Crash Test Dummies
Give Yourself a Hand (Arista)
An interview with Brad Roberts
by Scott Hefflon
So you say you’re “ready for this interview?”
Yeah, I finally feel good after a night of tossing and turning on the bus ride from Des Moines to Chicago, during which time I got up on several occasions, had them stop the bus, and had explosive diarrhea into a nearby field. Using a paper towel, I might add. Everyone on the bus was sick. You can’t puke or shit on a bus, by the way, unless the bus is outfitted for shitting, which most of them aren’t. I doubt that’s the lead-off you wanted for this interview, but there’s a behind the scenes snippet into the glamorous life of Crash Test Dummies.
What’d y’all eat before getting on the bus?
I think it was the combination of really greasy, hot chicken wings and vats of beer, just before taking a bumpy bus ride.
What’s your cuisine of choice?
I have a soft-spot for many things. I just had one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in Des Moines, Iowa, at the Iowa Beef. That’s why we went there in the first place, because of the name. I will go the red meat route, but I also like good Italian food, especially in Italy. I hate to be a snob, but we’ve toured Europe, so I know the difference between Italian food in Italy and Italian food in America. There’s something about it over there that just can’t be topped.
Is food a passion for you, or did it just happen to come up now?
I love food, and I love to cook. I’ve eaten at tons of restaurants of various ethnic origins because of my job description. I travel and meet with label people over dinner, so I’ve developed an appreciation for food. But at the same time, at home in New York, I thrive on two dollar turkey burgers with Swiss cheese. I love those things, I could eat them every day.
How long have you lived in Harlem?
About a year. I’ll probably stay here for a while. Even though I can’t imagine myself staying anywhere forever, I just really don’t like moving. I love where I am now, but every time I get on the road, I’m very glad I’m not stuck in one fuckin’ place all the time.
I tried to get various specifics from the lyrics to ask you about, but while they’re flavorful and interesting, you didn’t print them in the CD booklet.
I didn’t print the lyrics this time because I think they rely so much on attitude and delivery that they just don’t read well. They read well when I’m reading them, but I think you have to hear me do them. On the web, various people are translating and transcribing them.
Any classic misunderstandings in the translation?
On our first record, we did “Androgynous” by Paul Westerberg, and someone thought I was singing, “It drives ya nuts.” I thought that was such a quaint, homey interpretation.
I saw a VH1 special on Alice Cooper where a producer, evidently the one who made them, decided to work with the band after hearing a horribly-produced version of “I’m Edgy.” When he recorded the song and mixed it properly, he discovered the song was actually “I’m Eighteen.”
Too funny. I’m a huge Alice fan. I saw him on TV on one of those “Where Are They Now?” shows, and it showed him playing golf. When asked what his contribution to the sport was, he said he wanted to make golf more violent. He was just puttin’ away in his white pants, having a joke with them.
How long have you been doing the music thing?
Funny, no one ever asks me that, they always ask how long the band’s been together… I started writing music when I was 25, and now I’m 35.
I may be a writer, but that’s 10 years, right?
Correct. But the band started out as a recreational activity at this little coffee house. We played to the bar crowd that’d come in after the bars closed. They got beer out of teapots in this little Winnipeg white juke joint. I started what became the house band, Crash Test Dummies, and it was all cover tunes. Everything from Alice Cooper to Irish traditional. We did “I’m Eighteen” in fact – I did it acoustically solo. We also did the theme from Gilligan’s Island, “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” and every stupid thing you could imagine. It was a total fuck band, as they called them. After being in that band a while and going to University in my early-to-mid 20s, I turned to writing and the band turned to doing my originals. At that point, certain members stayed and developed a core, and other people who floated in and out – playing with the band once every few weeks – started dropping off, and “the band” coagulated.
Do you miss the cover days? Do you think it had a positive effect on your writing and performing?
It was a good developmental period.
I guess there’s no good transition so I’ll just ask: How and why is this record so drastically different from those before it?
I didn’t have a strategy, it just happened. See, over the years I’ve been going to New York City, falling in love with it more and more, and figuring I wanted to live there.
Where were you living at the time?
London, England.
And before that?
Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Sorry, go on.
When I got to Manhattan, I realized how hard it was to find an apartment, and it just so happened a place in Harlem opened up. I didn’t particularly want to live in Harlem. I was the only white guy and figured for sure I’d be a target, not because I’m racist, but that’s the way it works. In my old neighborhood in Winnipeg, if your the only white guy and everyone else is Native, you’re in trouble. Actually, the racial tension in Winnipeg between whites and Natives is more than I’ve experienced in Harlem as a white guy.
What’s a Native in this case?
Natives? The people who were here before the Europeans came in and tried to kill them all. You call them Native Indians here, or perhaps Native Americans. It’s not PC to call them Indians. Just like you don’t call them Eskimos, you call them Inuit. But I’m not one for the PC language. If you want to call them Indians, then Indians they are. Feel free to call me lily white ass.
