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Vice Blog

PITTSBURGH - BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW

In the high-stakes game of naming your art band a pile of ridiculous crap, Black Moth Super Rainbow are going for broke. While their collective sobriquet might not put them past such nearby stalwarts as Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and the Rock & Roll Dubble Bubble Trading Card Co. of Philadelphia 19141 by filling their ranks with such notable players as Iffernaut and the Seven Fields of Aphelion, they are still firmly in the running for the title of "band that has named itself weirdly." We really like their new album of crazy, neon-colored synth&vocoder nonsense (it sounds like what we always hoped all those Paper Rad-era Load bands would sound like instead of just obnoxious) and wanted to see what was up with them. However, we are also extremely busy people, so we dug up a cranky old coot to head down to Pittsburgh and pose our questions to their front man, Tobacco.

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Vice: Black Moth Super Rainbow—pffft, what kind of name is that for a band?
Tobacco: I wanted the name to be something that didn't mean anything at all, but when you thought about it for a while it might start meaning something. It's not something that I can describe—if you hear the songs, whatever they sound like, the name is supposed to sound like also.

Why doesn't anyone in the band use their real names? Back in my day, people used to be proud of what they did—they didn't go hide behind goofy made-up names like Tuna Sauce, or Hizzle Tow. What's wrong with you kids?
We don't want the band to be associated with people. If something happens—like if one of the members decides to kill himself one day, I don't want the music to have anything to do with people or their lives. I want it to kind of be its own entity. You know, if you have these people like Tobacco and Power Pill Fist and Father Hummingbird in a band, like, Father Hummingbird could leave one day and you could have Uncle Fields or something coming in and no one would ever even realize or understand what's going on. It's kind of unique that way… you know…

What? Now that doesn't make a lick of durn sense.
I don't know.

I mean, really—Tobacco? What kind of name is that for a musician? You sound like some sort of chain-smoking, wild-eyed blues hooligan. You ain't one of those, is you?
No. When I was a little kid I saw this Troma movie called Redneck Zombies and there was this character in it called the Tobacco Man. He always freaked me out as a kid and I always thought it would be a good name.

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Does your mother call you Tobacco? I should hope not. I should hope none of you actually go by these ridiculous nicknames!
I'm trying to call people by these names more and more. I want to get in the habit because I wouldn't want to yell someone's real name at a show in case someone jots it down.

So what is the deal with this album of yours? It isn't jazz or dance music, and yet you don't have any words! How do you expect people to know what it's all about?
It's about these two women who would make this candy in a shack in the woods and people would get lost and end up at the house and each would have a different telling of what this weird candy did to them. It seemed like a really good idea to put that to sound—so each song is like a different person's retelling.

You sound kind of groggy—as if I just roused you and you're about ready to nod back out at any time. Did I wake you… from a drug stupor?!
That's an illusion that I've been trying not to destroy. I get so many emails and people tell us at shows about how we make perfect drug records. But we're not actually drug users. It's just imagination I guess.

OLD MAN CARRUTHERS

Black Moth Super Rainbow's new album Dandelion Gum is out now on Graveface Records. You can check them out on MySpace or their website.