After 12 Years, Mindless Self Indulgence Re-Release And Reflect on 'Tight'

After 12 years, Mindless Self Indulgence have re-released their long out of print debut album "Tight".  The new version is called "Tighter" and to celebrate its release here's a rundown from the band on the original songs:

<<< GRAB THE MIC >>>

JIMMY > The one thing that I always remember about Grab The Mic is my cell phone ringing when i was doing the vocals ….we left it in because it was on the beat ….you can hear it  right in the break, before the lyrics "everything old is new again and again and again and again "

STEVE > There's a part in the song where I had to slide way up the neck and hit a sharp note. Luckily there was some dried up blood on the fret that I had to hit, so all I remember about this one is being loaded and thinking "find da blood sucka, find da blood"

KITTY > Hardly any drums in this song, but what was there was oddly difficult to time - especially coming in off the bass solo where there is really no track to cover any mistakes. I thought to myself "That is going to be a heart-in-the-throat moment live for the bass player and myself" & it always was!



<<< BRING THE PAIN >>>

JIMMY > This is the blueprint of an MSI song …. many different styles all smashed together …to invent that sound before we knew how to do it we made six different cover versions of bring the pain  … each one in a different style … one metal /new wave / dance / hip hop ect ect …then we took the best bits from each and cut them all together … this sounds easy today but in 1996 on an Atari computer and an s950 it was insane to even try it ...but we are stupid like that

STEVE  >  Because the programming has all Atari and shit back then, some of the timing was a little off- there were a lot of "guessing cues" on this one.

KITTY  > Absolutely agree with Steve - That Atari program was the bane of my existence because it was pattern-based instead of linear. If anyone tried to read the drum part that I wrote for this song, they would be like "what the hell am I looking at?!" Jimmy and I spent a lot of time during Tight arguing about what constituted "a measure" in any of these songs! haha :P

<<< TIGHT >>>

JIMMY > This song was about as slow as we ever got …which  proved to be a godsend live because we could take a two minute break from going 250 bpm all night long

STEVE > My favorite memory of this song was when Kitty asked Jimmy what the song was about. he said "it's about me not getting fucked in the ass yet". Kitty just looked at him and said "eww". I'm guessing she vurped a bit too.

KITTY > Yes & Yes. My favorite memory is Jimmy doing "the jumprope" with the mic cord during this song when we did it live.

  <<< DIABOLICAL >>>

JIMMY > This song to me is all about that hard rave kick drum beat and that awesome "Reign Of The Tech"  sample …
The Beatnuts are mad cool for letting a bunch of crazy white boys and girls dressed in pink scream bloody murder all over that sample

STEVE  > I just remember that when the breakdown would happen in the middle of the song, I would jump off the highest shit that I could find at the venue that we were playing at. 11 times out of 10 nobody caught me.

KITTY > Lots of cymbal crashes! Always a fun time playing this song :)

<<< MOLLY >>>

JIMMY > Everyone thinks that this song is about them …" oh my name is Molly it's about me he wrote it for me i know him we dated once"  blah blah blah …I DONT KNOW YOU AND IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!

STEVE >  I don't think that this one had an intro when we went to record it--I think Vanessa and I threw something together 5 minutes before they hit record. It still stands to this day as the greatest intro ever put to tape.

KITTY > Jimmy found these Clarissa Explains It All trading cards somewhere & somehow I ended up with a Clarissa Darling driver's license card in my in-ear box. Every couple of years I would be digging in there for an extra set of ear plugs and I would find it and crack up! So of course I left it in there, and it's still in there for me to chuckle over when I most need it on tour.

 <<< TORNADO >>>

JIMMY > I wrote this exactly how it sounds on this record in one day  …I never changed a note or arrangement on it …it took me 6 hours to make it and 14 years for it to destroy me.

STEVE  > Jimmy called me up and played Tornado to me over the phone. I just thought "a weather based song, huh? well i know blame it on the rain did really well for Milli Vanilli so.....maybe....." Lo and behold, I was wrong.

KITTY > One of my favorites to this day, never got stale for me, always got me pumped up and a great way to start live. So, it was almost always in our live set list over the entire 10 years, to the point where when we would talk about a set list it would begin "So, we'll start with Tornado, obviously..."

 
<<< DADDY >>>

JIMMY >  I love the shortness of punk rock songs ….one minute song! done! on to the next song!  … when we started out we had a lot of short short  songs ….the only drawback is you end up having 25 songs in a 30 minute set …

STEVE  >  We recorded the CD Tight live as a 3 piece over a 2 day period and then Jimmy did the vocals in L.A. this one was so short that i don't even remember recording it. I do remember however, falling down a lot playing it live in the early, early days.

