Wizard zine Interview.. =Where are you all from, what are your names? tim soete from cincinatti/san diego tim green from d.c. josh smith from rome/valencia but we all live in san francisco now =How did you hook up as a solid band? were you old friends? TG: tim and josh started playing two guitars together through a fender champ anp in santa cruz in 92 or 93. shortly after they got adam cantwell to play guitar and tim switched to drums. when my old band played santa cruz we played with them and became friends. i moved to san francisco in 95 and tim and i started playing together. he and josh decided to move up here. adam did'nt want to move so he quit and i started playing with them. =What do you guys think of wizards? TG: they're pretty cool unless they're bad. =What if any pieces of literature have you guys read or are fans of, because for me when i here your music i think of epics and sagas like beowulf,the god of thunder,that sort of imagery TG: i read alot of quantum physics and rock books. i don't know if i would call that literature. =What do the Fucking Champs think of the new Lord of the Rings films.how do they stand up to the books(if you've read them of course)? TG: i love them but i have'nt read the books. tim soete's re-reading them right now. i'd like to see alot more of the trees. =Who are some of your favorite bands / musicians? TG: queen, thin lizzy, acdc, zep, pussy galore, mahavishnu, return to forever, the prisoners, the move, bach, cathedral, carcass, confessor, cluster, chrome... any band that starts with c. =What were you into while you were all growing up? TG: we all listened to alot of classic rock. in high school i was really into 60's punk then jazz and 70's funk and then acid rock and speed metal like forbidden and death angel. i saw them in '88 in d.c. =Your standing on Dungeons & Dragons? love it ? played it? dork shit? TG: i tried to play it once when i was 12 but got bored and started tackling the other players. josh was in a group with some people around here that played it regularly last year. =For your first couple releases you were just straight "the champs", when you changed your name were you pissed? TG: it was kind of annoying but it worked out for the best. =How'd you come about the new band name? TG: i made some t shirts that said fucking champs for our first u.s. tour just because it looked good that way. then we changed the name 3 years later. =Your music is mainly instrumental, although your vocals rock, i was wondering though why you choose to favor one over the other? TG: i like vocals sometimes, but they can get in the way and it can be tricky to sing over a constantly changing stream of notes that never repeat- and who has time to write lyrics these days? =There is definately a heavy classical influence to your work, at least to my ears. have any of you had any formal musical training? TG: no, although i took a few saxaphone lessons in high school. =Do any of you play instruments that you wouldn't normally find in the usual Rock arsenal? TG: the piccolo tuba =How was it collaborating with Trans Am and have they left any lasting impression on your own sound? TG: it was great i like that ep a lot. we recorded 3 songs, sent them the reel and they added some stuff. then they recorded a few songs and phil came out here and we added stuff to that reel and recorded another song from scratch based on an acoustic song that they had done. =And do you see any other similar collaborations happening in the future? TG: yeah, last week phil flew out here and we got jon theodore (from golden) to come up from LA. those two and tim and i recorded some stuff for another transchamps record. i think we're gonna record some more in april. =The names of your songs like "Some Swords" are really interesting, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind telling us about your process of writing them and ultimately naming them? TG: alot of the time the name comes out of the process of writing. for example the song 'never enough neck' came about because we kept running out of neck on the guitar when we were writing the song. we would need to hit a note that was like a whole step higher than the last fret on the guitar. some song titles like 'children perceive the hoax cluster' are provided by our friend and linguist, andrew maxwell. =What's your current take on music today, the mainstream and the underground scene? TG: the mainstream situation is'nt really worth talking about. it's always the same; the more mediocre you are the more mass appeal you have. this is particularly true during and economic downturn where major labels are very wary of taking any chances by putting out something unusual. as far as the underground scene, i don't know, there's alot more places to play than ther were 11 years ago- i can tell you that much. =Any bands out there currently catching your attention? TG: golden, rye coalition, drunk horse, cherry valence, last of the juanitas, the husbands, ocifer, bozart, all night =The last two albums seem to have a running theme/asthetic, are you going to keep going with it on future releases or was it just coincidence?and what's the idea behind them? personally i think they fucking epic. TG: it's the same aesthetic as the first album too. after the second album we realised that we were following the progression of cover art of the echo and the bunnymen records. in fact their 3rd record was also shot in iceland as was ours. in theory we would have to shoot our next cover in a cave, so i don't know if we'll stick with that. i'd like to be in the dessert for the next one. the first album cover happened when we were on tour in oklahoma. we stopped at a rest stop, saw a nice looking bunch of trees and casually stated 'this will be the album cover'. our roadie, pam, took a polaroid and that was that. we've only used polaroids ever since. we had to buy one in iceland and it was really expensive- about $120 for the camera and three packs of film. i dropped the damn thing in the airport on our way out and it shattered into many pieces.