My name's Popeye I sing and play guitar, Kevin plays guitar and also does a little bit of singing, Bryan plays Bass and Bob plays drums. We've been together for approximately six years now... we've had a couple of line up changes. Our first Bass player, Josh Stanton was in the band for the first six months or so and he left and went on to do 411. Which coincidentally is where we got Kevin Murphy from, 'cos he was in 411 aswell as the band Headfirst. When our original guitar player, Rob who did alot of the writing, left the band after our first tour in 1992 very shortly after Rochambeau our first LP came out. Rob actually went on to do State of The Nation. When Rob left Farside it was basically the same summer that 411 had broken up so we asked Kevin if he'd join our band and he said he was real interested and since then everything's been great. So as I said Rob used to do most of the writing in fact he did nearly all the writing. He did everything on our first 7" and everything but one song on Rochambeau was written by him. Since then Kevin and I have split the songwriting down the middle, so that has alot to do with what I think is a kind of big notable change between Rochambeau and Rigged in terms of the style and writing of it.

For me personally yeah, I have to admit. I mean I really liked Rochambeau, I really liked the way that came out but with Rigged I really did feel like I had more to do with it. Rather than just singing songs someone else had done I got to do songs that I'd wrote the music for and the lyrics for. It's the same with Kevin, he's real glad that he gets to sing a bit now. Also it's nice to have someone to write with and alot of the time the songs are written by Kevin and me, together.

Yeah, very much so. We can work together really well, I think it's because Kevin and I have pretty broad guitar styles and our writing is broad as we're into quiet alot of different types of stuff and we play alot of different stuff, so it's easy for us to mesh well with each other. Robert and I never really did that, we never really tried, occasionally we worked a little like that but his style of playing was alot different than I play. So Kevin and I have a much more similar style of playing guitar, so we can play like faster stuff and slow stuff. So it's been a big change, but really enjoyable - it's been great.

Absolutely, yeah I gotta admit it's alot easier to write lyrics to something I've written the music for. It's alot easier 'cos I know how I was feeling when I wrote the music so it's easier to translate that into words.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, in terms of music I do listen to alot of stuff. I know the same goes for Kevin, we listen to alot of different types of music and I think that's very much reflected in Farside's songs. I still like to listen to hardcore and straight-edge stuff but I also like alot of stuff that's really the opposite like Buffalo Tom, which is very non-hardcore. I like Big Band stuff like Frank Sinatra, Harry Connick Jr...

Yeah, I like a bit of Frankie...

I like alot of 50's. I think I just like stuff with melody in it. Like Game Face...

It's great. It's like Kevin he listens to alot of obscure stuff that not alot of people know of and he gets really into it. Also I come up with alot of ideas when I'm just walking around. I tend to think of alot of riffs when I'm busy - we all work or go to school (college -Ed) full time so I find that for some reason when I'm really stressed I seem to write the best stuff. I'll be walking and I'll think of something when I'm really pissed off and it's like - hey that sounds really cool I better get home and put that on my guitar.

Actually, I've got a little Day Writer - like an organiser and I just jot them down on there. So I've got pages of these like, one-line lyrics, which if you tried to read them one right after the other it would be just a bunch of garbage, basically...

Yeah, it sounded great at the time... but I'll go back sometime when I'm writing something or if I need to get ideas.

I really like the acoustic tracks, I just feel acoustic music has a greater feel of emotion to it...

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, even the non-acoustic stuff is... you know... This doesn't happen so much anymore as now we've been a band for so long, we've got our own fan base. I mean most of our shows are with hardcore bands... basically because it's just always kinda been that way. Occasionally we play shows that aren't, but for the most part I'd say 95% of the shows we play are with hardcore bands or straight-edge bands. When we first used to play shows people would yell like "... faster, play faster..." so we would go "OK" and play faster. But it was strange 'cos at the time in the Orange County scene there really weren't too many melodic bands they were like ...

Yeah it was. There was Reason To Believe and us and all the other bands were hardcore bands. But eventually things kinda progressed and more bands came about, not that it had anything to do with us being a band but just sort of through evolution, I guess. Bands like Game Face started playing shows and gained some popularity and like now I think they're alot more prevalent than hardcore bands.

Yeah, I think that there's always going to be people like that in every place, like you said there's people like that in hardcore and in terms of alot of music they can't stand anything that's...

Yeah that's it. But I think that's just the way people are and I think it goes way beyond the scope of just music. I don't think it's something that's ever going to change, I think it's always been that way.

Yeah.

Actually it has. In fact I was actually quiet surprised it was going aswell as it did because as a band we didn't get the same feeling for it that we did with Rigged. Rigged just really came together really well, I guess having that as a marker for our last effort (new EP) was just a little bit different. It was kinda hard 'cos Bryan had just moved away to go to college in San Francisco which is like 7 or 8 hours away, so we don't get to see him that much. At that time we didn't have that much time to practise, not that it was really rushed when we recorded but it was just a little bit different - I don't think we felt that comfortable with the songs back then. I think we were all still happy with the outcome - like we're not ashamed to have put it out or anything, it's just that the record is a little different from Rigged. I think it's because when we go in to record we don't like pick the best songs or anything, we just record the next group of songs we've done. So after we did Rochambeau the next 10 songs we did went on Rigged, the next 4 were the EP and the songs we're in the middle of writing right now, are the ones that will be on the next record.

