Prong

Rude Awakening (Epic)
An interview with drummer Ted Parsons
by Robert Parsons

Going, Going, Prong

My earliest memory of Ted Parsons is the drumming – thunderous and incessant. He spent most of his time alone in his upstairs bedroom, brooding over the biggest drum kit I’d ever laid eyes on. To me, at the tender age of seven, he was a confident seventeen and hard to understand. Ted and I are cousins and grew up together in Boxford, Massachusetts, a small suburb north of Boston. I was intimidated by him, too shy and frightened to go up and watch him play. He was my idea of cool.

When I made it to high school, Ted was living in Brooklyn. He was drumming for Swans – a band I just never really got. And then it was on to Prong; for me, on to college. I watched Prong grow. It all started in 1987, with the release of Primitive Origins and Force Fed. Then they signed with Epic, and made the now-classic Beg To Differ. I remember underage drinking during those shows at Boston’s long-gone Channel, when Prong opened for the likes of Bullet Lavolta. The tour with Ozzy, supporting 1991’s Prove You Wrong, documented a ground-breaking moment for the band. And later, Cleansing produced some unforgettable shows with bands like White Zombie, Sepultura, Pantera, and Biohazard. My idea of cool.

Ted now lives in Los Angeles, along with Prong: Tommy Victor (guitar, vocals) and Paul Raven (bass, ex-Killing Joke). I live in Boston. Prong has just released their seventh album, Rude Awakening. Terry Date (White Zombie, Pantera) produced the album along with Tommy Victor.

Rude Awakening is the most focused outing in their ten-year history. This latest effort mixes the visionary techniques of 1993’s Cleansing with the “technocore” programming and sampling of Charlie Clauser, keyboardist and drummer for Nine Inch Nails.

Tired of watching other bands slingshot past them, Prong is hoping Rude Awakening will bring in some more fans and elevate them to new heights of success. Prong has taken its sound to another sonic plane – integrity intact. The climate is right to take the show to the next level. I’ve always been ready…

So, what do you think of your younger cousin interviewing you for Lollipop Magazine?
It makes me feel old. I always think of my cousin as little Bobby with diapers on, shitting his pants, running around and screaming.

I remember you as the cool, older guy. And now, being in Prong, which is way, crazy cool. But you’ve been drumming for almost twenty years now.
Yeah, for a long time. I actually started because of my Uncle Jim. When we went to see my grandmother in Peabody, that’s the first thing I’d do – go and start bangin’ on his drums. So, it’s all his fault.

Were you in bands in high school… I remember my parents telling me about some Kiss thing that you did?
Yeah, I was in a Kiss cover band. And the big gig was in the high school, we were in junior high at the time. I was all excited because I found this place where they sold make-up that was just like Kiss. But it wasn’t at all, it was the wrong kind of make-up. And when we got all sweaty, the make-up ran all over our faces. We looked like marbleized Kiss. In high school, that was my one thing – rushing home to play the drums.

You’ve got twenty years of drumming behind you, what do you think, twenty more?
Ahh, I don’t know, yeah. I don’t know if it will be in Prong or if I’ll be touring or on the road. But there’s definitely twenty more years of me playing. Unless there’s some reason I have to stop, like a crazy ailment or something, I’ll keep playing.

Speaking of Prong, in comparison to Swans or other projects you’ve done in the past, is Prong the best outlet for your drumming?
Um, yes and no. I think it shows a side of my playing. But there’s a lot of other things I’d like to do outside of Prong, things that I think will show more of an interest in what I like to do.

Such as…
Just a lot more dance stuff, and a lot more dub type stuff. Stuff that’s a lot more rhythmic and less straight-forward. But all the Prong albums definitely show a good representation of what my drumming is about, because there are some of those elements – dance, even some reggae beats – in Prong’s music. But there’s a certain boundary that we set up for ourselves, so I really can’t go outside of that. I can’t get up and do a bongo solo in the middle of a Prong song. Well I could, but everyone would be like, “what the fuck is going on here?”

Is dub what you’re listening to now?
Yeah, there’s a lot of rave music that I like. And a lot that I don’t like. There’s a whole new wave of dub music that’s coming out that kind of borderlines on dance and rave and techno – a lot of cross-over stuff that’s really cool.

You mean “technocore”?
Yeah, that’s kind of a new term for us because they don’t know what else to call us. They’ve never known what to call Prong. So we’re now “technocore.” Whatever the hell that means.

It works for me...
Hey, it doesn’t bother me. Let people call us whatever way they want.

What about side projects? Any in the works?
There’s not really a heck of a lot of time to do anything. But I’d like to try and get a DAT player and do some work on the road now that I have an electronic kit and sampler. I’ll have everything in a rack so I can wheel it into a hotel room on a day off if I want to start working. That’s the great thing about computers and technology and all the samplers and stuff – you can do all this stuff in your own studio, on the bus, or in a hotel room. You can do it anywhere. Anyone can make music anywhere now.

