhog Day didn't happen. Just before the CD's release, Capricorn Records (311, Cake, Vic Chestnutt) folded, leaving the J's in the lurch, dates booked, the album leaking into cyberspace. What's a band to do? Instead of detracting from record sales and taking money from the band's non-bulging pockets, Napster became the only medium the disc was available through. The show went on. Far from über-capitalists in the first place, all the J's could do was keep troopin', plug the Napster-only non-CD, with the modest request that fans download the entire album-- not just the singles. So the gigs continue. Since the Capricorn collapse, 2 Skinnee have signed on with Volcano records (Tool, Matthew Sweet, 311) and the invasion plans have changed. The band will release an enhanced-CD EP to sell at shows, and this spring, the band will return to the studio to record new tracks for Volumizer mark II, now set for a summer release. Despite superficial similarities to popular products, 2 Skinnee have made a career working around trends. The band formed to play a Columbia University party in 1991, and they've been at it ever since, surviving a 200%+ turnover-- 14 ex-J's include 1 singer, 1 drummer, 2 DJ's, 3 guitarists, and an entire horn section. Over three EPs and two full-length Cds, the band's sound, direction and stage show have remained consistent as they've evolved, new-wave sensibilities and sounds tinging their big-beat evangelist mission, from 1992's Tchaikovsky-sampling "Sensitive," to 1998's "The Good, The Bad & The Skinnee," to Volumizer's opener, "Horns of Destruction," an in-your-face anthem that's not as hard as Limp Bizkit, but more convincing: "We blow like a dart through the heart of your crew/'cuz everybody in our squad rocks harder than you." Producer Mickey P (Beck & Luscious Jackson) shapes the butt-shaking single, "Stockholm Love," vintage keyboards underscoring a bouncy bass line, MC's J. Guevara and Special J trading rhymes that grow into harmonies. The two even sing an unexpected love song, "The Girl with the World in Her Eyes." The band get to show off on the ambient closer, "Coming Home," and in between, the Js flex catchy vocal styles, storytelling and grooves from the bouncy "Secret Frequency" to the evocative "Sugar and Candy." The cohesive cycle of songs is a hell of a deal for free, their live show a performance extravaganza, and their situation provides a glimpse at one possible model for commercial music's future, where recorded music is an ancillary promotional product to generate ticket sales. InSide talked to MC/vocalist Special J to discuss these issues, the album that almost was, their standout performance at Woodstock '99, and more. There are more ex-J's than there are J's. How do you keep the chemistry going? When a lot of bands lose a key member, it's the beginning of the end. SJ: Honestly, the main songwriters, for a majority of the music--the basic parts of the music--have been intact for five years now. So in the early phase of our development the idea was to use music that other hip-hop bands wouldn't use-- not that we're a hip-hop band. When we started out, in 1991, we'd listen to the overview of hip hop. There was a lot of incredible music coming out: Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, De la Soul... but hip hop had reduced itself to sampling four records: a Parliament record, a James brown record. All the music was coming from the same place. We were in New York, and we were listening to stuff that hip hop could really use: There's new wave, there's rock and roll, all this other music. In the beginning all we did was basically sample, except we played live "The Stroke" by Billy Squier, "Peaches and Cream" by the Lemon Pipers. We'd use music that other people wouldn't use. Then slowly we started writing. The first couple years there was very little original music. Then we started writing original music. Obviously if you listen to the early, early stuff versus the stuff we're doing now, there's been a pretty big change. We've always come across, we've always done it to make good live music since the beginning. I think that's why the stuff holds together with the early stuff. But then, afterwards, the last record, we didn't write it at all for the live stage because we realized that if we did that some of the songs, even though they were great live songs, didn't come across with the kind of energy we expected them to when we recorded them. With this record, we were like, fuck that, let's just write music we want to hear on a record, record it, and see how it sounds. and if we like it, we'll play it live. As opposed to the other way around, where before if we'd play it live and it didn't work live, we'd throw the song away. The Chili Peppers, almost 20 years later, are coasting on a reputation from shows they did in LA in the early 80s. What made them great live was never captured on record. How are you planning to counter that and try to bring across the live energy you bring live? SJ: I think the way to avoid it is to understand first of all that they're two, or they can be two distinct things. If you look at the great live bands, they don't