This Is Albatross recently caught up with Popeye Vogelsang formerly of FARSIDE and currently in YOUR FAVOURITE TRAINWRECK to talk about both bands. This is a great retrospective history of FARSIDE including the involvment of Zach De La Rocha, why the band broke up as well as a video interview as Popeye explains what a few classic FARSIDE songs were actually about.
Let’s start off with the most important question…how the hell did you get the name “Popeye?”
The nickname I got when I was a kid. I used to do a lot of impressions on the playground and that was the one that always got me the most notoriety. So after a while, somewhere in Junior High, kids just started calling me Popeye. I used to move around quite a bit [when I was a kid], l and I was pretty shy like most kids. The thought of introducing myself to another kid just seemed like the most painful thing I could imagine…so I’d just do random impressions as an icebreaker.
As you know everyone in the punk scene seems to have some kind of nickname, so it just kept catching on from there. And when I’d record I just be credited as ‘Popeye.’ Not that anyone ever asked me, I was just credited that way…so I started rolling with it.
It’s funny because I do use ‘Popeye’ professionally. So according to SAG and AFTRA, my legal name is “Popeye V.” I was really surprised and thought they were gonna shoot me down but they were like, “Yeah, that’s fine…Popeye.” So I love it when I’m doing a voice-over job and I’m working with a director, and you know that everytime they say it (Popeye,) they just kinda hate themselves a little bit…because they have to.
Tell us about who made you fall in love with music?
I think it was KISS. Yeah, back in the mid-seventies. You know, when you’re a little kid what is cooler than KISS. I wanted to be Peter Chris. I wanted to be a drummer. My whole family was very musical, everybody played piano and my parents were absolutely not gonna buy me a drum set so I took a few years of piano lessons and eventually taught myself to play guitar.
What really kicked it up musically another notch was the very first Clash album. I was around 9 or 10 and it just completely blew me away. It was so beyond my comprehension. I knew a tiny bit about “Punk” but didn’t really know about the movement of it. But I totally love that album and it made me want to get more involved and learn more about it and, of course, to start writing those kind of songs.
Whoa…I trailed off there a little bit, but basically KISS because it made me realize musicians were the coolest people in the world and thinking, “Wow. A rockstar! How awesome would that be.” And more importantly The Clash made me want to be a musician, specifically a punk rock musician.
Can you ‘pin down’ a specific thing that makes you love playing music?
Wow. Ummm. That’s really hard to put into words. You just kinda know. There’s such a feeling of satisfaction with feeling like I wrote something that I can be proud of, or playing something that felt like it was just firing on all cylinders. A lot of times that happens at rehearsal. Shows are fun, but there’s something I’ve always enjoyed about being in a small room with a group of guys that you can work with really well and I don’t get tired of playing the same song over and over again ’cause you just want it to be as awesome as it can be. Feeling like you just fucking nailed it. Finding music in it’s purest sense, that purity is passion.
Let’s get into Farside. What’s the history for anyone who might not know?
I actually begged to be in Farside. Literally. I’d never sung for a band and heard they were looking for a singer. I kept bugging them till they let me come to a practice. It’s funny because when we all practiced together I was recording it as well. I went to go take a smoke break and forgot I left the tape recorder running, so in that 10/15 minute span you can hear the guys like, “What did you guys think?” ”Uhhh, yeah, he was pretty good…I guess.” Basically no one was really enthusiastic about me being in a band. I eventually made it in, but it didn’t really start off with the biggest vote of confidence.
Once things started catching on for us it worked really well. We did a 7″ on Crisis Records. Then we did the Rochambeau album on Revelation Records. Right after that in 1992, we had gotten back from our first US tour and Rob (Haworth,) the original guitarist decided to quit because he wanted to move on to something else. That’s when we got a hold of Kevin Murphy (411) who was a local musician we knew, and asked him to play…and it was amazing. Our first bass player, Josh Stanton, wanted to do something else after we recorded the 7″, so he went to play for 411, and that’s when we got Bryan Chu to play bass for us.
You wanna talk about the Zack De La Rocha thing? I’m sure you get that question a lot…
That was brief but certainly significant. Not because he went on to Rage Against The Machine, but because he is an incredibly talented musician. So he helped to change up the sound a little bit, and we expanded in ways we wanted to with random acoustic guitars and backup vocals. He recorded one demo with us, but I think he was only in the band for about six months. After he left, that’s when one of the guys was like, “Why don’t you play guitar?” and I was like, “Wait, what?! That’s ludicrious!” I locked myself in a room and started to figure out how to play. That definitely changed us a little bit because back in those days in Orange County, the singer never played an instrument. It was a little scary to be ‘that band’ but luckily everyone was pretty cool with it. It really takes away the option to do a lot of stage diving and get back-up vocals from the crowd.
Tell us about your first bands?
I played in a few bands before Farside, but nothing really significant although I was in a band on Conversion Records called Borderline and that was actually the first record I ever recorded. The only other member you might have heard of is Dennis Remsing who played drums in Outspoken. He did Conversion Records. That 7″ came out in ’89 or ’90.
What eventually led to Farside breaking up?
I think we just kinda reached a point where we really didn’t know what to do with ourselves anymore. It was hard for us to be on the same page about whether or no we wanted to make it into a ‘full time’ thing. We got offers from major labels, some of us were into it and some of us were not. We all had jobs, careers, significant others, and all that. So after roughly a decade if we weren’t going to make it a full-time thing and we were just gonna put out some records and play some local shows, we just kinda decided to hang it up.
What side of that ‘major-label’ fence were you on?
