Revolution Records is located in the Wilshire Corridor of Beverly Hills where seemingly hundreds of Record Labels, Music Publishing and Administration companies have located. On my way to Revolution to interview this new band, The Cunninghams, I got stuck on La Cienega Boulevard, in the mid-afternoon crush of traffic, looking at this homeless guy walk with a great resolve that outpaced the creeping traffic. His skin was blackened from months without a bath. If I was in NYC, I'd give him a subway token, but I'm here in L.A., stuck in traffic waiting my turn at the intersection. This homelessness observation would have some resonance as my interview with The Cunninghams at Revolution unfolded.

I park next door, since the lot at Revolution was full, go upstairs and wait briefly in an Art Deco reception room. The cool vibe of this place continues as I'm escorted into a room that seems to have been beamed in from a diner somewhere near Freehold, New Jersey. Coca-Cola paraphernalia was all over the walls, a tuck and roll wet bar with a ouija board on it was on the interior middle wall, and a SONY stack of commercial grade equipment running through a pair of Tannoys was playing KROQ at about 75 db's.

The table was a vintage-type pearlescent flake top you always see, surrounded by six chairs in colors like Thunderbird turquoise, Cadillac pink, and Corvette yellow, all with contrasting piping, reminiscent of Detroit's sheet metal-muscle days. I get ready for The Cunninghams , quaffing a delicious cup of coffee one of the Media Relations staffers got me.

The Cunninghams walk in and take their places facing me . I've positioned myself to talk to all of them in the most unobtrusive position possible: the middle of the table facing the door. Seven, the lead vocalist has jet-black hair today, Eliot the drummer has blond tipped, dark rooted hair, Eric has purple colored hair and fingernails polished black. Scott's got orange colored hair, a silver rod through the top of his nose between his eyes and green fingernails today. Eric and Scott are the guitarists in the band.

That was for you.

To me, I don't see anything but Musicians in front of me. I sense that these cats haven't done a lot of Press days in their life, so I give them a very brief history of me to cool them out and let them know how the format of the interview will be. They seemed cool with that and so the next hour I would see Musicians open up to me, lose a little bit of their shyness and/or mistrust, hear lots of laughter and watch them as they kept talking after I'd run out of tape.

EC: Where are you guys from?

Eric: The band's out of Seattle, WA

What do you guys think about the scene in Seattle?

Eric: Specifically? Or just the music scene?

Yeah.

Eric: Nowadays, it's pretty much the same as any other Rock scene. It's a pretty fair scene, you know, it's died down a lot, some of the Rock clubs have closed,... with Alternative Radio there's a lot more techno and stuff like that. It's a pretty typical Rock scene.

Eliot: It's not any better or any worse than it is anywhere else in the country.

Scott: We've seen a lot of really great music scenes on this tour alone. Cities like Austin, [TX] you know, it's a small city but they have hundreds of great bands.

Eric: The club scene there alone, smokes Seattle.

Eliot: We were only there a night, so we pretty much saw our hotel and we saw 6th Street, which is where all the clubs are.

So among the memorable cities you've been to, what other scene impressed you?

Eric: It's hard to really tell, because we're generally only in the Hotel and then at the club for the show. The only thing you really have to judge it by is how many people are coming out to support LIVE music.

Scott: Chicago is very cool.

Where did you play in Chicago?

Scott: The Metro, a really cool club. Most of the people we met up there were real receptive to new music and new bands... I think that's the key to a good scene, is people being real open-minded to whatever comes through and judging it at face value...

Eric: I mean really, the bands are probably a lower percentage than the fans and how openly accepted LIVE music is... that's what makes a scene. It doesn't matter if you've got the best bands in the World, and people aren't going out to see LIVE music, then you have No Scene, so...

Did you find living in Seattle influenced your writing, your songs, or could you have lived in Kentucky and been influenced by stuff you listened to in your own private record collection?

Eric: I think growing up, obviously, the reference is to the whole Grunge Music Era, but growing up, none of us were listening to Grunge Music--they didn't have Grunge Music yet, so I think our early influences really definitely have nothing to do with that. I mean obviously, we were there playing music in the time when that scene was happening, and at that time, you're probably more influenced by that, surely, than now. Everything you hear that you like, you're inevitably influenced by it but this band and the writing of this band is not influenced by anything that happened, directly from that scene.

Scott: If anything, I think every band is a product of their environment, and living in Seattle definitely had an affect on the music of the band because of the climate and atmosphere of the city...the vibe of the city. If you go to New Orleans and record your album, you're going to get a dark, probably a real...

Musty...

Scott: ...A voodoo kind of vibe about your record.

Eric: Because you're in that environment.

