DB- For me that sums up one aspect of what I have always enjoyed about the Biscuits. I am an intense, involved and above all patient listener and I respect a musical experience that rewards patience.

AM- If you’re patient you’re not going to be waiting for that precise moment when we bust into another tune. Instead you’ll just suddenly find yourself it in and realize that you were almost hypnotized by the last half hour of music where it was going in the back of your head and all of a sudden you’re in it.

DB- Lets jump to the New Year’s Eve run and in particular New Year’s Eve. To what extent do you view that as a special event?

AM- It is a special event, it’s fucking New Years, whether we’re playing or not, whether you’re going to a concert let alone be involved in the performance of a concert, that’s the night when you want to make it count. From growing up, you’d always expect so much out of New Years, so we try to do something different from our normal shows. That difference goes well beyond putting some bells and whistles on stage which of course we’ll have, with set design and stuff like that. We’re working on a concept of a New Year’s, which is not to say we’ll be improvising to a movie in black monk costumes but people can expect something different and out of the ordinary that we never do at shows. Of course I think you can say that of every Biscuits show, on any given night, but particularly at New Year’s.

DB- You referenced the Akira set – what is your memory of it and how successful was it from your perspective {the band improvised a soundtrack to the film Akira during its third set last New Year’s Eve).

AM- I thought it turned out great. I had never even seen the movie before and during soundcheck when we were testing out the monitors I looked down and there was a guy riding a motorcycle, so I knew that point was towards the end of the movie. Then during the set itself we were watching it and at one point I saw a guy riding a motorcycle and thought, “Oh cool we’re near the end of the movie, that was a great jam.” Forty five minutes later I thought “Okay, I guess that’s wasn’t it, well here’s another scene with a Japanese guy on a motorcycle.” Forty minutes later there was another motorcycle scene and then it was over.

DB- In thinking about last New Year’s Eve that also marked the last time you would perform for more than six months with Marc Brownstein on bass. He was not in the band for a period of time-

AM- Yeah that sucked

DB- Then he returned to the band-

AM- That was great

DB- I’m curious what you learned about the band and your music during that period?

AM- What we learned is that in the month of July 1995 we all kind of embarked on a dream and it was a dream that only the four of us really understood. Other people can look into it and kind of understand it but it’s all the little things that amass into this whole. The fact that we broke down in the middle of the desert on our first tour, the fact that we were playing all these tiny little hole-in-the-wall bars and everything else that we’ve given for this collective dream that the four of us shared. When we played a string of show with different bass players, it was really nice to have someone else’s musical input into what we were doing, although it was strange to revisit a structure that isn’t the same anymore. I think that led us to realize that the Biscuits are Marc, Aron, Jon and Sammy. To me the great part of it was, we didn’t make the decision because there was nobody else to fill the role. With Jordan {Crisman}, we found out that if there were any person to fill in the position of bass player then I think we had found him.

When Marc came back into the band we were energized. We realized what we had and it gave us an infusion to continue all these different tasks. The resurgence of the Biscuits after Marc came back really rooted into our brains the collective dream that we s hared. We are bunch of lucky people to have found each other, to share this particular form of non-verbal communication.

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