[Interview]/Music, the '90s and Fandoms with Initial P

"Ask nicely and he'll let you touch his beard"

Earlier last month we got the chance to sit down and talk with DJ Initial P after the chaos of Tekko X-2 had completed and wound down a bit. The location? Where else but a bar? The next two hours roughly was a conversation between Initial P, CK/Carrie, Peachy and myself about all things random over a couple of beers. Nothing was left off the table and was probably the second most fun and chaotic interview of the weekend. (The first being the one with Chris Cason, but that wasn't recorded...much to the dismay of Chris and ourselves...it was epic though, I promise.)

Yeah, I know this is a bit late and all but considering that DiskoWarp just celebrated it's 8th Anniversary? This seems to be a fitting time to get this one out there! 

Initial P is the founder and driving force behind DiskoWarp Music, based out of Seattle, and probably one of the must "punk/garage" electronic musicians that I've had the chance to meet in recent years. His philosophy of "make[ing] music with the equipment you have and whatever else is handy", is definitely one that I can get behind. After all, isn't that the purpose of music, to just make something out of what's in your head that you enjoy and hopefully others do as well? Personally I find that music made in such a way is typically better, even if it's not technically so, it just is for some reason. It speaks to me, the listener, in a deeper manner. So when one looks at the projects and sound of Initial P and other DiskoWarp artists, it's easy to see how that core idea is translated to all kinds of musical styles...and I like it. "I love what I do, I wouldn't do it if I didn't and making people happy and dance is awesome." Couldn't have said it better myself to be honest (Though, I think I tried...who knows.)

If you're looking to catch Initial P in your neck of the woods and happen to live in Toronto (specific, I know), he'll be performing at Anime North in just a few weeks! So, if you're in the area go check out not only the con but probably one of the most fun and insane sets you're likely to see any time soon. If you're already going, well, now you have no excuse not to stop in and check it out! Also make sure to swing on by his Twitter and Tumblr as well, both entertaining as all hell and if you're in the Seattle area (or not) can find out where he's playing next too.

Now, the reason that we had the chance to talk at all was because he was performing the "dance" at Tekkoshocon X-2 the night before and also doing background for Cristina Vee's concert on Sunday morning. The main reason for that is because the two of them worked together on the Anime Love Hardcore2 project, which I have to say is pretty unique and different in that it's a collection of anime theme song covers remixed. Definitely not something you see every day, though it does exist, just not on this level. The other reason is that we kept going back and forth randomly throughout the whole weekend via Twitter...which was definitely hysterical at times.

On stage April 6th @ Tekko X-2

While no stranger to the con circuit, Initial P was new to the Pittsburgh area. To one point of trying to find his way to get coffee, an exchange through Twitter happened involving me quoting Alex to say, "Well, that's what happens when you try to put a square on a triangle". Much laughing was had over that one and pretty much kicked off our conversation that lasted the entire weekend.

That said, apparently Cleveland didn't agree with his stomach either (not surprising) and he was fighting some kind of food poisoning throughout most of the day/evening on Saturday. Even with that, he was still able to rock the place as the only act for the dance that night. Something that even we, veterans of the 90's rave scene, considered "...weird and strange...it really caught me off guard", the way that he put it. However, the idea of being the sole act wasn't lost and he seemed to just roll with it, proclaiming that "I'm my own opening, headliner and closing act!" to a few people who came up to his booth in the vendors room earlier that day. Gotta love that West Coast mentality at times, eh?

So, as you can see, time was a bit of an issue for us getting together and on further impacted by ailments, our own interview schedule and general con crazy. So, the decision was finally made to just relax after everything on Sunday afternoon at the Fish Market in the Westin Convention Center Hotel (The first bar we picked turned out not to be open, fitting, eh?). Turns out, that was the way to go as we were mostly left to ourselves at the bar and recorded to our hearts content as the conversation took several bizarre turns.

What was talked about? Just about everything.

While this isn't nearly the whole thing, it is the more interesting bits. I'm sure at some point I'll have the whole thing up on our YouTube channel as well, it's over an hour of the four of us going on and on about, well...everything. No clue why, but the madness really does have to be shared in it's pure form, but for now...here's a few of the highlights!

