Mark Baldwin of Lovecup

I suppose it's only proper to start with Hum. That's how I got here, after all, and how I imagine many others did, too. Before the proliferation (and, let's be honest, current oversaturation) of bands calling themselves "grungegaze," Hum were one of a small number of bands fusing the atmospherics of shoegaze with the burlier sonics of the alternative rock that was en vogue in the 1990s. If you heard their one massive hit "Stars," as I did, and frantically consumed their whole discography, as I did, you may have found yourself Googling: "What else sounds like this?" Peruse the Reddit threads and message boards and a few names start to show up repeatedly: Failure, Helmet, Swervedriver, Deftones. But the band that drew me in most was actually one of Hum's closest contemporaries, a lesser-known band called Lovecup who also hailed from Champaign, Illinois.

Lovecup was a triumvirate of Mark Baldwin on guitar and vocals, TJ Harrison on bass, and Jason Milam on drums. Their lone full length--1994's ...Grefus Gronks and Sheet--took the same ingredients Hum was using and emerged with something a bit meaner, if not leaner, Baldwin's voice snarling over Milam's punishing drums and Harrison's bugged out basslines. But they also left behind enough miscellaneous recordings for two subsequent releases, compiled long after the group's dissolution, of wholly unclassifiable walls of noise and melodic songwriting. The backbone of "Millennium Falcon," for instance, is an undulating guitar riff that propels the song to its wailing chorus. Elsewhere the atonal "Don't Miss the Part" is the kind of droning no-fi pop that sounds twenty years behind and ahead of the times simultaneously.

Since the late 90s all three members have kept busy. Harrison joined forces with Hum's Tim Lash as Glifted, and Milam drums in the indie rock band Scurvine. Baldwin, meanwhile, has released a steady stream of music over the years under myriad names, but most consistently as The Mezzanines, which has encompassed two different full bands and is now largely a solo project operating out of his basement; Their Bandcamp reveals a wealth of hidden gems spanning the gamut from raucous garage punk to dour dream pop.

I spoke with Baldwin back in July about Lovecup's origins, brushes with major success, and what comes after the bands you start as a teenager.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Could you tell me how you got started playing music and what instrument(s) you started on? And then maybe take me through the formation of Lovecup? 

Let's see, Lovecup was the early 90s pretty much. Exactly, it was about 90 to 95. I think we started Lovecup when I was 18 or 19. I had played guitar since I was about 10 or 11, and was pretty much just into metal. Basically an 80s kid, metalhead type guy. In the 80s guitar was pretty competitive, I guess you would say. I realized fairly early on that I wasn't going to be, you know, Yngwie Malmsteen or something, and so I got pretty heavy into stuff like thrash metal because it was more rhythm oriented and I focused on that. Then somewhere around like my late teens I met people who started playing me different stuff besides just metal and punk and I started hearing what ended up being called grunge. At that time “alternative,” I guess. Hearing those bands sort of opened my horizons a little bit. 

There were two other guys in Lovecup. One's name was Jason Milam, and he was the drummer. The other guy was TJ Harrison, he was the bass player. All three of us had known each other through high school. TJ and I were good friends in high school. Jason played with other people, but I was friends with him. At one point, we just kind of decided we would get together and play. As a matter of fact, we briefly had a different drummer before Jason, his name was Jim Kelly. He was in some other bands at the time. But anyway, we ended up forming Lovecup in 1990. 

When you guys were starting out did you talk about influences? Were you trying to emulate or sound like anyone in particular?

All three of us were–and I still am anyway, I don't really talk to the other guys anymore–big into metal, especially what ended up becoming extreme metal. I was huge into thrash and death metal back then. Then we started hearing these new bands like The Melvins, Dinosaur Jr… Nirvana, although I guess everyone heard Nirvana at a certain point. Tad, Mudhoney, all the Sub Pop stuff. Jane's Addiction was a big influence on us believe it or not, all three of us were pretty big fans of that band. I wouldn't say that we tried to emulate any of those necessarily. But I also think that when I go back and listen to it, you can hear all of them in a certain way here and there.

Specifically, with the album that we put out, I was listening to a lot of 4AD bands at the time, like shoegaze stuff from England. My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Cocteau Twins, stuff like that. Lovecup was definitely a heavier band to begin with, but by the time we put out that album, it had changed a little bit. We sort of settled on this concept of “heavy, but pretty.” We wanted to be heavy like a metal band, but we wanted it to not be the dissonant or evil sounding stuff of metal bands; We wanted it to be the pretty sounding stuff, kind of like shoegaze bands but with super distorted guitars and heavy stuff like that. 

