Interview: Man Man

Q: Are you still thinking of doing a kid’s show with your music?

Ryan Kattner: It’s just a matter of time right now because we’ve just been touring so much. There was a space of time there where we could have feasibly done it, but . . . I would like to do it at some point. I had an ex-girlfriend and it was kind of a biting comment she made towards me - I asked her where she pictured me in five or ten years and she said a kid’s show host. I thought it was kind of funny. Right after I said that (about making a kid’s show) Wonder Showzen came out. It’s not for kids but that show is absolutely brilliant.

Q: Have you thought about if you would be the presenter?

RK: Oh totally. When I first thought about it I just wanted to be involved in the writing and the production. I just had people I wanted to be in it.

Q: Would you want to have puppets?

RK: Kind of. There’s that Pancake Mountain that does that too. I realize there are a lot of indie-underground kid’s shows. I just know a lot of crazy, talented people and it would be nice way to get every one together. It would definitely be trippy.

Q: I took a look at one of the videos on Man Man’s site – the one for Engwish Bwood. What’s the story behind that one?

RK: It turned out good but it definitely plays up an image of the band we didn’t really want to play up  – whacky goofy. We do have a sense of humor. The best thing about that video was that it ended up on Nickleodeon.
Lindsay Kovnat (the director) entered it into a contest on Nickleodeon and it won. It was subversive – a video with a dude with his head sticking out of an elephant’s rectum is on Nickleodeon.

Q: You studied screenwriting?

RK: Yeah. It’ just really good for break-up monologues. You can write really good break-up conversations, that’s basically what it turned into. I guess I figured I’d rather sleep on floors in my twenties rather than in my thirties. Both ventures are completely stupid. The ratio for success and failure is just so unbalanced. I think screenwriting is even harder.

Q: Screenwriting does seem pretty vicious.

RK: I’m working on a baseball movie right now - high concept.

Q: Like a comedy?

RK: Totally. High concept. I’m not going to elaborate anymore. Sports. People like sports – sports and love triangles. Very popular. When I was younger I just wanted to write edgy stuff but now I just want to write high concept stuff.

Q: Things with broad appeal?

RK: Totally, because you know the music we write has broad appeal. In my mind I think we’re writing pop songs so obviously when I say I’m going to write a high concept star vehicle it’s probably not going to end up that way.

Q: Is the next album finished?

RK: I think we’re about 80% done. All the tracks are there, it’s all pretty good, but it’s not awesome yet. I have to go back to Chicago with some of the dudes and that’s when it’s going to be awesome, when we set off fireworks and break bottles and overdub a hundred handclaps – all the stuff that makes it really great. Right now it’s serviceable.

Q: How did you pick the Shape Shoppe?

RK: The engineer, Griffin, he’s been recording with Powell for years so he really knows how to record Powell’s drums. He also plays in the band Icy Demons with Pow Pow. He played with Need New Body, which is Powell’s other band. Being in another city you can focus more and we went to Chicago in February, so it’s snowing and that makes you stay in the studio even more. We slept in the studio. A normal band should have gone in and recorded 13 tunes, but we recorded like 21. But we’re not going to release a double album, no way in hell, so we had to decide which songs to put on the album.

Q: You should do a double album.

RK: Hell period no period. That’s a curse man, double albums are the worst. I think it’s just too much. I think this next album’s going to be great. It’s more focussed, I think we’re honing in more on our writing without sacrificing what we do. We have our 3 minute pop songs but then we have our 9 minute murder ballad. We’re all about the extremes.

Q: I have heard about this murder ballad that’s going to be on the new record...

RK: I think it’s probably going to be one of the favorites on the record.

Q: I was looking at your myspace page and I was impressed you’d put lyrics up.

RK: To the old tunes.

Q: Yeah. Are you planning to put up lyrics to the new ones?

RK: Yeah, maybe. Do you think I should put them up before people actually hear them? I don’t know. That’s the thing about this tour, we’re kind of beating the sixteen in the bag into the ground as far as touring. We’ve toured so much behind it. So this tour especially we’re trying to test some of the new tunes on the road and see how they fly. It’s interesting though. All these shows we’ve played, our set is predominantly new stuff. It’s interesting to see how people react. In bigger cities obviously every one is behind everything. In smaller spots kids just want to hear the stuff they know.

Q: Are you going to do 10lb Moustache tonight?

RK: I don’t know, maybe. You like that song?

Q: Yeah!

RK: Yeah I like that one too. I couldn’t do that one in the beginning of the tour. We all got really sick our second day out. It sucked. When we left Philly it was 70 degrees, and we left Canada and there was a blizzard, so none of us had warm clothes. We just took our drummer to the hospital. He has bronchitis, a sinus infection and tonsillitis. What was even harder for him was that Icy Demons was touring with us so he had to play two sets a night. You’ve seen him play drums – I don’t know how he did it. He’s a fucking trooper.

Q: Your fans are really amusing, I mean that in a good way – are you surprised by how entertaining they are?

RK: We’re definitely a kind of band – we feed off the energy the audience gives us. When kids are thrashing around and they don’t care how they look and they don’t care if they look like a freak or whatever – cause obviously we don’t. Obviously we’re just in the moment of what we’re doing. It’s great when you see a kid at a show and they’re obviously in the moment. There’s nothing harder than for us to get excited and have fun playing a show and the audience is just crossing their arms. When I play I have a sight line of three people. When the person that I see right here is like (crosses his arms) it’s the worst. There’s nothing better when that person is a girl and she’s jumping around and she has the most crazy look on her face and she’s having a great time.