necessarily always have great records, great recorded albums. Take Fishbone for example of a band that blaze live, but their records never held the kind of passion that the live show did. And I think it's because live venues have that kind of feel to them. There's an energy to the room. It's something that's not necessarily possible to recreate. So what you have to do when you're recording something, you just have to accept that. That's not what you can go for, and you just go for something that sounds great on a record. It's not the same experience. SJ: Yeah. It'll all work out. You'll make great records. We're still a great live band. We're not worried about it, you know? It's OK for me for the album to sound different than the live show, just as long as the album sounds great and the live show sounds great. Whereas, I think with !Super Mercado!, the album, we had a problem, because what we did was record the live show, put it on tape, and a lot of the dynamics I think were lost in that transfer and I think if we had done it the way we did this last record we would have had a better record than we had last time. It would have been different, but it would have been a stronger album. I had it for a while and I was kind of so-so on it, because I like that kind of music. But then I saw you open for Everlast and I was like "Whoa... I get it now." SJ: That's what I think: A lot of people listened to that last record like a live record. A lot of bands-- like 311 is another good example-- if you just heard their first couple albums you might not really like the band that much. But if you saw them live, you could translate your thoughts, your memory of a great live experience and put it on the album. And that helps, and I think that's what happens to us too. But I think this record, we threw that away. We did something different, and the album stands up on its own. So it'll be easier for us to do both without having to worry about thinking "Whoa, the drums should be over here." I just have the press release copy without the credits and liner notes; it sounds like there are no samples on the album. Is that right? SJ: No. There are some samples on it, but not that many. In "Horns of Destruction," there's a Monkees sample. But the way we use samples on this record- I'm not saying this is the only way we'll ever use samples-- I don't want to make it seem like that whole sampling thing is bad. I think sampling is amazing. We sample really, really short bits of music. Like in 'Horns of Destruction,' like [hums a note]. That's one sound. And then build a song using the sample as an instrument as opposed to a whole bar or eight bars or a whole song. The difference between Public Enemy sampling and Puff Daddy sampling. SJ: Exactly. There are like three samples on it: There's that... there's only two actual samples. It sounds like there were no horns on this one either. SJ: No. No horns. We don't have a horn section any more. We dropped our horn section. Horn guys are hard. Singers have to... they are the band, they think the band is them. They think the band is about them. You never have to worry about them. They're prima-donna bullshitters. I'm talking about myself. But horn players, anybody can just pack their gear and walk away in under two minutes. They have a different attitude about things. [laughs]. It's not bad. It's just... Did having the horn players cause you to get lumped in with the ska movement? SJ: Oh, yeah. For a long time, we were just playing with ska bands. And now, we're playing with mostly metal bands. You survived the ska wave. What's the 2 Skinnee strategy for surviving the rap/rock crossover? SJ: I don't know. That one's got me... Our main thing, what we're trying to do is put together this group of bands called The People's Movement of Rock, which is going to be bands who are like us, who have good live shows. They don't necessarily have to be rock-crossover sort of things, but bands like Bows of Motley, Citizen King, the Getaway People, the kinds of bands that have good live shows, are good live and mostly politically left. That's our strategy. We're going to try to build a scene around those kind of people. Really that's all it is: your attempt to try and happen into something that people find appealing and help bring people along to that. And I think this is a good time to do that. It's depressing to see kids so disaffected and so angry and so... I have no problem with anger, because there's tons of stuff to be mad about, but... ...Like, what are they angry about, exactly? SJ: Like Fred Durst: I've seen pictures of his house and where he grew up. I don't understand what you're you so mad about. Maybe he didn't get enough girls in junior high school or something like that. And it's depressing. Like with any art form. You start out with Rage Against the Machine, who is so political, a very poignant band. Anger has a purpose. and then, as always, somebody figures out that you can make money at it, and then you grab onto it just to make music that just has the same the same theme. High school's like that, though: You have so much energy and time on your hands, with nothing to do