KITTY > When Jimmy first played me what he'd written for Daddy I was like "OK, in that breakdown part it's a little hard to hear the drums, can we solo it so I can hear what they're doing?" Then... "oh, that didn't help... at all..." In those days Jimmy was really into using non-drum sounds to make the electronic percussion in our songs, so when it came time to translate them to what I would play for recording and live, sometimes I had to be really creative... "hmmm, that sounds like it could be a snare, right??"

 
<<< P*SSY ALL NIGHT  >>>

JIMMY > The Backstreet Boys sounding chorus on this song is super fun to play live ….to sing in falsetto  "I wanna give you some drugs and I hope that you like them baby" to people who love you is fun …but to sing it to people who hate you is f*cking priceless

STEVE  > This was always one of the best songs to go buck a$s nuts to playing live. Lots of scars from this one.

KITTY > So much fun to play this one! To me, this was the classic early Mindless with lots of different song-styles mashed together - always fun for a drummer when every measure is different! See mom, all that ADHD video-game playing paid off finally...

 
<<< APPLE COUNTRY  >>>

JIMMY  > To me the bird twittering effect makes this song ….because you immediately imagine it takes place in a big field of trees with apples and you are laying in the grass looking at the sky ….then you're like "wait a fucking minute i was listening to an MSI record what the fuck is going on here?"….but by then it's too late, the joke is on you b*tch …and that happens to me every time i listen to it

STEVE  >  It's a love song written by someone who loves apples, sung to someone who makes him feel like he is surrounded.....by apples.

KITTY >  I remember, Steve sang this song while playing his guitar on "clear" at a Goth club as an encore when we were just starting out. Everyone there, who just a minute ago had been like "Yeah! Brutal! Dark! Gothy!! We want more!!... Encore!!" was immediately frozen in confusion, like "OK... Uh, am I supposed to like this?? Maybe if I try doing a gothy dance to it?" It was highly enjoyable for us, especially because it was so off-putting for everyone else!! haha!
 
<<< D*CKFACE  >>>

JIMMY > Is the forgotten hero on Tighter.. just like a Korean War soldier …it is a bang`n song, fun to play, sing and listen to …..but I always forget it even exists until i see the track list for this record.. ..I love it but tomorrow I'm gonna forget it exists again.

STEVE >  This song has some of the most freakoid cues and wacky timing, which makes you breathe weird when you play it live.

KITTY > In my top 10 fun tracks to play live! Super-challenging all-over-the-place bridge part for the drums, but if I hit it dead-on with the programming live, it was also super-satisfying to the point where sometimes I would yell "F YEAH!!!!" after coming back into the falsetto singy part.

 
<<< BITE YOUR RHYMES  >>>

JIMMY > This is my favorite song off of Tighter  …super cool lyrics and programing ..super fast BPM on the drums … we only played it live once ever and it was at Vanessa's last show.

STEVE > This one has got one of my favorite lyrics of all time- "I reign supreme in my own damn mind"- it sums up so many of us doesn't it?

KITTY > Love this song! Totally fun to play except it is all 32nd notes on the drums! Kind of feels like you are barely holding on by your fingernails the whole time you are playing & you are in a fever dream where your arms are just moving all over the place, then it is over and you are breathing hard & like "what just happened??" Maybe why we only ever played it live once...
 
<<< TORNADO LIVE >>>

JIMMY > Sounds pretty damn good for being recorded at CBGB's

STEVE > The best thing about this song being recorded at CBGB's was that 1 year earlier, we were "banned forever" from playing there.....they must have forgotten

KITTY > HAHAH! "You will never play CB's again!" Cut to.... :) I'll always remember the night we recorded this, because I invited a friend who brought her boyfriend to the show. They were there for like 5 minutes making their way through the crowd when Jimmy yelled "Shoe MF!" and threw his hightop into the audience randomly hitting my friend's boyfriend in the balls! He limped out, and they spent the rest of the show standing on Bowery waiting for the madness to be over. I don't think they ever came to another show, now that I think about it....
 
<<< JX-47 >>>

JIMMY > This is the big cult MSI song …it was written and sung by Steve …everyone loved loved loved this song they always quoted it to us at shows ….i think Steve did it once or twice at the end of a show if he drank a whole bottle of Cisco

STEVE > JX-47 is a loving homage to my "friends".....seeeee?

KITTY > I love this song :) Such an awesome sing-along song! I always imagine this song being sung by a pub full of drunken English soccer hooligans with deep, manly beer-soused voices waving pint glasses in the air. Can anyone make that dream come true for me? I'm just saying, I think it would be a YouTube sensation...

Mindless Self Indulgence's "Tighter" is available now on CD/DVD, Vinyl & Digital right here.