there's a link to an interview made by Scott McCloud I've somehow just found
out:
http://crackhitler.com/?page=sinusNodeSyndrome
It's quite new, Jan. 24th.

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I always meant to ask: why did it have to be ¨girls against boys¨?
You’ve got to think in terms of the context of when we started the band to get
the name. There were several reasons why we called it Girls Against Boys. One,
underground punk/postpunk whatever you want to call it was a very male dominated
thing back then, and we wanted a name that would be ambiguous in a way, a name
that wouldn’t necessarily make you identify us with a “noise rock” scene.
Musically, though we are a very noisy band, we always wanted to have a bit of a
dance tone thrown in, not just pummeling sonic volume, but a style, if you will.
“Girls Against Boys” doesn’t sound like something like Ministry of Death,
you know? It could be anything, and that’s what we wanted, a name that could
be any kind of music. We also didn’t want to only identify with the
male-oriented punk scene. We figured it would be better to appeal to both men
and women, and in fact, I don’t know if it was just the name or also the style
of our brand of postpunk, we had a lot of women coming to our shows. And if the
girls go, then the guys want to go. We basically wanted a name that implied a
sort of sexy-ness to the music we were making, and in the end, the name was a
good choice. It did not identify our brand of loud music to only macho guys, and
that was what we wanted to achieve. The full on testosterone macho element of
punk was uncool to us; we wanted to draw a more diversified crowd.

So, where have you guys been all these years?
Well, first of all, the Universal merger of 1998 basically derailed our momentum
as a band. We found ourselves at that point stuck in a legal limbo, unable to
make records, just stuck. Finally in 2002 we got out of that situation and made
the one last record “You Can’t Fight What You Can’t See” and toured
that. Still, in 2002 it felt like most of the momentum we’d had as a band, as
a creative force even within ourselves, had been derailed, so we decided to not
continue making any more records. Then we just lived our lives. Johnny Temple
(bassist) started an independent book company called Akashic Books that still
exists today. Eli Janney (bassist/keyboardist) focused his energies on studio
work. Alexis Fleisig (drums) continued playing with some other bands and worked
in art design for periods. I played on some other people’s records, like
Courtney Love’s “America’s Sweetheart” but found I didn’t want to be,
for lack of a better term, a “hired gun” and eventually moved to Paris,
where I was married and lived for three years just doing other things. Around
2005 we were invited to play somewhere interesting, a festival in Spain I think,
and decided it could be enjoyable to play out live again. Since then, we play
occasionally, only when we want to. We’re free to do whatever we want, when we
want, and what we choose to do we pick carefully. Either it’s a special
festival, or going somewhere we never got to (we played in Istanbul, Skopje
Macedonia and Bucharest Romania)… or its returning to places we have good
memories of playing, like Paris, and of course now in February, Athens Greece.

Word on the street is that each one of you is occupied in various projects
lately…
Definitely we all are doing things, various things. Alexis plays drums for a
group called Bellini. Several of us performed on a tour here in the US, several
years ago, with an actress named Gina Gershon, which was filmed for a sort of
reality-show-type documentary series which aired on The Independent Film TV
channel here… I’ve got a project I do with an Italian electronic composure
in Italy called Operator… and I’ve got something new also, which I’ll
answer about later in interview!

Despite so many individual works, you decided to get GvsB back on the street
after being on hiatus for almost 5 years. Should we expect more in the future?
We don’t make any rules about it. Nor do we have any plans to record another
album at this point. My point of view is that I don’t see the point in making
another album unless we have something creatively to ADD to what we’ve already
done as a band. I think the records we’ve done stand up very well, and in fact
I enjoy performing the music from, say, Venus Lux or Cruise Yourself now even
more than I ever did. Also, I don’t want to be in the position to owe anybody
anything, to owe a label a certain amount of tour dates, or what have you. Right
now we are not attached to any label, organization, anything at all. We are not
trying to force sell any products to people, we are not marketing ourselves. We
are essentially and simply playing our music as entirely free agents, and
that’s where I want to be right now. We are, indeed, fortunate to be in a
situation wherein we can play when we want, how we want, and not have to deal
with any of the other annoying parts of the music industry. We are not in
competition for radio play, or exposure in magazines. We are free. But, yes, I
believe we will continue to play when opportunities arise that sound interesting
to us, and another record has never been ruled out. Perhaps it will happen in
time.