Scott: So in that respect, yeah, Seattle had a huge impact on us, but not in the sense of the Music scene or anything that was going on in the city itself.

Let's get into then, let's start with you Scott, Who inspired you and who influenced you that kinda comes through in your music now?

Scott: As a kid playing, I was a big CARS fan, I liked Cheap Trick a lot. The guy that probably taught me how to play the guitar was Joe Perry. Yeah, the attitude of his playing more than any kinda technical thing. No matter what the guy plays, you can watch him play and he's bad ass. He's got such a serious attitude about what he does, and that really hit home for me. Musically, I was more of a Pop guy, I listened to all the Metal stuff of the era, but I kept going back to the more Pop songs.

So what kind of guitar do you play? What's your number one axe?

Scott: My favorite guitar now is an old T.V. Yellow Les Paul Special Reissue, which I've gotten and broken the first couple weeks on tour.

So your tech likes you...

Scott: They just love us, because we beat the hell out of our stuff. That's probably my favorite guitar right now, it's got an old, vintage feel about it.

Do you string pretty thick?

Scott: I use 0.11's

What do you drive it with? What's your amp?

Scott: Eric and I have got Matchless Amps and I've got an old '65 Fender Bandmaster which I love, we use it on the record a lot, and I use a Soldano.

What pick, just what's ever in the bin?

Scott: Just a nylon...

Eric, what did you listen to growing up that influenced you?

Eric: I listened to all the typical stuff. The first Rock record that I bought was AC/DC 's "Highway to Hell". But I think the first Rock song I ever heard where I knew that I liked Rock was "Shout It Out Loud", by KISS. It probably had an influence to the extent of where I decided that I wanted to play Rock music, but I definitely know that the earliest stuff I heard wasn't a direct influence on what I do in this band today, so...I think that the stuff that I listened to earlier was an indication to me that I wanted to play Rock. As far as the way I play guitar, I play pretty bonehead guitar. The way that we tune our guitars is unorthodox and it's not your standard, style of playing guitar, so I can't really say that I'm influenced by learning how to play that music.

So you use a variety of alternate tunings or you have your own custom...

Eric: We use one tuning, but it just creates different chords and we play all of our songs in that tune. So really, I think we're influenced by Rock, but the way that we play our guitars is something that we've kind of almost made up over the years of playing together, some of the chords we've come up with to write the songs are kinda crap...you know what I mean? Stuff! It's not stuff that's in the Rock book.

The chords that you come up with, do you save that in a file somewhere? Like #47?

Eric: Anytime you change to a different kind of tuning you come up with different chords, but the way that we chord our guitars is so unorthodox, it's not the normal way.

What's your primary axe?

Eric: My man guitar that I've played for years is a Cherry Sunburst Les Paul that an old girlfriend's mom bought for me years ago.

And you run that through a Matchless.

Eric: I play a Matchless and a Marshall.

And the pick?

Eric: I have this huge bag of Clayton picks.

Scott: Yeah, we use Clayton picks.

Eliot, what instrument do you play?

Eliot: Drums.

So the drums, what are you, Pearl,...

Eliot: DW right now.

Eric: Yeah, we're both Gibson endorsees.

Eliot: I'm not a DW endorsee, but I'd like to be! (Laughter) But I play DW drums because they're the best sounding drums, quality made, they're the best.

Eric: Because he can afford them. (Laughter)

The heads, what do you use, Evans, Remo?

Eliot: I use Remos. It depends on what week, what I feel like, sometimes I go a little thinner, sometimes I go coated. I change--sometimes you get sick of the same sound all the time.

A DW snare also?

Eliot: I have a DW and a Pearl.

Your cymbals are

Eliot: Zildjian. I have kind of an unofficial deal with a friend of a friend.

Scott: He's got a back door Zildjian Endorsement! (Laughter)

Eliot: It works out nicely.

How did you come to end up at drums?

Eliot: When I was a kid, my father was associated with the Military, so I didn't have Rock Radio stations to listen to, so I didn't grow up listening to Rock. I went to a rock concert which was thrown at a parade where I lived and was captivated by the drummer and thought it was really cool. At school one time we all had to eat in the auditorium because they were taking asbestos out of the cafeteria and a jazz band was going to be playing that night. They had the drums set up and the drummer came out during lunch and was just messing around on the kit and I was like, whoa!That's awesome.

Eric: I was the same when I was little, I thought I wanted to be a drummer my whole life, when I was a little kid, but I could tell by seeing Angus Young that I now wanted to be a guitar player.

Eliot: I always loved it. I just thought it was so cool how one guy could do all that.

Eric: And we're still trying to find the guy that can do all that!

