“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”

by Martin Popoff
illustrations by Jonathan Ian Mathers

Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns…
“I like a dead Mexican in my headphones and I’m ready to go.”

I interview rock guys two, three times a week. I use voice recognition software to transcribe these interviews. Works like this: I tape the phone conversation, then take the tape and speak my questions and their answers into a headset and voila, it’s a transcribed text file. It doesn’t always come out as planned though. Fun game: Repeat the wrongness out loud and you might be able to figure out what the guy actually said. Here are some of the more memorable miscues. More than a few of these gems ring truer than the actual words spoken…

Sami from Lullacry on tour plans…
“We will tour in Finland before the summer; we will do something like 25 geeks in Finland. After that we’ll do some festivals.”

Devin Townsend on his solo albums…
“Infinity has a real sense of defeated glory to it. I think that record is probably my favorite of all the solar records I’ve done. And Physicist was written when I just didn’t want to write. But there was a part of me that wanted to say ‘Don’t give up, you’ve got one more Indian.'”

Devin Townsend on why he does Strapping…
“It’s like Strapping is my cool guy. If we’re going to be crock guys, we’ve got cats strapping butt. Devin Townsend Band is all those emotions, all that stuff I’m trying to get across. I’m able to do it with budget guys who really support me.”