This interview was performed on behalf of Culture Shock Magazine which is now, according to rumor, and the fact that Sage never called me back, dead. I never had the time to seriously shop it to other magazines so here it is for free. Sorry for the brief intro. I have very little time for band interviews these days. Jack’s quotes might make him sound arrogant but that surely is not the case. I transcribed the interview for use in a feature-format article. This would have allowed me to introduce context and paint Jack as the modest man that he is. Alas, lack of time has forced me to spit it out as is. Jack is honestly one of the nicest people I have ever met and the new album is unbelievable!
MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO by Aaron Johnston
"It’s about getting a good, live, old sound."
The words of Meat Beat Manifesto’s Jack Dangers may sound atypical for the leader of an electronic dance act, but not if you consider his past. Meat Beat was Trip Hop before there was Trip Hop. Meat Beat was merging electronics with acoustic instruments and electronic guitars years before it became fashionable. Even now that the word "industrial" is just as commercially taboo as "metal" or "rock," he insists that the "I" word is very much a part of his sound.
In August of 1998, we met on the 24th floor of a skyscraper in San Francisco’s financial district. The Bay Bridge was to the east. The Golden Gate Bridge was to the north west. At the head of large meeting table in a "kooky" Bay Area office, Jack and crew sat for an hour talking about the band’s latest release, "Actual Sounds + Voices."
Roots…
I grew up and lived in a small town in England all of my life. It was called Swindon and is sort of like the English version of Fresno. There was never anything going on there so you had to make up your own enjoyment. None of my family had any musical interest at all. I didn’t have a record player until 1985. The first record I bought was in 1978 – "Trancewerk Express" by Kraftwerk. Eight-thousand records later, here I am.
Technology...
There are so many new instruments out now that would have seemed impossible ten or twelve years ago. So, it’s easier in that sense to do music now. You have all of these programs and hard disc space is becoming cheaper and cheaper. Four years ago I bought a 1.5 gigabyte hard drive for two-and-half bloody grand!
Is it too easy for kids to make "Electronica?" If so, will this dilute the genre?…
I think there’s still a certain knowledge that comes with it. If you were just turned on to the music over the last year, I think that’s different than being into it for the last twenty. With every scene you get 98% crap. It doesn’t matter what genre you look at. The same is true with electronic music but at least now it’s possible for more people to release their own tracks on their own label and even do the packaging for the releases on their own computer. That’s more akin to the ethic of what punk was supposed to be about than anything I’ve ever heard before.
Meat Beat Manifesto’s press kit compares them to Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and other current faves despite Meat Beat Manifesto’s long history in the genre…
The thing with those bands is most of them sampled us anyway. As a musician, it doesn’t bother me. You can’t blame me for making music ten or twelve years ago that just happens to fit in with what’s going on today. I don’t care about press kits. They just go to people like you. It’s up to you to rub two brain cells together and think about it.
Drummer Lynne Farmer on the press kit…
I think he press kit outlined the fact that people were finally catching on to what Jack has been doing all of this time and that he has been such a huge influence on these bands. I don’t think that it was trying to say that Meat Beat sounds like the Chemical Brothers, but it was really more of a learning lesson. People who know the history of the band and this style of music won’t think much of it. For people who just got into this style of music, it’s a bit of a history lesson. As far as being labeled ‘contemporaries’ to these other bands, I guess we are. Like it or not, we’ve been lumped into this same genre.
Being on Wax Trax! back then…
It helped back then because it made people want to check us out. At that point, if you were doing anything even remotely associated with hip-hop, and you were white, you weren’t taken seriously. Well, unless you were the Beastie Boys but not even they were taken very seriously. They had to change their image and reinvent themselves on ‘Paul’s Boutique’ to be taken seriously.
Facing the kids…
We just toured with the Prodigy and I saw a bunch of twelve-year-old kids there who were maybe one-years-old when ‘Storm The Studio’ came out. What are you going to show them? That’s just the way it works out. I feel that we’ve gotten the respect that we deserve, though. We haven’t got the record sales but respect is more important to me than record sales.
Open Minded Audiences?…
We’re lucky enough to live in the Bay Area and not somewhere like Kansas. You get to see all of that when you’re on tour. I met people in Kansas who’d never seen the ocean. It’s a different world out there.
Progressing…
Rather than progressing album by album, Meat Beat progresses track by track. A lot of bands are more cohesive; more consistent. Perhaps that’s the key to their success! I’m not interested in that because I listen to so many different types of music. I’m an A&R man’s worst nightmare.
On Englnd…
There’s definitely a perception over there that Americans are quite stupid. I think it’s just jealousy. You have to live somewhere else to see what it’s really like over there. America has its own problems, though. There is a stringent lack of gun control. Here, presidents get killed and nothing changes.
Lynne on Recording…
The magic comes when Jack takes everything home and chops it up.
But does Lynne feel bad when Jack tosses his sweat and soul into a heartless sampler?
Ha! No. I actually like loops.
Does Jack remix others?…
Not really. I turn down most offers. I do the good ones for next to nothing.
MBM Invades Jack’s Life…
It’s omnipresent, much to the chagrin of my wife sometimes!
Sampling…
I try to be obscure. Back in the 80s I didn’t have as big of a record collection to get so obscure with. Sampling well-known sources is tricky, scary territory. Public Enemy and their lot were into sampling famous songs that were big hits in the first place.
And is Puff Daddy giving sampling an even worse name?…
Is that guy even ‘hip hop’?
Validating Industrial…
There was always this perception that industrial music with this post-gothic dirge with no beat and lots of guitar in it. That’s not what we think but we were put in that bracket, anyway. People sometimes ask me why industrial music has a bad name. I didn’t know it had a bad name. It doesn’t have a bad name in my house. Punk died after a year and a half. I don’t think industrial ever burnt itself out because the scene just evolved into something else. It never had the chance to burn itself so it can’t be ‘trite’ and is impossible to throw away or dismiss.
Does Jack mind being labeled Industrial?…
Not at all. There are elements of industrial in MBM such as distorted vocals, some song content, lyrics about religion, etc. Through the 80s I was obsessed with true industrial music. I collected everything on Throbbing Gristle’s record label and was really into the Test Dept. and Einsturzende Neaubauten thing. It was real as opposed to Depeche Mode who were unreal.
Cabaret F**kin' Voltaire!
My favorite Cabaret Voltaire album was ‘Voice of America.’ It definitely shaped what I’m doing now. I remember reading their interviews which got me into the bands that they were into – Can, John Cage, Stockhausen, etc. Now I’m finding that things that were done in the fifties or sixties are sometimes hard to listen to because it’s just absolute noise. Yet, when I hear half of that stuff, it sounds like someone’s new record from last week. When I listen to Aphex Twin, it just sounds like old industrial music to me but there’s no way it would be called that today. It has to be classified as something else in order to be taken seriously.