A Chat Over Coffee With Ben and Matt

M: First of all, congrats on the continuation of your prolific output with the release of these three videos for The New York Stalker trilogy.

B: As I you. A toast to us stalkers...

M: Let's start with the songs themselves... can you tell me about writing the song "Broken Girl"

B: Sure, "Broken Girl" was written about my ex, Christina. We had a long and very dysfunctional relationship which was fertile soil for songwriting. She wanted marriage and kids and I wanted to be a rockstar...it became living hell from which we barely recovered. Actually, she recovered well enough to get married and have kids with another man.

M: So you wrote this while you were still in the relationship with her?

B: Yes, she actually liked the song. When I showed her the video, she loved it; she said she knew it would take three girls to accurately portray her.  She always hated you...

M: Yeah I think she suspected I was after you from the start. Maybe it was the skirt I was wearing when we first met.

B: Yes she knew something was up even then...she was like, "which skirt is it going to be - him or me?"

M: Well, I'd say you chose the right skirt.

B: My question to you is what made you think that song was ripe for video?

M: It immediately struck me as a very dramatic and intense song. There was a lot of self-loathing to the lyrics and the music itself was very dark - I liked how the song feels like it's building towards a certain doom, an inevitable bad ending of sorts. At least that’s the feeling the music and words kind of gave me.  I liked it.

B: Well, yeah - the song becomes a self attack, I didn't want it to be a finger pointing song, so the chorus becomes more of a "you thought I'd save you from the wreckage of your life but guess again , I'm just as fucked up as you."

M: When I first described the plot of the video to you - that you would be walking around as a serial killer as we witness your prior victims being discovered - did you think "of course - that's perfect" or did it take some getting used to?

B: I thought, "Of course, that's perfect MATT," and I'm sure Christina thought the same thing... "that fucking pervert!"

M: There is an odd use of our girlfriends and ex-girlfriends with this song and the video project.  You wrote the song about your ex Christina, then in the video you employed your current girlfriend Gina to
play a corpse that gets dumped in a garbage heap. My ex Jen Rock played the first victim and I have to give her credit and say Jen was totally essential to us doing that video since she really liked the idea for it and agreed to take on the task of handling the make-up.

B: Oh sure Gina and Jen were huge. And Jen really rocked the makeup, when you first hit me with the idea I remember her saying, "I want to be a dead girl!"

M: Well, she got her wish.  Of the three videos we did - "Broken Girl" is the most pure horror. Were you concerned about being involved with something that could be viewed as misogynistic or hateful towards women

B: Not at all, if you follow my career, through the What's Up Show and so on, you can see a pattern emerging: a distaste for all that is feminine and an interest revolving around seeing them made to suffer. Mom, goddamn you! Goddamn you! No, in all honesty, I think creation is creation.  It has nothing to do with all that PC shit....Were you afraid that you would be considered anti woman?

M: I knew people could misconstrue my intent or otherwise think me a creep for making such a video, but what do I have to lose?  People see what the want to see. I have my own values and beliefs and they're not always going to necessarily be reflected by what I create. It really helped to have the support of our girlfriends with the project in that regard - their "being OK" with the material was definitely a vote of confidence to me in moving forward.  But really, at the end of the day,  I don't think when you watch "Broken Girl" you get a feeling of "yeah, man, strangle that bitch!"  The video's not an experience for the viewer to vicariously experience the thrill of stalking and/or killing. But this raises an interesting question in terms of the material, do you have any stalker in you when you walk the streets of NYC? Like have you ever found yourself following a woman that you're attracted to?

B: YES. I can literally walk the streets for hours behind a woman who looks particularly good from the back. I just watch though - I don't touch! It is the best free entertainment in the world - just follow a beautiful girl... WAIT that rhymes -

M: Well this segues nicely into the second song of the trilogy - "Seen a Girl." How long have you had that song kicking around your catalog of tunes?

B: Since you rejected it from God The Band!