The last piece is the sticks

Eliot: I use Promark, 2B Nylon tips, natural finish.

Am I missing, ...who does the bass on the album?

Eric: On the album, we had a mystery bass player.

Scott: We have one for the tour.

You have a contractor that you're touring with?

Eric: He's a guy that we hired after the record and he's an unofficial member of the band at this point. Realistically, he's only been working with us for a few months, and if it continues to work out then we'll have an official member.

Eliot: We'd like for him to work out. So at the end of this tour you'll make a decision?

Eliot: Probably next album.

Eric: When we get to the next record, we'll decide.

Eliot: If he's willing to stick with us, we're willing to stick with him.

Scott: He's here as long as he wants to be.

Eric: It's like in any business with anything, any member, if he does his job good, then he'll be here. He's only been around a couple months and you don't know a person. It's hard to have a bunch of guys who've known each other for years, have a major label deal, you record your record, and you just meet a guy and go , okay, you're an equal member. And your an equal money partner and all that kind of stuff.

You've got to feel him out.

Eric: You've got to get a chance to really know the guy.

That's important for you, Eliot, too, to lock into what he's doing as a bass guitar player, that feel of being able to talk without, just look at each other and not talk.

Eliot: Yeah, it was weird when we were auditioning bass players, we had all kinds of guys coming down here in L.A., actually, and he just walked in, and we had given everyone three songs to learn, and he came in and just...flawless. He locked in perfectly with me , we had a connection. I didn't even want to audition anybody else. It was like, he's the guy. Of course, I'm happy to have a great bass player, it makes jamming that much more fun!

Scott: Poor Eliot's had a few bad bass players.

Eric: We've had a handful of bass players throughout the history of this band and it was the first time we actually hired a guy that was really into playing the bass and was really a bass player. We'd had a few guys that were guitar players who'd changed over to bass, that type of thing. I think that's the majority of why it's working out. We needed a bass player and we got a bass player.

Seven, tell me about how you got your name, are you Swedish, is it from Sven? (Laughter) No, seriously...

Seven: It's a nickname. It will be changed to a legal name for all purposes.

One of the things that really struck me while listening to Zeroed Out was your voice. I know what I hear, but tell me about what you listened to coming up, that kind of comes through what you're doing today.

Seven: Well influences of course, when I was growing up in my house the music that was being played was like a lot of Motown stuff, The Supremes, and Ray Charles, The Platters, The Ink Spots, 50's Doo Wop stuff and a lot of stuff that concentrated on the vocals, harmonies and whatnot. Later on, when I decided I wanted to get into a band, the only people that you could play with were people in the smoking section. (Laughter) People who were smoking, pot or doing drugs or whatever. They would be listening to Rock and so obviously, obviously that's the path you go down: Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Queen, all of that is an influence on what I do now. If I hear something on the Radio that I like, I try to take something out of it without really stealing it. I've been compared to all different types of singers that I personally don't hear it all the time.

I heard a little bit of Elvis Costello and some Iggy Pop in you.

Seven: I did listen to Elvis Costello and that whole, Blondie, The Cars, because of Radio at that time, growing up. Your allowance only allows you so much, so you end up listening to a lot of Radio. A lot of crap, and a lot of good stuff.

How did you pick up that, you have this diaphragm tremolo, thing going that you do which is kind of cool. Did you take vocal training or anything?

Seven: I recently took vocal lessons to sing properly from Ron Anderson. He trains everybody that's out there right now, Chris Cornell, Gwen from No Doubt, Janet Jackson. Up until then, I was your basic guy that could sing in a Karaoke Bar.

Obviously you smoke, so that kind of helps your , gives you a little, do you drink whiskey or anything to influence your throat?

Seven: I used to drink very heavily and do a lot of drugs heavily, so I'm sure that helped a lot.

Now that you're on the road and touring, do you as most vocalists do, is there a spot like nine shows in where you hit a wall and you've got to recoup and then you're stronger for the rest of the tour?

Seven: Yeah, cause you're using your whole body and it's very physical. I can go for like four or five shows and I start hitting a really good stride and then you're thinking that you're on fire and things are working for me, and the next night, it all catches up to you and you have a really shitty show. And I'll have maybe four shows like that where the voice just get tired.

Eliot: The scheduling alone probably takes a toll on you as well.

Scott: Yeah, we're exhausted.

Are you guys on a tour bus?

Eric: We're in a van.

Oh, Geez, how do you sleep in a van?

The Cunninghams: We don't.

Eliot: Not comfortably or blissfully.