Champaign obviously was a pretty massive scene, Hum, you guys. Would you say it was very close knit? Were you playing the same venues all the time? Were you playing a lot? What was that like?

Champaign always had a pretty good music scene through the 70s and 80s. You know, there were bands that got really big back then. And then specifically, by the late 80s or early 90s it really was pretty close knit. We played with the same bands all the time. Like you mentioned Hum, I think we probably played with them 20 or 30 times. There were a few places to play. But for the most part, there was a club called the Blind Pig, where pretty much every show happened. If it was a bigger, maybe like a larger touring band, there was a place called Mabel’s that they might play at. But we would even book shows out of town with bands like Hum, Honcho Overload, which was two of the guys from Hum and some other guys and was an awesome band. Mother, which turned into Menthol. Poster Children. So yeah, I should mention Poster Children because they basically did everything for Lovecup. They were big fans of ours and really kind of went out on a lot of limbs for us to try and help us get somewhere. But yeah, super close knit. I still talk to tons of people from that time, sometimes almost daily. Everybody knew each other. There was a lot of competition, which was awesome. You know, you'd go see a band like Hum and you go, “Oh, shit, we gotta up our game a little bit here.” And so we would go do that and then they would come see us and say, “Shit, we gotta up our game.” And I think that's how it was with a lot of the bands at that time. There was a lot of talent going on.

That’s so sick. It’s like how Brian Wilson heard Revolver and was like, “Fuck, I gotta go make Pet Sounds.” And then The Beatles heard Pet Sounds and came up with Sgt. Pepper because they were all so scared of getting one upped.

Except the only difference is that Hum and Lovecup are clearly better than The Beatles and The Beach Boys. [laughs]

A lot of the bands that you're mentioning I feel like have a sort of certain sound, that “heavy but pretty.” And I feel like the other stuff going on Champaign to me was more straight ahead emo, like American Football and Braid are happening, and Castor. Were you guys aware of all that? Would you say that you were in conversation with that too? Or did that feel like its own thing happening off to the side?

No, I mean, back then things changed quick. So saying two years doesn't seem like a lot today, but back then those bands that you mentioned were all later. Braid was probably the first of those to come through. I think Lovecup played with Braid once or twice, when they were first starting out. Super cool guys, they're all awesome. But that was definitely a different thing coming out of the same place, or a different leg of what was happening already. I think American Football was even later than that. Castor might have been closer to the timeline of Braid. But yeah, it seemed different.

When you guys were playing a lot, when you were at your most active, what would you have said success looked like to you at that time?

That's a good question. In a way that kind of ties into why we broke up, because I think each of us had a different idea of what success meant. I don't really think we thought about success, other than we want to go as high and as far as we possibly can. At that time, the whole indie rock, slash grunge thing, there was a paradox where you're doing everything DIY, you're making all your own shirts, you're sleeving up all your own records and mailing stuff out, doing it all without the help of a label. But at a certain point, you have to level up, and obviously, so many of those bands got on major labels. And it wasn't really a no-no or anything like that, but there was sort of a DIY attitude. But then that was hard, because if you want to get super huge, you have to go to a major label. So I think what we thought success was at the time was to get to the point where someone paid us to record albums. I think that's kind of what we had hoped for, that someone would pay for us to record, and we could put it out and we wouldn't get dropped. It was kind of the goal, so that we could continue to make more than one album. But like I said, I think very quickly we all developed different ideas about how we would do that, and how we would continue, musically. And then we broke up.

You guys made the one proper record before you broke up. Was that self recorded? Was the plan to release it and hope that it would lead to the serious-label-level-up?

Sort of. The Poster Children, Rose and Rick from that band, paid for us to record that album. And we did it at a place called Windy City in Chicago with a guy named Matt Allison, who we knew from Champaign, but he had moved up there to do stuff. It was going to come out on Poster Children’s record label which was Twelve Inch Records, and at the time they already had a deal with Cargo to distribute. So to us, we felt like, that's cool, that's perfect, because it's an indie label but Cargo’s pretty big and we should get good distribution or whatever. Good reach. But to be honest, man, we didn't really think about that stuff all that much. I'm looking back at it and hindsight’s 2020. And I think it makes more sense to me now but back then it was like, “Oh, you're gonna pay us to record? Cool, we'll do it.” What ended up happening is when we put out that album on Twelve Inch Records, somebody at Warner Brothers got a hold of it. And I remember taking a phone call one day from a guy there, which was crazy. “Like, hey, this is so and so from Warner Brothers.” He said that the president of the company had been listening to our record all week in his car, cruising around Southern California.

