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Interview by Jason Potter and Jeff White

After watching a Conformists show it is a guarantee that you will walk away either hating them or loving them. For those who fall into the former, it's almost no surprise. They're loud and dissonant and very scary. Watching the singer, Mike convort around the stage bearded, shirtless and tatooed, screaming and whispering is down right spooky. Either way their is no denying the Conformists' importanace to the St. Louis scene. They're a classic punk band. Not in the sound sense, but in the DIY attitude and "fuck everybody we're doing what we want".

For a band with their kind of confrontational stage prescence, The Capitaless' Jason Potter and Jeff White were slightly on guard as to what would happen when we met them to do the interview. Would this band a band of assholes? Would they be pull one of their legendary pratical jokes and humilate their interviewers? Thank God the answer was "no" to all.

The guys were very cool and willing to talk openly about their band's (destined to legendary) history thus far. We met the band at the now defunct 3 J's Coffee House (R.I.P.) in Belleville and were we quickly bonded over that night's Simpsons reruns and jokes about Brittany Spears (Poops! She did it again!) then made the walk to the house that most of the band members live and rehearse in.

M: I'm Michael. I'm the vocalist.
J: I'm Jim. I play the bass.
T: I'm Tom. Drums.
C: Chris. Guitar.

TC: How did you guys hook up with Chris Deckard, who does your recordings?

M: We did a benefit for Charlie and this guy named Eric Carlson heard us and he really liked us. He pitched us this "Hey, I'm this guy from St. Louis. I'm doin my shit. I got my foot in the door with this guy named Chris Deckard who records bands. He just set up this studio and I could probably get ya hooked up with him. I want to set up some shows for you guys, but I want to get you guys a clean sounding demo" and we're like "ok", so he introduced us to Chris Deckard.
J: Plus I distinctly remember him feeding us a line about it possibly being free...which suckered me in right away. I'm like "free? Sweet".
M: So, we met Deckard and the first time we met him he was in the dumpster, remember that?
[Everyone laughs]
M: And we're at the Globe Democrat Building which is gigantic and we're like..."This is fucking nuts. We're working with some dumpster rat in the bowels of some big ol' fucking newspaper factory...Cool!" So we go into his studio and didn't we bust it out in like a day and a half or two days or something? Or like one session? One twelve-hour session I think we did? We did that like all in one day or something like that.
C: I remember the long session for "Hatchet" and "Black Dahlia" was a twelve-hour day.
M: See, no "Black Dahlia" we came back a couple of times. I remember that. For the 7 inch.
T: Yeah, we came back because we did like the...
J: Power drills...
T: Power tools. Chris and I did the power drills for "Hatchet".
M: Well, so we recorded that. It was after the Charlie show which was in May...or early June of it must have been 2000.
T: No, the five-song demo wasn't recorded in 2000.
C: Man, we don't know anything about any of our stuff!
[laughs]

TC: Tell us a little about the Dazzling Killmen CD. How did you get on it? Did this guy contact you or did you find him?

C: Well, a friend of ours told us about this guy who was putting together this compilation...and I think he originally asked if his band wanted to be on it...
J: He asked Chris Boron, and Chris Boron sent it to us.
C: We just e-mailed him back.

TC: Did Chris Deckard do that too?

T: We recorded that and "Clef Pallate" in one session. Which "Clef Pallate" is on the other compilation.
M: We have some other songs out on other compilations. we recorded "Silent Night" for a Christmas compilation that Matt Harnish did. We did this thing called "Lobster Bis" for a food compilation. Chris Deckard did a food and music pairing for an art project. Didn't he get funded from like some sort of big...
J: St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Arts.
C: Yeah, they had an exhibit at a gallery. They played the music and there was the food. It was a five-course meal and there was one band for each course of the meal. We had the soup. So, we had to taste the soup. Jim and I went in, we had to taste the soup and write a song for it. This was before the big exhibit. We had to write a song based on what it tasted like.

TC: That's interesting because that seems like the situation for Person 1 as well. Isn't that the same situation for the everywhen comp? Weren't you given a script before hand?

M: The only way they're related is that the same people that were on the compilation were in the show.
C: That's correct.

TC: I didn't really even know it came out since it wasn't available at the Person 1 show.

T: It took a while before it was in stores. We were supposed to have a write-up of the release of it but never got it.
M: Ascetic Records got that gigantic write-up.
T: It got a HUGE write-up and ours is way better than theirs. That's on the record! (many laughs)
M: Ascetic records equals my butt.
T: On the record! (many laughs)

TC: Jeff and I went to the Person 1 show and loved the "Dance" performance.

M: Ah, that was fun. We were giggling for like a week. We wrote that like a week before hand, right?
T: Yeah.
M: And we were just like, "Oh my God! This is so funny!"
T: I know, we thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
C: We actually practiced that song.
T: It was grueling practicing.
C: We'd get a minute into it and laugh for five minutes and then try and practice more. Then, eventually we did a whole ten-minute thing. We thought, "Oh man. I can't believe we're going todo this for people."
T: Yeah, I know. We're like, "We are so stupid."
J: Yeah, it's hypnotizing too. After a while you don't even hear the notes anymore.

Continued: < 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 >

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