Scott: We have a pretty high energy show. The band tries to perform its songs as passionately and energetically as we can every night and that takes its toll as far as being in a band and not resting and trying to keep the calibre of the show at that level every night. Everybody in this band does the best that they can every night. We put the exhaustion aside til later.

So you've got a bank account for exhaustion.

Scott: We're all stocked up on that!

Yeah, you're earning interest.

Seven: I learned to buy your own microphone, otherwise, you've got all kinds of freaks singing through the mic that's in the club and you get herpes, so I use the [Shure] SM58 cause you can beat the shit out of it.

Scott: It's a roadie hammer!

Eliot: You can throw that thing across the room and it'll still work.

Scott: It still has it's tonality.

Seven: That one is almost indestructible.

So rest on the road is an issue, then?

Seven: Physically and mentally, it's just something that all bands go through and you've got to pay your dues. Everyone thinks that you get the record contract, you get the golden ring and everything's gonna be nice and killer for you and cush. That's when all the hard work really starts. Everything before that was basically fucking nothing.

Eliot: You don't sign a deal and get a bus. You sign a deal and get the cheapest van you can find and you drive all over the place in it and it sucks, but the ones who have a bus are the ones who stuck with it.

Scott: You've got to sell a few hundred thousand records to get a bus.

Eliot: That's a lot of records.

Eric: And earn it. Just like everything else in the Record Industry, you get what you earn.

So to maintain your voice, do you drink any slippery elm bark tea, or ginger tea or ginger ale?

Seven: I abstain from drinking and doing drugs. Pretty much dairy products, which is really hard. I'm Italian and I like a lot of cheese and stuff. I can't really eat any of that because it causes phlegm. I can't really go swimming in pools, because you get water in the ear and it screws you up for weeks on end. You can't catch a cold. It's almost like I've got to be the boy in the plastic bubble.

Why music, guys, why aren't you guys working in an office somewhere from 9 to 5, why music above all else?

Scott: I think I was 5 years old, my parents were divorced and my mom was dating a guy that played guitar. I remember watching him play and just being mesmerized and amazed by that and thinking, that's what I want to do. I've been really fortunate, I've got a lot of friends and family who are half way through their lives and don't know what they want to do yet. I've always known. There was never really a question about it, what I should do. It was just a matter of if I could I do it. It's just another part of everything that makes me who I am. Some people are driven to be doctors, because they have this passion to heal people. I couldn't touch a sick person if there was money involved! I've always been driven to love music and play it. It's just me, who I am.

Eric: When I was the littlest, my mom and my step dad that I lived with were real heavy, real music people and I was just always around music. From being a really little kid, I remember I used to really like Rod Stewart. Basically now in my life, from the point when I decided that I was going to forego making any attempt at higher education, I think I realized that this is what I am best at in life above anything that I could do naturally. It was probably the most honest decision, because it's really the only thing I know how to do, and I was good at it. I could have done something else, but it would have been unnatural, and it would have been something that I'd have had to put years of college into or something like that.

Eliot: It's the same deal. I love to play the drums more than anything. No matter how I feel, I could be pissed off, but I can still play the drums and deal with it. The only thing I love more than that is playing with a band. I'm grateful that I'm given a chance to make the foreground for, hopefully, a career. I can't think of any better life I could live than to play drums for a living.

Eric: We're all so lucky. I think you dedicate your life to playing music because you realize that's your love and what you're good at. To be able to get to this level and do it is just incredibly lucky. We're lucky, we won the lottery because without this all of us would have been working ridiculous jobs.

Eliot: We're doing what we've always done, but we're actually being focused on a little bit, instead of just another band. Now, for some reason a record deal makes people think that you're special when we're doing something that these people are all doing now for nothing.

Eric: It makes you feel good to know that you worked all those years and maybe everybody thought that you were full of shit and a lazy musician...now we're doing it at this level and at the very least you can go home and hold your head high and go man, all those years I was working selling hot dogs...this guy and that guy thought I was a loser, and now they're going to have to turn on the radio...

Eliot: All of the sudden, my dad likes my drumset. (Laughter)

Eric: Those are the little things that make you feel liked, but it could have easily not happened to any of us.

So how long did it take to get over that feeling of luckiness, a week or

Eric: I feel lucky everyday. Sometimes you forget about it and you act like a spoiled brat, but you just have to constantly remind yourself, and each other.

Scott: I hope I never wake up and don't feel lucky. I mean you have to, to maintain what you're doing.

Eric: Yeah, if you take this for granted, if you can take this for granted, you're never going to make it anyway.

Eliot: You'd just be so ungrateful about life.

Eric: When we showed up to make our video and we rolled up there, and there were cameras all over and we had our own trailer, I mean those are the moments where you realize, Oh my God, not everybody's doing this. If everybody could do this, everybody would be doing it.

