The small clips of dialogue from TV and film found in a whole load of punk songs seem to be just as infectious as the songs themselves. However, is there any significance to those references, or is this just an exercise in delving into the superficial. I set out to find the answer to that question after binge-watching the first four seasons of Futurama. Naturally, the first band I thought to ask was The Dopamines, so I caught up with Jon Lewis (guitar, vocals) to answer these questions.
You guys try and sneak in samples from Futurama, like at the end of ‘Dick Simmons‘. How and why did you use that clip of dialogue, and were there any legal issues?
Well, some people know and some people don’t – I’m an huge fan of Futurama. Like, OBSESSED with Futurama. I fall asleep to an episode every night in bed. Lately, my wife has been giving me shit, so we’ve switched to Bob’s Burgers (equally amazing show), but we’ll be back to Futurama soon enough.To answer your question (finally), I tried to lay some Futurama clips on pretty much every release we have. It would continuously be shot down by someone (band or others) before it made it to wax, but i was able to force one in on Expect the Worst. I chose that one in particular because it was relevant to the song that came after it, which was ‘Waking Up In The Monroe House With Cat Hair In My Mouth’. Also, it’s a funny line about drinking and driving.As far as legal ramifications? I don’t think we’re big enough of a band that we fall on Fox’s radar (hopefully). Plus, we don’t make any money doing this band so there’s no point in suing us. A cease and deist letter would be painfully messy so hopefully nobody on the (former) Futurama payroll hears it someday and gets pissed.
That use of the sample from Futurama seemed to strike a chord heavily with some listeners. Why do you think that is?
Probably because Futurama rules. Everyone loves a good Futurama reference. I have to imagine that a sizable amount of people who listen to us are fans.Also worth noting is that the song title ‘Try This Kids At Home’ from our split with the Copyrights is a Futurama reference. Everyone, the band/label/artist kept telling me it was supposed to be ‘Try This At Home Kids’, because they didn’t know it was a Futurama reference. Everyone just thought I was too stupid to put a sentence together correctly. But yeah, it’s a quote from Bender on the episode ‘Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV’ from season four.
A couple of song titles are references to dates, like October 24th and June 4th – why are those dates significant?
October 24th, 2008 was the day I got laid off from my office job. The song itself is about that event. June 4th, 2009 was the first time I got an unemployment check while on tour. The song is basically about the day I got over all the depression of losing my job. You see, back in early 2008, I was ready to accept my career path. 40 hours a week, 2 weeks vacation. I had gone to college for architecture and was really excited about working in the field. I had no clue that I could just get laid off. I was so naive. The economy was about to collapse and it was just going over my head at the time. It was a real kick to the nuts when I lost my job. It seems trivial now, but a the time I was so oblivious to how the professional world operated that it really felt like a betrayal. I put in so many years of education and worked so hard, only to be shown the door.Anyway I could go on for hours about that shit. Point is, without that shit, there would be no Expect the Worst. Neither of those songs would have existed without that personal “tragedy”.
Your EP ‘Soap and Lampshades’ seems to be a reference to the Nazis. Is it really?
Yep, it’s about the Holocaust. Not on purpose necessarily, and I wasn’t trying to make a statement or anything, which is kind of shitty when you think about it. Anyway our old drummer Matt watched this Holocaust documentary where Jewish survivors were being interviewed about their experiences in concentration camps. The interviewer asked one man “what happened to your friends and family? do you have any friends that also survived?” To which the man replied, “All my friends are lampshades and soap”, alluding to the horrid practice of Nazi doctors and surgeons, who allegedly would use the fat of Jewish people to make soap, and made lampshades out of their skin.So Matt wanted me to write a song using that line “all my friends are soap and lampshades” as a metaphor for losing friendships throughout life. Instead I wore a very literal song with a lot of wordplay about the Holocaust. It’s also pretty catchy. Go figure.
A lot of fans in the UK are disappointed that we didn’t get to catch The Dopamines on tour here. Is it more difficult to tour in Britain than on mainland Europe, or is it just not worth doing so?
I think that by the time we had built a big enough fan base to warrant going to the UK, our lives were such that we didn’t have a lot of time to schedule longer tours that included going to the UK. Also, yes, it takes a lot of due diligence and cash to get a punk band into the UK, especially when some of us have police records. And because we pretty much do everything ourselves, the paperwork and hoops to jump through are pretty intimidating. But i think we’ll get over there eventually.
What are you guys up to now and in the next few months?
Not a damn thing. I have most of a record written, and it’s been written since 2012, so we have no excuse to not be doing anything. I also want to call the new record ‘Tales of Interest’ – A title fitting for the subject of this interview.
So, that should clear up some of the more ambiguous elements behind The Dopamines. Who knows where TV PARTY will take us next…