Tilt

Collect ’em All (Fat)
An interview with vocalist Cinder Block
by Scott Hefflon

I was kinda surprised that, given the length of time between records, Collect ’em All (Fat) is a hair under 30 minutes.
Why beat someone over the head with it? Just do another record. Why torture people with 75 minutes of music?

For those who care, anything under 30 minutes in supposed to be considered an EP. But as long as no one cares…
We don’t even have a contract with Fat, just a handshake. I’m sure we’ll eventually sign a contract, just like we did with ‘Til it Kills. We signed way after the record was done. But that’s the great thing about Fat Wreck Chords, you don’t have to worry about crap like that. Every time I go over the bridge into the city to do errands, I stop by to chew the fat, so to speak. I feel so at home there, it’s awesome. And you can tell Mike runs a good business, because people seem relaxed, happy, and comfortable with where they stand. I’m just guessing, based on appearances, but it seems people work hard for the good of the company and the music.

And there are no power plays, no attempts to establish and enforce a hierarchy…
Yeah! None of the back-biting, gossip, head games, or power trips that I know are prevalent at other labels. When we were recording, Mike had some great suggestions, but you don’t have to take them. There were a couple of times on the last record where we needed a bridge or some idea for a vocal melody, and he came up with some really good ideas. A couple of which he said, “No, you can’t have that. I going to keep that one for my next record.” But he’s great. And I just love the label. I’m very happy being there.

Collect ’em All was produced by Ryan Greene. Is he the in-house producer for Fat, or is he simply the guy they call all the time?
I believe he’s pretty in-house now, because I think Mike bought what used to be Razor’s Edge studio, and renamed it Motor Studios. This way, there’s really good communication between the studio, the producer, the engineer, and the label.

When was your last album?
‘Til it Kills was released in ’95, I don’t remember what month.

There was a rumor going around that you’d broken up…
We did. Momentarily. Our bassist (Gabe Meline) left, and then we got a bassist from Italy to fill in for a tour, but then he had to go back home. We decided that we wanted to do other things for a while. The timing was good, because Cinder Block T-Shirts, owned by Jeffrey and myself, was moving and we were expanding a lot. We had a 1700 square foot place, now we have a 6,000 square foot place with a lot of new equipment. We needed the time for the transition. And then, I guess what happened was Screw 32 broke up, and we were all getting the itch to do music again. We gave Jimmy (bassist) a week to mourn the loss of Screw 32 before we called him up to ask if he’d play bass with us. We started writing songs, and things worked out really well. It seems like we’ve been auditioning bass player this whole time, now that we’ve found Mr. Right.

Were you close friends with Jimmy beforehand?
Well, we just knew him through the scene. We’d never really hung out, but he’s from the East Bay, as are we, so we’re kinda influenced by the same bands, coming out of the same scene, so he just kinda fell in naturally.

Did Tilt and Screw 32 play together?
Yeah, sure, but we’d never really hung out with Jimmy. We just liked his playing, and he seemed like a nice guy.

Does Collect ’em All have more bass riffs than ‘Til it Kills?
I’m not really sure. They’re just different riffs, ’cause they’re his. He’s a really rock-solid bassist, he’s supportive of the melody line, not going off into left field like some kind of frustrated guitarist. But the riffs he does are really awesome. Jimmy also just started a record label, Cheetah, which put out a 7″ for United Blood, with Orlando, formerly of Special Forces, and there’s other good stuff coming. He also answers all the fan mail. I do the books, Jeffrey manages us…

Jeffrey is also your partner in Cinder Block, right?
We’re married, so anything he owes, I owe half of, and visa-versa. Are you smoking? You’re smoking and drinking, huh? And here I am with my tea, herbal, mind you.

Is it caffeinated at least?
No. No caffeine. I have one cup of coffee in the morning, and that is enough to do me all day.

How the hell do you maintain such a high level of energy?
Yoga, probably. I take about four classes a week, and do at least about a half hour a day. It’s pretty much changed my life. I know I sound like a fuckin’ hippy, but whatever works. Yoga’s a great energizer, and it keeps me focused.

Your lyrics really dig into the heart of the matter, really introspective and insightful, and that’s really tough to do. You’re really leaving yourself exposed there in the lyrics.
That’s what it’s all about. The writing aspect is very important to me. I try to pour my soul, unrestrained, into every aspect of the band, but the writing is the most intense experience of all. I took about six weeks off, spending eight hours a day at a desk, whether one line or two songs came out. For each song, I probably have 15-20 pages of raw material, stream of consciousness spilling onto the pages, then condensed and funneled to give the piece focus. So each of those songs means a lot to me. A lot of fun, but a lot of work.

