MBB: What's the beers?
BC: I got that bitter beer. Its really good.
JG: Get Carlsberg.
MBB: Carlsberg. And you got the bitter?
BC: "Can using the CCFS lead to alcoholism or drug abuse?". Yes. It does, it does.
JG: I would imagine so as they are very expensive items and they can be consumed on mixed levels.
BC: And they also, alcohol and drugs, generally take you out of a sense of thinking about the future because you're into immediate please then. They're actually, its almost, its very hard to contain the CCFS without drinking heavily because otherwise you start worrying about all the people that hate you.
JG: What do you think of people that are straight edge?
BC: Straight edge? Well. No, fine, excellent. Good for them!
JG: It's just I've got a friend who's gone straight edge and he just seems to be denying himself.
BC: Well I mean, its like any other kind of fanaticism, you know, whether its being a junkie or being a teetotaller, if you're an ass about it, it's irritating. I personally like to sample all of life's pleasures in amounts that I can control. So I love heroin, it's a fun drug but you can't really do it more than a few times a year without, er, having problems.
MBB: How much do you tip?
JG: We don't in this country.
WW: That 50 pence piece.
MBB: I tried to give it to them already. It failed.
BC: He said "this is not useful". Yeah, I don't recommend people do heroin but its a good drug if you do want to try it.
JG: You can have some real good times I've heard.
BC: Yeah but some people vomit when they take it. I don't, I love it.
JG: There's a whole problem, there's a whole stigma attached to it, you don't really want to get involved in that scene.
BC: Right, whatever. You know its just like anything else. I mean its just like potato chips or anything else. It's like.....pursuing a heroin lifestyle is very boring. LSD also, I did a lot of that and I don't need to do that anymore. Marijuana, useful but again gets very boring. Alcohol, I can't really get drunk anymore, it takes too much effort, I get too sleepy. Speed, very hard on the body. Quaaludes, who can find them? I can't find Quaaludes. You know, like Barbiturate pills.
JG: Have you tried Prozac?
BC: Er, a drug that just makes you feel like good?
JG: It makes you fart too.
BC: It makes you fart? It makes you not want to have sex. Cocaine, I don't like, it makes me feel like a bug. I don't like that. You know I'm already extroverted enough so the idea of me being more extroverted sounds like an arsehole. Actually when I did try it I wasn't in a very talkative mood, I just felt kind of like I hated people. There was nasty shit running down my throat and I felt like an insect. And then when I woke up I started crying. Yeah, that's a great drug.
MBB: What drug was that?
BC: Cocaine. Remember the morning after? I was in tears. "Will I be pursuing multinational corporations?".
JG: Yeah, you actually offered to do a seminar at my firm I work at.
BC: Yeah, I would. I would love to do that, it would be so funny but I would have to do it in like the cafeteria but it seems you don't have a cafeteria. I had visions of like a big office block. Yeah, but that's like the kind of thing I'd like to do, seminars in cafeterias.
JG: Especially as I was thinking that in my line of work, the accountants are influential with clients, it would be a really good way of targeting people.
BC: You see, you do realise that that will land you in jail.
JG: I personally would not subscribe to it, it would harm my reputation.
BC: You've got to have ethics. I don't but you should. (next question regarding Bill Hicks and the Waco incident). Um, Bill Hicks is a genius. "Do I fear the FBI?". Well the FBI, actually no what is scary is that on that website, that fanboy website, he is telling me who hits that website, he says that the Justice Department of the United States visited it five times. That's not a good sign for Bobby. So, do I fear the FBI? Yes I do now. I'm not worried about the FBI rubbing me out ala David Koresh but I'm worried more about people like Koresh rubbing me out. I worry about assassination at the hands of Right Wing fanatics.
JG: What did you make of Koresh and what he did?
BC: Well he was a nut along the same lines as Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven's Gate thing and Jim Jones. He's a nut along those lines, a very American style nut. But the FBI. They assassinated him and they killed 80 innocent people. That attack was one of the most heinous crimes of our government. What makes it so heinous is that they could have easily arrested Koresh in the years prior to that but for some reason they would rather eliminate like 60 children. "Do I think I'll be reincarnated?" Reincarnated, maybe. Reincarcerated, not if I can possibly help it. I will move to Brazil before I go back to jail. "How does touching people assist my cause?". Because it feels good and its warm! "Do I trust the music press?" No, why should I? Why should I trust anyone? Why should you trust me? We don't know each other. We're not really friends, we're just meeting over this talk. It's not personal...
JG: You're trying to get your message across, we're trying to get something interesting to read.
BC: We're using each other, in the friendliest way. In the nicest way, right? "Have I seen 'Brewster's Millions'?" No I haven't, but I see your point - he's trying to spend all his money.
JG: You should, it's very.
BC: I love Richard Pryor.
JG: And John Candy?
BC: John Candy? I feel very sorry about him. I feel very bad for him. Did you ever see Second City Television? It was a TV show he had in Canada and later in the US. Amazing show, really fucking funny. He was incredible on that, but his movie career was like (dive-bomb whistles). Just cheesier and cheesier shit.
WW: He generally played the bumbling uncle. Your relative that is a little clumsy!
BC: Right. Are you familiar with Chris Farley?
JG: Yeah.
BC: John Candy didn't have it as bad as Chris Farley did. Chris Farley really got fucked. The amount of self-loathing that that man was encouraged to partake in was...
