** Interview/article by Shane Prendiville (guest of Adrenalin) -
January 2007 **
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have had the privilege of hanging out with
the fella's. I had to crash one night at Thymmes place in Chicago
with my buddy Dave's band, Sounds Like Braille (who, by the way, introduced me to Cheer-Accident). I found Thymme very easy to talk to and get along with, we rode to get pizza and played scrabble until four in the morning, team Thymme & Shane won the board, he's a scrabble monster. And in the morning I found him running circles around his roommate as she's talking about something or other, and I'm still wiping the sleep from my eyes and grumpiness from my soul. He shows me a song of theirs on the piano, which I tried to play earlier, it made me feel great. The pure endurance
of Thymme and Jeff to keep Cheer-Accident music flowing and fresh
for over twenty years is bow-worthy alone, with all the member
changes and the pain of time itself, but it is their music and great
spirit that is the glimmer on the edge of a large world of 'art',
pulling their feet out of the mud and trudging through the muck to
reach for and capture new experiences for the ear and eyes, devoid
of mundane commercial insects that seem to swarm and infect most of
what we people here, in this country, know as music. I thank them
for showing what is possible. SHANE: What, Who were the biggest influences in your quest for musical godliness? THYMME: First of all, if there's been a quest involved, the quest hunted me down-- not the other way around. Initially, the first godly music to find me was that of Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass. I think that happened right out of the womb (or, perhaps, while still in the womb). When I was in grade school we used to occasionally attend school assemblies, which would sometimes entail getting to hear the "big kids" (meaning students in junior high or high school) play music. The sound of |
school symphonic bands and marching bands would
always bring tears to my eyes-- not out of sadness, but out of
sheer, SHANE: How long have you been interested in music? THYMME: Right out of the womb (or, perhaps, while still in the womb). So: 44 years. SHANE: What was your first musical experience? THYMME: Gosh. It looks like I'm just going to talk about Herb Alpert a lot. My first musical experience was listening to Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass on my parents' console stereo. I can still clearly recall looking at those tan A&M record labels and-- before I knew how to read-- looking at the grooves on the record to note the distance between songs (and/or how many songs were on a side) in order to determine what I was about to listen to. The first concert I ever attended was Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass at Arlington Park Race Track in Arlington Heights, IL. It was in the summer of '68. I was five and a half years old. The only thing I really remember from that show was a middle-aged woman standing in front of me and shrieking during the entirety of "This Guy's In Love With You." SHANE: Watching you play drums, physically, you sort of remind me of Thelonius Monk on his piano, looking a bit stiff, like you're always about to fuck up, but you never do. what do you think? |