October 21st, 2013 | E-mail interview by NINa | Submit for an interview | detailed review | Read other Fabryka interviews

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NINa: You've been making industrial and metal music for the last 12 years. What are 5 major changes you've noticed about the scene: older and newer bands, fans, support, music directions?

Jimmie Jones: Actually it's been longer than that. I started way back when I was in my teens playing bass for metal bands around the San Francisco Bay Area. For lack of better terminology, Eroded Pride is just the girlfriend I've had the longest.

The scene hasn't changed much in my opinion. You sadly have bands no matter where they are, trying to be the biggest fish in the littlest fishbowl and do things that they think boost themselves while attempting to undermine their perceived competition, but all their actions do is bring down the music community in their area / region / town.

I've never been one to trash talk or talk down other bands or performers; I'm a firm believer in "a rising tide floats all ships". The older bands are fading away and I hate to see them go because I have a lot of respect and admiration for them. There is and always will be a next generation to take the place of those before them and as part of that next generation, what I do and what others do will always be compared to the prior. I think the only difference between older bands newer bands really is that the older bands blazed the trail and all of us now stand on the shoulders of their achievements.

Now I have and heard of bands saying they are the musical combination of this artist and this artist. I think being compared is in a way honoring and showing the respect to not only your influences. I don't think it matters who you are or what genre you're in, there will be sound and style comparisons. The fans see it and the fans hear it. It makes it harder in a way to grow an audience unless you can give them something that they as a listener can grab a hold of and call their own. I think music listeners want to hear something comfortable, something with a vague feel of familiar.

As far as music directions, I am hoping we are entering a phase in music where genres are solidifying and are no longer fragmenting into splintered sub-genres. The whole process from a musician stand point doesn't really make much sense to me. In the attempt to theoretically carve out your own niche, you're ultimately narrowing the people who might listen to you. I guess the perfect example would be instead of lumping Aerosmith, Rush and AC/DC into a rock category, they get splintered off into hard rock, prog rock etc. So someone who would have otherwise listened to them all is turned off by the categorized names. I think everyone who is trying to get an audience, no matter what size, should appreciate the fans they get and I for one do. I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for them and no one can say they are where they are without them.

NINa: Most of the songs from the album seem to be inspired by dark or sad stories such as that of a mortician who learns more about a woman of his interest only when she arrives dead on his table or the last minutes of a man on death row. Finally, a boy who locks a girl in a basement to kill his own loneliness. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Jimmie: lol yeah good stuff. In my other life I'm a writer and I was raised on horror movies. As a matter of fact when I think about it in the same timeframe of my youth, 9 or so, I got my first musical instrument and discovered Edgar Allan Poe. I always approach music as an exercise in storytelling and since I slant more to horror and sci-fi genres, I think the bleed over into music is just natural. I guess one could view each song as an episode of Tales from the Crypt put to music like horror musical vignettes.

Of the two songs you brought up, "Pathology" was written as a mousy man pining for a hooker junkie that he passed every night on his way to work the graveyard shift at the county morgue. One night on the way to work he doesn't see her, till he gets to work and she's on his autopsy table. At that point he is able to express his affections to her when she's dead that he couldn't muster the courage to in life. With the second song mention "Alone", that is more of a Norman Bates, for lack of a better example off the top of my head, type of story where boy meets and falls madly in love with girl, boy stalks girl and sees she has a boyfriend, boy kills girl and keeps her body in the basement so she'd always be with him and only him and he'd never be alone.

NINa: It seems that there will be a few music videos released to visualize the songs from Short Attention-span Theatre. Are you going to step into any promotional models similar to unlocking one video after another on YouTube with every 50 new Facebook Likes or after selling 5-10 albums?

Jimmie: The current plan is 5 videos from Short Attention-span Theatre and 4 from the first album Surviving Reno: The Biggest Little Headache and those 9 being turned into a DVD. That however depends on the direction of the negotiations I am in with a video production company and right now my mind is more on getting things set for the album's release on October 29th.
Part of the plan though is to give a little something back to the people that have been Eroded Pride's biggest fans and I'd like to try and work them into the videos in some way, but plans are what you do before life intervenes. At this point a marketing scheme for videos is up in the air until I have some videos to market.

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Pictures come from Eroded Pride's archive, all copyrights reserved by their respective owners. Questions proofreading: Mike 'Vesper' Dziewoński.