I’d like a few words about your new semi-solo project, Paramount Styles…
Paramount Styles is my new band, it is a solo band. I sometimes say
“semi-solo”” only because I want to stress that it is not me alone, not
something like a solo acoustic singer/songwriter thing. I write the songs, and
perform with a band of people I want to play with and who can be available.
Therefore, again, I can be free to create records and tour without having to
necessarily organize the same group of people every time. Paramount Styles first
record; entitled “Failure American Style” will be released in Europe through
Cycle/Konkurrent on March 17 this year. It is a rock record, but in the vein of
moodier GVSB stuff. Alexis, from GVSB plays drums on it. Richard Fortus, a
friend who played with the Psychedelic Furs and now Guns N’ Roses plays second
guitar… and other people and friends contribute on the record in various ways.
The first European Paramount Styles tour is currently being scheduled for
May/June 2008. I am excited to have a new record out after nearly five years.
People can hear what its like, and see updates, tour dates, at
http://www.myspace.com/paramountstylesnyc
I’m already thinking of plans to make another record, so this may go on for
some time!

You were around in the early-mid 90’s, when the underground scene had reached
one of its highest points. Do you think those were the “good ol’ times” or
that there’s still potential nowadays?
I think what was going on in the 1990s in the music industry is that there was a
lot of money floating around. Major labels were making huge profits from sales
of the then new Compact Disk (its funny to think of that being “new” but it
was) and in general, as they call the 90s now, it was an age of ‘irrational
exuberance.” The underground music scene that had been growing through the 80s
burst wide open with bands like Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, many others, and
there was the Alternative Nation explosion part I happening. For me personally,
they 1990s were good times, but I’m not sure that the same thing isn’t
happening again right now. There is so much alternative music these days. Even
calling something ‘alternative’ doesn’t really mean anything anymore, but
in the 80s it did. And originally ‘Alternative’ was in some ways less about
the ‘sound’ of something but more about the ways in which it was being
distributed, which was in ways not part of the mainstream. The distinction is
less clear now. I am not one of those people that think, “Man, those were the
good old days, when things made a fucking difference!” To me I suppose it was
just one wave of waves that continue, and which comes down to the idea that
music and its creation can be accomplished by people and bands apart from large
corporations, etc… All underground “scenes” are usually started on some
kind of localized level of people supporting one another (and competing with one
another), which grow into something larger. Right now, the music industry is not
riding as high as it was in the 1990s. Sales are down. The era of the Compact
disk is over, and the digital era is upon us, and I think what’s going happen
still remains to be seen, and likely it will forever be changing.

Any recommendation on new promising bands worth listening to?
To be honest, I don’t follow new music as much as I used to so I probably
can’t make any recommendations that people don’t already know about. I tend
to like the sort of music that shares in common something of my own sensibility
about music. So anything having to do with a sort of post punk/dance element
(say, LCD Sound System) I tend to like because it’s somewhat close to GVSB
music. But I just turned 40 last year, so I don’t have the same perspective
about music as I did when I was younger. It’s no longer about my personal
identity. However, I am curious by nature so like a lot of people, I always want
to hear what people are doing out there.

Give me one memorable on-the-road incident.
Well we lived on the road for about ten years, so there are so many. I used to
have a problem with sleepwalking, so I have a lot of memories about waking up in
hotel hallways, essentially naked, with no idea what room I had been in. Once,
somewhere in the UK, I had to just take the elevator down to the lobby to ask
the desk clerk what room I was in. I was still half-drunk, and nearly nude, and
it was early late morning, so people were already in the lobby, in line checking
into the hotel, and out comes this naked guy (me) from the elevator. Everyone
just stared at me, but I acted completely calm and just said, “Excuse me, but
I seem to have lost my room.” They took care of me in a hurry, with all their
customers looking on horrified. On a more serious note, I remember very well
playing the Reading Festival in the UK in 1996. Girls Against Boys was just
reaching the pinnacle of our fame, and I remember walking out on the stage (a
bit shaken by the enormous crowd) and playing the first chord. The place went
wild. That kind of thing is a very euphoric memory, just because the experience
was so surreal at the time.