The room during Initial P's set on Saturday at Tekko X-2

DJing for a convention is apparently quite the different experience from a regular show as well. When I brought up the massive conga line that broke out during the beginning of his set, this kind of just came out:

"The con crowd is usually off in their own world and you'll usually have a few people upfront that are like; 'Hey I like what you're DJing'. It's different than playing in like a club where you have people coming up to you and high fiving you and they're kind of hanging out with you."


Then we got into the fandom end of things, somehow. Which turned into a discussion about Bronies, Furries and even Homestuck...along with the other crazy things going on out there. Though, this does kinda fit in with our logic around here in a big way...

"I wanna like make a fake fandom for something that doesn't have one. I mean, I just feel like the My Little Pony thing is random. It is random...a little bit, when you think about it." 

Carrie came in with an explanation on the matter, describing that there's kind of two camps going on with things. The older fans that have been around since the original (or earlier generations of the show), like her, and then the newer "Bronies", like Peachy. After that...well...

"If you said to me 20 years ago that most of the My Little Pony fans now were going to be males that were aged 18-24, I would've laughed at you. Which is why it's a little strange."

From here it was a quick trip into the odd crossovers that happen between Brony and Furry DJs and musicians. Turns out that while not only friends with EuroBeat Brony, "the Eurobeat community is pretty small and everyone knows eachother", they've been trying to collaborate some quite some time too. Not overly surprising given the fact that he had this to say about the musical crossover between fandoms:

"There's so much crossover. [and] I'm a little jealous they have a thing like that. I mean the Furry music scene is crazy and the pony music scene is crazy. It [seems] a bit weird to me how that happened." 

Speaking of EuroBeat Brony, here's a little free remix of his song Discord by Initial P, (https://soundcloud.com/initialp/eurobeat-brony-discord-initial)

After bit more conversation about randomness (I mean really, what else do you expect with the three of us drinking and getting run over by the nostalgia train every few minutes?), we moved into the direction of the Furry scene a little and just how it relates to other fandoms too. This does make a bit of sense since Carrie and I are Furries and the fact that we're in Pittsburgh...Furry Central.

"I headlined Seattle's Furry con...that was educational also. I learned a lot of things you guys, yeah I learned a lot." (Insert Carrie with the "I'm sure there was a lot of "What was seen cannot be unseen") "Yeah, yeah. They warned me too. When they booked me they said you're going to see some shit and I'm like yeah, I know, it's fine, I'll handle it."

"The Furry thing, I have a couple friends who are Furries. I have a couple other friends who are Furry DJs in Seattle, they wanted to book me because I've played cons, I'm local and it was fun. I had a great time. I have a bunch of friends that are Furries, I don't get it but I don't think it's weirder than anything else."

"I mean people are like, 'Yeah, it's weird'. It's not that weird when you think about it objectively, it's not weirder than any other fandom. They don't deserve to be picked on to the degree that they do. Now, the Homestuck kids on the other hand, fuck them but the Furries, they're fine." (much cackling from Carrie and I on that one) "But at first you think it's weird [look at] the Ren Fair, if you think those people aren't fucking in their in their medieval garb, some of them definitely are. You take any group of people that are into something and a certain percentage of them are doing that, it doesn't mean that's what they're all about.

While I can't say I'm overly surprised at any of those statements coming from him, he's just that laid back and relaxed with most things, it's just refreshing to hear from someone outside of the Furry fandom as a whole. Granted the Homestuck statement had me and Carrie in stitches for a few moments and he went on a bit later (after our explanation of Carrie's Homestuck Kindergarten idea) to say this:

"My friend Robin(Robyn?) summed it up nicely by saying that it's for middle schoolers who think character development is a costume change. [and] I thought that was pretty nice. [and] Another person said it's the modern day "Tween Ulysses", which I thought was pretty good, right?"

No, that's okay. We'd rather not.

"Yeah, I don't get it and I'm never going to get it and I don't really want to get it. I actually saw a guy walk up to a bunch of Homestuck kids this weekend and go 'What's the point?' and they all just responded 'Hmmm uh..unno', well exactly, yeah. I did this con in Portland and I think, I swear, like 20-30% of the attendees were Homestuck cosplayers and it looks like they have candy corn dildos strapped to their heads. And, I...so we just call them dildo heads cause that's what they look like.