So one thing led to another, we ended up going on a tour with Poster Children on the West Coast. While we were out there, we went to Warner Brothers with the A&R guy that was trying to sign us. We talked a lot about what we were going to do, and they offered us a demo deal. Basically they wanted to gauge how serious we were, how easy we were to work with business wise, and we would cut a demo. Then the idea was we would sign a record deal after that. And that's essentially when we broke up. So we never really delivered on that demo deal. They got kind of pissed at us, rightfully so. But whatever. And we broke up, because I think, I think when that kind of came, it kind of happened fast. You know like, oh we're doing that thing for Rick and Rose, and then all of a sudden Warner Brothers has us in their offices talking to them. I think it happened really fast and just kind of threw everybody for a loop. So my goal, at the time, was to sign with Warner Brothers and start putting out albums and see what happened. The other two guys, in my opinion, didn't seem as hot on that idea, and maybe wanted to keep going the indie label route. Eventually disagreements and shit like that just led to us calling it quits.

Wow, okay. I know John Peel was playing one of the singles quite a lot, right? Was that before or after this meeting with Warner Brothers?

That was way before. I mean, I say way before, but it was probably a year before we put out the full length. Yeah, somehow he got a hold of the seven inch that we put out. Again, Rick and Rose paid for it to be recorded and put it out on their Twelve Inch label. John Peel got a hold of it and started playing it on his radio show, which was nuts, because we started getting fan mail with letters from people all over Europe, Japan… We got letters from Japan. It was crazy man, just because of one single that we put out. Then that thing got thrown on a Rough Trade Records compilation as well, which I think also got a little bit of notice, and it got reviewed in Spin Magazine. Sounds crazy, looking back on this and talking about it. It's kind of nuts, but it all did happen pretty fast. 

Okay, so there was the single and then the full length record. And then these two sort of demo compilations that are on Bandcamp. Chronologically where do those other two releases fit into this picture?

Those other two are all over the place. You might even be able to tell if you listen to them, but some of them are really early on. Some of them are before the single. I think there's some stuff on there that was from the same time that we recorded the single, but we ended up just choosing two different songs for that. There's like, practice crap… We recorded almost every practice we ever had and I had, I don't know how many cassette tapes, like hundreds of cassette tapes just full of practice stuff. In all honesty, we used to pretty rarely practice our songs, we would just screw around and jam and do stupid stuff. And so we recorded all of that, and that's what a lot of those releases are. There are a few things on those, I think, that are from the brief period of time after we sort of didn't respond to Warner Brothers, and we decided we would keep making music before it just got too weird. But some of that stuff's on there, too. It’s really everywhere, it's all over the place.

Crazy. So some of the stuff was potentially, you were jamming, fleshed it out enough to be a song and then recorded what you came up with that night. And that's what's up on Bandcamp.

Some of it, yeah, for sure. You can kind of tell stuff that's from practice, on a boombox. And then some of it is obviously recorded in a studio, and we wrote a bunch of stuff that we never ended up using, and so a lot of that is on there. Because we moved on. I put those up on Bandcamp mostly just for people who knew us at the time, and probably would trip out on hearing something that they hadn't heard in 30 years. Like, “Oh I remember that song!” I will say this, there are a couple of things on those comps that would have been on whatever our second full length looked like. We definitely had enough material for a second release. I just remember being pretty psyched about what our second release was going to be like because I thought it was going to be huge. But c'est la vie. You know, we broke up and those things never saw the light of day. I won't go into it more than that. But I thought I was writing some killer stuff. 

When you were more intentionally writing songs, did you usually come up with the main idea? Or did it come more out of jams or was everyone kind of bringing their own ideas? How did that process look?

It could be all of those things. Most of the time, I would come up with something myself and maybe just boombox it and bring it to practice and say, “Hey, check this out. Should we work on this?” And then the other guys would go “Yeah, that's cool. Let's work on that.” Usually by the time we got done with it, the same idea was there, but we always changed it because Jason was really good at arrangements. He would always say, we should change how many times this part happens or where we put this part or switch these around or add something different here. And then TJ was just such a fucking genius with his basslines that whatever he added just changed the vibe of the song completely. So that's usually how it worked. I would come up with something, kind of the bare bones idea of the song, and then I knew that when those guys got a hold of it it would turn into something even cooler than I thought.