…and one you would rather forget…
A lot I’d like to forget. Once, in Lisbon, Portugal, we’d arrived for a big
gig and were very rushed. I’d never been to Portugal before, and was excited
to be there. I asked someone, the wrong person it turned out, how to say
‘Thank you’ on Portuguese. The person told me, “Oh, just say Gracias, they
understand that.” So we went out to play in front of something like 5,000
people, and at the start everything was going fine. But about five songs into
the set I started to notice some discontent in the audience. Some people were
joyously dancing around, while others were yelling something at me that I
didn’t understand. I thought they were saying, “Gracias is obbligato”
which I took to me “Thank you is obligatory.” So I thought to myself: Have I
not been saying thank you between songs? Because often when playing I am very
into the moment and not conscious of myself in a usual way. So I said
“Gracias, Gracias” several times in a row. The weirdness continued and soon
the crowd started to turn against us, booing like crazy in-between songs. I
continued to say ‘Gracias’… toward the end of the show, the crowd had
grown ugly, they were nearly rioting on the floor, and the volume of booing was
intense… Finally security came on and ushered me off the stage and out of the
building saying, “You should not come back here tonight, because we fear for
your life, seriously.” I asked “why?” They told me, “You cannot say
Gracias in Portugal, it is like a very bad insult, and you have to say OBRIGADO.
So, in the heat of a show I’d just misunderstood one word. It was not
OBLIGATO, like obligatory, but instead something else entirely. I’d never
heard the word ‘obrigado’ before. So basically, I was the only asshole in a
room full of 5,000 people that didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I was
embarrassed beyond belief. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.
Five thousand people hated me that night. After that I thought: Well, I’ve
probably now been through the worst live show experience I can ever expect to
happen to me, at least that’s something. I’d definitely like to forget that
night.
I’ve never been invited back to Lisbon either. Maybe there’s still a price
on my head. The audience thought I was DELIBERATLY REFUSING to say thank you to
them in their own language. A huge insult. Which of course wasn’t my intention
at all.

You had the chance to work and tour with some of the most interesting
people/bands, such as Ted Niceley, Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Fugazi, Big Black
etc. Any special memory about anyone in particular?
We toured for a couple years on and off with the Jesus Lizard. Those were very
cool times. Touring together we saw our shows get bigger and bigger and our
friendship bonds gets deeper and deeper. It was a pleasure to play with them
every night, one of the best live bands that ever existed. Working with Ted was
always my favorite, just his sense of humor. When we recorded “House of
GVSB” in 1996 it was at the same time as the OJ Simpson trial was happening,
and being shown 24 hours a day on TV. Ted was obsessed by it, which was very
funny to watch. And Fugazi, to know and tour with them was great. We were all
from WDC, so it was like bands of brothers. It was Fugazi who invited Girls
Against Boys on our first European tour ever, in 1992.

I always considered New York and Girls Against Boys being as one. Was it the
ideal landscape for your music or just the land of opportunity?
When we moved, individually at first, from WDC to NYC it was a life transforming
experience. I can only speak for myself. I was the first move up and slowly
convinced the others. And the city was so exciting, so full of exactly the kind
of late nightlife I loved. So many people, and yet you could be completely
anonymous at the same time. NYC was like a dreamscape to me, and lyrically I
always liked to be both conversational, and use imagery at the same time, to
place a song almost in a picture, or an event, like two people talking late in a
bar together. I think unconsciously we started making music that seemed and
sounded to us like a good soundtrack for our lives in NYC, and I guess that
comes across in the music.

How’s Mr. Silas Green doing? Haven’t heard from him for a while…
He’s well, resting in a retirement home in Florida near Tampa Bay. He’s an
excellent golfer nowadays.

You only perform selected shows nowadays. I was surprised that Athens was chosen
over other major European capitals…
We remember playing in Athens in 1996, and it was a special show for us, just a
good night, a great crowd, so we’ve wanted to return for a long time and I’m
very glad its finally happening.

At this point i should inform you that we are expecting a bad-ass show and
Greeks don’t like to be disappointed…
We are expecting a bad-ass crowd and we don’t like to be disappointed either!
We are going to bring it, so you all better be prepared to take it.

Last question. What is that you like the most about Crackhitler?
The name. Combines two very strong words. Crack and Hitler. I am a fan of
non-sequiters, and it’s a fine one.




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