Interview with Spider Powerman 5000

Spider is sick, "I'm going to try and struggle through." His with his girlfriend I guess, she offers me a Coke, and we sit down. So you guys did Letterman or something the other night didn't you?

"Conan O'Brien."

I read about it in the TV listings in the Newspaper, but it was too late. What song did you do?

"Neckbone. It went really well. It was a new experience for us that's for sure, we'd never done anything like that. It was very cool, we we're happy with the way it came out."

It was your first National TV experience?

"Yeah, it was very cool."

You guys are doing a video for "Neckbone" aren't you?

"We're going to try, we're so busy with the tour, and the plan was to do it before, then not, then possibly fly home in the middle of the tour, if not then definitely when we get back we're going to try to put it together."

When do you get back? You've been on the road for a long time now it seems.

"Around Thanksgiving."

Are you still living in Boston?

"No LA, I moved out there about a year ago. There's no Boston show on the tour, Providence is about as close as we get."

You guys have played Providence a lot lately.

"Yea, we've played the Living Room a couple of times, we we're here last year with Danzig, and the we do do shows in Boston usually like at Avalon, so we do get back here just as much as we ever did really."

I brought you copies of my zine, Whatever- the Zine for Good People with Bad Jobs, we try to tell stories about bad jobs and shit, so what's the worst straight job you've ever had?

"The worst job I ever had was painting temporary tattoos down at Salisbury beach as a summer job, and you'd always get this 300 pound woman coming in and wanting a rose on her thigh and stuff. I don't think it got any worse than that.

One time I worked in a furniture factory and they sent me into this room to bail some foam, and they had this ancient machine, completely manual, in this huge warehouse where I was supposed to put a piece of cardboard in the machine with foam then another piece of cardboard, wrap it with wire , and crank it squashed as much as I could, and they told me the last guy broke his knees 'cause he let go of the crank and it came back, that was another pretty crappy job I guess. But that Tattoo that was the worst."

Yea, it sounds pretty bad.

"You'd get guys in there SO drunk they had so much alcohol pouring through their system you couldn't even apply the tattoo because they were sweating the alcohol.

Are you doing any writing on the road?

"Not Really, its hard to write on the road."

What have you been doing to pass the days? Sleeping on the bus trying to stay well?

"You don't do a lot that's the thing, you have all the time in the world to do anything, and you tend to seek out the nearest mall, watch the same movies over and over..

You've got a lot of pop culture influence in your work, what movies have you been watching over and over an the bus?

"Uh, we watched "Twelve Monkeys" the other night, uh, lots of times you get on a bus and they seem to come with movies, usually I bring some of my collection but this time I didn't.

I just got a two pack of Godzilla movies, and like a four hour tape of all the old "Flash Gordan" Serials. So I'll be busting those out tonight probably.

I've found that every tour bus that we've been on always has the movie "Tombstone", that like western with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. Its like you have to have that movie on your bus.

The Bus Standard.

"Last tour it was "Jaws," I brought my copy and we watched it like 20 times."

"You have King Kong," his girl friend interjects.

"Yea I have "King Kong," you go to these truck stops, "Flying J's" I don't know if you have them up here, its more of a Southern thing, and you always get movies for like ten dollars or less, and I got like the original; "Nightmare on Elm Street," "King K ong," and a bunch of other shit.

You guys been listening to anything new these days, your touring with Buck-O-Nine, that's kind of different.

"It's definitely interesting, it's an interesting bill. I like it. I like it when we play bills like this where all the bands are fairly different, but somehow it all works together.

We've been on a lot of Tours where its just uh, like the Ozzfest- us and like Type O Negative were the only ones who were something other than grinding speedcore.

So yea, I definitely dig it when the bill gets all messed up. If we have a really good night lots of times Buck-O-Nine doesn't have a really good one. Or if they have a really good night we don't have one. Sometimes the crowds, you know. "

How many dates have you done together?

We're into the fourth week, and there's another four more to go. Its kind of a long tour, eight and a half weeks or something.

Are you going back into the studio when its over?

"No we're basically going to take the holidays off, try and do some writing, and uh, then decide when January rolls around if we're going to tour again or start working on a new record. We've been out on tour basically since last January straight."

Yea you guys keep showing up on all kinds of bills.

"We're real lucky with the bands we get to play with."

Did you guys do the sno-core tour, or the airwalk thing?

We did sno-core. It was weird for us it was the one tour that was kind of shaky. We did the last half of the tour, out west, so we didn't get to play here.

We also did Ozzfest, Kiss, and Marilyn Manson, and us, lots of others.

Who did you like touring with? Was Kiss cool?

"Yea, it was definitely the first taste of like huge rock stardom shows that we're ever done. Stuff like 'drive the bus into the place your playing' and stuff like that, so it was really cool. Plus we were like Kiss fans when we were kids so it was cool for that too.

Uh, Manson was great. That was in Canada, and their crowd completely dug what we were doing. Plus they treated us really well.

This has also been amazing and great for us. The Primus tour. We've been going over really well.

Primus fans seem like the kind that dig what your doing.

Yea, they like the heavy stuff, but they appreciate the musicality of it, or whatever.

Well I guess that's all I have, I know your sick so I'll let you go.

Well cool, Thanks.

Primus & Powerman 5000 review