ANJI: You just heard a 20 minute set of EEL-EYE's spoken word with musical accompaniment. We don't seem to quite have ourselves organized in here yet; we're cueing up some of his music right now... I guess the first question I could ask is: how recent is the material that you just read?
EEL-EYE: I wrote it this month.
ANJI: Pretty darned recent! Hot off the press, as it were. Is there any truth to the story of it?
EEL-EYE: Its partially based on auto-biographical experiences, drug experiences, and paranoid-schizophrenic experiences -- science fiction, fantasy, all kinds of things. A hodgepodge, if you will, of good times and bad times.
ANJI: Do you have any plans to publish this material?
EEL-EYE: Not really. I'd like to get it out there, but I really don't know of any producers or publications who would be interested in putting it out. Unless there's somebody out there listening who might be interested?
ANJI: You could probably start off with fanzines publishing excerpts. Come closer, come around the console here -- let's get cozy!
EEL-EYE: To be honest with you, I don't really write very much. I paint a lot.
ANJI: If only I could show that to the audience! It's like, "How are we going to talk about his art?"
JUSTIN: Visual radio.
ANJI: I guess we'll have to get our show on the Internet for that kind of stuff. But I am creating the web page, which will have some of your sketches on it...
JUSTIN: Why don't you talk about the background music we played for your performance?
EEL-EYE: Well, that strange instrument that you heard was called a Diddley Bo, whose prototype was made by my uncle, Dan Fox, for me. He designed it, and sent me the plans, and my other uncle, John Fox, helped me put it together. What it is, is a plank of wood, a coffee can and a guitar string, with a tuner. And you play it with a whiskey bottle and a stick. I originally got the idea from a blues artist named One String. I brought up a recording of him which, hopefully, we'll hear later on tonight... And there's some harmonica, I play some harmonica on there. If you noticed [from the spoken word piece] earlier, I'm from Lancaster. A lot of my favorite heroes came from Lancaster; Beefheart, Zappa...
JUSTIN: Did they both come from there? Wow, what must Lancaster have been like in the 60's? Now it's a pretty thriving city, but back then it seems like it must have been a little place.
EEL-EYE: Well what I heard, or read in the bio's, is that it was pretty crazy. Zappa and Beefheart mostly spent their time in a place called Sun Village, which was a predominately black area. They listened to a lot of blues and drove around, getting into trouble, getting beaten up by all the jocks.
JUSTIN: Ah, small town livin'! Well, anyway, let's get into the music again. Tell them a little bit about the song we're going to hear next.
EEL-EYE: This is the blues song. We recorded this about 3 days ago. It was a lot of fun. We were in my house and I have some acoustic instruments. I've been real influenced by the blues lately, so we just brought 'em out and had a good time.
JUSTIN: Does it have a title?
EEL-EYE: "Gonna Make You Purr All Night, Pussycat." Something like that.
 

JUSTIN: Why don't you tell us about who we just heard?
EEL-EYE: That was One String, who was the inspiration for the instrument that was played behind the spoken word. I guess he was a street derelict who lived on Skid Row in the 60's. He gained some notoriety there, and he had some people record him, I guess. He was really popular at parties for awhile, and then he vanished, leaving us with that wonderful piece that we just heard ["Rolling and Tumbling"].
JUSTIN: Is that the only song recorded of him?
EEL-EYE: It's the only one that I'm aware of, but I'm sure there's more.
JUSTIN: Right. It was amazing.
ANJI: Now we want to get into some more of your work!
EEL-EYE: Well, this next piece is "Some Call It Noise." I did it in about 1991, with my band, Grunt People. We were basically a psychedelic rock band influenced by Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground, The Butthole Surfers, and of course, Captain Beefheart. This song is not very typical of Grunt People, but I wrote it about my frustration between noise and music. I hope you like it.
 

JUSTIN: That was William S. Burroughs, "The Silver Smoke of Dreams," selected by EEL-EYE. We're trying to play some of his influences here tonight to follow up his performance. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what we just heard.
EEL-EYE: Well, the song before was done with my friend, Luke McGowan, from the Five Starkelmen, and my friend, Bawb, who was partly mentioned in the story. After that you heard some cut-up stuff with The Master Musicians of Jajouka, some pygmies, some radio and just a mixture of all kinds of cultural differences. I'm really influenced by the cut-ups of William Burroughs, that's pretty evident in my writing, and this show is called, "The All-Purpose Nuclear Bedtime Story," so it seems appropriate to do some cut-ups...yeah.
JUSTIN: So how do you approach the cut-up method? I've heard different people talk about using cut-ups influenced by Burroughs, but everyone seems to have their own technique.
EEL-EYE: That particular piece, I just recorded several different tracks I had distorted and mutated at random and then played them all back, kinda using the 4-track as an instrument in itself, to create a lot of random effects. Usually if you like, 20 minutes of a cut-up tape, you get a few good seconds of really good random material that make the entire effort worthwhile. I'm really influenced by John Cage, and I like the idea of using different techniques to achieve a random sound.
ANJI: Do you have any philosophical beliefs about cut-ups?
EEL-EYE: Well, I originally started doing cut-ups just to put myself in a creative state of mind. I liked to surround myself with chaos at the time (world-weary chuckle), it seemed to promote a very creative state of mind -- I don't know, sorta like a trance state. But, you can only listen to that so long, and its been done for years... so I'm trying to move on, and, like I said, I'm moving towards more primitive instruments, instead of using samples and that kind of thing.
ANJI: How old was that cut-up piece?
EEL-EYE: That was about 2 years old.
ANJI: We've got some really, really recent material cued up here which definitely doesn't have any noise influence. (conspiratorial giggles) But, back to the idea of state of mind in your music; how does your state of mind and your mental condition affect your writing and your music?
EEL-EYE: Before I was taking medication for my paranoid-schizophrenia, it was really bad. I would just try to sloppily put things together and use the cut-up method as an excuse not to write complete material. I just kinda gave you flashes and images of psychosis, which I don't necessarily think is good for everybody, but it reflected my state of mind at the time. Now that I'm on medication, I like to produce more complete material. 
JUSTIN: Do you find that the more chaotic material you were working with before is still present in your work, but transformed and refined?
EEL-EYE: Oh, absolutely! I've taken it to a whole different level. Instead of using it as the primary goal of creating a piece, I just use it as another tool, like you would an instrument, to complete the piece.
JUSTIN: Right. Well, let's go into some more of your music now.
ANJI: This is an acoustic piece, also recorded last week. It's a really fun song, called "The Mystic Elf Named Steven."