One percent of one percent.

Eric: We're so fucking incredibly lucky, when you pull up somewhere and there's somebody standing there asking what you want made for breakfast and there's people doing your makeup and your hair in your trailer and you're kinda like sitting there going, wow, last week you wouldn't even talk to me.

Seven: It's just something that's really easy, singing, probably the laziest profession of the whole band. (Laughter) & I'm pretty lazy. (More Laughter) I mean, it's easy, anybody can sing, there's karaoke bars all across the world. It's not anything special. I probably wanted to be a drummer when I was little too, but I was so lazy, I wouldn't want to carry around a bunch of equipment.

You just show up with your clean, sterile mic and you spray the band with Lysol.

(Laughter)

What kind of day gigs did you do before you did music full time?

Scott: I pretty much, early on started to do construction, building houses, because I figured out that I could be kind of a loser and not show up to work, or leave whenever I needed to, and at the same time, make enough money so I could survive, buy my guitars and support my musical habit, it's almost what it is. It's like having a drug habit, because everything you own, everything you have, everything you possess goes into it, in order to succeed. So I pounded nails.

Ever hit your thumb?

Scott: Many times. I almost cut both these fingers off with a table saw [shows two fretting fingers] once, and the scars on there prove it. I was always real conscious of it, it was a bad job for me to have.

Eric: I don't think any of mine were all that interesting. (Laughter) I was an Assistant Manager at a Pizza Hut for about three years, before we got signed I worked at a children's amusement place, doing a number of jobs there, but the last thing I did was work at the food stand and gave out popcorn and hot dogs to kids all day. So that was, before we got signed, I was selling hot dogs to kids.

Were they Hebrew National, or generic?

Eric: They were--

Eliot: Oscar Mayer! We need an endorsement!

(Laughter)

Eric: They were good, you know, all beef. I came with a quality hot dog!

Scott: The corn dogs, I'm telling you, were to die for.

Eric: It was a cool little place, they had like miniature golf and video games and I worked there for about a year & 1/2 and at the time I was like 25, 26 and I was working there going man, if we don't get a record deal...(Big, Knowing Laughs all around). Cause I was hardly making any money, you don't make very much money selling hot dogs, so that's where I was at. The reason why I quit Pizza Hut was because I was assistant manager there and it required so much of my time and so much of my mental energy that it was hard for me to be as involved in my band as I wanted to be.

Eliot: I worked, I worked, I worked...I had a lot of jobs. (Laughter) I worked at a pet store for a while, and needless to say, that sucked.

Scott: Eliot, what was your job at the pet store?

Stable Boy. (Laughter)

Eliot: I had to clean out the mess every morning. And then I went to work for a car wash and then I cooked for a while, did some carpet laying. I was a Kelly Girl for a while. (More Laughter) Worse comes to worse, you can always do the Temp Service thing for some cash. I jumped around wishing I could do something cooler. (Laughs)

Seven: Any job that I had I didn't have very long, because they wouldn't put up with me being gone because I had a show out of town. I worked at an amusement park, did landscaping, just anything where I could just be a lazy fuck. The amusement park bosses were supportive and really bent my schedule around all of that, they were like really supportive.

What was the name of that amusement park?

Seven: Seattle Center Fun Forest, it's right by the space needle. It's kind of cool to have a boss like that when you have other people around you like your mom & dad that are thinking, you're just a fucking loser.

Those kind of bosses are so rare, you know.

Seven: They were really cool.

So how long have you four been together as a unit?

Scott: About a year and a half.

Eliot: It's coming up on two years now, but we've known each other for longer, we just weren't The Cunninghams.

Who are the founders?

Eliot: These three. [Pointing to Scott, Eric and Seven]

Who met who first, and how did this dynamic happen?

Scott: It's been years, all of us playing in different bands together. Seven and I had been in a band, that broke up, we came back to Seattle, Eric and Seven got a band together,

Seven: He met me through a drummer that we (Seven and Scott) had played with. He was playing with Eric, and I didn't want to sing anymore. But we did that, and those bands were just lame, Eric brought members of his other band and we needed another guitar player, so since I knew Scott,

Scott: I was playing in a band with Eliot.

Seven: That band kind of fell apart and then it was just us three again, and Scott knew Eliot, so we did that and it was just a succession bass players, you get a bunch of guys that think they can play bass , which is probably the second laziest instrument. (Laughter)

Eliot: Bass players across the country now hate you!

Seven: I've got to tell it like it is.

Scott: Eliot was a tough guy to get in the band, we tried about a year to talk him into joining our band.