I didn’t want to sign to a major label and I definitely didn’t want to be on tour between six and nine months out of the year. So that was the side I was on. You know, looking back you make the decisions that felt right at the time. Given those same choices now, I can’t say how I would necessarily feel about it. Sadly, no one’s breaking down my door with those kinda offers so it’s not really an issue. I was happy being on Revelation. I liked the freedom, plus I enjoyed my home life and I didn’t want to permanently live out of a suitcase. I like to go on tour and have a little ‘touring vacation.’ The thought of making it into my job just didn’t really feel right for me at the time.
What did you do after Farside broke up?
I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch my guitar for three years. Got married and just kinda wanted to be a regular dood for a while. Did normal stuff that normal people do; focused on my career as a journalist and editor. After so many years of doing that, it started to get stale and then I got an opportunity to try out for The Aquabats and I thought, “That could be interesting.” So I did that for about a year, maybe a little less (circa 2006.) I felt really good, and I kinda miss it. Plus there was a ‘get-up,’ it’s really a rash guard, and a pair of very very comfortable shorts. You can actually see a picture of it on The Aquabat’s Wikipedia. I mean, I’m not mentioned in there, but you can see me in the picture. It was short-lived, but it was a great experience and my seque of getting back into music. I realized how much I missed being on the road and playing music. I also joined up with Jeff Caudill’s solo project. Played with him for about three years, which was awesome. He’s one of my best friends and I’m a huge fan of everything he does. Because it was Jeff’s solo stuff, I really didn’t have to do much other than just show up and play. After seven years after Farside recorded “The Monroe Doctrine” is when I actually started writing again. It was fun to get those creative juices flowing again.
What was the name of the first song you wrote when you started writing again?
It was “Left Alone” which is out on my new bands demo! (Don’t worry…we’ll get to it…)
Let’s get back to “The Monroe Doctrine” because Caudill also did the layout for that record, right?
He and I worked on it together. I did more conceptual, and Jeff did the design. He’s actually a graphic designer and helped me bang it out. At the time, Jeff was doing all of the design work for Revelation releases. He was a graphics guy [for them.] He also helped out on Rochambeau and has done layouts for a ridiculous number of bands. We were very proud of the way it came out.
Tell me about the ‘music range’ of “The Monroe Doctrine?
We went into that record, knowing that it was going to be the last record we ever recorded. So we just wanted to put everything on there that we could possibly come up with. Originally we wanted it to be a double album but Revelation said it would cost too much, especially if we weren’t going to tour too much. They told us we could do one ‘really big’ album. We said, “Screw it.” This is the last time we’re going to be doing it, so we just wanted to throw everything on there that we thought was going to be a good song. I think it definitely encompasses the band as a whole, from beginning to end. I’m unbelievably proud of that record, and it’s my favorite Farside record, for sure. I’m proud of everything we did, but I’ve always loved records that went into a lot of different ‘areas,’ and that one [The Monroe Doctrine] does. “Rigged” is great cause it’s straight forward. “Rochambeau” was a little more produced and not quite as ‘punk.’
Did you have any contemporary influences at the time of Farside?
The Descendants, 7 Seconds, Gameface were all big influences. Elvis Costello has always been one of my all time favorites. I also liked a lot of stuff that wasn’t ‘punk’ but still had the attitude of it, like Costello, Joe Jackson, Graham Parker. And then I can turn around a listen to Helmet, or Youth of Today and just think, “I’m really inspired by this, how am I gonna take that and make it palettable to what Farside’s doing?” Or, “What if you were to mix up a song between The Descendants and Helmet?” I’m not sure if it worked, but it was a fun way to keep it fresh.
Is that how you always write songs?
Not always. Sometimes that just how I like to challenge myself. Sometimes some of the most popular songs you write are sometimes the ones you spent the least amount of time writing or working on. There’s some songs I’ve written from beginning to end in an hour and everyone’s like “That’s an amazing song!” Then other songs I’ve literally spent months working on, and people are like, “Oh yeah, that one’s pretty good…yeah.”
Can you give us some examples?
Yeah, on “Rigged” the first song “Square One” is one that I just wrote in a flash, and then “Moral Straightjacket” (The Monroe Doctrine)took me months to get done. It kinda spun out of control, although no one ever told me they hated that song, but not as many people seemed to like it.
What do you think your biggest regret is with playing in Farside?
I wish we would have taken advantage of more of the opportunities we had, like touring and stuff. We got offered a lot of stuff but we always had to turn it down because we thought it was absurd that we could make a living off of it. We had jobs and were going to college and we trying to be normal members of society. So we passed on a lot of great stuff. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m sure if I took those opportunities I woulda turned out fine. At the time I didn’t regret it (that much) because it’s not what I really, really wanted to do. Looking back I think about all the cool places I could have gone like Australia, or gone on tour with the Goo Goo Dolls. I guess next time?
What do you think the biggest success with the band was?
I have shoeboxes full of letters from people all around the world that are completely priceless to me. The funny thing is is that I never really cared about popularity. I was probably the most surprised that anyone gave a damn about us. I thought we were a good band but you never know how it’s gonna go. I was pleasantly surprised that we did as well as we did. I have a huge debt of gratitude for everyone who supported us and took the time to come to a show, buy a record or a T-shirt. Getting a ‘friend request’ from some random person in some random place in the world saying how much they loved an album. I couldn’t imagine a greater success then that and I’m humbled. It certainly wasn’t the millions of dollars that we didn’t make.
We ended part I of Popeye's interview by asking him if he would mind explaining a few Farside songs...He told us he needed a glass of wine first. Then we continued the conversation...First up should be obvious..."I Hope You're Unhappy"
Farside with Zach De La Rocha