Acid Test

One of the hottest new bands around just finished up their second tour of the West Coast (which included a guest appearance by Trent Reznor). They are from Toronto, but are currently in a studio in Vancouver working with the producer of Skinny Puppy on their second Sire records release. The last time they were in town, I talked to Steve and Lucy about life in general and in abstract.

RAD

WITH ALL THIS TOURING WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE TIME FOR WORKING ON A NEW ALBUM? DO YOU HAVE SO MUCH STUFF ALREADY?

Steve

No. We have a little bit of left-over material, but we're basically writing on the road right now. We're storing our ideas and when we're finished touring we're going to take two months off and write and pick producers and we're going to go in and we're going to go in and do a record. When we're doing sound check and somebody comes up with a riff, we'll go "save that" and it's that person's responsibility to save it or we lose it. That's basically how we write right now.

RAD

SO BASICALLY IT'S TEAMWORK...NOT ONE WRITER.

Steve

No, no, no. Well, on the first record it was kind of Lucy and myself and then the guys, but it's getting more towards a band effort.

RAD

SO, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOU MUSIC? IS IT KIND OF INDUSTRIAL?

Steve

We've all got different influences, so it's kind of weird. We're all different styles. It's a cross between grunge, industrial, punk and techno. It's all brought in. And it sounds something different. It's wild, like Tony from Curve likes our record and Trent Reznor likes our record.

RAD

THAT'S AN EXTREME.

Steve

Yeah, it is. That's the idea exactly. Those are two different styles and they like it. It's really wild that successful musicians like our music. Because we got fan mail121112111211 once from Philadelphia a guy said that we were gonna be the new thing and we did the same thing as Seattle. In seattle people are calling us the new sound because grunge is dead and there's this new band that's heavy, but we're doing something totally different.

RAD

HOW LONG HAS THE BAND BEEN TOGETHER?

Steve

Two years.

RAD

HOW LONG BEFORE THAT DID SOME OF YOU GET TOGETHER?

Steve

Lucy and I have actually been together right at four years. And we waited until we had the right chemistry and people, but we really didn't have a band. We just kinda did movie soundtracks. We did Highway 61, the movie. I played the dead guy in that one. Sort of like an underground cult movie, like a black comedy. You know the movie?

RAD

YES.

Steve

Well, got a song Mr. Skin that was from that movie. It's on an independent label under Capitol. The song Mr. Skin is on that soundtrack. We used the movie to create a buzz in Toronto in Canada and some parts of the U.S. And then when the movie came out, we did another movie called "Talk 16" which was a documentary like in all the film festivals and that sort of thing. And we were just doing any soundtracks to occupy our time until we got a band. And then the band suddenly just started forming. Like we got people to write with and it started clicking and we had no idea of how we wanted to sound, what we wanted to sound like. We knew what WE liked as far as our influences were, but we wanted other people to bring in their influences. So we got a DJ keyboard player who is really into Sonic Youth and we got another keyboard player who is in to industrial and we got a drummer who's into Peter Gabriel, so just a total mismatch. So we just started writing and started creating this new sound and we liked it and we started playing the clubs and touring and we got a beach buzz on college radio in Canada and parts of the states. And we went down to the New Music Seminar in New York about two years ago and we got on the "Day in Rock" and they were looking for bands to get signed and they picked us and they filmed our show. And when we had record companies come in to see us and we had three steady-cameras there and they're all going "what's going on," "who's this band," and "why is MTV filming them?" So it's actually because of MTV that helped us in the initial stages. "The Day in Rock" and a guy named Ivano actually discovered us in New York and he put us on TV and we did a little interview and he filmed part of our show and we were talking about how we wanted to be signed and why and that sort of thing. Somebody at Sire saw this because it was on MTV for a week. At the same time we talked to Semour Stien at "Seminar" and gave him a tape with no bio, no bull-shit, we just gave him the tape and he called us up four days later and said "I love this, I want to come up and see the band, and I want to sign it." We also had other labels interested, which I can't mention, and Semour flew up with his lawyer and saw a show at the Beverly in Toronto, no big deal. And he liked it and we started talking to him and it turns out his label is the coolest and he's the coolest so we went with him.

RAD

HOW DO YOU FIND SIRE? IS IT TOO BIG?

