Combustible Edison Q & A, The Daily Cardinal, October 30-November 1, 1998

Invariably tagged, occasionally dismissed as a “revival” act, Combustible Edison, performing at Cafe Montmartré, 124 E, Mifflin St., Sunday, has spent more than a year refining and redefining its sound.

“We never felt that we were doing something that was ‘retro’” said Combustible Edison guitarist The Millionaire, a.k.a. Michael Cudahy, in a recent interview. “We hate that phrase.”

With its new album, The Impossible World, Combustible Edison has bridged the kitschy cocktail past with an absurdist space-age future, relying more on such technological amenities as sequencers and samplers. Earlier this month, Combustible Edison began its first tour in two years. “I didn’t know when we were embarking on this if anyone would remember us,” Cudahy joked.

Cudahy spoke to the Cardinal by phone.

(Author’s note: An audio recording of the full interview is available via the audio player at this bottom of this page. Sincere apologies for the poor sound quality.)

Q: [I read] that the band took last year off to experiment with “the sound.” Is that true?

A: It was more than last year. More like a year and a half. The traditional cycle when you’re putting out records is write-record-tour, write-record-tour, over and over. We’d gone through that cycle a couple times; it was just nonstop. In the course of two and a half years we recorded and released three albums and toured like six times and we never had a minute to stop and evaluate what we were doing. This record is probably the first opportunity we had to put into practice ideas we had about what we wanted to do. Ideas we had since around the time of our first record.

Q: What kind of ideas and how has that experimentation been translated with the new album?

A: We wanted to do something that was more forward looking. We had a lot of ideas of how we wanted to use the technology. From the very beginning we’ve been employing computers and sequencing software and synthesizers. There’s a lot more you can do with the sort of thing. The possibilities of the technology are virtually limitless right now for creating a seductive soundscape. We just hadn’t had the time. We were working nonstop for the first two or three years. We hadn’t had time to sit down and figure out what we could do with it and bend it to our purposes. There were a couple other more practical aims we had in mind. One was, having been on tour for like three years, we discovered that it’s more enjoyable for us when the audience is dancing. It’s more fun for everybody. We deliberately wanted to do more danceable songs.

Q: Has it worked? Have you had some dancers out there so far?

A: Yes and no. People just seem reluctant to dance. I remember this from my misbegotten rock band days. Silly as I think a lot of this swing revival — and in that case its very much like a total revival thing —swing at least people are dancing, are going to deliberately dance. I just wish people would make up there own steps. Why do people feel constrained to learn the moves they found in a goddam Gap ad?

Q: Speaking of that, how does the timing of that [the current swing revival] play into what you’re doing?

A: It doesn’t even affect us in any way. We don’t feel like it has anything to do with us and it hasn’t really seemed to have changed our audience. I haven’t even seen any swing dancing at our shows.

Q: I read that you first discovered cocktail-lounge music when you were 18, but you played in a punk band for 10 years before you started playing this sort of music. What prompted you finally to start playing it?

A: It’s the sorry truth. The thing is, I had been fascinated by this music all along. I guess I was just too much of a coward to do something that I really enjoyed or that spoke to me. It was just a matter of finally coming to my senses and it took me a long time. Anybody else with more senses than me would have come to [his] senses long before. It was a long, disheartening, disillusioning and pretty fruitless period of time spent pursuing the rock band thing. There was no one moment; there was no straw that broke the camel’s back. But we realized, 'Why are we doing this?’ You don’t have to. That was the big revelation. 'Hey, we don’t have to do this. We weren’t drafted to be in a rock band.’ It was at the time when I was a teenager it seemed like that was what you do. All my friends were in rock bands. Being in a rock band probably served its purpose up 'til I was like 21 or 22. Even though I liked the music I still was angry and horny.

Q: How do categorize what Combustible Edison is doing? How would you classify it?

A: I usually use the catchall phrase “easy listening,” because it’s so vague and virtually meaningless. If you’re going to categorize yourself you want as much room in your pigeonhole as possible so you can fit some other stuff in there too. You can probably do anything in that category, other than Kiss covers. I think that it’s got room for almost anything. The people we are really identifying with now who are doing something similar as far as our values and ideas about what we do are more like abstract electronica and ambient dub. Very few of the modern lounge bands are of any interest to us.

