1. Hello guys. First of all can you guys tell us what do you guys working on this time? I mean do you guys now doing the new recording for upcoming new release?
Right now we're trying to empty out the vault with all of the past recordings so that we can focus on new material. We have a bad habit of recording stuff, not finishing it, then moving on to new things. It's my intention to only work on one recording at a time from here on out, but listening to old cassette masters recently has unearthed a cache of old songs that were recorded but never released. We're planning on releasing all of these older recordings in one or more collections here soon.
2. Captain Three Leg. How you guys do came out with this name? i think this name is very unique and catchy for the grindcore band for sure. But I liked the name! Can you guys tell us little bit of the C3L biography and the current line up for 2012. What is inspired to form a band?
C3L came about in the summer of 1995. Brian was playing in another band, Forced Expression, and their guitarist/vocalist moved back to New Jersey. I have been friends with them since childhood, so I filled in on guitar. We wrote a few songs, but the bass player (Spence) started missing rehearsals. Instead of just going home, Brian and I started playing shorter, noisier songs for fun, just messing around. Our friend Tom joined in after the first day and after a few times of playing we had a tape filled with 40 songs. It was Tom that suggested the name Captain Three Leg in a brain-storming session at my house. We all laughed at it and decided to keep it. It's an unusual name for a "heavy" band, agreed, but that's also why we liked it. Soon after that Tom joined the Navy and moved away leaving us to find more members. Many people have played with us since and making a list would be boring for most of your readers. Brian and I have been the only two constant members since the beginning; two of the original three. On occasion when one of our friends from our past line-ups is back town visiting family we will record a session with them, but most of the time it's just Brian and I on the recordings. He plays drums, I play guitar and bass and both of us share vocals.
3. Unreleased Crap is my favorite release by C3L. Can you guys tell us about this tape? The artwork for this tape also looked interesting. Who’s made the artwork? How the people/friends responses about this tape?
"Unreleased Crap" seems to be a lot of people's favorite C3L release. When Headfucker Zine reviewed it they gave it a perfect 10/10 rating. It was because of that tape the split 7" with UNHOLY GRAVE happened on his label. When Tom left for the Navy our friends Chris and John joined the band. That line-up lasted under a year, but we rehearsed more during that time than any other and wrote a lot of songs. "Unreleased Crap" is made up of two different recording sessions, both done on 4 tracks. Friends of ours did the recordings quickly and with very little mixing, but since we had mostly only recorded on a boombox up to that point, we were thrilled with the results. While I was sending out copies of our first two tapes I would send an advance tape with those sessions with "unreleased crap" written on the tape. People thought that was the title of the demo, but really it hadn't been released yet. We made a cover for it and released it with the name "Unreleased Crap" later. I sold/traded over 500 copies of that tape over the years. People loved it. Once we started adding more structure to our songs people accused us of selling out. We lost a lot of fans after that and still haven't gained them back. Food Fortunata from Sockeye drew the cover art. We recently made shirts with that design. I still have a couple of them left.
4. C3L has played since 90’s, so is it has the different that you saw and felt about playing in band from your early days and present days? How do you guys made contact with other friends from worldwide on your early days?
When we started C3L we were teenagers just out of high school. We had more time to do it then, fewer real life responsibilities. Underground music was new to us and it was during that time I had just started making connections with other bands/labels, trading tapes, etc. I spent most of my day writing letters and dubbing tapes and working my third-shift job during the night and answering even more mail. Today I'm not so motivated to get our recordings heard. We've always recorded whatever we wanted to and are our own biggest fans, but pressures of real-life have eliminated most of the free time and enthusiasm that existed 17 years ago. Recording on a boombox is a one time shot, quick and easy. Today I care more about how our recordings sound and there's a lot of work that goes into finishing a recording. We record as a two piece, so once the main tracks are recorded I still have to record guitar tracks (sometimes two tracks), write lyrics, record vocals, mix, master, arrange for artwork, etc. One day of recording ends up creating a month or more of work for me to finish things. I don't have any help with any of this stuff. It was a lot easier with a full band recording on boomboxes when I didn't care as much.