Steve

Nope, it's the perfect size. It's like a small label on a major label. I find Warner Brothers too big. Warner Brothers is very hard to lobby because they don't even know who we are.

RAD

THEY DON'T CARE IF THEY DON'T KNOW YOU. S; Yeah, exactly. Unless we have a hit. Which is just kind of bull shit. Because why do you bother to spend all this money on a band if you're not going to promote it properly. We have to go out and find our own promotion and go up to people and say "Hi, we're Acid Test." We score our own tours, we score our own interviews, we did our own album, which is fine the way we're doing now. Sire is perfect. They work us, but they're limited to what they can do because Warner Brothers owns them. Sire is the perfect sized label, and they're very excited about us. We're one of the priorities at Sire, as far as new bands go. They have a policy that every band is important to them, although we all know can't always be the truth, but they really do try with new bands, so they're cool. They give us a lot of artistic freedom.

RAD

THAT'S IMPORTANT.

Steve

Yeah, definitely. That's the thing. We did our time without a label, but there's only so long you can eat craft dinner. We wanted to reach more people and the only way to do that is to get on a proper label. Even if we're not like this huge huge band, at least I can go into a record store in Utah, or in L.A., or somewhere in Canada, and I can find our record in the store. And that makes me feel good, because if somebody wants to check out a new band and they happened to see us at a show, they can go to that record store and find a copy of Acid Test Drop. That's something that you need--you need a label to at least do that. And the fact of the matter is that if we play our cards right we could have a proper courtship, which is what we're trying to lobby right now. We're basically a very hard-working band. We like to tour. We're touring all over the States and Canada in a small brown van and a U-haul.

RAD

SO YOU'RE NOT IN THE BIG GREEN BUS?

Steve

No, we have five band members and three crew members in a van and we tour like hell. We score tours and we rip apart people when we play live and we're very aggressive and we really want this to happen. So far bands like Nine Inch Nails and Curve and stuff are kinda helping us out--being our "big brothers" and "big sisters"--sending us little notes telling us to "hang in there" and stuff like that. We're getting some respect out of the more respectable musicians, which means everything to us.

RAD

HAVE YOU BEEN TO SALT LAKE [CITY] BEFORE?

Steve

Nope, first time. Actually, we drove through Utah on the way out to Los Angeles. It's an interesting story. We were touring Canada, working our way out west because we were going to play a few shows like in Seattle and stuff, and then we were going to play our way down through the mid- west to hook up with the CMJ in New York. So to do that we decide to through Canada from Vancouver back to Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay is like the same distance as Minnesota. We get to Thunder Bay, we play, and then we get a call saying that you have to drive back to Los Angeles. You have three days to get here and you'll be going to hook up with The Ocean Blue. So we say, "OK" and we drive from Thunder Bay, through Minnesota, on Highway 61 of all coincidences, to Los Angeles.

RAD

ANYTHING STRANGE HAPPEN TO YOU? YOU MEET UP WITH SATAN?

Steve

No, but we saw a lot of road kill on the highway. We did it in 44 hours and hooked up with the tour. We found out Thursday, we left Friday, and we got there late Sunday night/Monday morning in Los Angeles. We started The Ocean Blue tour November 1st--Monday. That Thursday we found out and we left Friday and drove there in the van.

RAD

ARE ALL OF THE BAND MEMBERS CANADIAN?

Steve

Yeah, except for our singer. Lucy is a Canadian citizen, but she's from Australia, but she's been living in Toronto a long time. She considers herself a Canadian citizen.

RAD

WHAT'S YOUR VIEWS ON CENSORSHIP?

Steve

We're against censorship completely. I can't think of one musician that truly isn't against censorship. Censorship doesn't really exist in Canada, in Europe. It certainly doesn't exist in Japan.

RAD

IN ANY FORM?

Steve

No. I mean, you can't buy guns at a grocery store in Canada, but at the same time at least your music won't be edit either, and there won't be a warning sticker. It seems like only in America that they get all these people running for office and Senates and stuff like that, and they have all these bored house-wives of senators who have nothing better to do that to pick on rock musicians.