Do you write with a focus on lyrics? Or do you think more about, sounds, textures, chords, riffs, stuff like that?

I didn't like writing lyrics. A lot of those lyrics are complete nonsense. Somehow they ended up making sense in a weird way to me. Being in my late teens or early 20s, it is probably about girls most of the time, but I was more interested in the song and how it sounded and the vibe of it. I didn't really care to write any clever lyrics or anything like that. 

When did you become aware of Bandcamp? How did you decide to start uploading your music?

I think it was, again, Rick and Rose from Poster Children. I'm pretty sure they were the first ones to create the Lovecup account on Bandcamp. And they kind of said, “Hey, we did this hope you don't mind. We put your album up there. But here's the login information, and you can just take over that account.” That was the first time I had heard of it. As far as when that was, man, I don't even remember. 2014, something like that. But then as soon as I went on the site, I figured out, “Oh man, I can do all kinds of shit on here.” Because I had always recorded music myself over the years, and just had a ton of stuff. It seemed like a perfect place where I could just throw stuff up. If I think up some stupid band name and record an album then I can just put it up here. And that's kind of how that started.

One quick aside, some of the tags: Death Reggae, Expansion Rock, Foam Treatment Rock, Insomniac Rock. Are those your tags? 

Yeah. 

Can you elaborate on some of these?

They're all pretty much made up. Except for Insomniac Rock, because I would not go to bed and just stay up recording music every night for decades. Expansion Rock has always been kind of a Lovecup thing. It wasn't a huge thing that we always talked about, but there was this idea that our songs always felt like they were expanding somehow. And we thought that was cool. Death Reggae, that's pretty self explanatory. That's an elusive genre that no one has achieved yet. 

Did reggae play any kind of influence? Or did you just think it was a funny idea?

A funny idea, because you get to put whatever tags you want up there. So if somebody ever wonders if there's anything called death reggae and looks it up, maybe they'll find our stuff. But that being said, I've always liked reggae. The other guys in the band always liked reggae, all kinds of music always.

I don't know if you know Porches. But all the Porches releases are tagged with “dark muscle” on Bandcamp which is the same kind of thing. You click and it's just all music by one dude. It's kind of funny.

Yeah, yeah, that's the deal. Think up something stupid to put there. Like, you get to put whatever you want.

I wanted to ask why you've stuck solely to Bandcamp not just for Lovecup, but also for all the music you’ve made since. And interestingly enough, it looks like all of the music that I know TJ or Jason were involved with after Lovecup is also not on the conventional streaming services. 

To be honest with you, I think laziness is probably the first answer. I still have a bunch of people who are always telling me to get my shit up on all the services, call Distrokid, have them put everything up and I've just never done it. Partially because I don't really care. I'm 50 now, I don’t give a shit. If people want to find my stuff, they can go find it. Bandcamp has been, in my opinion, pretty rock solid as far as what they do and what they let you do. It hasn't changed. So I put my stuff up there, and people can find it. I don't really feel like my stuff would be huge if it just got out to all the people. Maybe I don't feel that confident in what I do, but I just don't care. Bandcamp does what I want it to do, and it gives me a place to put my stuff. Enough people who I know personally are on there, and they all go check when I put music out. I'm cool with that, just leaving it at that level.

But still, all the time, people try to get me to put it up on all the streaming services. And I don't know what that would do. I'm kind of scared of that, actually. I don't have a publishing company or anything, I’m not accounting for rights that extend any further than what Bandcamp has on there. Which I think, for what I do, is good enough. So yeah, maybe I'm just lazy. And I don't want to look into what I would have to do to support putting it up on all the streaming services.

I mean, everything you're saying makes a lot of sense. If it works for you, it works. This whole blog started because I just had an iPod longer than everyone else, and I liked that. I like a file, I don’t want to be constrained by some other service. And I think it’s the same kind of thing you're describing. Why would I do something different?

Yeah. I mean, I hear about people who write songs about farts and stuff and and they write them for kids who are on any of the streaming services, and they search up “poop…” and people are making money doing stuff like that. I don't know, it's tempting. I guess maybe I'll put all my songs about poo up someday. But yeah, it just works for what I want it to do right now. I'm just not as motivated as I was when I was 19 to get the word out there and have people hear my shit.

These days it seems like you’re mostly focused on The Mezzanines. I hadn't really listened to that many of those releases prior to reaching out to you. But to prepare for this, I started going through them. Is that mostly just you, or does that still entail a fuller band?

