When I recorded Contra la Puerta, I never really thought out doing the material live. Mostly because I haven't really seen any electronic music performed live in an interesting way.

First, I'm trying to edit down about 7 hours of material which I made prior to the Cop days and find some way to get it out. This stuff is pretty out there, mostly sonic collages and tape manipulations.

And when that's working, the sum can be greater than the parts.

I do remember being in high school and trying to go to an Outlaws concert, but I was too drunk and ended up in trouble with the police at some truck stop on 95 in Connecticut.

And I definitely have an affinity with the piano.

For electronica music, David Linton has been doing this series called Unity Gain, which is pretty cool.

Yes, I was forced to take piano lessons for 8 years as a child.

I like to think that my finest hour is still ahead of me, so I can look forward rather than look backward.

But that's something that I like about scoring film: it makes me reach out of the parameters of my self, it requires me to do things musically that I wouldn't normally do left to my own devices.

And I think that I'd be a natural for scoring horror movies.

Also, differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating.

When I recorded Contra la Puerta, I never really thought out doing the material live. Mostly because I haven't really seen any electronic music performed live in an interesting way.

In scoring, I usually start with a sound or group of sounds, searching out what feels right.

And I don't know where I'm heading. I mean, I've got a pretty good idea of what I want in life.

But in my college years it got to the point where my friends and I didn't do anything without consuming a massive amount of alcohol before we went anywhere or did anything, and you know that.

I don't think I really know just how cool Satan really was when I was in Junior High School. Now, thanks to Marilyn Manson, it's no longer a secret.

So, through playing with Cop I realized that there is a potentially interested audience out in the world.

But Contra la Puerta was done mostly in the opposite way, starting with sounds and melodies.

I'm from all over the Northeast.

I actually went to film school and was making experimental films for a short time, so it wasn't such a leap.

But things can happen in a band, or any type of collaboration, that would not otherwise happen.

As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.

If the finest hour is now, then I'll always be in it.

I think that one of the strengths of Cop Shoot Cop lay in the different, and at times, clashing personalities, Ideally, I want to have both ways of working in my life.

I guess professionally it began when Hal Hartley used some music of mine in his film The Unbelievable Truth.

Then I took 8 years of French Horn, first jazz, and then classical.

I grew up outside of DC, New York state, and Connecticut.

Unfortunately, however, I have too many desires to make a good Buddhist.

I'm just like you, only I'm different because I'm me.

With Frat House, at times I needed to make music that would reflect what these fraternity brothers might actually listen to, but still keep it within the realm of a score; it still had to lead the viewer through the scene, or just help create the mood.

I've had a lot of highs in my life and a lot of lows, some pivotal experiences, and in ways I feel like I've already lived a couple of lives.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.