RAD

UNLIKE OUR OWN VICE PRESIDENT'S WIFE.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. It's just another example of the government having nothing better to do than censorize music. But what they don't realize is that when the censorize music, it just makes the music that much cooler. Record companies use it as an opportunity to market music with a warning sticker, that makes the music more unapproachable and dangerous for the kids to get, supposedly, because it's got a sticker. "Mom and dad told me I can't have it." It makes hard rock and roll dangerous, and what it does is it creates sales. If anything, all they're doing is making the music that much more exciting again and it really hasn't had that much of an effect. The only thing I've seen is that it's made MTV kinda lame, but when was MTV ever cool?

RAD

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO.

Steve

Exactly. Much Music, on the other hand, up in Canada is totally cool. It's all unrehearsed. They just show the VJs winging it. It's like an MTV, but they play a lot more than eight videos. They have their own shows for each different type of music, and they let everything combine. Then they have shows where everything runs together. But that's my views on censorship.

RAD

WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ALSO ON RACISM AND DRUGS?

Steve

I think racism stinks. Yet, at the same time, with all due respect, I've never seen so much racism in one country than in the United States, and it's disgusting. Last night, for example, to show you what I experienced. I walk into a truck stop when we were taking a smoke break and a gas fuel-up, there's a line-up of three or four of us. There's a black lady trying to get a pack of cigarettes, with two other people in front of her. They get served and I'm behind her, and the person at the desk pretended to be busy--she waited for at least five or ten minutes. [The black woman] said, "excuse me, I'd like to buy a packet of cigarettes." Then the lady [behind the desk] said to me, "can I help you?" I said, "no, this lady was first." [The woman in line] turned around and said, "thank you," so finally she felt embarrassed and she served her. "Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Blah blah blah." She said, "you're not from here." And I said, "no, I'm not. I'm from Canada." She said, "I figured you're not from here." In young people today it doesn't really exist as much I don't think. It's mostly influent in the older people. If you want to stop racism here, it's going to start with young people being educated enough to say they are not going to be influenced by older people's view, and go in there with an open mind and experience other forms music, avoid classification of music, and avoid classification of culture. Just go out there and experience. As far as the drug thing goes, I'm not for it. I'm not against it. If you want to experiment, do it educated and in a safe way. Don't do it in a stupid way. Do it with somebody you can trust.

Lucy

And don't do it because of peer pressure or because it's part of the in thing.

RAD

OR BECAUSE THIS COOL BAND HAS THIS NAME...

Steve

Our name, for example, isn't even a drug name.

Lucy

I guess it does symbolize acid. It comes from a Tom Wolf novel. It's more symbolic of try out the music, let that be the drug and take a trip from the music.

Steve

It comes from the book "electric fluid--acid test" by Tom Wolf.

RAD

ARE YOU (LUCY) HAPPY WITH WHAT THE BAND HAS DONE? ALL THE TOURING AND WRITING ON THE ROAD?

Lucy

I personally do like more of a confined atmosphere for writing, because writing for me is introspective and it comes out when I bring it into the band. Then we collaborate. For me it is initiated in a more introspective way. That's just my way on it. But I realize that this is what we have to be doing. We just did our time of creation with the album, and now it's time to show everyone that this is who we are. We're very good live. We've gotten good response live. And I think that it's going to fuel checking out the album.

Steve

One of the things we're trying to experiment with on the next record is we're trying to use the intensive touring to try to influence the record. Because we're getting so tight as a band by playing together every night that we want to capture that energy on tape for the next record.

Lucy

It's definitely going to influence our writing on the next album, for sure. I think it's great. I'd like to tour as long as we can--as long as there is a want for us.

RAD

AND PLAY WHAT COMES UP AS LIFE GIVES IT TO YOU.

Lucy

We're a pretty positive band, too. We're into being self-motivated, and trying to do something positive with your life and not sitting around strung out and complaining and bitching about the world. Go out there and make it happen for yourself. Basically read the news and read between the lines in the news, and don't watch too much television. Think--use the brain. Have a good time and make things happen for yourself. Don't sit there and bitch about your shitty neighborhood and how this race or that race treated you bad, and how you're strung out and it's this government's fault. Do it yourself. Get up on your own feet and make it happen for yourself. We're against censorship of the arts. Particularly music and lyrics, because of the fact that it's just whoever--the government--putting a hold on people what to think. They don't want people to get spawned by these ideas and start thinking that, "yeah, maybe there is a different way out there". The government just wants to put a hold on that.