A mixture of ingredients ranging from early Bowie to late-period Beatles to Robyn Hitchcock’s Soft Boys period, the immaculately-produced Dream is an unabashedly refined pop record, and one that rewards with each successive listen. The album was self-produced in the homey confines of the vintage-everything Tiny Telephone (also on John’s list of titles is Complete Gear Freak) and it’s a quantum leap forward for the quartet. It takes but one listen to the gorgeous title track to know that Mr. Nice Guy and his cohorts are definitely not long for obscurity.
I managed to get in a few words with John while he was relaxing in Seattle following MK Ultra’s 5 week tour in support of Sunny Day Real Estate. They’ll head out with that band again in early February.

Snack: Where does the new album’s title come from?
John: It’s from the song "God" by the Plastic Ono Band. I knew I’d lifted it from somewhere, and then someone said, "Hey, that’s a line from a John Lennon song," and I thought, "Oh, that’s where I got it from." [laughs]

Snack: Tell me about how you recorded the album. I know it was an on-going process.
John: It’s really the history of my studio, Tiny Telephone. We opened Tiny Telephone about a year ago, and as we were opening it, we started recording the record. So we were kind of guinea pigs in the studio. And as we were recording, so many things changed: the monitor speakers, the mixing board, the tape deck. We had a lot of variables going on there; it was crazy. The first basic tracks were done with Damien Rasmussen. He came in and we recorded about 10 songs. We would always borrow gear, because at that time the studio didn’t have as much gear. Damien would do the basic tracks and then we’d be left with the songs for a couple months. That’s when we really got involved in experimenting with things like distorted xylophone and sampling and all that stuff you play with when you’re really bored [laughs].

Snack: There are a lot of really nice production touches on the album. They really elevate it.
John: We just wanted to be able to finish it ourselves. After Damien we had our manager Greg Williamson come down from Seattle to record some more songs. We borrowed a new batch of equipment and did basic tracks at Tiny Telephone. And then over the next three months or so we mixed it down, in three different batches, with Greg. So it was a really long, drawn-out process, but it was actually good in a way, because it helped us trouble-shoot the studio by recording in there. It’s good looking back, but during recording there were some tough moments, with equipment breaking down and my bandmates looking at me like, "What kind of shithole are you running?!" [laughs]

Snack: Give me a brief history of the band.
John: We started at the beginning of ‘94. I was in a band called Cylinder and we changed our name to MK Ultra. We released a self-titled debut as MK Ultra, but it was really the Cylinder line-up. We broke up about 6 months later. And then about a year later I got together with the current line-up and we recorded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. That came out in ‘96 and then we started building Tiny Telephone, which delayed the release of the new record by about a year. Oh...I’ve just been offered coffee. This interview is about to get more interesting. [laughs]

Snack: How did you meet the members of the current line-up?
John: I just put an ad in the SF Weekly, like every other loser. I don’t know anybody who wants to be in a band with me [laughs].

Snack: Yeah, ‘cause you know, you’re so hard to get along with... It seems to me that the new record might be a little bit more realized than Original Motion Soundtrack. It sounds like you’ve matured sonically, like you ‘ve figured out more of what you want to be as a band.
John: We’ve all gotten better at stepping back from a song and figuring out what kind of a song we want it to be. That took us a long time because usually you don’t want to examine those things too closely; you want to keep it in the unconscious realm. It’s uncomfortable to dissect a song and wonder, for example, what a bridge is doing to a song, or why you even have a bridge. I think we had more time to really arrange stuff and live with stuff. We toured a lot on this music, and that really changed it a lot. We also had time to spend with the recordings. There are a lot of songs that didn’t make it onto this record. There were at least 10 songs that weren’t put on this record.

Snack: Why weren’t they considered for inclusion?
John: Because we just didn’t feel that they were up to par. Or maybe they were duplications of another song. You know how some songwriters tend to write songs in pairs? I do that all the time. We all like CD’s that are short, so we wanted to keep this record under 45 minutes. We tried to split it into two sides by putting an interlude in the middle. I really miss having two sides of a record. You can take a break and start on side two. I really miss that. Whenever a record comes out on vinyl, I buy it, mostly because of that.

Snack: I know that you collaborate with someone on your lyrics. Tell me about that.
John: Yeah, I workshop my lyrics. The process generally starts with me sitting at home and writing something on acoustic guitar. It’s pretty bare bones; I try to keep it simple. And then I e-mail the lyrics to Amanda Yskamp, who I’ve been working with since ‘91. It’s a pretty great relationship. I bought her a fax machine so she does it for free [laughs]. So then she e-mails me back, or calls me, and gives me her opinion. Sometimes she just says to throw it away. I generally listen to her ‘cause she knows where I’m coming from. We definitely work very fast and easily together.

