The first of four interviews we did for 3 Cynical in the mid-'90s.
I have been a fan of Unsane since around the time the 'Singles 89-92' collection came out. I never got to see them with their original line-up as original drummer Charlie Ondras had just recently passed away. I did get to see them with original bassist Pete Shore a few times - at the original Knitting Factory on Houston St. & CBGB. The first impression is just how crushingly loud they were.
Soon after, bassist Dave Curran replaced Shore - and the line-up of guitarist/vocalist Chris Spencer, bassist Dave Curran & drummer Vinnie Signorelli have remained a constant right through what appears to the band's final album - 2017's 'Sterlize'.
This interview was conducted after the release of the band's third full-length, 'Scattered, Smothered & Covered' - which is generally considered to be the band's finest album and made Decibel magazine's "Hall of Fame" in 2012.....and which I'm listening to right now, over & over, as I'm re-typing this whole thing out for a little inspiration.
Here we go......exactly as printed in the one & only issue of 3 Cynical.....including those photos - photocopied using a Xerox. How times have changed.
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Unsane were interviewed by Jeff and Aaron at CBGB in New York City on November 4, 1995. Unsane are Chris Spencer (guitar, voice), Dave Curran (bass, voice) and Vincent Signorelli (drums).
The interview started in the back of CBGB. Vincent had a black eye from being sucker-punched by some guy at a bar in New Orleans. This was the topic of conversation. Some band started sound-checking, and the interview got moved next door to the Pizza Boutique. Vincent had to go...this is where we join the interview, already in progress.
3C: 3 Cynical
CS: Chris Spencer
DC: Dave Curran
3C: So finish up telling us what happened.
CS: We went out, we had a night off. We went to a party and all these bands were playing and they wanted us to play. Vinnie took a pill, which shall remain nameless, so he was feeling good, walking around, talking to people. We didn't play and we went to this other bar afterward. Vinnie bumps into some jock motherfucker so the guy clocks him in the face totally out of the blue. Then, I'm ordering a drink. I'm hanging out with some friends of mine out front. I hadn't been drinking or doing anything all night. I had one drink - took a sip - I hear all this shit. I put it down. I run inside and there's Vinnie with a pile of four guys on him. So I run over and pull these guys off, and Dave's behind me helping out. I pulled three guys off, and there's this one huge guy who has Vinnie in a headlock, he had already been punched in the face. I'm like, 'let him go'. He saw that since he had him in a headlock that either I was going to punch him in the face or Vinnie was going to attack him. He looks at me and says 'look let me get out of here'. I could tell that he hadn't been a part of the fight, he just wanted to stop it. So I said, 'OK, go ahead, just get out of here and I'll calm him down.' So the guy lets go of Vinnie, I grab Vinnie so he won't hit him. The guy runs out, Vinnie grabs a chair and tries to go at him, we made him put it down. Then I ran outside...it was total chaos...I ran outside, the guy that's working there is an ex-cop, he's yelling shit. Vinnie comes outside with his eyes all fucked up. He picks up a stool, we made him put it down. They were dicks, the big college macho-jock types. Everyone calmed down after awhile. Vinnie wanted to talk to the guy, but the guy just wanted to kill him. I told Vinnie not to even bother. Everything calmed down after that. I left, these guys went out and had a totally crazy night. Vinnie ended up talking to the guy eventually, and shaking his hand. Vinnie actually hit the guy after he had hit him. These guys went out to another club and Vinnie almost got in another fight.
DC: I had a friend down there who was showing us around. He takes us to this bar, a nicer bar, a little fancier, he gets us in without cover. We're in there for about three minutes and Vinnie goes to the bathroom...apparently what had happened, he was kinda wobbly and fucked up, he bumped into some guy, the guy touches him on the shoulder. Vinnie says, 'Oh, sorry', and the guy goes, 'Don't touch me, motherfucker.' Vinnie goes, 'Look, I'm sorry, just calm down.' The guy's freaking out on him. 'Don't tell me to calm down!' Vinnie comes back and goes, 'Give me a bottle.' We're like, 'Vinnie, what the fuck are you talking about? Give me a bottle? You're not going to get into trouble again.' As soon as I said that, the guy shows up and is all in Vinnie's face, yelling at him. Vinnie goes, 'Look, I just want to know what's the problem.' The guy goes, 'You've got a pretty big motherfuckin' problem.' There's a bunch of huge looking guys all standing around him, there's one guy completely staring Vinnie down. He was just ready to pounce and kill him. The bouncer came by and sneaked us out.
CS: No, I used to get in a lot of fights...
DC: You've calmed down...
CS: ...one time I got mugged in Dallas, but that was my own fault. I was in a project and I was just up to no good. Let's leave it at that.
