Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 23:35:31 +0000
From: Paul Minor
Reply-To: superego@io.com
Organization: Nickel $ Dime Records
To: ALT COUNTRY NL

here are some answers. have you looked at our website for background, such as: we have played at the hole in the wall every week for 5 years? you can use the pictures for free.


-Can you tell me more about musical influences?

"Superego has drawn published comparisons to the replacements, tom petty, neil young, big star, velvet underground, the who, fastball, smithereens, new order, beck, cheap trick and others, but we are also into the band, the kinks, the who, elvis costello, roky erickson, nirvana, tom waits, robert johnson, wilco, basically anything and everything with a decent pop hook-lyrical, melodic, or textural. "

-Tell me me about yourself: you sound like you are in the music scene a long time.

"i started my first band in 1984 at the age of 16, and i have been starving ever since...seriously, i played at frat parties for a few years with "the urge," then toured the country with a couple of roots-rock bands, the "neptunes" and "roman candles," in between semesters earning a bachelors degree in english composition from St. Edward's University in South Austin. I was a tour manager for the wagoneers, rosie flores, big car, and many other emerging austin bands. In 1994 I co-wrote and recorded an unreleased album by Beaver Nelson at Ardent studios in Memphis, with Tony Scalzo and Joey Shuffield, the rhythm section that later formed Fastball, before conceiving Superego later that year and beginning our five year run playing at the hole every Sunday."

-I like the back of your sleeve. It's exactly what your music is about: a lot of influences. It's pop, it's rock, it's rootsmusic, it's the beatles, it's even Prince. Is that what you want to create, a kind of cosmic music?

"I took that picture in our house with a plastic disposable camera, in the dining room, standing in the kitchen. I live with Superego guitarist Jon Sanchez, who also plays with Troy Campbell and Ginger Mackenzie. That's our workshop and playground. Our music is like a collage, because the references are very specific, and i think authentic, reproductions of certain sounds we have assimilated, such as the heavy tremolo stratocaster guitar, or a spooky B-3 hammond organ, but the resulting whole is our unique statement, as if we cut out magazine pictures of junk food and candy and shaped it into a tree or a landscape or something...i think this kind of open-ended approach is what makes it universal."

-the name of the band, can you tell me more about it?

i showed up at an open jam at a little club when i was starting to do some writing again after the beaver nelson band broke up in1994. The host thought it was presumptuous or arrogant of me and my new band to bumrush the show without signing up, so she glibly introduced us as "paul minor's big ego," and it stuck. Then when we got the Sunday night gig and started advertising that name for awhile, it got kind of old and cumbersome quick. When we had the first of many personnel changes, the resulting temporary band had former members of several well-known Austin bands like Flying Saucers and Sixteen Deluxe (on the first t-shirt it was "Jon, Paul, George and Scalzo"), so we started listing it on the calendar as "Superego" like a super-group. This name has turned out to be great food for thought, with many speculating as to the Freudian and Jungian overtones. I have always thought it was like saying that being a person in the limelight, living onstage is the perfect metaphor to describe the freudian concept of the superego, which is the most self-conscious, self-critical, and self-realized component of the psyche. A performer crafts a stage "persona," which is a rough synonym of the term superego in my unschooled opinion.

-you play a lot live? in pubs or venues? How is it playing live? Do you get payed well?

"i play once a week in two bands, one plays clubs, one plays wedding parties. superego averages 200 dollars total, sometimes nothing. the argyles showband makes 2,000 dollars to play roy orbison and van morrison. superego plays small clubs like pubs with small stages, occasionally we play on big stages supporting touring bands like Yo La Tengo, Fastball, Bob Mould... We all live to play live, and there is nothing like the thrill of interacting with other talented musicians, with an attentive audience, making unprocessed, unprogrammed, spontaneous, improvisational live music."

-Making music is your profession? Or do you have a job, like the members of the band?

"I worked full-time for the state of Texas for 3 years as a night security guard at a state school, but I got bored and got in trouble for using the computers to make my webpage. Since then, I have been a proofreader, a real estate researcher, more recently a free-lance booking agent for clubs, I started a record label, and I have been a part time guitar salesman at a huge corporate music superstore for a year.

-Plans for the future?

"Superego desparately needs to expose ourselves in some of the other great music communities around the world: portland, san francisco, new orleans, amsterdam, paris, houston, etc. We plan to make more records as the songs come, explore more musical adventures, and hopefully make some hit songs."

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