Q: With the way the sound and the music that Combustible Edison is playing has evolved over the last few records, do you feel like more and more you’re going to shed those comparisons and the pigeonholing which sticks you in that “retro” category?

A: I’m certain of it. It’s been our goal all along. The new record doesn’t really sound “retro.” The roots are still apparent. My analogy for this I use almost every time somebody asks is: I think of our relation to say, Henry Mancini or Martin Denny, is like the Rolling Stones’ relation to Robert Johnson or Skip James. That’s where they came from; they started out downright emulating those people, but eventually they developed their own voice. For us, at least, this music is our actual roots.

Q: What’s the best setting for your music, for the band?

A: We like to play shows that are unusual events rather than just another night in the miserable bunker – although we still have plenty of those, unfortunately. Ideally what we’re doing is part of a complete experience which is very much about the audience’s enjoyment of the environment and each other and all the peripherals as well. We started this tour playing at “the world’s most beautiful Polynesian supper club,” the Tahiki in Columbus, Ohio — one of the most magnificent shrines to the Tiki aesthetic that you can find in North America. That was great because it was a paying crowd [that] actually came in from all over the country. People flew in from San Francisco and New York and Boston and Providence and Texas and Canada to be there. It was like playing at a private party even though it was a paying crowd. The problem I have with a lot of pop music, and rap, rock and today’s alleged country music, is [that] it’s totalitarian; it demands your attention. We’re more like being part of the ultimate experience. We don’t play very loud because we want you to be able to enjoy the company of your friends and not be dominated by our racket.

Q: What a turnaround from the perspective of most musicians.

A: Well, musicians are needy people for the most part.

Q: Combustible Edison has done some work on films. What films would have been perfect for your band?

A: There were a lot of them. A lot of my favorite movies also have great scores by musical geniuses. Any Fellini movie orDanger: Diabolik, which is a Mario Bava movie, had incredible music by Ennio Morricone. I only wish we could produce a score that is as gripping and as fun as that one. You know what really needed a better score was Apocalypse Now. It’s a towering work of art, but the soundtrack is terrible. The original music is awful.

Q: Who did it?

A: I think it might have been Francis Ford Copolla’s father, Carmine. I think at the time he was thinking “This is really far out, I’m gonna use this whole synthesizer score.” But it just sounds like every cheesy B-movie from the '80s.

Q: How would you describe your fans and what kind of people come out to your shows?

A: There’s every conceivable stripe of character out there. You have triple-amputee Martians hanging from bungee cords, defrocked priests, crown heads of foreign countries, various potentates and movie stars, homeless people, teeny-boppers, supermodels, the whole gamut.

Q: What preconceived notions do you upset when people come to see you?

A: That we’re a novelty act or that it’s a gag. If you’re there for two whole sets of our music, hopefully people will realize that we’re good musicians and there’s actually some musical value to what we do, instead of “Break out your swizzle sticks, it’s Martini time!,” which is how almost every other article I’ve seen begins.

Q: Are you touring with anybody?

A: Nope. Usually we just do two sets ourselves. We actually have a clause in our contract: No opening act. Because [on] our first tour or two we were constantly getting paired with the most inappropriate mood-shattering groups. It would either be a lousy rock band or it would be, like, “Joey Vegas and the Swingtown Cavaliers” or something. A guy with a polyester ruffled tux shirt opened to the navel and a big medallion. “Get me, I’m making fun of Vegas!” We’d be sitting in the back slapping our heads and moaning. Sometimes people would have given it some thought, but then we’d get some horrible sensitive singer-songwriter. In fact, one time Jewel opened for us, on our first tour. We thought, 'This chick’s going nowhere. She’s terrible.“

Q: How recent a thing is that clause in your contract? Is that with the new contract?

A: That was after the second tour. We were like, "This can’t be happening.” As Barney Fife once put it, “Nip it in the bud!”