JG: When John Candy died he had newspaper coverage but when Chris Farley died, nothing. Chris Farley was never recognised in this country. Tommy Boy and his Saturday Night Live stuff was great.
BC: He was great but they encouraged him to feel about as bad about himself as possible. Hollywood is very cruel to the misfits.
JG: Have you considered acting?
BC: (smiles) Yes but I haven't had any offers.
MBB: You've been asked to be in a couple of movies.
BC: Not Hollywood movies. "Musical influences?" Isn't it obvious? You've heard the record, you can tell what I listen to. The classics. Classic nouveau. (as Shepherd reappears from buying his computer stuff). "What effect will the year 2000 computer bug have?" I think they're going to work that one out frankly.
MBB: I'm a little worried about the phone company.
BC: Utility bills may be confused.
MBB: They have so much trouble right now before the computers have even done anything.
BC: I actually think the world wide depression and economic crisis are going to be a bigger problem than this bug. What is my idea of the perfect Continuous Cash Flow System? To borrow $100 dollars from you and then take her (points to Monica) out to dinner, assuming that she was a complete stranger, do you know what I mean? So it's like, who loses? Okay, you lose $100, but she gains and I'm just a catalyst. I figured morally that would allow me to have the excitement of the lifestyle that I craze, without any of the guilt or obligation of having, like, a Porsche. But anyway, I've abandoned the CCFS because I can't maintain a network of friends and other humans. When you have the CCFS going people avoid you. You have to constantly meet new people. That's the sad thing about being a parasite, you always end up killing the host. That's what the song Baby Man is about. Women are easy to sponge off of. That men do it is depressing. "Is it true that I'm 5 foot 1?" Actually I'm 5 foot 4.
JG: You're 5 foot 4! So am I! (then I remember I'm actually 5 foot 6).
BC: Congratulations, we're the same height (Bobby and Jason high-five). There we go!
JG: Male bonding!
BC: (Starts reading the mailout about Bobby written by Southern press person Jeff Prinsloo, upon which my questions are typed). This is a good point from Jeff "Vanilla was like a cross between Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Lake of Dracula, they were awful!". "After just saying hi to Monica Bou Bou she accused me of giving her shit. I like her". Jeff Prinsloo is the most paranoid man in the world! (Bobby starts laughing) This is good (of Coldman, Bobby's drummer) "I guess he used to play drums in Rome. Not much to say about him other than he reminds me of the biker guy in the Village People. Sunglasses and leather".
JG: Have you been managing to get satisfactory changing rooms and riders?
AS: For the most part . It's interesting that people's attitudes to crack in the parts of Europe we've been to so far seem to be way out of whack with the way things are in real life. I don't know if people don't have any access to crack here or if the crack is different here or something like that. You mention that here and people freak out. You have the conception that it's an alley-sweeper of a drug right? I don't understand it all, it's totally different in the US. It would be nice if you could get crack on your rider but people don't seem to want to do that. BC: (still laughing and reading Jeff's press release) "Self-amputated ring finger". That guy! JG: It's a strange rumour, who started it?
BC: I was telling Weasel that I wanted to cut my finger off and then Weasel extended it to that I already had done it. I'm gonna have to tape this finger down tonight cos this guy's coming to the show and he's going to be really upset. He actually very directly asked, "So you're not lying about this ring finger?", and when a guy's on the phone I'm not gonna say, "Yes, I'm lying". I'm gonna say, "No, of course not!"
JG: I just remembered a really frightening thing. When I was at school this boy, Lee Patrick, had his ring finger chewed off by his pet weasel (I remember now, it was actually a Ferret called Freddy. Vicious, vicious little fella). That's a bit of a coincidence. So is the Chicago scene really good then?
BC: We never think of it as being good but when we look at what else is out there it seems like it, well, can't be that bad. It's better than L.A., I dunno, it's been very good to me.
JG: So is England living up to your preconceptions?
BC: Actually it's turned out a lot better. The show last night was really a lot of fun. It was packed.
JG: What's in your set at the moment? Is it a mixture of the two albums?
BC: Yeah, it's a mixture of the two albums and we've got some new songs which haven't been released. Basically I wanted to include more covers but we weren't able to work those out. We've got a repertoire of around 23 songs right now so we alternate.
JG: What covers are you out to do then?
BC: I do a really nice version of Without You, which was made famous by Harry Nilsson (and Mariah Carey's version didn't hurt it), but it's actually written by the guys in Badfinger. (Quietly sings) "I can't live if living is without you". It's a classic song. My version is very touching. I like the really desperate love songs.
JG: Do you think they make songs like that these days?
BC: (sighs) No, they don't. That's the next thing I want to do, go into that territory of painfully embarrassing desperate love songs. Stuff that makes you just... drop. I'm interested in shock music, y'know? Noise is not shocking any more. What I'm trying to do is use the melody and harmony in song writing to surprise people. Cos I've already done all the noise shit. Maybe I'll get back to it later or something.
JG: How far do you hope to take this music then?
BC: To the top. To the toppermost of the poppermost. Why not? I mean, I've got to go as far as I can go.
JG: What's the major ambition then?
BC: To be able to do this all the time and not having to worry about other things. I've done a lot of different things, some of them have pretty unpleasant. I've wasted a lot of time working. You understand.
JG: I do, yeah.

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[taken from No Pictures 10]