Over the past five years there’s been “family talk” of you moving on from the band. What, in terms of Prong, do you consider success, or what needs to happen for you to consider yourself successful?
I think we just want to get to that next level that’s alluded us for so long. We’ve made progression. But we’d like to start playing theaters. We’d like to sell a couple hundred thousand more records. We’d like to see a gold record. We’d like to start making some money, you know? Not that money’s the reason why I’m in music or why anyone should be in music. You should do it because you love it, just like anything else, but our time has come. We’ve developed as musicians and couldn’t have made a Prong album like this one four years ago. We’re tired of being a band’s band or a label’s band. We wanna get out there into the general audience and get the market – like the Zombie audience, like the Nine Inch Nails audience. And now is a good climate for music. There’re bands like Stabbing Westward, they’ve been around as long as Prong. But now there’s a buzz on them. And that’s good. It shows that there’s still some hope for some old pappies like us who’ve been around for ages.

One thing about Prong is that you guys haven’t been afraid to show your desire for commercial success, but at the same time, you’re able to hold on to the genuineness and the raw nature of the music. When bands sell-out for success, that’s a hard fast way to piss-off fans and lose your hardcore followers. You guys have managed to avoid that…
You’re gonna lose some fans and you’re going to gain some more fans. Everything we’ve done I’ve been really happy with. I don’t think the production on Prove You Wrong is all that great. But the songwriting and the playing is really good. We’ve been very aware of what’s going on. You have to be. We’ve always written songs and music that we liked. We didn’t really say, “Is this going to be commercial?” Obviously, a song like “Rude Awakening” is radio friendly, but it’s a good song.

Anybody who says, “Oh, we don’t want to be commercially successful,” is lying, or in this romantic state, you know, “We want to stay underground and we’re fine with that.” Well, great. If that’s good for people, then fine. But if you’re a musician and you’re a performer, it’s kind of stupid to say that you don’t want to be playing in front of a lot of people and you don’t want people to hear your music. And if that means being played on KROQ, and playing to 10,000 or 20,000 people a night, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Tell me about Rude Awakening.
I think it’s the best Prong album to date. Sonically it sounds really amazing. The song “Rude Awakening” is the first single. We just shot a video with Rob Zombie for it. It’s pretty weird. It’s apocalyptic. And it’s very, no, not apocalyptic. Don’t use that word, I hate that word…

Okay.
It’s post-apocalyptic. Use that word. It’s just like a fucked up David Lynch tiki bar with Prong playing and all these weird people there. Everything from demented people in bunny suits to fat, bald people with white make-up and Mickey Mouse ears.

Is this a Prong concept or a Rob Zombie concept?
It’s more of a Rob Zombie concept. We liked the idea. We saw the treatments and said, “it’s wacky and it’s weird and it’s demented.” But if they’re playing Marilyn Manson a lot, this isn’t that disturbing, really. Terry Date and Tommy produced the album; Prong co-produced it. Charlie Clauser did all the loops and samples. We’ve known Charlie for a while. He was friends with our old keyboard player, JB. He did a “Broken Peace” remix from the Cleansing album, and it came out really well. Actually, Trent Reznor heard that remix and sought out Charlie, and that’s kind of how Charlie got the Nine Inch Nails gig, those Prong remixes. Once again (laughs), people using Prong on their ladder of success, stepping on our hands on the way up.

Is Charlie going to be joining you on tour?
No, he’s still in Nine Inch Nails. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to pay Charlie enough money to join us. I’m sure Trent’s got him well set up.

You’ve mentioned before that you might be grabbing another guitarist for a tour?
Yeah, we’re probably gonna take out another guitarist just to get Tommy off the mic a little bit on a couple of songs. And just sonically and visually, I think it’ll be really good. We’re looking at two different people now. We really don’t have the time to show people the songs. I mean, if they don’t know the material, if they don’t know four or five songs and come in and play them, then they’re pretty much not in the band.

And what’s going on with the tour?
Our first Prong show is May 21, in Fullerton, CA, with the new line-up and new songs. And then, we’re just trying to line up a tour. We’ve been trying to open for a band, but there’s not a lot [of bands] going out right now. So we’re booking our own club tour and trying to take some bands out with us. There is talk about Stabbing Westward. There’s talk about The Young Gods. The Young Gods actually did some remixes for us that will be coming out soon. And the Orb did some remixes that will be released in Europe.

We’ll probably be on tour in the states until the middle of July. And then we’re going to be in Japan for seven days. After that, over to Europe to do a tour and some festivals. We’re gonna be busy all the way up until September. But everything is always subject to change.

So what are you gonna call this piece?

I was thinking about calling it, simply – “My Cousin Ted.”
Yeah, don’t even mention Prong. Just make up shit about how I like to macramé and knit.