A lily white ass now living in Harlem.
Right. So I move in, I start to like it, and I start to absorb the atmosphere. As much as I hate most rap and over-sung soul/r&b diva bullshit that’s played on people’s blasters, I started digging the falsetto that was all around me, even though the music’s kinda shitty. I started singing falsetto in the shower, realized I had a falsetto, and writing parts for it. It took the music in a direction it’d never gone before. Falsetto, to me, implies ’60s and ’70s Black music, and I’m a child of that era. So I had Black influence I never thought I’d have because I’m the whitest guy going. I laugh at white guys who try to rap. They’re so lame. So I used that influence as grist for my mill, and I think it sounds more like Shaft or Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield than pretty much anything that’s Black right now.
What are the sights and the smells of Harlem that affected you?
Harlem, at one time, was where all the white money lived. When the Dutch built their places there, they built beautiful structures in the European tradition. If you go to Amsterdam, it looks a lot like Harlem. Now, it’s over a hundred years later, and it’s a far different socio/economic environment. Beautiful architecture contrasted by graffiti and the stink of urine, razor wire, the bros hangin’ out… And I don’t mean to emphasize the bad things: there’s a thriving economy, all sorts of cool people hanging out, a sense of humor, good restaurants, a feeling of community… It’s not nearly as depressed as it was at the height of crack in the ’80s. There’re lots of different Blacks there – native New Yorkers, African, whatever, and there’s a Hispanic community on West Broadway as well as traditional Spanish Harlem which is East. And below 125th there’s a studenty population.
Where’d the “electro sound” come from?
I went to a songwriting retreat at a castle in the southwest of France, and there I met Greg Wells who became our producer. He and I co-wrote this music. I wrote the lyrics, but we co-wrote the music. He’s a boy genius with all the loops and technology and has a vast library of sounds, plus he also plays keyboards and guitar. So we constructed very sophisticated demos, so much so that we thought we’d just dump them to two-inch tape and get the band in to do overdubes. So the record sounds different because Greg had such a big influence. In the past, I haven’t had producers that had that much affect on the sound. This guy was unreal. And I was at a time in my life where I was totally ready to accept someone coming in on that level. Now I can’t imagine writing songs by myself, it was too much fun writing with someone else. Sit around, have a couple of brews as we say in Canada, get hosed, and it becomes a much more social event.
I have a cheap comparison I wanna run by you: Leonard Cohen meets the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I like Leonard Cohen. He has a bass baritone, as do I. His singing relies more on character than accuracy, as does mine. Although I’m building character…
But Leonard Cohen has the tendency to write pop cheese whiz with female “Oh la la la”s that remind me of Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible,” but he has the richest, warmest, deepest voice spread like buttah on top. “Tower of Song”…
I’m Your Man is my favorite record by him, it has “Tower of Song,” “I Can’t Forget,” “First We Take Manhattan,” great tunes. I know it’s cheese, but I love it. And I can see the funk of Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I’ve always thought they were too white. Flea’s got a great feel, but the singer’s more of a yeller. And I like the crooning edge.
Perhaps Leonard Cohen singing for Red Hot Chili Peppers?
Maybe your cheap shot is onto something.
And you combine the deep-voiced soul with “dancy,” very modern drum beats.
In some tunes there’s drum’n’bass and jungle. We used some fast drum programming, but tried to elaborate on it so it wouldn’t sound so mechanical.
What about lyrics? I hear you recently switched to computer?
Yeah. Anyone who thinks we should go back to pen and paper is just being a romantic. Once a writer gets on a computer, they’ll never want to go back. Even Bukowski, who wrote for years on a typewritter or by hand, got a computer in his late 60s. He was into the computer. He wrote poems about being into the computer. It’s very freeing when you’re using the kind of words I was this time. The words rely more on attitude than telling stories, so I just wrote stuff that rhymed as fast as I could, without thinking what it all meant. I wrote reams of it. Most of it was garbage, of course, but I kept about 40% and moved it around until the phrases I’d written that rhymed started to build a story. I had 25 songs that were a little more cerebral, but these just flowed out effortlessly. I ditched the 25, threw them in the trash, and kept the final 15, 12 of which are on the record, three of which are b-sides.
Do you ever get ideas from spell checking?
Haven’t tried that one, but I used to use this really good rhyming dictionary. Sometimes I’d get stuck on a line, need something to rhyme, and when I looked up the word, ideas I’d never’ve come up with presented themselves. Sometimes I’d change the whole thing just to get there.
Typos can change direction of a piece too. Sometimes when your fingers are flying, they hit the “wrong” keys, but they spell out words that are more what you’re writing about than what you’re trying to write.
Yeah, you have to take advantage of the happy accidents.
You seem to get a lot out of the technique of living, as well as your surroundings.
Aside from writing about it and traveling, my favorite pastime is going on lots of long strolls through various and diverse parts of Manhattan. Especially remote ones, they’re usually the most fun.
