Thinking Plague

Colorado's Thinking Plague have been a prominent band in the world of Rock In Opposition / Avant Prog since their formation in 1982. As they approach their 30th anniversary Torodd Fuglesteg sent a few questions to co-founder, leader, composer/producer and guitarist Mike Johnson:

My own influences are somewhat different from the other band founder, Bob Drake. We were both big Beatles fans, and later serious fans of 70's progressive bands like Yes and Gentle Giant.  I was more into Genesis than him, and he never listened to King Crimson, whose early albums I liked a lot.  We were both into Henry Cow and then the Art Bears - probably him a little more than me, though I was very much influenced by HC's album 'Western Culture" and their song "Living in the Heart of the Beast".  Both of us were deep in the thrall of the Art Bears by 1979-80.

The main difference between myself and Bob, and a lot of other "rock" people, is my long devotion to the orchestral or symphonic music of the 20th century.  I was introduced to Aaron Copland as a small child and have been a fan ever since.  In my teens my older brother, Burton, turned me on to Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Britten and others, which changed the trajectory of my life permanently.  And I became enamored of the symphonic music of Leonard Bernstein, and also Samuel Barber, Michael Tippet, and many others.  Ultimately the American composer William Schuman rose to the top of my "pyramid of worship".  I think that he and Shostakovich have had the greatest effect on my harmonic sense.

As I recall, Bob and I were searching for a name that was a kind of non sequitur, sort of like Iron Butterfly or Led Zeppelin.  So we were trying to put together words that wouldn't normally be found together.  I think it was me who came up with 'Thinking Plague' as both a non sequitur, but also a double or multiple entendre: the inability to stop thinking, or thinking ABOUT the plague, or a disease, a plague, that thinks.  My own preferred interpretation has always been basically the first one, one's inability to be in the 'hear and now' without having to think, to analyze, to be somehow separate from one's immediate experience.  A "plague" indeed.  But there was no "agenda" with the name, really.

This is an archive based interview also intended for the fans you get will after both you and I have passed away so let's go straight to your albums. Please give us your views/some words on your albums, starting with.......

This, of course, was our first attempt, and was very much a DIY kind of effort, by a couple inexperienced but determined young musicians.  I was far from finding my definite 'voice' as a composer, and there are various developmental threads that are represented on the album, which perhaps should not have been squished together onto one record.  Or perhaps they should - I don't know.  In any event, there were only 500 copies pressed and the covers were hand-sprayed-painted by Bob Drake with me as 'production line assistant'.  The re-mastered re-release of this LP on the 'Early Plague Years' CD is much better sounding than the original cheap vinyl pressing.

We had some more and better players to help us on this album, although we still did not have a clear aesthetic direction.  We included an excerpt from a live-in-the-studio improv ('Collarless Fog that One Day Soon…'), and a very mesmerizing kind of static song by Susanne Lewis, neither of which had much in common with my more composed songs on the record. Again, divergent threads pulled together into an album. Nevertheless, I thought it was a better sounding record with better playing…although the original vinyl pressing by Deadman's Curve Records was total crap.  Again the CD re-release on 'Early Plague Years' is vastly superior.

This is the first record where I feel like we actually found our "voice" and made a solid consistent 'album' of songs.  Our actual recording technology resources were not particularly better than for the previous records, but we had more experience and clearer aesthetic vision to guide us.  And we did not have to suffer the indignity of a low quality vinyl pressing, since it was our first CD (and CD only) release.  Moreover, we managed to get onto Chris Cutler's RēR label, which for us was a real coup.  The album got much wider distribution and had the inherent "recommendation" of being on the "Recommended" label.  It kind of put us "on the map".

Ultimately, this record was a combination of some material written for and played by the 1990 incarnation of the band (Bob Drake on bass, Dave Kerman on drums, Susanne Lewis on vocals, Shane Hotle on Keys, Mark Harris on reeds, and me on guitar) with material written later and played by the1997 incarnation (Dave Willey on bass, Deborah Perry on vocals, Harris on reeds, me, and nobody in particular on keys, yet).  So, it was some of the best recording work by the earlier band, such as 'Les Etudes d'Organisme', four new songs, and some material that fell kind of in-between, such as 'Kingdom Come', which was actually written in the late 80s.

Anyway, Kerman added a lot of drum energy that we'd never had, and Deborah's precision allowed me to write more difficulty vocal parts.  Dave Willey's accordion added a new color and, of course, Bob's great mix job, even though he was no longer an active band member, really MADE the album. He managed to make it all sound like it belongs together.  We had gotten onto the Cuneiform label for this one, and that along with the explosion of the internet gave this CD much greater distribution than we'd ever had.