Eric: He was so stuck up, he wouldn't have us!

Seven: The thing was he was very loyal. He already was in a band and he was loyal. That meant a lot to us that we'd sit there and offer and he'd do demo work with us, but he'd stick with his band. Then when his band finally did start going down the tubes,

Eric: Then he jumped ship. Stuff starts getting rough with his band, so then he jumped ship.

Scott: I had to get his guitar player to quit, so there was no hope!

Eric: We convinced him there was no hope.

Eliot: I just realized that my relationship with my old band was becoming less and less friendly, and I knew that these guys were good guys and I already knew them, and I liked the music that they were playing, they had awesome management, so I was jumping into a great band. Nice guys, with great management.

Eric: We always used to tell Eliot he should quit his band because we're going to get a record deal.

Scott: Join the band, we're going to get signed.

Eliot: Then I joined the band and I realized you guys suck, we're not going to get signed! (Laughter)

Seven: He's calling back his old band and whining.

Eliot: But we stuck to it and we actually did get signed.

Eric: So his old band told him like, we can go on without you. They told him he was replaceable,

Eliot: They told me I was replaceable ,

Eric: And then he joined this band and I don't even know if they're a band anymore.

Scott: It's easy to feel good about that.

Eliot: Well I don't feel good about that.

Scott: You should, obviously, you're not replaceable.

Oooh, his head's blowing up now.

Eliot: (mimicking inflating balloon) Yeah.

Do you guys write collectively, or does one guy sit in a room and write the words, and someone else writes the music? The writer gives you the words, or ...

Eric: We write from music to words

On "No Complaints" how did the words come to that song?

Seven: I write all the words, so... you've got to have the music first so everything that you hear on there, the music comes first, and then we just try to...when you hear music you just try to think , what is it trying to convey? You do your best to come across lyrically what the music is trying to put across. It's just a bunch of different characters. I didn't want to use one character to offend anybody. It's basically the music is the main thing, you know, without the music, you're not going to get any of lyrics or whatnot, these guys are awesome, they come in and the song is basically done. It's really easy for me to come in and do what I do.

It's like painting a house, they build it and you paint it.

Seven: I just sit back and smoke cigarettes. (Laughter)

Eliot: That's why he likes his job, he gets to sit and smoke a lot.

What do you smoke, what brand of smokes?

Seven: Marlboro Light 100's, in a box, usually, I got these cause this is all they had.

Scott and Eric, did you guys come up with "Intermission"?

Eric: Yeah, it came from a song, we had a song that during pre-production for the record, we decided that the song probably wasn't going to make it to the record and that it probably wasn't going to make any of the B sides, because we had some more quality stuff that we wanted to record for the B sides, but we always thought that the verse part was kind of interesting and some of the changes on the song were fairly interesting and I was just gonna try to keep it and down the road maybe try to rewrite the song, but then we decided that we wanted to do a couple things like that on the record. It was such an interesting little piece.

It's right, almost at the dead center of the album, so it gives you

Seven: Time to smoke a cigarette.

Scott: Time to smoke a Marlboro 100 from a box! (Lots of Laughter)

I told Dave at Susan Blond that I wouldn't interview you until I heard your music , to get a feel for you, and then I'd interview not over the phone , but in person, so I could feel you guys.

Eliot: That's how we prefer it.

It's different, over the phone, you can't...there's no time alignment.

Eric: You can't look into someone's eyes.

Scott: Getting a good grip of what someone's about is being able to see their facial expressions.

I think "Wannabe" and "Alienate" are my favorites.

Scott: Really?

Eliot: "Alienate"? I've never heard that one before.

Eric: That's great.

The green ones are the ones I'll talk about in my album review and the red ones are also songs that I like, so you've got six out of thirteen songs that I like. [Shows Cunninghams the CD inlay with editorial markings]

Scott: That's pretty good.

Eliot: That's a good batting average.

So on "Wannabe" there's a line in there that goes, "You're my Hero, I feel like a Zero", who were you thinking of talking to, like David Bowie or Lou Reed? Who were you imagining saying that to?

Seven: A guy in the front row that was in a rival band that looked at us and thought we were fucking nothing. So I wrote him a song.

What's the name of that band?

Seven: Ummmm....

You wanna start something, you can, if you want.

Seven: I'm not in a fighting mood.

Okay, you're a singer, not a fighter..."Alienate", tell me about "Alienate"

Seven: That one was really thrown together lyrically. Sometimes when I listen to it, I don't even know what the hell I meant. You feel like there's all kinds of people around you, and you're this or that or whatever, and when it comes down to it at the end of the day it's just you that you have to live with. I think everybody feels that. I think I write basically people can relate to that cause they've felt like that at some point or another.

