It’s been a while since I heard about The Revolting Cocks (aka RevCo, as they’re more commonly referred to now). The last time was in high school, when my friends were passing around a copy of Linger Fickin’ Good like it was a vial of some weird strand of pot you’d never smoked. There was the cover art with Al Jourgensen and his fellow bandmates’ heads on roosters. And of course that name that made any parent unable to keep from snickering uncontrollably whenever they heard it. Like many other Jourgensen aficionados, however, I spent most of my listening time devoted to his main band, Ministry– as newly-discovered classics like Psalm 69 and the live version of “Thieves” off In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up…Live were spending untold hours on repeat in our respective CD players.
But as Linger and the then-legendary Beers, Steers, and Queers began making their rounds throughout high school halls everywhere, delinquents all over town had begun to follow Jourgensen’s latest in a wide-eyed, Jonestown-ish trance, turning to whatever magazines and websites they could for the latest excrement on the band. Devoted fans will be pleased to find that the Cocks’ latest, Sex-O Olympic-O, marks not only a return to familiar, oddly endearing form for the group, but also the manifestation of a new and more melodic vision of an entire band. I caught up with main songwriters Sin Quirin (guitars) and Joshua Bradford (vocals) to discuss their latest anarchic endeavors and clear up any (and every) possible misgiving about the band that I could. Luckily for me, the two were only too happy to oblige… sort of…
How much of a say does (founder) Al Jourgensen have in what goes on with RevCo nowadays?
Josh Bradford: Al’s like a cross between that football coach that pushes you to the brink of madness, and a crazy uncle. He’s a good friend to write music with. Mostly, he still produces and is a very hands-on person. He even said himself that he’s a singer by default. Producing, mastering…
Sin Quirin: Drinking. Also, he doesn’t want to hold his shits in anymore.
I heard about this. Trouble pooping.
Sin: You can’t take shits on the bus– You can only pee. Al basically told us he’s too old to be doing that anymore.
About the whole “I’m Not Gay” song– I’ve heard you guys have been catching a lot of flack from religious groups and even people who think you’re homophobic.
Josh: Actually, I get a lot of guys at the end of my show grabbing my crotch. One time this guy came up to me at the end of a show and just started staring at me. So I tried to break the ice a little by asking him if he liked it. He goes, “Yes, but not as much as I’d like having my cock in your mouth.” I just kinda said, “Okay, uh, gotta go.”
Sin: “Check please.”
Josh: Yeah.“Way to kill the conversation, thanks.”
What about life on the road? The stink must be pretty bad if you guys are always holding it in and farting and stuff.
Sin: Sort of a musky man-odor.
Josh: Fortunately Al’s wife Angie is awesome. She keeps all the bad stuff from us. She calls us and gives us only positive reviews while we’re out.
Sin: Unfortunately we don’t get called a lot. (laughs)
So what were all you guys doing before this?
Sin: I played sax in a Glenn Miller tribute band. Before that I was a stunt cock in porn…
Josh: Yeah. He was my stunt cock. I was in a band with Clayton. Al heard about us through that. I was in a one-man show, Simple Shelter — that’s what I do if I’m not in RevCo. It’s on MySpace. Just play a bunch of instruments, and show video clips, with a one-man performance. It’s easy to get gigs because it’s just me traveling in my car.
Sex-O Olympic-O seems to have taken a more melodic direction, as opposed to older stuff, which was more experimental and just Al doing his own thing.
Josh: Yeah. Al just kind of let us do our thing on this one, and would come in at the end. Told us to just sort of go to town. Towards the end he’d come in and craft the later songs.
What about the whole “industrial” label? It seems pretty worn nowadays — especially on the West Coast, where nobody knows what it is.
Sin: I don’t know what I’d call it. Plastic? Plastic rock? I think RevCo just got stuck with that label because there was no other label people could think of. Al went in a lot of different directions, but because it had some industrial elements, it just got that label.
Sin: The first thing the label told us was that on this tour, they’re not paying any more bail. And no money for Planned Parenthood either.
Josh: And no Morning After Pills. So we have to entertain ourselves: ball clamps, French ticklers. Ball ticklers…
Sin: The days of raping girls on buses is over. Now we just rape each other.
You guys used to have a lot of guest musicians come out and play on the records — Kirk Hammett played bass on one, some of the guys from Cheap Trick, one of the guys from ZZ Top…
Josh: Yeah. Trent Reznor actually played on the first one. But we kind of went past that guest musician thing on the new record to focus on…what’s it called…
Writing songs.
Sin: Yeah. A little.
So how do you guys do most of your songwriting these days?
Sin: Mainly Josh and I work together. A lot of the time, it comes out pretty easily. On this one we just went into the studio and banged out one track after another, boom-boom.
Josh Bradford: We literally wrote them all in a few minutes.
So you guys have a lot of the next album already done?
Sin: Yeah, completely done.
Josh: Just needs to be touched-up, mastered…
So Al’s not really a writer at all anymore?
Josh: He writes some stuff. But he’s more of an editing/producer guy now, really. Kind of just oversees the whole thing. It’s his money and his label (13th Planet) and he’s gracious enough to give it out to us.
What about getting airplay? Any idea what the new single’s gonna be?
Sin: We have a song coming out on the Saw V soundtrack. We’ve had a song played on NCIS already. And…the Chicago Blackhawks actually used “I’m Not Gay” for one of their video games. We’ve also got two songs coming out on the RockBand video game.
Any particular substances you prefer to dabble in to help the songwriting process? Plenty of musicians still swear by it…
Josh: Ahhhh–
Sin: Nah, not really. Our days of getting cracked out and that kinda thing has basically passed.
Josh: I literally just bring a drink with me onstage and take offerings from the crowd: usually I’m looking for date rape drugs. Any roofies of any kind.
8 hours later
Following the assorted opening acts of deviance, including The Jim Rose Circus, it was good to learn that certain bands are still capable of putting on one hell of a loud show. Al Jourgensen himself even came out at the end, Gibson in hand, dreads whipping about in a frenzy, to treat the faithful roofie-donating audience to an encore of classics like “Beers, Steers, and Queers” and newer gems such as “I’m Not Gay.” By bringing in new blood, Jourgensen is cleverly keeping his incendiary legend etched in the annals of industrial (or whatever you call it) rock n’ roll. And now, boobies!
Interview by Jeff Nau, photos by Sidney Bensimon
