1) Can you tell us the Story of the band?
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum grew out of the charred remains of a band called Idiot Flesh, a maniacal theatre/terrorist movement involving a rotating cast of performers, some of which were engulfed in flames. Following the dissolution of the Idiots, of which Dan Rathbun and Nils Frykdahl were members, Sleepytime was formed, having secured the talents of renowned Turkish violinist/mentalist Carla Kihlstedt, drummer David Shamrock and junk-ist Moe! Staiano. Drummer Frank Grau, who co-released the first album and managed the band until recently, instigated touring in 2001. Moe! Staiano continued pummeling both metal and wood at a fantastic speed until, in the autumn of 2004, a career in the behavioral sciences beckoned. New life has arrived with amateur cat hypnotist Matthias Bossi and I, Michael Mellender, percussionist/ misinformationist.

2) Your music is so strange, how can you describe your syle?
A pulsating slab of meat, atop a marble plinth. We are fond of texture. All textures. Careening from smooth to pointy, a speciality.

3) What can you tell us about “GRAND OPENING AND CLOSING » ?
The inaugural opus of the Museum, Grand Opening and Closing is. An album. Containing beloved anthems, the severity of which is designed to spread virally throughout rock, thus destroying it and itself in the process.

4) Who is the main song writter?
A song is written. It can be very specific. I

t can be very unspecified. It is then pulverized by the 750-pound group mind of the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. When hashing out a new song, we often shout out completely inappropriate suggestions for the music at each other, all at the same time. Somehow, through the cacophony, we siphon out the sticky elements and throw away the paste. A song is born. It’s a rotating dictatorship that is eventually eaten by socialism.

5) Where did you find all this inspiration?
The blood forest.

6) “GRAND OPENING AND CLOSING “ is a re-issue, why did ypu decide to do this re-issue with 3 bonus track?
It was, I believe, primarily to get the CD across the water into Europe. While we were at it, there were a couple of unrecorded songs from that era that Carla had written, so we recorded them with the new band lineup, and also included a recent live version of ‘Powerless.’ Listeners will be able to track the evolution of that song from the stark studio version to what it has become today, which is a sort of atonal funk song. We’re basically a funk band.

7) You use a lot of instruments, can you tell us all these instruments and why did you use it?
There is a seven-foot plank with six piano bass strings stretched across it called the Slide Piano Log, which can be played a variety of ways. I think the concept behind that instrument was to convey the harmonically rich tones of the bass notes of a piano, but in proper, electric format. It can be played with slides, or a stick with an ac

tual piano hammer at the end of it. The Percussion Guitar is another device in heavy rotation which is a tabletop fretless guitar with seven strings all tuned to the same note, played frequently and with great fervour. I might also mention the Lever, which is a three string instrument, two thirds of which is played with a lap steel slide, the remaining third makes a “whomping” sort of noise, descending upon the ears suddenly and with, not unlike the Percussion Guitar, great ferocity. The textural palette we have gained through these instruments is proof alone of their need to exist, yet no one remembers what life was like before we had them.

8) My website is call Spirit Of Metal, but what is the Spirit Of Metal for you?
I like, yes… metal. The guttural intensity of it. Sleepytime is not specifically metal, although there are elements of metal within the band. What interested me beyond the emotional intensity of, as you say, ahem, metal, was the instrumental prowess required to play it. It’s a fevered combination of cathartic release of emotion and an unrepentant display of, as we say in music, chops.

9) What’s your influences?
Many, is who. Varied, is what. Where to begin.

10) Just a last word for the french people who will discover you with this CD........
Oh. Hello there. We haven’t met yet, but we soon will be making a racket on your doorstep. This coming April you may beware, be wary, but not where. It is when. April. I’ll see you. And I thank you.