Schizophrenic Lucky Rock and Other Sunny Things: An Interview with Silversun Pickups

The SMP is proud to present yet another interview from an well known alternative rock band by the name of Silversun Pickups. The band has been making music since 2002 and have released two albums and four EPs since. One of their single's, "Panic Switch" hit number 1 on the alternative charts and their latest album Swoon hit number 7 on the Billboard top 100. Jennifer Llyod talked to the band's bassist, Nikki Monninger.

Previously published in The Knox Student in April 1, 2010

Nikki Monninger, the bassist for Silversun Pickups talked with me about their tour with Muse, why she choose music and live performances.

Nikki: Did you enjoy the Muse light show? I really liked watching it. It’s nice to see a band that prides themselves on putting on a good show. I don’t think we’ll have a million lasers in our future but it’s nice to see what other bands are doing. And it’s over the top but I think they do it really well.

Jenn Lloyd: Where did you get the band name from and were there other ideas?

NM : I think it was always Silversun Pickups. We got the name from a liquor store called Silversun Liquor and was on the corner of Boulevard. We joked around that it would be called “A Couple of Couples” because we started out with Brian [Aubert] (lead vocals and guitar) and his girlfriend at the time and me and my boyfriend at the time, so it was two couples. But it’s pretty much always been Silversun Pickups.

JL: How would you describe the band’s music?

NM: Brian likes to say we’re schizophrenic lucky rock; basically indie alternative music.

JL: How did the band create their style?

NM: It’s just what happens when the four of us get together. We could potentially plan on a sound, but our sound is just what has happened from playing together over the years.

JL: Why did you personally decide that you wanted to be a musician and be in a band?

NM: It’s always been in the back of my mind. My mother put me in piano lessons when I was five years old and I took lessons for ten years so I’ve always kind of been around music. Then when I went to college, my best friend’s brother was selling a bass so I decided to buy it for $100. When we were starting the band we didn’t have a bass player and I’ve always enjoyed listening to the bass, I’ve always been drawn to the instrument. But in college I didn’t want to major in music because I didn’t want to burn out from it, so I majored in art history.

JL: If you weren’t in music what other career would you have had?

NM: In college I interned at several record companies…so I was always doing things related to music. So, yeah, I’d probably be working on some videos I was working with a little bit.

JL: Did you ever have any interest in art history professionally?

NM: Yeah, definitely. I’d always be interested in working with a museum or along those lines. That’s also a very competitive market and there aren’t a lot of jobs open. That is something I would definitely have done if I hadn’t gone the music route.

JL: What music did you listen to growing up?

NM: It’s kind of diverse, but during my formative years Modest Mouse, Wilco, but also Madonna and Prince. But in general, we have a lot that we all grew up listening to, which brought us together as friends first and then we started the band a few years later.

JL: Who writes the lyrics and what is the creative process that you guys go through?

NM: Brian writes most of the lyrics. Sometimes, when I do my parts I’ll write those parts, but in general, Brian writes all the lyrics. He’ll come in with song ideas and then we’ll work out creating some songs. Then the lyrics will come in usually only after we’ve been recording in the studio. He’ll have melodies but he likes to wait till towards the end of the recording process for the lyrics.

JL: What is your favorite song or songs to perform live?

NM: We really like starting off with “Growing Old is Getting Old,” and I love playing that song. I like how it begins quietly and just builds. It’s also a harder song for me to play so I enjoy the bass end of it. I’d say that’s my favorite one to play right now.

JL: How do you think hearing your music live is a different experience than hearing recorded?

NM: We’re able to get more dynamic live, and, musically, can mix sounds more live. We don’t want it to sound exactly like the CD but, at the same time, we don’t want to stray too far from it. Live is more of an extension of the CD.

JL: Where is your favorite venue to perform?

NM: One of my favorites is The Fillmore in San Francisco. Right now we’re playing in a lot of arenas but before that we were in a lot of theaters. I enjoy playing in those because there’s so much history to them. Also The Wiltern in Los Angeles.

JL: How has Silversun Pickups gotten along with Muse?

NM: We get in a lot earlier than them, so before the show we don’t get to see them. But once the show is over, we’ll see them backstage. They’re very nice and it interesting to see Matt [Bellamy] so reserved after rocking out before during the show. They’ve been really nice to us.

JL: What is it like being the only female touring with all the men?

NM: Luckily there are some girls working with Muse so I’m not the only girl backstage. But overall, it is mostly a male dominated area. I get along well with everyone so they’re fun to travel with. There is about ten of us that travel together and we’ve been traveling together so long that they’re like brothers to me.

JL: How does Muse's over-the-top performance mix with Silversun Pickup's relaxed show?

NM: As an opening band, we just don’t get the opportunity to have all the craziness, but they have definitely inspired us for our upcoming headlining tours. It’s opened up a whole world of what lights can do. In general, we focus so much on the music, we sometimes forget that a light show could be cool to watch as well.

Ok Talk! An Interview With Youtube Band Sensation Ok Go

The SMP is proud to present an awesome interview with a really cool band. Ok Go has been giving the world music since 1998, and are known for their funny/weird music videos, like "Here It Goes Again" (which won a Grammy), "A Million Ways", "This Too Shall Pass", and "White Knuckles". The have released three albums, their latest being Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky. Thanks to Jennifer Lloyd for interviewing the band's lead singer (and cutie), Damian Kulash. Peace, love, and treadmills.