I like the fake moustaches too. Demographically I just like how wide the group we have (is). In Philly our last show was like 90% between the ages of 12 to 15. It was totally weird. It felt like the early 90s.

We’re definitely a word of mouth band, which I think is the best way for your band to spread. What’s great now is we’re starting to see the younger brothers and sisters of our initial fans – it’s such a great feeling. Hopefully with this Modest Mouse tour we’ll reach more people. It’s really awesome that they chose us. What’s great about that band is that they do what they do and they manage to be massively successful. Like that Float On song, it’s amazing that was on the radio next to all the fucking garbage that you hear. Modest Mouse toured their asses off forever, and it was their fourth album that broke.

Q: You and Modest Mouse is a really, really good combination.

RK: There’s very few big bands we’d make sense with in that an audience as diverse as theirs being open to us. I still think there’s going to be some jocks throwing beer cans at us or telling us to get the fuck off the stage, but less so than if we were touring with Arcade Fire. We maybe share some of the same influences – the grittiness. But I am anticipating heckling.

Q: So, maybe not influences but what kind of things did you like as a kid? Or now?

RK: I like when I’m not touring.

Q: When you can just relax?

RK: Yeah. I don’t want to complain, because it’s awesome. I feel very fortunate being in a band that people like. It still doesn’t register that I have the same effect on someone’s sensibilities as bands I listened to when I was a kid. I really loved Pavement. I loved his songwriting. It was random, yet he’d be singing the most random and clever line but somehow it was personal. It kind of made me not want to play guitar cause I thought he was doing the same kind of writing I would want to do if I was in a rock band. Stephen Malkmus – the way he would meld lyrics and melodies – I was always impressed by him.  I’m hoping our tour with Modest Mouse won’t be like U.S. Maple’s tour with Pavement. When U.S. Maple toured with Pavement they just got booed and people threw stuff at them.

Q: I don’t want to scare you but a fan picked a fight with Isaac Brock (singer/guitarist) at a Modest Mouse show I saw a couple of years ago.

RK: I’m sure the Modest Mouse fans are really going to dig my short shorts.
It’s not so much music stuff that influences the band. It’s a lot of things. Have you ever seen the Holy Mountain? It’s an Alejandro Jodorowsky movie. Just the vibe of that movie – I wanted to make it a blueprint for the band. I really hate the idea of a band, “I’m a musician” – it’s the worst. Yeah we may play music that rocks, but none of us wants to be in a fucking rock band. We have no desire to be in a rock band even though we are in a rock band. It’s weird.

Q: You toured Europe recently?

RK: We did a tour in Europe. Our records are unavailable in Europe, so it felt like our very first tour four years ago. The only difference was that people in Europe go to shows as something to do. In that way it’s great because you get to ambush people, steal them. It was good but at the same time people don’t know who the hell we are. I mean people in the U.S. don’t know who we are.

[At this point fellow Man Man Sergei Sogay walks in]

Q: You’ve been to Seattle a few times. What’s your impression?

RK: Seattle’s great – we love this playing venue too. We got in trouble for this drawing right behind us.

SS: They still brought us back. When we played here the last time there was no graffiti in this room. The time before everything was covered with graffiti.

RK: It doesn’t matter, wherever you are, in a rock club all the graffiti has the same thing: dicks.

SS: Dicks, everywhere.

RK: Somebody draws a cute bear someone’s gonna come along and draws a dick on it.

SS: In every city, every state, every country the backstage room looks just like this.

RK: This is a variation on the dick theme: the beauty and the beast.

SS: It kind of looks like he’s squeezing poop out of her.

Q: How do you maintain in the energy during your nonstop shows?

SS: The first show is a little tiring, but then after that you get used to it. By the end of the tour sometimes it doesn’t even like you played.

RK: Imagine having to sit in that chair for eight hours and then you can let out all that energy.

SS: It’s like being kept in a cage. Then they let you out.

RK: But then afterwards Sergei always holds me while I cry.

SS: That’s actually why he’s crying.

Q: What’s the worst fight you’ve gotten in?

RK: Usually it’s because my tone was incorrect. I’m really bad at saying stuff. I may have the best intentions but it just doesn’t come across that right way, ever. I have no concept of intonation.

SS: You say things as bluntly as possible. I don’t remember any fights. Sometimes there may be arguments.

RK: He threw a tv at me once.

SS: It was a little one.

RK: It was at a hotel in Iowa. It wasn’t like he just picked it up and threw it. He went out and had to get a screwdriver, he had to unscrew it but first he had the wrong screwdriver. So he had to go out and get the right screwdriver

SS: From his toolbox.

RK:  But first he had to get the key to my toolbox. It was a heated argument.

Q: Did the tv hit you?

RK: No, it hit the wall. It’s funny now, but it was kind of heated back then.

Q: How’d you two met?

RK: We thought we could pick up chicks in a seminar for dealing with life. We thought there’d be needy girls there but instead it was just us.

SS: This is how we dealt with life.

RK: In a green room with dicks drawn everywhere.

-Man Man is gearing up for the summer, including an appearance at Chicago’s Wicker Park Summer Fest in July. I am, for one, eagerly awaiting their new cd. For more information check out their website: http://www.wearemanman.com

-Dagmar Sieglinde

Tue May 22 2007 · Posted in Interviews