Interview with MAZING VIDS
You throw a stick, chances are you won’t hit Mazing Vids (New York.) They elusive that way.
Where are you from:
R. Crypt-end: New York, by way of Ontario, or reverse that.
C.R. Sovereign: Michigan, by way of northern Florida.
Where are you now:
New York & The Zone.
How long have you been at it:
c. 8 years, with interruptions.
What got you started:
Love of music. Enough cash to buy a couple of synths and a drum machine. 3-minute jam through stereo speakers while waiting for something else to happen.
What else do you do:
C.R. Sovereign: Design knots.
R. Crypt-end: I engage in a discipline comprising aspects of mail art and mail bombs without really being either. But mostly I walk…
How do you keep it together:
It (the ensemble of sounds & its appurtenances) self-propels, it seems. While our meat hangs on for dear life.
What are you reading:
C.R. Sovereign: Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
R. Crypt-end: Spy novels, like Eric Ambler, and, as always, the clairvoyant-style poetry of Hannah Weiner.
C.R. Sovereign: That makes you sound paranoid, man.
R. Crypt-end: Paranoia is a kind of love.
C.R. Sovereign: I’d say.
What comedy and/or comedians are you into:
R. C.r.ypt-end: Is this obvious? Alan Partridge, this has been the case for a while. I was thinking about this Rodney Dangerfield monologue the other day when I was in the grocery store.
C.R. Sovereign: I like John Candy doing Orson Welles on The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour.
Music:
R. C.r.ypt-end: Das Ding, Jeunesse d’Ivoire, Andi Arroganti, Ankles. Cod-reggae. Mayday. Heaven 17. Further Reductions. Bengt Berger Bitter Funeral Beer LP, Robert Wyatt Old Rottenhat. Dzeltenie Pastnieki. SSPS.
C.R. Sovereign: Canadian sound poetry. And the Swell Maps.
What art, if any, you seen worth talking about:
R. C.r.ypt-end: Uh, nothing new recently. I’ve been feeling kind of abecedarian lately, I hear that’s going around? So I’ve been digging Joan La Barbara’s alphabet videos…
Worked any fucked-up jobs? Do tell:
Wage-labor, it’s toil just talking about it.
Played any fucked-up shows:
They’re all fucked up.
With whom, if anyone, do you roll:
R. Crypt-end: Do we roll with anyone?
C.R. Sovereign: We roll by, and around.
Where are you headed: Up the stairs.
Where is the rest of it headed: By intermittently halting elevator, also wherever the penthouse is.
What can you do about it: Run!
Are there any people you’d like to mention who’ve helped you work it out:
It seems like it would be only after we had worked it out that we could answer this question.
People to look for:
See above.
People to look out for, because they are bad news:
Considering the beam in mine own eye, as they say.
Anything you have in the works, on the ready, or on the horizon:
EP in the works, with some songs we are of late performing live. Drastic Mirth mini-LP out now, go to your local Internet and demand it!
Anything else you want to pass on:
Stay minatory.
Mazing Vids on the internet at:
mazingvids.com
myspace.com/mazingvids
A video of Mazing Vids performing at the Wierd Records party in Manhattan can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_eP5ryaOA