M: Oh, is that true?

B: Don't you remember I was playing it to you and Danny Rockett in the kitchen of our house in Hatfield, PA. Everyone liked it but some were afraid it didn't "fit."

M: Hm... I don't remember that, but even so, I don't think the song would have fit with the GTB mold, if there was one. But Danny did write some similarly themed love-song tripe that managed to make the grade. I'd say it probably didn’t get picked because we didn’t want you taking over the band, Ben. We were God The Band - not Flies of the Marketplace.

B: Ouch. Well, regardless I always liked that song and was thrilled when you expressed interest in making a video for it.

M: Well, I liked the song, too, though it's not the kind of thing I would normally gravitate towards in adapting it for music video.

B: Right, it's a Beatlesy, happy thing...

M: Exactly - and it could make for a Beatlesy, cutesy sort of video if you wanted to play it safe. It’s obvious when you hear the song that you’re being sincere – it's a sweet and heartfelt little ditty. There isn’t that level of menace or twisted irony that comes off in the video.

B: Did you find some parallels between that song and "Broken Girl"?

M: No, not really.  I wasn’t really seeking to make those types of connections at any point.  I mean, there was a thematic connection between the ideas, but it wasn't originally worked up as a trilogy of stalker incidents. It wasn’t like “ok, we have Ben as a serial killer, now let’s see what he’s like with his mother and so on.” I think as it happened I had volunteered to work up some music video ideas for some of the songs off some of your albums and “Seen a Girl” one came out of one of those brainstorming sessions. I still have the little piece of paper where i wrote out the idea for it. Originally you were supposed to be accompanied by a trio of black female back-up singers as you were stalking your mom. Kind of a “Little Shop of Horrors” touch.

B: Damn! I miss that idea...oh is that mysogonistic?

M: No, actuallly, it was out of budget. But that’s fine - if we did have the resources to shoot the back-up singers for the video, it would have taken on a higher level of camp which would probably have been too cutesy for my taste. The way it ended up, it’s a somewhat unsettling video – especially with the revelation that this poor old woman you’re following around is your mother.

B: Who do you like in terms of horror directors?

M: Well, i think what Polanski did with the genre is somehwat unparalleled - he's easily one of my film gods, both in terms of horror and otherwise. I do like some of the Italian directors like Fulci and Argento, but they run the gamut from brilliant to just bad. You kind of need to check your brain at the door when watching that kind of stuff.  It's funny - we acknowledged all these horror films that the trilogy was "paying homage" to when we sent out the press release and really, the only one with any real direct point of reference to me is John Carpenter's Halloween with all those shots of Michael Meyers stepping into frame... seeing "the shape" ominously juxtaposed against wide shots of unsuspecting victims going about their business.  That stuff still gives me chills.

B: I love John Carpenter too, I just watched "The Thing" which I borrowed from you a few weeks ago and it's just amazing, gets better with age actually...someone just recently told me that the movie Halloween was shot in just a few weeks. I was like "you have got to be kidding..."

M: I notice you've written a lot of songs with the word "girl" in the title. Was "Seen a Girl" always a standalone piece or did you write it as a companion piece to something else.

B: It was written as its own song.  I remember (surprisingly enough) seeing a girl on a bus and it was just love at first sight. It's weird isn't it how you can love the way a person looks and imagine what they are like and what personality they will have just by their features and expressions? You construe their intellect, their values...it's so cool, none of the bother of actually really going through a messy relationship.

M: So true - from that standpoint I'm the biggest slut of New York City.

B: Right. For me, who is generally a voyeur, that's how i exist. I go through a 5 year relationship in 30 seconds, come in my pants and then I transfer to the L train.

M: OK moving on.... "Like You Do" sounds deceptively simple at first - like a basic rock blues riff but it goes off somewhat unexpectedly in the lead-in to the chorus - was this something that came natural to you in the writing or did you go through a lot of trial and error in getting it to sound right?