3C: He's looking all guilty.
CS: I know, I know. I missed the show the next day.
DC: We had to cancel the show. He got clocked and woke up in the bushes the next day.
CS: It took me three hours to get out of the neighborhood because no cabs would go there. I had no money....it was just hell. I couldn't page anyone because you couldn't page back on the public phones.
DC: The rest of the tour was OK, though.
3C: You guys have had a good time on this tour?
CS: Yeah, we're with Guzzard. They're fucking great guys. Every night I watch them. They're good.
3C: What's after the tour?
CS: We're going to Europe next Tuesday. We did a single and a video on this tour. We had one day off to go in and record all night in San Francisco. We did a single for [Frank] Kozic's label, Man's Ruin [edit - this would be the "Sick"/"No Soul" single]. We did a video in Chicago all day before and after soundcheck and they shot the show.
CS: "Alleged", it's on the new record. The one with the harmonica.
3C: Where did the harmonica come from?
CS: I've been playing harmonica for three or four years.
DC: It came from his ass.
CS: With our kind of music, you can't play that up too much. I can play harmonica a lot better than I do on the record, but you gotta play it down so it doesn't sound bluesy too much. It does sound Unsane. It can cross over from sounding bluesy to sounding like cheese.
3C: It would almost change the style of the band.
CS: Exactly.
3C: Despite the line-up changes, whether you put on the first 7" or the newest album, it's Unsane all the way.
DC: It's weird, it's 50/50. Some people think it's really different, some people think it sounds kinda the same.
CS: The production's got a lot better. If we could have made the record we made now back then, with the sound we got out of the new record, we would have in two seconds. Everything used to sound so compressed and muddy.
3C: Don't you think that works for the band, though?
CS: Yeah, it does. I like the old records. The only record I have a problem with is 'Total Destruction'. It was the whole time period for this band. We took too much time for it, it wasn't written spontaneously like everything else we had done. This new record took two weeks. It's the only thing I'm not happy with. The singles collection is cool, the first record I like, that came out fine.
CS: We write music they way we write it.
3C: Do you ever find it limiting? You have such a distinctive sound, no other band sounds like you...
CS: We just rip off other bands riffs. [laughs]
3C: ...do you ever feel like you want to write songs outside of this style, or you'll run out of ideas?
CS: No, as long as I'm alive I'll keep 'em coming. I'm going to write music like this, this is what I like to do. It's what I've always like to do. It's just personal preference. Dave is into the big heavy, smelly bass riffs. It's cool - it complements the whole thing.
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| Charlie Ondras (1965-1992) |
3C: You lost your drummer, Charlie [Ondras] awhile ago. I was wondering how that affected the band.
CS: It changed the band more than the loss of Pete [Shore, ex-bassist] did. It changed the band's sound a lot. Originally, I'd start out by showing Pete how to play songs, how to play in a band, taught him some bass. I would say I taught him, but he didn't do shit on his own. That was really getting stagnant, the input was something I would do anyway. His own style was like...he would do stuff on a 4-track and it was joke kind of stuff, he wanted to start playing stand-up bass. Towards the end he was just doing it because he didn't want to drive a cab. He liked being in the band, but musically, this is what I was saying about 'Total Destruction'....I'd come in and be like, 'Here's a couple of riffs I got. What can you do with it?' Vinnie would start working off of it. We'd ask Pete, 'Do you have anything?' Week after week after week he'd be like, 'No, uh-uh'. It was stagnating. I realized that it wasn't my fault. I'm just as productive now, if not more so, than I ever was. I don't wanna say that it was him that was making me lazy, but...
3C: How did you find Vinnie?
CS: We played in a band called Anal Nitrate, with Unsane playing, two drummers - Vinnie and Charlie, and Jim Thirwell singing. We did one 15-minute song called "The Building" or "26th Street" or something like that...it was one long noise epic, Jim was like, "AAAAIHG:IPHEGP:IEH!!!" All this crazy shit, he never even practiced with us. He heard the tape that we had done in the practice space, he walked in and said, "Hey, I can do vocals for this." He did them, we got paid like $1800 for 15 minutes. That was purely our motivation. We played and got along with Vinnie. So, when Charlie died, we still had a European tour left to do. We tried out one guy from Boston who sucked, he emulated Charlie's style perfectly, but the guy's personality was crap.
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| Vinnie Signorelli (photo by Marc Broussely (2011)) |
CS: Yeah, exactly, exactly. WE wanted him to do exactly what he would want to do, it didn't matter to us if it changed the sound of the band because that's how it is - Charlie's dead. But then Vinnie, himself felt he had to fill big shoes in terms of the crazy tom stuff, so he started doing more of that. That's not really his natural style, he can do it, though. On the new record there's more hi-hat, kick, snare....heavier beats.