but sit in your room. SJ: Like, what is the matter? I think these kids are just ridiculously bored. They're not anywhere. They're just bored, lashing out at anything. Like Woodstock was so pathetic. What was that like? SJ: We were really lucky to be there. We went there, we played a side stage. They had to convince us to play, because we were just not convinced that it would be worth it. They weren't paying us anything. Their big gift to us and the bands on the side stage was that we could bring in our own food...Can you believe that? "Drive here, you can play, and we're gonna be really nice: you don't have to buy a seven-dollar slice of pizza." You can actually bring your own food. We watched three or four bands before us. It was in the middle of a hot day. The only reason that people were in the room was that they were shaded. And there were people sleeping on the ground. There'd be like a hundred people there, in this big, open place. And then we were playing at the same time as Rage Against the Machine and the Chemical Brothers, and we were like, well... Going on opposite some heavy hitters, you drew by far the largest crowds at the side stage. SJ: At least that day. And we were just amazed. We were planning on, and if there were fifty people there, playing three songs and seeing Rage Against the Machine, and three thousand people showed up. It was great. But at the same time, the whole experience, I thought was like really depressing. We went there, and... I grew up in the 80s. There was diversity in terms of kids, like there were goth kids, skate kids, new wave kids, punk kids, prep kids. There were all these uniforms, but at least at the same time there was an alternative way of doing things. And now everybody looks alike. They all wore the same exact clothes. And the only way you could tell the difference between preppie kids and skater kids and metal kids was by how baggy their khaki shorts were. You mentioned Napster, and we were talking about how the album's available online before it's available in stores. What does Napster actually do to bands like you, that don't sell that many records but tour constantly? SJ: It's hard for me to actually tell. I'd prefer it if the entire record were not on Napster yet. even though I hate making kids wait to hear it, but it's an album; it's not a collection of songs. You know what I mean? I think that the order that they're put in, or the whole picture helps- I think especially in this album's case. I think in some records it's not a big deal, because there's a couple singles and everything else is throw-away... The record flows. SJ: I think more than a lot of records it goes somewhere. But when kids download it and hear the songs individually, it doesn't make much sense. It's a weird way for me to listen to this record. Some kid downloaded "Stockholm Love" and "Secret Frequency" and those were the only two songs he downloaded. And he didn't know, he hadn't heard any of the songs, and he was freaking out: "God, the songs are so new wave." And while I love both those songs, hey, if you understood, if you saw the whole picture as opposed to just a point... but it's hard for me to tell. Most of me thinks that more than anything it's an advertisement, and probably a pretty good one. The kids that go online now and download our album are probably for the most part kids that just love our music. So I'm not that worried that they're not going to buy the record. I think that for bands, where it probably hurts is when they have a big song on the radio and then kids just go download the single or a couple songs off the record and don't buy the album because they're not fans. But at the same time, if you have a big hit on the radio, hopefully you'll sell some albums. It's amazing to me, one of the amazing things about this country is that as long as it's making money, the government is so, so loathe to stop it. Because it is so clearly copyright infringement. There can be no question about it. The farce that it's not that it is just hilarious. But at the same time, the government's interest... If Napster was not generating much income, then they wouldn't care. Because we're talking about millions of dollars being lost on either side, then it has to be decided in the courts and it will take a long time to be decided, which is hysterical to me. Same thing with Microsoft: It is patently obvious that they own a monopoly. It's clear to anybody who understands what they're talking about that this is the situation. But, when 85% of the computers in the country run on their operating system, that's what's happening. But because it's about so much money, that's really all the government is there to do any more, is to adjudicate between money-making interests. That's why it takes so long. Any asshole knows that Napster is clearly, clearly, so obviously doing some thing that would... If I did it with my 50 bucks, the government would stop me immediately. It's interesting. I don't know what's going to happen. I think eventually that they're going to get shut down. You don't think the genie's out of the bottle? Whatever happens, there's going to be something like