5. Do you think the internet usage (email, songs streaming etc.) is not ‘underground’ or d.i.y? what do you guys think about the people who hate the band that use the internet as the contact source?
I'm not concerned with what's "underground" these days. After years of running a label and losing money trying to sell our music and competing with bloggers sharing our music for free, it makes more sense to skip the middle man and make our music available for free myself and beat them to the punch. I've never had a problem with people sharing our music. For me, it's never been about making money. I've always encouraged people to copy our tapes, as was the spirit in the tape trading days. I sold our demos for $2.00 and our CDs for $3.00, so I've lost a lot of money over the past 17 years. I think people have an unhealthy relationship with physical formats. There's a format fetish that exists today in which people care more about how music is available than the music itself. I have a huge collection of CDs/tapes/records I've accumulated over the years and I still buy physical releases, but I listen to most of my music on my iPod or in my car. The CDs I buy all end up on my iPod to make for easier listening. Colored vinyl and limited pressings are gimmicks to get people to buy things. I really don't care about any of that shit today.
6. How many tour that C3L already did? Can you guys tell us about that? Do you guys think that the live performance is important for a band? And why?
We played a couple of live shows locally with the line-up that did "Unreleased Crap", but nobody liked us. Ottumwa is a very small town and this was right in the middle of the 90s grunge scene, so this kind of chaotic noisecore fell on deaf ears. One of these shows was captured on our "Paroxis '96" demo, you can hear our friends laughing at us. We tried touring in 1998, but had no idea what we were doing and it was disastrous. We played very few shows and ended up just driving around and having a bit of a vacation instead. In 1999 we tried again with better results, but I'd hesitate to call it a "tour". It was a string of poorly organized, poorly attended shows, but it was fun. That was the last time we've played live and have existed only as a recording project since then. I suppose it depends on what kind of a band you are and what your goals are for your music if you think touring is important. I've never thought it was important to what we've been doing, though. If we were depending on this as part of our income or had records to support, then maybe, but that isn't the case. We just want to make music, that's it.
7. C3L has put out so many of releases. What is your personal favorite C3L release? I also saw about C3L split 7” with GROINCHURN from South Africa! How many were pressed? How do you guys found this band? Because it’s very rare to see band from South Africa.
My favorite C3L release changes with my mood. For the longest time our split with MAMARRACHO was my favorite because it was the only thing that sounded like that in our discography. It was recorded right after the second line-up dissolved and being left without members brought interesting results. "3516" is another one of my favorites and it's the one I'm most proud of. It's probably the most musical thing I've been involved with, and from a technical standpoint it's one of my best sounding 4 track recordings. There was no outside technology utilized on that album. Everything was recorded and mixed on a single 4 track machine. As far as our grind stuff goes, the split with PANTALONES ABAJO MARINERO is my favorite. We spent a lot of time rehearsing those songs and it shows. Again, same as with "3516", everything was recorded and mixed on 4 tracks. I haven't gotten a recording that good since. Brian has told me recently that the HOMOGENIZED TERRESTRIALS split is his favorite. Fudgeworthy Records arranged the split 7" with GROINCHURN. I sent Charlie a demo and asked him to please consider us for a future release and he called me on the phone asking if we wanted to do a split with them. I had never heard of them at that point, but have a lot of their releases now. There were 500 copies of that pressed, all on green vinyl. It's difficult to find a copy now.
8. What the other activities (distro & label, fanzine maybe) that the C3L line up doing beside play in the band? If have can you tell us about that.