B: I like that part - it actually came easily to me when I was writing it chord-wise, but the lyrics took longer. But back to the blues riff, you know something weird, when I was learning guitar I would go into this guitar shop to play some amps. I was really young and this guy was playing just a blues vamp, the same as the first few notes of that song, and I was totally captivated, bum bum bum... I was standing in the middle of the music shop transfixed. I looked at his fingers to try to learn from sight what he was doing, and I STILL LOVE the sound of just the simplest blues chords...but I loathe the 'chicago' blues.

M: Right well you use that standard blues riff as a sort of springboard - you abandon it pretty quickly and that's where the song gets interesting. One thing that really sticks out to me with "Like You Do" is the production - the song sounds really amazing as it swells up to the chorus.

B: Two words, no three...Caleb "KBC" Sherman - he produced it.

M: You guys have quite a history together as performers from the "What's Up" band and as musical collaborators afterwards. What exactly is his role in producing a song like "Like You Do?"
I gave him "Like You Do" with NOTHING - just the chords and no vocals. He gave it back to me LIKE THAT!  It's scary...he should be the stalker!

M: So you didn't really play any of the instruments on that song?

B: Nada. Nothing. Nil. Netay.

M: Wow, how very Monkees of you.

B: I excel at taking undeserved credit. But that build-up to the chorus, in the video you have that shot panning up to all the photographs on the wall - truly a moment. What was your inspiration there?

M: My inspiration was basically "wouldn't that look cool?"  I don't think I was consciously lifting anything out of a specific film or anything like that.  Really, the inspiration, in this case, would be the music - it has a wonderfully demented build-up right there.  I thought that would be wicked to kind of mirror the dementia of the music with a simultaneous reveal of the frightening extent of your character's obsession. Can you tell me what the song is really about?

B: Russ Irwin! Russ was a member of the semi-legendary underground comedy troupe Whats Up with me and Jason Paige. Now he's playing keys with Aerosmith. He went on to fame and fortune as I collapsed in the corner. So you have the makings of a pop song right there: jealousy, regret, envy. He goes everywhere, tours all over the world making bank, as I read online tutorials about how to legally rob banks...so I tried to make the song about hanging out with him, but as three people: me, him and my jealousy.

M: Are you still jealous of his success?

B: I'm positively livid! Leaving our cable show to join Aeorosmith! Ha, but I am that single minded - I was like 'what about the public access show!' The song really taps into that childlike sort of world revolves around me thing, i don't think I'm that envious now though...10 years later...I imagine his life probably has just as many pluses and minuses as mine....that MOTHERFUCKER!

M: Well to me the video, if not the song, is about self-obsession as much as it is about your preoccupation with the subject. That’s why it translated well into this idea of you stalking yourself. Did you realize that the whole idea of this video was to mock you and your self-importance as an artist?

B: Sorry to say that I've lost all feelings of self-importance a long long time ago, I've gone from wanting to take over the world to wanting to take out the trash...c'mon Matt admit it, you're jealous of my awesome talent!

M: Well i remember recording the RAWK! album with GTB and having to concede that you could play that one guitar riff in "latch key kids" better than me - but i don't know if I was jealous really. More frustrated with the limits of my abilities.

B: I'll take that as a simmering pool of unxpressed envy. We'll use that for the NEXT video, but with "Like You Do"...did you storyboard that video out?

M: I didn't write out a shotlist or phsyically draw storyboards - it only leads to humiliation and mockery when people see my ragged stick figures and ask "what the hell is that?" But it was mentally storyboarded - I had nearly every shot and edit worked out beforehand, especially in the first half and that happens from listening to the song over and over again, envisioning the video as the song plays out. That's a very exciting time for me because there's no limits at that point - only what your mind can conjure.

B: Did you run into any major problems during shooting aside from needing a better looking star?

M: Hell no, Ben - I like the way you look - I'd much rather work with someone who has interesting features than just another pretty face.