Ok Go performed on October 10th at the House of Blues in Chicago. Jenn talked with the lead singer, Damian Kulash about their live shows, choreographed dances and why the older Star Wars movies are better than the newer ones.

Jenn Lloyd: What do you enjoy most about performing live?

Damian Kulash: It’s kind of hard to put into words. It’s the emotional connection with the audience that when a show is going really well everyone is sort of feeling things when we go for as much energy as possible and get everyone as fired up and as excited as possible. Standing there in a crowd of 200 or 2000 people and everybody is concentrating on the same feeling, it’s an amazing experience.

JL: Does Ok Go have any preshow routines?

DK: Tours are so repetitive that the whole thing is a little like a routine. About a half hour before we go on we make sure everyone has their monitors ready and everything is ready for the performance. There’s a moment of focusing before anything happens, but it’s not like we all speak a Latin prayer or something. It’s a very functional thing, but because we do it every day it has a routine quality to it.

JL: Describe an Ok Go show in 2-3 words.

DK: Fun, surprising, colorful

JL: What do you hope to achieve as a musician? When will consider being a musician a success?

DK: I don’t think there’s ever a particular moment of a single plateau that is a success. Success is being proud of what you make and being excited about the places you are going. I think if you ever decide you have achieved all you want to you are finished. I think you are always working towards the next new project.

JL: So, you graduated from Brown University. Did you go in knowing you would pursue music?

DK: I was both art and music. I was going to pursue visual art afterwards but I guess I felt like the things happening in the art department and the art world in general didn’t resonate well for me. Music was really fun for me; I had been doing a lot of music and I had bands and played a lot in my bedroom in high school so I was doing a lot of music. I don’t think I figured it would become a career or anything. At school I started working in the music studio at college and become completely fascinated with that process.

JL: Do you feel that musical ability can be made better through learning in school versus picking it up on your own?

DK: They’re totally different processes, I don’t think better or worse. You become more efficient if you are trained, but I think music encompasses a great many types of communication. What’s so wonderful about music is that you can make it with a beat and a chord. You communicate incredibly complicated, fulfilling, emotional statements that words could never get to. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with someone’s skill. Different things: like asking about being a good writer. If you want to become a good writer you certainly make it a lot easier by being a good writer, but becoming a good writer is also helped by spending a lot of your time writing, but that doesn’t mean you will be good.

JL: Did you know how successful the videos for A Million Ways and Here it Goes Again would be on YouTube? Do you think it was because of YouTube that they became so popular?

DK: I don’t think we predicted exactly what would happen and no I don’t think it was all because of YouTube. The logic of the question is like asking, do you think you are alive because of air, you certainly need air to survive. Those videos traveled the world via YouTube but the success is not just because of YouTube.

JL: How did the idea of dancing on treadmills come about?

DK: We had danced on the stage for years for sort of shocking the audience. One of the big challenges of mine at shows is that a lot of people have set expectations of what should happen all the time and it gets really boring; what they expect to happen happens. There’s no surprise or excitement. Having choreographed dances on stage people just thought songs would have crazy routines. Having done that for a few years we came up with a new dance routine with my sister for the song A Million Ways and when the video of that exploded online, I thought to myself if we can have a video that by accident travels the world at that speed then we can make an intentional video. So we altered the parameters of the dance so there would be something where we weren’t repeating ourselves but going somewhere new. That’s when we came up with the idea of the treadmill.

JL: It seems that Ok Go is into making complicated music videos that require a lot going precisely right. How would you describe your music videos?

DK: I think that says it pretty well. I think that music itself is a version of choreography. You get a bunch of people together and what everybody does when they hit the right outcome creates something that is bigger than the parts. When you hear a song you don’t think, ‘I hear a bass and also a guitar and also drums’, what you hear is the emotion and feeling that is behind the music. Choreographing is doing the same thing visually: coming up with system by which every part has to be just right to achieve the outcome.

JL: Your song, "A Good Idea at the Time", from the CD Oh No is a response to "Sympathy for the Devil". Why did you decide to take on such a well known song?

DK: I really love that song. I was listening to it and there is a line in it about the troubadours were killed before they reached Bombay. I tried to figure out what that was about and went online to find out what that was referring to. This was all during Bush’s second term and I was not a fan of what was going on politically. I was thinking about how the evil that is perpetrated in our world does not have to be by mysterious forces like the devil, but just by us so I wrote a song about it.

Two selected student questions from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois:

Sara Koehnke, junior: You get a lot of press for the treadmill video, but what was your favorite video to make?

DK: The "White Knuckles" video that just came out.

Connor Schmidt, freshman: What is your opinion on the newer Stars Wars movies?

DK: Not a big fan. I feel like they didn’t have the magic that the original three had. You can tell from our music videos that we are big fans of no constraints. The original Star Wars were amazing because you felt the technology, incredible people created a futuristic universe. When you move into our decade and you have computers that can do everything you lose some of the magic of the futuristic world. I just felt like I was being yelled at by a computer.

Interview performed by Jennifer Lloyd in October 2010.