Eric, what's your favorite color?

Eric: Probably Blue.

Eliot, what's yours?

Eliot: Brown, no I think Green.

Why?

Eliot: Because it's the color of my favorite plant. (Laughter)

A venus fly-trap?

The Cunninghams: No!

Eric: It's a trap...

Scott: Keep trying, Bud-die.

Eliot: That's the other reason why I worked at the carwash.

Scott, what's your favorite color?

Scott: Orange, because it's the color of the Sun.

Why don't you use Orange Amps?

Eliot: Cause they don't sound as good as they look!

Seven: They're too fuzzy for him.

Seven, what's your favorite color?

Seven: Black, but it's not a color it's a shade.

What's next for you guys? You guys are going on Tour with INXS, Kevin [Kevin Lee, the band's manager] is telling me?

The Cunninghams: Yes.

Eliot: It's gonna rule!

Eric: Phenomenal.

What leg? The West Coast leg?

Eric: The West Coast leg.

Scott: The first U.S. Shows.

Eric: Which is really neat for us, too, because we're from the West and we've been there before, our Tour started here and we're only on the West Coast for a couple shows

Scott: The record wasn't even out yet.

Eric: And then we've just been in the middle of America and on the East Coast for so long it's just nice to come home and play a killer tour like that and also where we feel at home.

How do you feel about opening up for INXS? Have you listened to any of their material?

Scott: Awe shucks, man, how could you not, those guys just have hit after hit after hit.

Eric: Those guys just have major hits, they're major stars and they're just one of the bands that through the 80's everybody was influenced by, if not them, then that whole genre of music.

Seven: Hopefully, we can pick up a few things and learn something from them.

Eric: Oh, that's long overdue.

Seven: We're gonna get squashed like a bug!

Scott: We'll get schooled by them.

So it's nice to tour with a band you dig as opposed to opening up for people that you... there's almost a bridge that you have cross.

Seven: There's been some bands that we've opened up for that we didn't even know who they were, like Matchbox 20, and after watching them night after night you just grow to love them.

Scott: They have all my respect.

So you like that song that they do, "Push"?

Seven: They've got some great songs.

Scott: They're awesome musicians.

Eliot: They're the real deal.

Eric: Those guys are really nice guys, and they work really hard, they're the real deal. Those guys are a real Rock band. They're really good live.

Seven: If they don't become huge, and it looks like they are or they're going in that direction, if they don't become like one of the bigger bands of the late 90's then something's wrong.

Scott: They're already huge stars, they just are. They are. Absolutely.

So do you know what the biggest venue is going to be?

Eric: There's one on the tour that's like a 15,000 seat, oh actually it's in Utah. The first show on the tour is here in L.A. , And it's a 6,000 seater and that's going to be the biggest place we've ever played.

When's the show in L.A.?

Eric: July 11th.

6,000 seater, where's that, The Greek?

The Cunninghams: The Greek Theatre.

Kevin tells me that you guys are great live so I'm going to try to get a way to see you guys live, and then do the album review.

Scott: It takes on a little different texture live.

Any advice to anyone coming up that wants to be a musician, or to a fan?

Seven: Don't do it, we don't want the competition.

Eliot: Stick with it and believe in yourself. If you know in your heart that that's the only thing you can do that you're still happy, then do it. There's a lot of Zombies out there that regret their lives and that's really sad. You can't achieve anything unless you stick your neck out.

Seven: Persistence, you know.

Eric: You've got to be willing to work every day real honestly, you've got to be a leader, you've got to concentrate on writing songs. Everything else is just a load of bullshit. In order to achieve anything in the Music Business, you have to write songs. You have to write good songs.

Seven: Be nice to people. You never know when you'll run across someone again. You meet them on the way up and on the way down.

Scott: Yesterday, when we were doing a chat room, a guy came on and asked us about some of Seven's lyrics about starving and about basically living in the gutter to do what you love. He said that he got really depressed, because it's easier said than done and that's why a lot of people don't make it. Surround yourself with good people that you trust and believe in you and just put everything you've got into it. When you do get depressed, which everybody does, hopefully, there'll be enough there that makes you get up the next day and do it again. It's a hard thing to do, especially when you're at the gutter level and it's a matter of eating or playing music, and you choose music.

Eliot: We've eaten a lot of popcorn, collectively.

Seven: All people should go and live in the gutter for a while.

Eric: It gives you some perspective.

Scott: Balance.

Seven: People born with a silver spoon, or have everything handed to them, they just never really know what life is about. Just go out on the street right now and look how many people are homeless or are trying to clean people's windshields just to get enough to eat. Think about that when you're sitting in your nice little apartment or house or whatever.

