Originally published in ‘zine issue 1, 1991
Fear Of God came to Washington, D.C. in June in support of the Warner Brothers debut, Within the Veil. What a great show the band put on! Nick Teta Jr. and I went on the tour bus before the show and talked to Dawn Crosby, the vocalist, and Mike Carlino, the guitarist, two of the coolest.
D.U.: In a live situation, how do you decide what vocal and guitar parts to play, since there’s so many tracks all over each other on the album?
Mike: Well, actually, what you hear in the studio, it’s the opposite. The live thing was interpreted a certain way for the studio, so that when you hear it live, you don’t really miss what’s not there on the record. I don’t really know how to—
Dawn: ‘Cause we wrote the songs live. We just embellished them a little in the studio.
Mike: So there’s not a particular choice, like, “Okay, I’m only gonna play this part.” Actually, what you hear live is what we did on the record, but on the record, say, like, instead of doubling the one part with a second electric guitar, it’s doubled with an acoustic guitar. We tried to capture on the record what we do live.
Whose idea was it to typeset all the lyrics in that way on the album?
Dawn: Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, all mine. [laughs] Oh yeah, that’s just my dyslexic mind at work. It’s like a poem. Dyslexic Dawn, that’s the poetic type.
Do you two make all the decisions for the band?
Dawn: More or less, yeah, just me and Mike.
Mike: We tell everybody what to do. We tell our record company and our manager and—no, actually, it’s just because me and her were writing together years ago before the band formed into what it formed into. And it’s been basically song-wise our baby all the way, you know. But the other bandmembers are just as much considered bandmembers, you know? We don’t really think we run a show or anything.
Dawn: They get paid just as much as we do on the road. That’s right, isn’t it, Blair?
Blair Darby, the bassist, who was sitting there the whole time: Mm-hmm.
Since you have songs on the album that are three or four years old, did you think that they’d get stale by the time they came out?
Dawn: Not really, ‘cause we just felt like they were important enough to be heard. They were children that were old and distorted and fucked up, but we loved them anyway, you know? [laughs] We got lots of new ones that are just waiting for the next record, too, so it’s just like, it would’ve been a shame not to put them on there.
Mike: Definitely.
Do you have any comment about labels not putting albums out on vinyl anymore?
Dawn: Yeah, we wish they’d put our record on vinyl. Then I would tape it at home onto cassette. I think it’s warmer, I like it better, and when my CD starts to skip, I absolutely lose my mind. I run through the house, I knock things over, I gotta get that thing off, y’know?
Mike: LP is definitely much warmer in terms of, y’know, what you’re hearing. CD, you hear a wider dynamic range, but you’re missing a lot of the elements that the vinyl brought out. Just like the major difference between a cassette and a CD. I mean, even a cassette, if it’s well made, is much warmer sounding than the actual CD. The CD, clarity wise, is much better. That warmth is missing.
What types of bands do you prefer to tour with?
Mike: I’d like to actually tour with two other different bands.
Dawn: Slayer!
Mike: I’d like to tour with the extreme of Slayer and then Jane’s Addiction, you know? Like, one big bill. Because I’d like to think that us and those other two bands could definitely cross over to each other’s crowd. ‘Cause we’ve played before a Slayer crowd in Montreal, and we’ve also played in front of kinda artsy-fartsy kinda crowds.
When you played with Slayer, did you get spat on and stuff?
Mike: No way. They loved us. That was one of the best shows I’ve ever done. And the guys in Slayer were really cool to us. They couldn’t believe we packed in a van and drove cross-country just to play with them. Well, we drove from Jersey.
Dawn: I drove from California.
Mike: Well, that just makes you—
Dawn: A star.
Mike: Just more hungry.
Dawn: No, that makes me poor. I couldn’t afford a ticket. [laughs]
Do you have a last comment to say to the kids that’ll read this?
Dawn: We just wanna say that we love you guys and that you’re sick. If you’re reading this magazine, you must be sick. And we’re sick ‘cause we’re doing an interview with this magazine! [laughs] And sick Richard and his sick friend Nick. Over and out! Crosby out! [laughs] ■