Since the early days of C3L I've ran a distribution that eventually evolved into Mortville Records. Trading tapes with other bands led to me assembling a couple of tape compilations. When the second compilation ("Attacked by Bees...") sold 400 copies I decided to try pressing a 7" and found I could sell them, too. The story of Mortville is a long story, though. Recently I've stopped making physical releases for reasons I explained inside the booklet for the "Small Doses" compilation CD, but I'm still assembling releases for free downloads online. Because C3L doesn't play live anymore, there's no reason to rehearse. We only get together to record 3-4 times a year, and once we're able to play a song through with minimal fuck-ups, we record it and never play it again. Throughout the years I've played in other bands that have been somewhat successful in either playing live shows or recording, occasionally both. By "success" I mean only that we recorded music and have played shows, not that we made any money or gained lots of fans. The three biggest bands have been BILLY CRYSTAL METH, MUMMIFIER and most recently THE MIGHTY ACCELERATÖR. The musical style of all of these bands are quite different from C3L, and different from each other. Since 1995, Brian only does C3L.
9. Is it the lyrics in the songs is important? How about the bands that don’t have the lyrics but only have the songs title only (mostly grindcore bands)? Is it shit for you? Do you think the song lyrics will affect the listener? Bands with just the title songs without lyrics also convey the message to the listener. Why many say grindcore just scream without message headers while the title of each song already shown what the message is if you think wisely. What do you think?
Quite a few of our releases don't have any lyrics at all. Only recently have we started putting some effort behind them, but only to make for a better song - not because we feel we have anything important to say. For years we only wrote lyrics so it sounded as if we were actually screaming something instead of just growling and screaming like we did on our first few demos. We treat our vocals as if they were just another instrument. The vocals play no more of an important role than that of the drums or guitars. When we write lyrics they're usually about things we find to be funny or annoying. Sometimes they're about odd news stories we find online. We've never voiced an opinion on any serious subject. I think it's possible to be political or whatever with imagery and song titles but no lyrics, but we're not that kind of band. I think people can be affected by lyrics, but I stopped reading lyrics sheets long before C3L formed. I choose the bands I listen to for their sounds, not their politics.
10. C3L already made the grindcore,noisecore,harshnoise,programming released. How about the C3L Monkey and the Blue Jay EP 2011? How come the sounds and style changed to rock & roll, blues? How about the reaction from the C3L fans?
It was never our goal to be a noisecore band, or a grindcore band, or a hardcore band, etc. We only wanted to make music without the restriction of genre. We listen to many styles of music and sometimes are moved to try to copy those sounds. The majority of our music has been harsh and noisy, but there has been plenty of experimentation since the beginning. Even on our first noisecore releases most of the songs had structured parts and metal or rock riffs. The people we record with also influence what style we do on any given session. There have been times when we'll set up microphones to record and have no plans for what style of music we'll record that day. On "The Monkey and the Blue Jay" EP, Jake wanted to play guitar, so Brian and I acted as his supporting band. By releasing that EP online instead of making CDs and being forced to sell them, we were able to record whatever we wanted to without taking other people's interests into consideration. If people liked it, great, but if not, I'm not out anything. That sort of musical freedom comes with removing financial risk from the equation. Not painting yourself into a corner musically is a great thing, but I'd say we've lost most of our fans over the years because of it. I'd rather play what I want instead of what I think people think we should be playing.
11. So what’s C3L current released and upcoming release? Can you guys tell us?
We just finished putting together 13 songs for a split with HYPERMESIS that will be released on CDR by Medical Malfunctions and a cassette version on SAORS. We'll have 13 minutes of material on the "Incident at Ape Canyon" compilation CD that will be out at the beginning of 2013. Eventually there will be splits with DEEP FRIED EMBRYOS, SORDO and CAVERNOUS SORES. We'd like to record another spacey instrumental album, too, before breaking up. 2015 will be our 20th anniversary as a band and we're planning on it being our last year. I don't want to keep doing this into my 40s. Before then we hope to record as much as possible.
12. Any last word to the reader? And thanks for spend your time to answered this interview.
I really don't have anything else to add, but would like to point out that you can download all of our releases for free from our Bandcamp page listed below. Thanks for being interested enough to want to interview us.
captainthreeleg.bandcamp.com
mortvillenoise.blogspot.com
mortvillenoise@gmail.com
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