"I get it, it's this generation gap thing, and I don't get it. That's okay, but it does sort of feel a little like it's glorified being like this aloofness and this anti-social or unsocialized media obsessed shut in. [Though] Yeah, it is the fandoms doing. So I went to Kumoricon and was like 'I have to check this out and see what it's all about' and I went and read it. I made it maybe 30 pages in and my mind felt numb, just completely. A fan commented and went 'It gets really good around page 250 and I thought 'There's things that get good immediately'".

"I will say one good thing, I guess, the Homestuck thing has a lot of fan content too and I think that for a fandom that's pretty cool. I guess that anything that's giving them a framework to create and add to it and add to the culture of fanfiction, fan art and fan music from what I understand. I guess that's pretty cool [in relation to the wide variety of music genres, etc]. I appreciate that in a way. "

From there, there was a lot more random talk, story sharing and other insanity. However, we did actually get onto the music stuff some more and while recanting stories about driving into the woods with a bunch of  candi ravers, (being totally cool with the idea of Godzilla wiping out where Twilight was filmed/took place "I can't remember, but I don't live there anymore so I'm good with that") and the weirdness that is the "art/rave" scene in Washington amongst other things, we stumbled across a couple of things that Initial P would love to do. Those being? A Laundromat Rave, an Elevator Rave at a con and other various oddities.

Apparently out there in the Portland/Seattle area "you just kind of have to make do with what you have. No one really has a lot of money so we go with local people and make it as interesting as we can." Of course we came up with our own idea at the time, if that if he ever DJ's at Colossalcon...there has to be a glow in the dark mini-golf rave. So, if you're out there Colossalcon staff, you know what to do. 

On the subject of those of us who grew up in the 90's this was said "We ruined it", after the explanation that those of us who grew up in the '80s and '90s were the "experimental generation'.

I mean really, think about the TV shows, music and everything else that was going on. It's the only way to make sense of the whole thing. Diving a bit further into our own personal lives, he went onto give us a glimpse of his high school life as well, which sounded kind of familiar:

"For some reason when I was in high school I was always friends with the girls who were like trouble and I was totally square, such a nerd and I was like 'Why are you hanging out with me?' [and they] were like 'I dunno you're just cool'" too which he would reply "'I'm not cool, I promise you' and they were like dating guys who were 10 years older than them and drinking at school". 

So far this is sounding a lot like my high school experience. That said, Jackie, if you're out there...he's never going to let this one go:

"My friend Jackie borrowed my favorite t-shirt (I'll never let her live this down) and we were at her house, she was mega drunk and decided to let some stranger pierce her nipple and she let her use my favorite t-shirt to soak up the blood, while she was drunk. And...this was like 10th grade? It's like 'What are you doing? Like where do we go from here?'

We also found that he's "Secretly a 90's dance music hoarder" as well, apparently a lot of time was spent buying up records for 25cents, I mean at 25cents, why not, right? This of course gave Carrie a good squee moment as well as an impromptu singing session as she queued up stuff from her phone for no other reason than "Why not?". It was also during this time that we got into talking about things like Frutopia, Surge, Evercrack (EverQuest for those don't know) and mixing Zima with jolly ranchers...yes, this is what happens when the '90s had such a profound impact on one's life...

That said, we've figured it out, we know exactly where to go from here. We're all going to go to Japan, take over the Zima Party Bus and see the country. We're even thinking of a Kickstarter for this (Yes, we're crazy, see what the 90's did to us?!). The decision had been solidified and after seeing a video of the Zima Party Bus and we couldn't argue with "That's all it takes".

So, look for all of us in 2014 invading...Japan? (we'd so get deported...)

That said, we're looking forward to what the 9th year of DiskoWarp Music and what Initial P cooks up for us in the realm of ear candy. We're hoping to catch up with him again at Anime North (if all goes to plan as well) and any other convention that we happen to cross paths at. Also, as said before, stay tuned for the full audio at some point as well!