"Dressing Up In Imperial Drag"
RIP Magazine - July 1996
by Daina Darzin
Imperial Drag have only one request: in this interview, they gotta say something about their music.
"We had a small Rolling Stone interview and somehow we got sidetracked into talking about the genius of Debbie Gibson," deadpans keyboardist Roger Manning, "and we never talked about anything else in the whole article."
So the music...
"Quite simply, we rock," quips frontman Eric Dover in a perfect, pompous faux-British accent.
"We offer an alternative to the alternative. If you come to an Imperial Drag show, you're gonna be entertained in some fashion," says Manning reclining back on the pillowed bench and hiding behind a menu. He's worried about the upcoming entertainment at L.A.'s Moon of Tunis restaurant; a bellydancer he's sure he'll fall for. Watch it, Manning, that's RIP scribe Pleasant Gehman wiggling her tummy.
"Punk rock came along in the late '70s and said, 'All this big-production, total corporate glitter rock is not real, so we're going to strip things down to what's real.' And a lot of bands did that," adds drummer Eric Skodis, who sports Elvis-like hair. "But 15 years later, that whole punk ethic is alive and a lot of people are afraid to acknowledge the fact that a band like ZZ Top were entertaining -- they served a purpose. Or Ted Nugent. You couldn't SAY 'Ted Nugent' five years ago without being laughed out of the party. Although everybody at the party had a copy of Cat Scratch fever when they were 10. It still blows my mind that in 1996, bands are going, 'We're real, so we're not gonna dress up. We're real, so we're not gonna jump around. We're gonna blow off the live aspect of the show and just rely on the studio album and the roughness of my Marlboro throat."
Imperial Drag comes from an entirely different place. After a stint in a less than prestigious community college in Alabama ("They gave welding degrees, I swear to God!" Dover cackles), the singer/guitarist and Manning formed Jellyfish (sic) [we all know Roger formed Jellyfish with Andy Sturmer, not Eric Dover!], a cult fave, similarly goofy/glamorous outfit that released two albums in the early '90s before disintegrating into San Francisco's clean air. They regrouped as Imperial Drag with L.A. natives Skodis and Joseph Karnes (bass), and have just released their self-titled debut disc, which is, predictably, entertaining as hell: a wildly imaginative, swirling, slightly campy whirlwind of loopy keyboards and pop-culture influences, winding its way through such inspiringly silly subjects as astrology ("Zodiac Sign"), Hugh Hefner ("Playboy After Dark") and the decline and fall of the space program ("Man In The Moon"). Right now, Dover's reading the Unabomber manifesto. Stay tuned for funny future song lyrics. Nail polish is important, too. The Drags are resplendent in multicolored, glittery fingernails.
"We were in this store yesterday," recalls Dover, an almost dead-ringer for the Black Crowes' Rich Robinson, "and the guy at the cash register goes, 'Can I ask you something? Are you making the [sex] change? I don't mean to offend, it's just that I saw the nail polish' And he was being serious."
"I think HE was making the change," says Skodis.
"Nail polish really throws 'em off," says Dover, regarding his hand. "I think all people's nails should be polished every day." But the real deal, they decide, is no eyebrows.
"You shave your eyebrows off, and it's the quickest, easiest way to become a freak," Dover adds. Better than a mohawk or multiple piercings. "No eyebrows, you turn into a minion of Satan."
Somehow, such conversation seems strangely apropos in the exotic environs of Moon of Tunis, an authentic Middle Eastern joint in Hollywood that just happens to be across the street from the locale of Hugh Grant and Divine's, uh, divine encounter. The finger lickin' exotic food is best -- like it or not -- when eaten with your fingers. As the Drag-sters scoop bites of the strange delicacies from the communal platter, they wonder about the content of the sometimes mysterious shared meal.
"Human flesh. The other white meat," deadpans Karnes, a vegetarian.
The talk turns to advisability of using CPR ResuscitAnnie dolls for sex-toy, blow-up doll purposes (Really!); the relationship of aging and space travel; Dr. Who; Back to The Future and America's Most Wanted.
"I like Cops and all those shows because they make me feel so much better about my life," laughs Dover. "Look at the white trash, they're being carried away, their kids are crying...."
"I can't watch too much reality. It freaks me out," says Manning. "The news -- today there was death, death, death, rape, maiming and more death."
Adds Karnes, "everything is chaotic now -- the world is so rapid-fire that it's really easy to get bogged down and go, 'Oh my God, it's too much to handle. I'm just going to go and sulk and be morbid and depressed."
Like some bands they know. It's an important subject for them.
"People have had their fill of the alterna-thing. They're starting to go, 'I want something new.' Even the alternative bands, like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, they were musical. Smashing Pumpkins is very musical. It's getting away, thank God, from that whole underachiever punk-rock think of, LET'S LEARN THREE CHORDS AND PLAY IN A BAND," says Manning. "Punkers are coming around. It's not like '79 where, if you had long hair, the punkers would make fun of you, kick your ass and kick you out. But now, they're going, 'You know, I remember when my brother used to listen to Van Halen records and I thought they were stupid when I was 12, but now I kinda like them.'"
"But with us, if you want to look deeper, you'll find things, too," adds Dover. "You can listen to this band as background music at a party -- that's a personal goal of mine -- but if you get under the headphones and really listen...I know that's in there too. because that's how all my favorite records were.
"People are worried about credibility? They better be worried about what's being sold to them," he adds. "You have to be very careful what you watch on TV, and I don't mean censorship. I think everything: nudity, fucking, sucking...EVERYTHING should be on TV. But you have to be careful about what you put in your head, because they don't always know how your head is going to react to it. Beware of something that sounds too good to be true."
Dover's favorite TV is public-access cable and the Discovery Channel.
"I just watched this thing on King penguins," he recalls.
"History-of-the-Bible shows," adds Manning.
When they wrote the Bible, they knew how to pack in entertainment value," says Dover. "The early books of the Bible were nothing but begattin' and begettin'. Genesis, Exodus...two great speed-metal bands,' he deadpans, breaking into guffaws.
"Don't forget Nazareth," says Skodis.
"Everyone in this band listens to so many different kinds of music, it kind of fucks us up," says Karnes. "I guess the average listener is wanting us to champion one kind of music and we just can't do it -- we're musicians."
"It's like, we like to try a lot of different restaurants," says Dover. "It doesn't mean we're bad people or we're whores or we're trying to take the fast route to success." (Though with a tour with Alanis Morissette coming up...)
"We're just fucking fickle," laughs Dover. "We get bored very easily....."
"And we want to try it ALL," interrupts Skodis.