Napster, so a lot of the business dynamics are going to shift. SJ: Totally. But the bottom line for me is: I'm a Communist. I think that music is to be shared with everybody. That's the whole point of it. It shouldn't be a commodity. Whenever you mix it with the money, it f* it up. It turns it into something totally different. That's why you have bands like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys: because of money, not because of an attempt to make art. If you weren't in a capitalist system, the need for those bands would be very minimal because you could turn on the radio and you could have fifty different stations playing fifty different kinds of music. And people could pick and choose what they like, as opposed to people turning on the radio and having four choices of music, even though you can have twenty stations in a market and they all play four different formats. And that's why the system sucks. All of it. Hopefully bands that go out and work their ass off and put on such a show will survive and sell records. SJ: As long as we want to survive playing live music, there won't be a problem. In a perfect world, would you like to expand into arenas or just keep playing clubs? SJ: Well, in a perfect world... I've never been interested in being rich and playing arenas. That's not what I'd want to do. My favorite venues are always between 500 and 1500, like a theater with no seats. A big hall where you have a crowd of people all sweaty and feeling the music and just rocking out. To me, rock and roll is a dirty business that's meant to be done in the dark, behind closed doors, with everything pushed into each other, because it's all about the vibe. What are some bands that you're into that we might be missing or might be going under the radar? SJ: There's a band called Infectious Organisms from Richmond. They're a live hip hop band who are really, really good. Other than that, I really don't buy CDs. I love drum & bass. I love underground hip hop. What can we look forward to on this tour? SJ: We have new outfits. We have a lot of new songs, songs we wrote for the album that we didn't put on the record. More mayhem, and good-time vibes from the whole band. On one hand the fans want to emerging bands make it, but don't want to have to see you with bigger crowds. SJ: I totally understand. That's what I've always said: It's a double-edged sword. Especially if you're a band that likes the underground. There are the competing interests: Well, I want to do it this way, these are the people I like to be around, and the crowd vibe I Iike to feel. And then the problem is, as soon as it becomes popular and people know about it, lots of other people come in whose vibe you don't necessarily appreciate as much. And then they come in, and the people who it used to appeal to don't want to be around those people any more and don't want to be around that group of people. So they don't come anymore, and they find somewhere else to go. You've been opening sets with "Irresistable Force." How'd you like Phantom Menace? SJ: I think it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I hated it. Somebody asked me one time, "You wrote two Star Wars songs, why'd you only write two when there's two more movies? You should write one for each movie." I wrote him back and said, "Man, we wrote one song for each of the good ones. You can trust in the Force, but you can't trust George Lucas." It was a children's movie. It made me angry. Like that fuckin' chase scene under the water, where they do the same thing twice. Like, didn't you go to film school? Don't you know you don't do that? We already saw the big fish eat the bigger fish. What are you doing? They just did that. I think he was just so concerned about financial success that he... And I don't think he's a really great director. He's only made five movies, you know. American Graffiti, which was a good movie, Star Wars, which was a great movie, and Howard the Duck was the last movie he made before Phantom Menace. That's what people forget when they're like "He's going to be back in the driver's seat!" I think the really depressing thing was his continual statements that Phantom Menace was more like the movie he wanted to make with Star Wars. All it does is show that he doesn't have.... Because Star Wars is this fuckin amazing movie that changed my life. And Phantom Menace is not. But it did change my life, but not for the better. Everyone writes about love. You write about food. SJ: Well, you know, we're skinny. So it's been a fixation for a long time. The last record was the first time we didn't write about food at all. I don't know why. Maybe it's because we didn't eat well. Nobody has fed us well for the last few years, and I don't know what's going on. It's hard for me to put weight on. If you could put together an ideal tour, who would you go out with? Who would you like to, and who do you think you will? SJ: I love so many bands. I love Custom Grooves. I love Dilated Peoples. Black-Eyed Peas. And obviously, the Beastie Boys. There's lots of bands out there who just have a cool vibe. And really, that's all I look for: Just the vibe. <====