We want to do an LP. It'll be a little while, we'll not be ready to record until probably summer. The last year's been really tough for us 'cos we're all so busy with school and Kevin got married and Bob and I are both in serious relationships. You know you get older and that (yep, I know the score -Ed). We don't all live real close together, not just Bryan but Kevin lives a couple of hours away from Bob and I. So it's not really this religious get-together - a scheduled practise is pretty hard to do. So it is alot harder than it used to be to get together and just jam, which is sad really. But that's the way it is, there's not too much we can do about it.

Yeah the last tour we did was summer '93, since then we've done a couple of mini tours. But for those reasons as it's not that easy to be in that position to just quit your job.

Bob's got an understanding Boss who lets him come and go as he likes. Bryan's parents help him out a little bit with living expenses while he's going to school, which is very enviable. Bob also lives at home but he pays rent, but he can go away with out having to worry about it. Where as me and Kevin have rent to pay we live independent of our parents. So we would have to quit whatever job, you know I couldn't just take a leave of absence for 6 weeks and expect my job to be still there when I came back and it's really a drag to quit a job, come home from a tour and have to go find a job.

Yeah and we don't really make any money on tour. We just go for the fun of it, we don't ask for more than we deserve - we don't shoot for really high guarantees and we don't jack our merchandise rates up. We don't want to rip anybody off, we don't go on tour as a business endeavour it's just for the travelling and the enjoyment of it all, so we get home hopefully with the same amount of money that we left with but that's an ideal tour! Then of course when you get home you've gotta find a new job and even on tour you have to worry about car insurance and just living, which is why we've haven't done any real touring. Everything that we've done since the big tour has been in vacation time, so it's like a weeks tour here and there which sucks, but it's the best we do at the moment.

We don't really have any plans to do that. We had a really good time when we went to Europe - it was a great tour. But I don't know, we've never been a band that makes real long term plans - it's always been like maybe a couple of months down the road and we basically look to the next goal, right now that goal is the next record. We'd like to go to Europe, Australia and Japan - we've got all these offers to do that, it's just that the sacrifices would be too great. When we did Europe last time we borrowed alot of money from Revelation and we had alot of problems with the tour. The guy who was booking the tour for us had arranged a booking agency and they were going to give us a van and stuff - then 3 weeks before we're supposed to go, we found out he'd been lying to us and basically split. He just didn't book the tour and this is like 3 weeks before we're about to leave, we'd quit our jobs and put in our notices for taking off the semester from school and we were like "...my god what are we going to do should we wait and go in a few months...". So we talked and decided that we just should go because we had taken too much time off school and quit our jobs and like what the hell are we going to do in the mean time. We got hold of a brother of the friend of Jordan (Revelation's Honcho) who lived in England, his name was Ian and he lived in Bradford. He'd never booked a tour before but basically got together a 6 week tour for us and some of it was booked as we went along so it obviously could of been alot better if he'd had more time to prepare but it was still a really good tour. There was only one show were nobody really showed up but all the rest were great. We got paid very fairly and the European audiences are alot more appreciative of American bands coming over, everyone's real supportive and it's alot different from doing a US tour. But we had to ship all our equipment over which cost alot of money and we had to rent a van from a rental company so we came home very much in debt. That was when Revelation (Europe) was in Amsterdam and we had sold all our merchandise so Jordan shipped a bunch of merchandise to Amsterdam and we picked it up but what we didn't know was that in Amsterdam there's a 20% import tax. So just like we do at home, we were selling our shirts for $3 above costs and basically because we didn't take into account the 20% tax we were underselling our merchandise and losing money on every sale.

Well we'd do it alot different, I mean since then we've had offers to do tours, we've had a couple more records come out. When we were over there last time we were basically touring off our 7", our album still hadn't made it over here. Now we have two albums out and the EP and we've met alot of people who've said if we come over they'll look after us. I think if we did it would be very successful but at the moment I think it's about making the time and the commitment, so I don't honestly see it happening. But like I said we don't plan that far ahead and by the time the next record is out alot of things might have changed and we might be ready to just go.

I think it's very interesting. I think over the years there's been enough evidence to make me believe that there is a definite possibility that there is something out there. I can't really say that I know whether there is or that there isn't but I think enough things have been brought into the public eye to make me believe that there is a possibility and conversely I think it's kind of absurd of us to think that in a universe so large that we are the only intelligent lifeforms. I mean we don't really know what's beyond our own galaxy. We're just barely able to send stuff, I mean we've got 50 satellites out at Pluto at the moment and you know that's just our Solar System and there's thousands of galaxies out there that we know are there but we have no idea what's in them. So I don't think we're the only beings out here, I think that would be just too egocentric for us as the Human Race to believe in.

Yeah, definitely. With the Alien Abduction thing do you think that alot of people have gone overboard on the whole issue maybe even reaching fever pitch in some places ?

Yeah I think so, people just like the attention. But basically you're gonna find that kind of attitude in anybody, like you get alot of people saying they know Michael Jackson personally but they're just saying that you know. But I think that there's alot of reputable people out there like alot Scientists and you know people who are obviously intelligent and have really nothing to gain from that kind of exposure to themselves. There's like these groups of people who go out into certain deserts where there's very Top Secret Military Installations and they see all sorts of strange things, they might be testing weapons but you know... but some of the things that I've seen like TV shows they broadcast and some of the film images I wouldn't be at all surprised if they weren't some sort of Alien spaceship.

Err... not really I'm not any good at this kind of closing comments thing I can never think of anything to say. So I'll say that I have no closing comments other than hey, thanks Rick for the interview.