In het high-stakes spel neem-een- hoopje-belachelijke-crap- als-naam-voor-je-artgroepje, gaat Black Moth Super Rainbow all-in. Ook al geraken ze met hun gezamelijke alias niet helemaal voorbij opponenten als Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments en The Rock & Roll Dubble Bubble Trading Card Co. of Philadelphia 19141, door hun rangen te vullen met opmerkelijke players als Iffernaut en The Seven Fields of Aphelion, zijn ze nog steeds stevig in de running voor de titel van “groep die zichzelf een rare naam gaf.” We vinden hun laatste album vol crazy neonkleurige synth&vocoder nonsens echt goed (ze klinken zoals wij hadden gehoopt dat die Load-bands uit de Paper Rad tijd hadden geklonken – in plaats van gewoon enerverend) en we wilden eens zien hoe het met hen ging. We zijn echter allemaal extreem druk bezette mensen dus daarom hebben we maar besloten een zopas overleden oude zagevent op te graven en die naar Pittsburgh te sturen om wat vragen te stellen aan frontman Tobacco.

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.

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 Gun is out now on Graveface Records. You can check them out on MySpace or their website.