Snack: How did you meet her?
John: I was taking night workshop classes at UC Berkeley, and she was doing one of them. I asked if we could meet privately and she agreed to it. So we’d meet one hour a week and she would give me exercises to do. She’s got an MFA from NYU and went to Berkeley; she’s been through the ringer in terms of academic stuff. She’s very good.

Snack: Some people might say that "academic stuff" has no place in Rock Music. It’s not very Rock to workshop your lyrics with someone. It completely flies in the face of the whole "I wrote this on a cocktail napkin last night when I was loaded" mentality.
John: Yeah, but often that song that someone wrote on a cocktail napkin sucks.

Snack: But there are other people who would say that that’s when you’re most inspired.
John: The lyrics to the new record’s title track were written really quickly. But what you don’t hear in that song are the stupid stanzas that I wrote on the proverbial cocktail napkin ‘cause Amanda said, "These are really lame." Or she’ll say, "Why is this language so flat? Why is this so dull?" Or maybe it’ll be just changing a word, or line. Her advice doesn’t overhaul the entire lyric.

Snack: Does she ever offer actual word substitutions?
John: Not really, but a couple times she has. I actually have asked her for a lot more substitutions than she’s given me [laughs]. And I’ve also asked her many times for ballads or for songs. She’s a very avant-garde poet; she’s pretty out there. We’ve talked about her writing some lyrics, but she never does. [laughs]

Snack: Tell me about the tour you did in support of Sunny Day Real Estate.
John: We did a five week tour in the Fall with Sunny Day. It was mostly the top half of the U.S. It started in New York and then zigzagged around. It was great. We did a 45 city tour in support of Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, but it was, you know, playing for the club staff and that’s about it. It was good that we did that. We learned how to tour, how to play live night after night, how to change strings in three minutes and all that shit. Also, you get to a point where you can go into any city and just find the club. [laughs]

Snack: You’re going out with Sunny Day again very soon, right?
John: We’re going out for a month with them starting at the beginning of February. It’s going to be pretty much the bottom half of the U.S. I think it’s 17 or 18 shows.

Snack: The lyrics and vocals are two things that really set MK Ultra apart from the great majority of bands. Everything is hyper-articulated, you don’t have a typical "rock" voice, and your lyrics are very literal and candid. It’s a very clean sound overall.
John: When I was growing up listening to stuff, my main disappointment with so much of what I heard was that bands didn’t seem to have anything to say. I really wanted these bands to tell me something. The bands that I grew up on, that I still listen to - Bowie, Beatles, Dylan - I can’t tire of them because there’s constant conversation going on with them. There are bands that I like that don’t really have a lot to say, but they’re very crafty about how they don’t say anything. But when I was a kid there were so many times that I’d buy a record, bring it home, pull out the lyrics and think to myself, "I can’t respect this stuff. This is total crap." And I wasn’t even looking for high-art stuff. My main obsession in the late 80s and early 90s was rap. Public Enemy, Schooly D, KRS One, De La Soul - I thought, "Man, these people have something to say."

Snack: That’s amazing. I never would have thought that listening to MK Ultra.
John: Yeah, I was so into Public Enemy. I didn’t really grow up listening to rap. I just sort of...found it. Some of my friends were like, "What the hell are you listening to?"

Snack: Yeah, I can see you as a skinny little white kid growing up, cranking that stuff. You grew up in Maryland, so you were actually pretty close to a lot of influential rap and punk artists during their renaissances.
John: Yeah, but I was so uncool, listening to King Crimson and Yes and Zeppelin and Pink Floyd - all the classic rock dinosaurs. I didn’t even know who Minor Threat was, no idea.

Snack: I think there are hints of prog in your music. You arrangements aren’t linear pop. Your music is very baroque. I think the 70s influence definitely shows. Who are some more contemporary artists that you’re into?
John: I really like Neutral Milk Hotel. They’re the band I play the most. I like the Minders. I like the last Weezer record. I like the new Richard Buckner and Lisa Germano records.

Snack: A lot of this music that you’re mentioning is very refined. And it makes sense because MK Ultra isn’t very "rock." That’s not a value judgment, it’s just a fact. You guys have always seemed to eschew the classic kind of posturing. I think of your band as very graceful and refined, which is very refreshing. It’s a very clean sound that you’ve cultivated. And you’re one of the best-dressed bands I’ve ever seen.
John: Well, thanks a lot.

Note: this story ran in the last issue of Snackcake! (Spring of '99) This zine, created and edited by Mr Scanlin, was fresh, funny and very smart. It was equally interested in local and national bands, a rarity in Bay Area press. The mag will be missed...