And a lot of thought, a lot of pain.
Yeah, and… well, this record… OK, I’m going to break my anonymity here – I got clean & sober a couple years ago, so this is the first record I’ve written, recorded, and now toured, clean. Anyone who thinks doing drugs and so forth expands your consciousness… I guess at one point it may’ve helped my creativity, but after it while, it killed it. Creativity became horribly, inextricably, dependent upon using a substance, any substance. This record is the most focused thing I’ve ever done. The thing is, once my mind started clearing, things outside of myself started to become of interest. Previously, I wrote a lot of songs that were about internal hell and working out my own little microcosm of madness. I couldn’t break out of that pain. Sure, there are a few songs like that on this record, but there is also subject matter outside of myself. When you shake the sleep out of your eyes, you begin seeing things out in the world that are of interest to you.

Such as what, for example?
“Dear Wife” is a traditional theme, but I wanted to put my two cents in. It’s about a soldier who goes off to war, and every verse is a letter home to his wife. His spiritual life, in essence, is dependent upon his image of his wife’s faith. He equates her with the cause. In the beginning, he’s all full of the cause, the righteousness of his side. As the song progresses, he gets exposed to the realities and horrors of war, not only does he abandon his love of life and get killed, but, by the end, he can’t even remember her face anymore.

“Collect ’em All” is my spin on the widely accepted Christian notion of God as a stern, demanding, punishing father, which I think is a terrible representation of a deity. It’s not at all my idea of spirituality. So I represented that version of God as a cheap plastic figurine – with flashing red eyes, and synthetic baritone voice chip – lording over other cheap plastic figurines.

“Minister of Culture” I actually researched. I did a lot of reading on cultural abuse of women around the world, as well as in the United States. There’s a debate on the international level where many countries will defend their inhuman practices against women and children, claiming them to be within their cultural right. This is a human rights issue, not a women’s issue, and I think it’s important to not sluff it off as just part of another culture. To me, a society ought to be able to maintain their cultural identity, while at the same time, evolve away from their inhumane practices. Even in this country, while we may not see it as obviously as we can see it in other cultures, we have a tendency to look away from our own inhumane behavior. From domestic abuse, to subtleties such as passing over a girl raising her hand in the classroom for her male classmate, there are instances that are harmful to women as members of the human race. I don’t want people to think I’m a knee-jerk reactionary feminist, but in this song, I’m looking into human rights.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that once you have clarity of thought, a nasty side-effect of long periods of sobriety, you see what’s really going on, and you’re amazed we can do this to ourselves, do it to others, and allow others to do it to us. That, perhaps, is the favored justification for inebriation – deadening your senses to the atrocities, some even of your own doing, around you.
Things that were tolerable while you were drugged are now revealing themselves as unacceptable.

Another song I like is “Molly Coddled,” the equivalent of summer squatters “slumming” between semesters of college. Spoiled suburban kids bumming change in the street to get a 40 oz., but then going to the ATM for a bus ticket home when they’ve had enough. And they’ll tell the stories for years of when they “lived on the streets.”
Exactly. They’re the same ones who, when their in their mid-twenties-early-thirties, will meld right into the pastel forest. They can afford their bohemian aesthetic.

I remember going through that song, as well as others, putting the little mental check mark next to my favorite lines. Do you, as a writer, go through your notes, literally, with a highlighter?
Oh, fuck yeah!

But you still use a notebook?
No, it’s on sheets on paper all over the place.

Have you gone computer?
Yeah, but I like to write longhand. I like the feeling of a pen or pencil in my hand. I also carry around one of those little Dictaphones.

I have trouble because I walk really, really fast – basically trying to get my body to work as quickly as my brain – so there I am, huffing and puffing (probably smoking two packs a day doesn’t help) walking about as fast as the human body can without, like, trotting or something, and then when I sit down to transcribe the tape, I realize I sound like a complete fuckin’ dork! But a dork with some great ideas that would’ve otherwise been lost, thank you.
I call those lost ideas “for the gods.” That’s kind of a standing joke between Jeffrey and myself. Whether it’s jamming on songs or driving around in the car, there are ideas that are lost forever. I also think a lot of artists disregard their work. And society, in general, doesn’t support the work of artists, or at least it’s devalued. Other societies value the efforts of their artists more, because they recognize it as a viable cultural contribution. Personally, I have the need to get everything down on paper, even little doodles and sentence fragments. I think artists should definitely keep diaries.

You have the archives from hell, don’t you?
Oh yeah, I have stuff back from the early ’80s, even though I started writing in the mid-’70s. I have files of raw material called “thodder” [combining the words “thought” and “fodder,” if I heard her correctly] which I pull from on occasion.For Collect ’em All, I actually didn’t pull from any of that, I wanted to create some new thodder, which I did.