As I mentioned earlier, this was a remastered CD re-release by Cuneiform of our first two vinyl LPs.  This CD almost never came into being, because I had some difficulty finding the original masters, which were in different formats like reel-to-reel, digital tape, etc.  We never got our master tape of Moonsongs back from the defunct Deadman's Curve label, but I found a digital copy in Sony F1 format.  Somehow, I managed top get it all into one format in one place, and then I sent it all to Bob Drake to re-master.  With the help of Cuneiform's graphic artist Bill Ellsworth, we put together a very nice booklet and included cover and other art from the original albums.  As I said, the sound is very good, and so much better than the vinyl versions.  Bob did a great mastering job.

In 1995 I spend a couple months in Europe rehearsing and touring with the 5UU's. While there I became very intrigued with the history and geography of the area of southern France - Languedoc and Midi-Pyrenees - where Bob Drake's studio/farm is located.  Predictably, I came up with some musical ideas that became very associated in my mind with that region.  When I returned to the states, I read a number of related histories and historical novels, and after In Extremis was released, I began to work on a collection of songs, using those ideas from 1995 and later, that would express some of the mystique and tragedy of that region's history.  I hoped to use that as a kind of allegory about humanity's insane history of inhumanity, from which sickness we are not yet cured.  And I also touched on the personal malaise or mental illness that such a heritage has produced.  These songs became A History of Madness, another title with multiple entendres.

This CD was recorded by the "live" line-up that had performed at Progday, NEARFest, the MIMI festival, and other concerts in 1999 and 2000 - essentially the "In Extremis" band but with Matt Mitchell on keys and David Shamrock, late of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, on drums (after our live shows in 2000, Dave Kerman left TP to live and work on music in Israel). The approach for this CD was more "organic", featuring a lot of acoustic instruments, especially reedy sounds like accordion, harmonium, hurdy-gurdy, etc.

Initially, I felt that our performance at NEARFest in 2000 was not one of our best, and it took some pressure from some other people to convince me that we should use the multitrack recordings made at the festival to mix a TP live album - which is what happened, and this CD is the result.  Again, I asked Bob Drake to mix it, and he did a fantastic job of capturing the authentic live quality of the room, while getting a great overall band sound, in which everything is clear and audible.  We played much of the material at a faster tempo than the studio versions, and so there is a lot of raw energy in these tracks.

I don't really know what other bands may sound like us, other than a few 5UUs tracks.  I haven't heard any others.  But I would say that we have elements of everything from the Art Bears to Yes, King Crimson to Albert Marcoeur, but more of something "other" than any of those kinds of artists.  …which I think comes from my deep interest in 20th century orchestral music from composers such as Shostakovich and Schuman.

We do NOT play 'jazz', but we do use some jazz-like orchestration at times.  Our music is more like progressive rock, maybe along the lines of some Gentle Giant material, but with a definite element of modern extended or poly-tonality.  We are NOT technically atonal, I must insist, and we NEVER use the 12 tone method or any other "system" for generating musical ideas.  Our music require numerous listenings before most people can begin to appreciate, but thematic is "tuneful" and emotional in a more "modern" way.  It is NOT written to be intentionally complex, but rather to create some depth.

This new CD is really the epitome, in my opinion, of what I was just describing.  It is also a straight up musical indictment of the corruption, greed, dogmatic stupidity and improvident short-sightedness of political, economical and religious leaders in the world today.  The lyric concepts are pretty dark, obviously, giving a pretty pessimistic view of the current state of affairs.  The music, however, is mostly not so dark. The songs are complex and deep, but they have very distinct melodies and recurring themes and sections.  There are some wistful or even forlorn passages, some mysterious or dream-like passages, but there are also some pretty "rocking" sections, with rather upbeat rhythms and melodies.  I believe it is the best TP album yet, having taken a huge amount of time and effort, and benefiting from my increased command over my own compositional idiom.  I hope people will give many listens before passing any judgment.

We are currently rehearsing a live performance unit completely based in Colorado, which we have not had in over 20 years, and we plan to do more local and regional concerts, with occasional festivals and small tours as the opportunities arise.  We have been invited to perform at the Rock-in-Opposition Festival near Albi, France this September (2012), so we hope our European fans will try to come see us there.

No, not really.  Thank you very much.

Mike Johnson

(with thanks to Torodd Fuglesteg for the interview)