B: Oh fuck off!

M: The biggest problem with the "Like You Do" shoot was the limited time we had to do it. We did all  three videos over a 4 day weekend in September and "Like You Do" was the last video we shot and so it was foolishly relegated to one day of production.

B: Right. Three days of the condor. What would you change if you could?

M: Well I just think a lot of shots are below my standard of what passes for good.  The end product and the video that was in my mind were two different things.  The video we ended up with isn't bad, it's just compromised. And this is very much due to the fact that we were cramming everything in to one day - we had to keep things moving forward so my standard was lowered from "that's good" to "that's good enough."

B: Sure but I think everyone thinks that...John Carpenter probably still doesn't like that looney bin parking lot shot in Halloween either.
M: So back to writing about your jealousy, did this translate to you at all when making the video?

B: Well sure, I mean putting a visual to an abstract feeling in a song is always settling on a particular choice and I thought this choice - stalking myself - was a bold and interesting choice so i thought it was
going to be fun to see what we ...WE came up with.  I still don't think anyone watching the video will really follow it like a linear story which is fine. It's like all those videos we used to watch at the beginning of MTV that they spent so much time trying to make a story and basically kids just kinda glazed over and bopped along oblivious.

M: I like story-driven music videos - they're much more interesting to me than "let's shoot the band playing in 10 different locations and cut it together."  Blah.
B: During the shoot, I saw a different side of you - you were relaxed and precise with things. I'd like to see you directing much more, actual TIME doing thing after thing. You were in the zone.

M: Well thanks for that, though I’m of the opinion that if it’s a good shoot and the director is being clear with his vision and the actors are comfortable and doing good work, then there has to be a good crew supporting the whole endeavor. This shoot was definitely a success because of the people who were supporting the project by volunteering their time to do it.

B: How crucial was Bowls MacLean?
M: Oh absolutely crucial!  And not just because he was lending us his VX100-B camera to the cause. I think his presence definitely helped keep me relaxed because of our own history from working together. There wasn't any tiptoeing around our egos when it came time to do the thing, which makes everything flow much better. Bowls also has good suggestions and keeps a keen eye out for things that I might be too distracted to notice. It couldn't have been done without him.

B: You need more things to direct, check out fuckben.com for more songs!

M: It seems there's a disparity between what these songs were about or where you were mentally when you wrote them - do you feel that now when watching the videos?

B: Not really...whenever you draw something in the sand, through a song or a video, you know all those thoughts or feelings are going to change, except with anti-Bush songs! Feelings are fleeting, get em down and move on...so what are you going to do now?

M: I don't have anything in the queue production-wise - just trying to get more people to see the stuff that's already done like Family Tie and the stalker trilogy.  But I'm working on a feature length horror film screenplay which has been getting kicked around the noggin for a few years now, so hopefully that will take some shape in the months to come.

B: What's the film about?

M: It's about a bunch of 20-somehting adults living in Brooklyn who are getting murdered for other people's amusement - basically a post-modern slasher film for a hip young audience. It's a hipster bloodbath.
B: Well living in Greenpoint must be great for inspiration.

M: Yeah i'm in the thick of it. I'd love to try something non-violent, non-dark one of these days but you know, they say, "write what you know" and that kind of stuff never comes naturally to me.  And what about yourself - what's next on your agenda?

B: Gotta play live more, probably do solo shows with a twist...recording an album with Caleb Sherman called "C The Deuce" about a white guy who has a 'race-change operation to launch a career in the entertainment industry, and I still have 10 songs on my hard drive that I'm calling a "new album." but in actuality I've been recording it for years.... It sucks to be constipated.

M: But it seems like you usually have a few things going on simultaneously - you let projects simmer so that the flavor is all the richer when it's ready to be served.

B: And i want to collaborate with you MATT!

M: You want to do everything like I do.

B: Ha.

M: Well, let's start with this new album - any good stalker material for me to run with?

B: Only if I’m stalking myself.