Nowadays, it's mostly just me. Anything that's been put out in the last five years is just me. I have a little studio set up in my basement and that's just what I do all the time, and The Mezzanines page on Bandcamp is the result of that. That's where you can hear what dumb shit I've been doing late at night for the last 10 years. But there are some things on there that are older than that, that actually are real bands. I started The Mezzanines with a guy named Matt Friedberger in 1996 right after Lovecup broke up. That was a band that played here in Champaign, around town, and played out of town a few times. We put out two albums on a label called Mud Records, which is also here in Champaign. I don't think those two are on my page, those might even be streamable elsewhere because I think Mud Records has put it up in different places. And then we totally changed, and it was a band with myself, a guy named Matt Filippo, and a guy named Colin Koteles, and we put out Maximum Top Out. And that one was also a real band, we played out for a while. After that it's assorted. There could be other people on stuff, but I would say if it came out in the last five years, that's just me.

I’ve only gone through a handful of the releases, but it seems like most of them are pretty sonically consistent within the album, and then pretty different from album to album. Is that kind of the ethos that you're going for?

Yeah. I think the last two or three that I put out are totally different from each other. Because I'll just get an idea of, I want to do an album that sounds like this, you know, and so I'll go down and work for a few months on that and try to get enough songs together that equals an album, and then I put it out. That's kind of what The Mezzanines was always supposed to be, was anything we wanted to do, you know? So if I want to make a metal album, I'm going to do that and put it out. Or if I want to make something that's just like noise, I'll do that. Cave music… Who cares? I don't know about people who listen to them, but to me, they always end up sounding a little more similar than I thought they were going to, probably because it's just me. But yeah, coming up with different ideas. What happens is I'll hear a band that I haven't heard ever, some obscure shit, and I'll go, “Man, that's a cool ass sound. I'm gonna try to do something like that.” And then sometimes I get enough songs together to actually put it out as a whole album.

That's pretty cool. Some of these are really incredible. I actually just sent a bunch of friends Hypnotic Charm Harm because I was, like, “The first track on this is fucking sick.”

Oh yeah, that was a good one. I liked that one. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. 

Do you have other musical projects that you're working on? 

Yeah, I have other stuff. I've had a death metal band that I've been in since around 2010. We don't do a whole lot anymore, but that was called Absconder. There is an Absconder Bandcamp page. I don't link to it, the music is so different. Maybe people would get into it. But Absconder kind of had its own thing, and we've played a lot of shows. We've been on some comps and some split singles and stuff like that. Not all of it is on the Absconder Bandcamp page, but there is some stuff up there. There's a bunch of stuff on YouTube, if you search deep enough. There was a band called Wrist that was another metal band, although I wouldn't call it death metal, and we put out a few things that you might find on YouTube. And basically, I always have a band going to just play out locally. I've got a band right now called The Shit People, which is… so we're back to that poo thing again. We're kind of like 80s punk rock. We’ve played one show so far. It's a pretty new band, but we just play around town and people we know come and see us and laugh and drink and have fun. So there's that side of it, going out and playing shows and having fun with other bands, but then I continue to record myself, just whatever I feel like.

Do you keep up with the current musical landscape at all? Are you tapped into younger bands, whatever's hip and stuff?

No, not at all, I’m ashamed to say. I might hear stuff here and there, just surfing through YouTube or whatever, but I don't really make a note of it. I actually still listen to new underground metal bands, specifically death metal mostly. So I know a little bit about what's going on there, but in general, no. There's just so much shit from way before that I've never heard, which is crazy, because I've heard so much shit. There's so much stuff that I still have never heard. I keep finding things that I get into, and it's like, “How did I never know about this band, you know?” And I'll get into that, and that's kind of how it goes for me. I like listening. I like finding old stuff, old gems that I've never discovered before.

I mean, I definitely relate to that. Is there anything in particular that you've been really stoked on recently? 

It's always like one-off stuff. It's like a song here, song there, because I don't know, it seems like back in especially in the 80s and 90s, that's kind of how it was. A band would have one song that was really killer, and then the rest of it was not that great, so I usually just find one song that I love. There was a band called Lowlife from the 80s and 90s that I was into that is kind of dreamy, shoegazey, but a little darker. More goth, maybe. Just got into them like a year ago. There's a band called Asylum Party from the late 80s that is total post punk, cold wave sounding stuff that I have been trying to tell a lot of my friends about. They're awesome. Metal bands. You know, I could go into that. Don't know if you want to hear about that, but there's some new death metal bands, like Tomb Mold and Necrot that I think are awesome. I play with a guy in Absconder named Brad, and he just sends me stuff all the time, like new underground metal, and I listen to it go, “That's killer.” But I never really pay attention to who it is. I just kind of listen to it.