Eliot: It's hard to appreciate having things without never having nothing. If you've always had cool shit, then cool shit's just another piece of shit.

Seven: It's a good lesson to learn. If you can learn from it, then it's the best thing you can do, because if you just sit there and go poor me, you're going to stay there.

So after you guys deliver your fourth album are you guys going to have your heads together like you do now, are you going to be pretty normal, or if you become superstars are you going to change or are you going to keep the same perspective. What's going to happen when you guys are flying around in a Lear Jet.

Eric: It's difficult to keep perspective at any level, but you just have to try as hard as you can. I don't know.

Scott: I sure hope so.

Seven: I can always go back to my job at the Fun Forest.

Eric: You just hope that individuals have enough respect for each other and for the entity that they would never do anything to damage it, cause it got them here and it will also send them home. Obviously, people change, we've changed since we got our deal, everything in life changes you and you just have to hope that you can wake up everyday with a correct perspective on your life.

Seven: Look in the mirror and not hate yourself.

Scott: Just to be able to be in the position to do things you couldn't do before, as opposed to being an asshole and you turn into an egotistical maniac, maybe it will make you into a person that's able to be charitable or to help people to do things that before, financially and physically, you were not able to do.

So is there a point where you guys will leave it if it stops becoming fun?

Scott: Absolutely.

And when will you know, when will it not be fun?

Eliot: You'll know it when it sucks.

Scott: It will be so painfully obvious.

Eric: It's too much work to do it if you don't love it. This is the most awesome opportunity that you can't even explain to anyone who's not in the Music or entertainment business. Getting a chance to act, do movies or T.V. for a living, or music for a living, I think the entertainment business just blows my mind everyday, and if you can't keep your head together for this, then you shouldn't be in it, because you don't deserve it if you can't have respect for it. If you can't respect the fact that all of the hundreds of people that are working for us are working day and night, tooth and nail to make us into stars...if you can't respect that then you don't deserve it.

Scott: If you do forget it, the Industry will swat you down.

Eric: They can make you feel so irrelevant and so meaningless.

Seven: They've done it to thousands before and thousands that will be. Look at Hollywood, look at all the people that move from Kansas and try to make it, try to do something.

Do you guys know the statistics of Musicians between Ventura County and the Orange County line?

Eliot: Good Grief!

Scott: Do you know?

Yeah, there are 500,000 musicians within those boundaries and only 100,000 ever get work and of that 100,000 only a percentage of that are signed or doing session work. So what you guys have accomplished is astronomical.

Scott: It's very rare.

Eric: It's like winning the lottery.

Scott: A one in a million shot.

Seven: It's like the toughest profession because it is like that. Kids today, they don't want to grow up to be President or a Doctor, they want to be a Rock Star. They want to be an actor or whatever because that's just the way America is, that's where the Icons come from. You don't see kids out there emulating Doctors. You get to a certain point and there's gonna be another band that's practicing in a garage right now that's going to be the next big thing coming around the corner.

If there was an album you could lay down for the ages, would you want to make that album, and what would you name it. The Velvet Underground is known for their Banana album, Led Zeppelin IV, that kind of thing. What's the album that you're going to make that's going to stand as your...25, 30 years from now, as your sonic imprint on the world. Do you want to do something like that, do you want to make that big of an impact?

Eliot: I'd like for all of our albums to be something in themselves. I want us to be a band where fans have got every CD and they're all killer, not I've got all their CDs but this one's really awesome.

Scott: Collectively, I hope all of our records stand the test of time as our work. That would be much more as opposed to one piece in the body of work.

[Ed. Note: The tape has recorded for a full hour and the deck shuts off, The Cunninghams keep talking.] At this point in the interview, we're sort of wrapping things up, and the four guys around me are sharing more feelings of what it's like to be on a Major Label, and their anticipation of a successful career recording a comprehensive catalogue of music for people to enjoy.]

I stand up, and dig, the whole band stands up and shakes my hand, thanking me for one of the easiest interviews they've ever done. I tell them that I'll be at The Greek Theatre to check them out on the 11th and then The Cunninghams leave the room. Scott comes back in to tell me how many Snapple ice teas he's been drinking all day to stay up, and how wired he is. I go, Yeah man, but you're there.

For years, The Cunninghams have had to live the dual life that all starving artists live, respite found only in their music. Now that they're signed, The Cunninghams seem ready to deliver on their contract, perhaps closing out what's left of this century by posting some successful albums and starting the 21st Century with some great music and a contract renewal. Who knows? Let's watch and see. They've got what it takes.

Emery Columna
La Crescenta, CA