Mark: How do you feel about the recent writeups and the quotes, etc. You know, what was said in the articles?
Dean: Are we gonna go clockwise or what?
John: We can't complain because it's good press. It's good for the band, good publicity. And they were all real nice to us when they did stories about us. But for the Fresh Tape they were all mean and jerks. (laughter) But, you know, it's all good for the band.
Mark: Well, to be called "junior rockers"...
John: Well, that's fine cause that's what we are.
Dean: They were all real nice, except for the writeups on "Blonde Haired Ghost."
Mark: Steve, anything to say about the writeups?
Steve: They were all pretty great.
All: They were all pretty fair.
Mark: But with headlines like, not bad for junior rockers, high schoolers, everyone's like, yay.
John: Well, that's good if that gets more people to listen to our music, that's fine. Just because we're high-schoolers, so what? That's still good music.
Steve: But we're not gonna be high-schoolers much longer.
John: Well, by that time all those people that have been listening to us cause we're in high school and they'll find out that maybe it's not that bad.
Mark: Not different from anyone else.
Dean: We're doing this for ourselves. If we can get ahead from people saying nice things about us, then we're all for it.
John: Just as long as Dean's dad gets to retire early. (laughter)
Dean: Isn't that another interview?
David: Also, you cant expect a newspaper review to be like a fanzine review.
Dean: It's hard to judge what other people write about you, cause we all have our own feelings about what's good and what's bad.I mean, they're all opinions, and I think that people who read that should keep it in mind. It isn't God.
Mark: It seems that you guys have become quite an item on KJHK, you made it to #1 in the chart!
John: Well Raz, if you guys made an album you'd be #1 too. If any local band puts out an album they'll be #1 for a while.
Steve: I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we're one of the first Lawrence bands to actually put out an album, and second of all we have a lot of people up at KJHK who do a lot of really nice things for us.
Mark: But don't you guys think you deserved it? C'mon...
John: Yeah, I think we deserved it. Because we've been working for two years.
Steve: It was definitely time for something good to happen like that, but I wouldn't have expected something like that.
Dean: I think everybody deserves it. I think the Embarrassment deserves it. All the Lawrence bands, Start, Ritual Romance, the Blue Riddim band, all those bands--
Steve: Yeah, but we're better than all of them. (laughter)
Mark: In terms of, now that the album is out, what would you say if you listened to it and said, god I wish I had changed that.
Dean: Lotsa things. Singing-wise, I wish I'd have done more takes. Because I know what I wanna do in my head, but sometimes I forget.
John: The performances was not as good as we coulda done. But they were good.
Dean: But I think that the record shows that we're getting better. Like the next record will be better than this, and every release after that.
John: It's just a learning process. You learn what you have to do, each time you record.
Dean: For a first album, I think it's alright.
Mark: Well what's up in the future for the Micronotz?
Steve: We might do an EP, probably next year.
Dean: Touring. We're gonna tour.
M: How'd the tour turn out? Let's get an overall view...
Steve: It was a lotta fun. It was pretty low as far as emotion goes, we didn't make any money, but hey, we had a lot of fun.
John: (to someone else) Hey, can you people shut up?
Steve: It didn't really matter that we made any money, it was just nice to do it.
Dean: We're doing it for ourselves.
Steve: For our parents too, this was to get them broken in a bit.
Dean: Saddle sores...
Mark: Do you think that the record will sell in the places that you toured?
Dean: I think it will sell better in the places we haven't toured. (everyone cracks up) I know it won't sell in Tulsa! (settles down) Cause I people have this preconceived notion about that the bands they've never seen before, especially if they're out of town.
John: Especially if they're not bad.
(band goes off in a tirade about not liking people--David says "Nobody likes people." Ha!
Steve: It's nice, with the image that we have being high school students and everything, its better that the people haven't seen us before. When they get the album, it'll give 'em a little more room to imagine what we're like live. As long as they don't see us, I think it's alright. (Dean laughs)
Mark: How long has the album been out?
Steve and David: Too long!
Dean: About two or three weeks now.
Mark: How has the feedback been.
John: All we gotten so far was local stuff, the articles you mentioned, and our friends say they heard it.
Mark: Have any people come up to you and say, hey you--micronotz--album--wow!?
Steve: Well...(band suddenly goes off on a tangent about the subject of reading)
Mark: Well, here's the basic general question and I hope you don't get upset by it--
John: OK, sounds bad!
Mark: At least to me, everyone looks at you and says, "you're a micronot". Ever get sick of that? (everyone laughs again) (Raz, you're on the ropes...)
Dean: What else are they gonna say?
Steve: That's the only thing we are, if we're not Micronotz, we're not anyone else either...
John: "Hey look at you, you're the Embarrassment!" (mocking)
Steve: We'd just as well get identified, not just another pretty face in the crowd.
No, they usually refer to it as a cutdown cause they don't wanna use our real names...
John: Yeah, cause the band's name is like, stupid and silly and doesn't mean anything--and another thing, the thing about this band is that it was formed before we were, before we even learned to play.
Dean: And everything we do is sincere and sarcastic.
Steve: Aren't you going to ask us how we got our name?
Mark: Yeah, let's hear this old, uh, rehash this old question. Where did you get the name "Mortal Micronotz"?
Dean: Out of a cookie jar.
David: Out of the sewer.
John: Hung up in a smoke shed...
(pause)
John: Next question...
Mark: OK, when they talk about "Individ--"
Steve: Hold it--are you writing an article on an article?
Dean: Strike it. I don't wanna talk about it.
Mark: When they mentioned "Individuality", they were saying--ho hum boys, boredom. What do you think about that?
John: What do you expect, he wrote those words when he was FOURTEEN.
Dean: Fourteen. Look, I was pretentious when I was fourteen...even if the words were stupid, that's what I felt when I was fourteen.
John: And it's not a bad thing to say, no matter how old you are. It's just like, rebellion against social values. Especially at the high school.
Steve: There are a whole lot of older people writing stupid-er songs.
Dean: Yeah, abracadabra, wanna reach out and grab ya...even if it was stupid, it came from the heart.
Someone: Are you using the sixth channel? (What?)
(another pause...)
Mark: Any last words on the...
Dean: I think they're entitled to their opinions, but if they ever came and saw us sing those, uh, "Blonde Haired Ghost", they would realize that I was being sarcastic. Making fun of all the girl-and-boy songs, all the psychedelic hippie songs, you know, that type of thing. They may say "she caught my eye near the food stand", but it also says "chocolate igloos under the sun, cement hot dogs on my bun..." It's obvious there's something not quite so ho hum about it.
John: Do you have any patch cords for that?
Mark: Ok, honestly, what do you think the potential of the album is? I mean in terms of nationwide...
John: We don't know.
Steve: It's probably very slim.
Dean: We just don't know. We're hoping for the best, but we don't know what could happen.
Steve: There are a lot of records out there that never get listened to, but we hope ours is different. We think it is different enough that a few more people would listen to it.
Dean: It's red. I like it. (laughs)
John: What's next?
Mark: OK, time out. What do you think about the recent centerfold of you guys in BLUR? I mean, it must be good publicity.
Dean: I wish I had something to say about it, because it might as well have been "Teen Beat".
John: Yeah, Jim Morrison!
Mark: God, he was doing a pretty nice thing for you guys...
Dean: I appreciate the idea, bit I wished he would have...
John: Found some other way to do it.
Dean: We might as well have been naked, or had perfect teeth. (I tried--Mike.)
John: (a band starts playing) Time to quit.............