Going back to more current music: Hum especially went from quasi-one hit wonder, cult band status to being this widely accepted influence. Tons of newer guitar bands are trying to sound like them, and by extension, you guys. It’s shoegaze but it’s heavy, it has that metal or hardcore thing to it. Is that something they or you are aware of? Is it weird to watch the sound that you were basically inventing together become so big?

I don't know. I'm sure they're aware of it. I talk to several of those guys quite often, specifically, Matt [Talbott, lead singer and guitarist in Hum] and Jeff [Dimpsey, bassist in Hum]. I think they're aware of it, because they actually get asked to play festivals and stuff from time to time, or at least did a couple of years ago. And there was the whole Cadillac commercial thing that they had, however long ago that was. It’s a little weird, but you know, that's cool. I don't see that for Lovecup. We don't get asked things. You're the first person who's ever interviewed me about that band. So I don't really see it happening for us. I don't know if we were ever an influence on anybody, but if we were, that's awesome. Or if it's like young people going back and finding it, that's even more awesome. I love that. But yeah, I think that was a pie in the sky sound for a lot of bands at that time, in the early 90s. I heard a lot of bands all striving for the same kind of sound in a way, whether it was Hum or Helmet… I always thought Hum and Helmet were a little closer together in sound than Hum and Lovecup. And then us that less people knew about, or even going to huge bands like Smashing Pumpkins, it just all was kind of the same thing back then. And I think that it was because a ton of metal dudes got into other kinds of music, and started playing different stuff, but still had some of that metal sound, especially with the guitars. I can't say that for Hum, except for Tim [Lash, lead guitarist in Hum]. Tim was into metal. I don't think any of the other guys really were.

Interesting. I’m a big emo guy, which is why I was asking about Braid before. I think what's cool about so many of those bands is that at least some of the members were initially hardcore guys. It seems like you have to start heavier and work your way lighter and figure that stuff out. You don't hear so much about folkies getting into hardcore late and arriving at this thing.

Right. Yeah, no, I think you're spot on with that. It just gives that perspective to something else that you do that creates something cool.

Are there any bands that you guys played with or that were around that you feel like are unfairly lost in the historical shuffle that you want to shout out? Anything you feel like more people should be aware of.

Yeah, sure. First one that comes to mind is a band called Steel Pole Bath Tub that I think probably has a pretty big kind of cult following anyway, so I might not have to even say that one, but we played with them one time. They were incredible. Totally weird band, though, if you're looking for stuff that sounded like us then not at all. But they were awesome and weird. I don't know, we played with so many bands that were really good. There were some bands from Champaign that were really good that I don't think people ever found out about. There was a band called Hot Glue Gun I remember that was awesome. Those guys were kick ass musicians. They played kind of funk, rock, punk, melodic stuff. I think they actually put out a single on Poster Children's record label as well, back in the day.

Who else? A lot of the bands that we played with and thought were great ended up being big. Bands like Flaming Lips, there was a time when no one knew who they were. Or Smashing Pumpkins, I remember seeing them at the Blind Pig when it held 150 people. It's like, “Man, these guys are fucking pretty good.” All those bands got huge. I don't know about bands that no one's ever heard. Saw a lot of bands that were really good that everyone knows about now, because weirdly, Champaign got tons of those bands back in the day. A bunch of those bands came through Champaign, I think because we're close enough to Chicago, so bands would play there and then could pop down and play a show here on an off night or something. And it would be packed, because everyone here would go to every show.

University of Illinois is in Champaign, right? I feel like a college town is also an easy sell. Playing to a bunch of people that'll come and drink a beer.

Yeah, because back then it was, that was the cool music, everybody was into it all. College kids were into that shit then, which I don't think is true anymore, although I'm sure there are pockets of it, or whatever.

I'm about seven or eight years out of college at this point, and this definitely wasn’t what was popular, but you could find people that wanted to go to shows and stuff, for sure.

Right, right, yeah. Back then everybody went, it was weird. Well it wasn't weird, it was awesome. I don't think we would have done anything, Hum wouldn't have done anything either, if people weren't into that kind of music at the time. Champaign-Urbana had a huge scene, and it was super supportive at the time of bands like us. Whenever we would play, or when Hum would play, those shows would sell out by 9pm and there'd be people waiting outside to get in. And it was great. It was awesome.