3C: Where did you get Dave?
CS: Dave was our soundguy, we were friends. All this shit went down with Pete, he moved to L.A....
3C: Did he get kicked out?
CS: Well, that's debatable. It could go either way. He told Vinnie he didn't want to tour. We went on tour with Biohazard for three days. Pete flies out to L.A. to be with my ex-girlfriend. He was like, 'I'm moving to L.A. I'm getting married, fuck Chris, fuck this tour, I don't want to go, we're not doing it.' After months of this, plus the musical thing I was talking about before, me and Vinnie knew that this was the end. We said fuck it, let's try and find a bass player. Dave came out to do sound for us on the tour, so we got this guy from Seattle, he was lazy as fuck. We did four shows with him, he fucked everyone up. So me and Dave would sit around. We had played a little bit in hotel rooms and stuff. Meanwhile, this guy's fucking up shows and I keep saying to him, 'Look, I've gone over this song a million times with you, just play it right, that's all I'm asking.' He would go, 'Oh, shut up - you've acted like I've never played in a band before.' I was like, whoa, this is a big ego thing, the guy had to play the songs right. So Dave and I are jamming, this other guy is a total pathetic piece of shit. So Vinnie can't take him anymore, he was sharing a room with him, and he booted him. He was like, 'I don't care what happens - you're out of here.' So we sent him back to Seattle. Now we had between Las Vegas and L.A. Dave and me had been jamming, we knew he could do it, we taught him seven songs in the back of the van while we're driving to L.A. and we'll play the set tonight, and then we'll work it. He knew the songs, all it took was a little bit of practice. Seven songs later, we did the show in L.A. better than the other guy played any of the shows. We get along really well, and we write really well together, too. The single we just did, we wrote a song in like 5-10 minutes. To me, it's amazing.
3C: Did you, Dave, help with the writing on the new album, or were the songs already written?
3C: I want to ask about the Jabberjaw comp (which "Blew" is also on). How involved were you with Jabberjaw [a club in L.A.]?
CS: L.A. has always been a hard place for out-of-town bands to play, especially new bands. When we first started out, Jabberjaw was the only place we could play. We'd play there and the place would be packed. It's a little cafe in a bad neighborhood in L.A. The guy really helped us out, he gave us a lot of early exposure out there. We appreciated it, so when they asked us to be on that benefit compilation, we said sure, of course.
DC: He lost a lot of money...
CS: Well, he never lost money on us before. It's now when they unannounced shows and no one even knows we're playing. It was secretive this last time. We played the Whisky and then Jabberjaw the next night, and no one knew we were playing there. There was only like 40 people there.
CS: It's over!! Thank God!
3C: Was it the kind of thing where you said, "Why not? Let's try it, and if it doesn't work, OK?"
CS: No, what happened was that Matador Records became a subsidiary of Atlantic, and Gerard [Cosloy] said to us...well, this is how it was told to me....that all the bands on Matador were going to Atlantic. We were supposed to be the first rung to deal with that. We were duped into thinking that everyone was going, so we did it. We wouldn't have done it had we known we didn't have to. Pete had done a lot of the Matador crap. I realized that had I been doing it, a lot of things would have happened differently. There are some really cool people at Atlantic, but, in general, all major labels are out for is money. They don't think about the music. Like, Amphetamine Reptile, Tom Hazelmyer signs bands he likes.
3C: You've known him for awhile, right?
CS: Yeah, I've known him since us, the Cows and Babes in Toyland were on Treehouse.
3C: I wanted to ask you about Treehouse. I interviewed another band who also started out on Treehouse, and they basically said that the guy wasn't really on the level.
3C: It seems like a long time in coming....it seems you should have been on AmRep from the begining.
CS: You would think so. It was a three paragraph contract...
DC: ....and Shannon from the Cows burnt it. None of those bands have contracts, it's all verbal.
CS: That was the whole thing with Pete dealing with Matador. They wouldn't put out the record, they're still asking for royalties on certain songs like "Blew" and "Alleged". We're on AmRep. They're SCUM!!!! They're being SCUM!!!!! They did let us off, and it was the best thing that ever happened to this band.
3C: We were talking about this as we were driving into the city and listening to the new record....[see prelude to interview]....and it just seems that Unsane could have only come from New York City.
CS: A lot of the songs are about experiences from here. There's a lot of rage and frustration.
3C: Who has all the ideas for the infamous album covers?
CS: Some I did, like the new one, some are police photos, like the first album.
CS: Kill your parents.
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