A: Well, sure! I mean: The songs that wound up on the album were never meant to fit together, they were just a collection I thought of our best songs that havent been put on record yet.
And if you got the same songwriter you always have these recurrent themes in songs.
One of my conflicts in life has always been being a woman: how women are treated, how there`s always this big douple standard that women can be so powerful and powerless at the same time.
It is the place where my mind often goes, as other people just chose to focus on different conflicts and write about political conflicts better, absorbing them - or emotional damage about whats done to their family...
For me girl attitudes and sex is just one conflict that I have focused on really early - but it doesn't mean that it preoccupies me in my everyday life, I am not the tortured woman who doesnt fucking now... !

A: Thats hard... "Mrs. O" is one of my favourites, and probably "Delilah", they are containing to my favourites.
And I like playing live "Mandy goes to med school", because its really fun to play.

A: Sing is not a hit! Sing came out as a single and I noticed that most of our younger fans hated it.
It was not too surprising, because Sing is one of those songs that really works well in the context of the band, but maybe standing on its own people dont understand it quite as well. I think I know why...

A: They don't like it, because they are: zu viel gewöhnt an Ironie; accustomed to much to irony - constant tongue and cheek irony, especially from the band, and that song is actually very ernsthaft. And I think that really took some younger fans back.
I think they are listening to that song waiting for the big "FuckYou" at the end but there is none. You see that so much with teenagers nowadays, too. Like by the time: they are 13 (years) and completely over jaded in the black humour. So you need to be able to see the flipside of that. I think that has to happen until you get older.

A: Well, that`s part of it.

A: Musical flow was important rather than lyrical flow!

Q: Is it harder to play on festivals` stage than on your own concerts?

A: Yes, for so many reasons - first technically it's much harder, cause you don't get a proper soundcheck. You literally just get on stage, plug in and go. The sound is usually bad and you are competing with the daylight, which is difficult cause its not as good giving the vibe.
But mostly it is difficult cause you are not preaching to the Converted. You know... its not your fans, there is a lot of strangers out there.
Brian and me, we are very dependent on energy from the crowd to entertain on our shows and build up what we do.
But even if people (the audience) are liking us, usually it's in the first time, crowd stays very quiet because they are just watching, saying "What is this" *whispers* and that is not necessarilly bad. Once, when our fans know what the show is about they get loud and they scream and jell and they crob along and we build on top of that and that is like the snowballeffect which doesn't happen as much on a festival because there is just too many people.

A: I think that that's a device that basically almost every perfomer uses, you just have to not abuse it.

A: Which book? The story of O, the feddish one? I heard about it.

 Q: Lyric relates exactly to the book. In the book is written: "They took all her clothes and brought it to the castle..." So, is that book connected to the song?

A: No!
Mrs. O was the name of my step grandmother, my step father`s mother: Mrs.Obertäufer - this Name was too long and complicated, so we called it Mrs O. She was sort of the original inspiration.
In the context i wrote it, that was more the Holocaust reference - but thats the beautiful thing about life: you can fucking connect any two things.

A: Sometimes, not very often. But i like to reverse a certain variety.

A: No, its always both. I mean lyrics just come very naturally and i think that talent is not coming up with them, it's getting up on the way - lyrics hit me constantly, just in the course of everyday life.
And it is a question of discipline, for sitting down and putting them on paper and not filtering them to much.
Because when you put up to many filters, then nothing comes through, often time you get a lyric to whom you say: "that's stupid, that doesnt make any sense, that's too clischee". But you need to be able to let something come through - even if you are not certain that it's gonna be keeper. Afterwards you piece the whole song together and change it by taking out the clischees and shaping the lyrics.

A: It is cabaret, sort of fictional cabaret with the band on stage. About ten other people join this. It is based on the chapter "The Onion Cellar" from "Blechtrommel" by Günther Grass.

A: I followed this discurse, it is very interesting! No, i don't think he came out too late. But I found it shameful that anyone could accuse somebody telling the truth at a wrong time.
You could say: you should have done that or done that earlier, but it's the present.

A: Not even hypocracy, but would people be happier if he has gone to the grave without saying that? And if they would, then there is something wrong, you know..
Maybe he is a hypocrit - but.. thats the thing, theres no such thing - as a really right or wrong decision, especially given a right decision!
The question I would ask those people is: What the fuck would you do? And how can you possibly know how that feels - there is just no way, that you can possibly know!
And it's such a fucked up situation that there is not a correct answer. I think everyone has to deal with it (living within the German dictatorship between 1933-45, redaction type) in their own way and this is the way he dealt with it. And who cares?
Eventually he came around and that is where he is at. But he also has done so much. And some people have done nothing. So who is right?
Somebody who does nothing and then it comes out with the truth sixty years later and doesn't be criticized?!
Or Somebody who devotes his life to art and writing and trying to open peoples minds. You know, it just seems ridiculous...
That is what you get as an artist with an opinion - you are just becoming criticized... to death!

A: Yes, but especially, he is a political artist, he has not been painting pictures with flowers for the last 60 years..
And sure, there comes a responsibility with that, but once again, there is no right way to do it.

A: I think that's in the eye of the beholder, because there are no two situations which are ever the same.
The beautiful thing about art is that if there was a formular and you could use an experience to make art and it worked, you know.. -
if there were answers to these questions, then there would not be such thing as art. The whole beauty of it, that's completely confusion, there is no rule.

A: It's pretty important. I mean there are several different kinds of music:
definetely great background music, then there is greyarea. And then there is music, which really demands your attention. And I think certainly with this record (Yes, Virginia; 2006) there is not a single song on it which could be wallpaper. Its really music where it belongs to be actively listened to, not stuck along in the background of a party.
And you sacrifice sth. for that *laughing* - because you give it to your friends who run a cafe: they might love it, but they are not gonna play it as long as not enough people are used to that kind of music. That's the pros and contras of ... of music.

A: I had several! The most amazing piano teacher I had was in college, it was a woman named Sanda Shouldmann.
She was Romanian and she never gave a shit about my compositions.. she thought they were totally terrible.
I learned a lot about the piano, very strict to classical. But i never had that one inspiring teacher.

A: I don't think that it is as deep and profound as some people would like to read into it.
I sort of had this obsession with Germany, because i fell in love with a guy, Jason, who grew up in Berlin. His mother was German and his father an American GI stationed here. He was always very homesick for Germany and he kind of sucked me into his homesickness even before i came the first time to Germany.
And he was my musical mentor, too. He gave me all these bands and shaped my musical taste: The Legendary Pink Dots came through him and they became my favorite band.
And Einstürzende Neubauten and Swarms. I was so in love with him, that when i went to university I decided going to learn German and went to Germany. It was a romantic whimmer, i had this idea of living together in Berlin forever - and of course we broke up.

A: All different stuff: Neubauten was the big one but also SPK, DAF, Nina Hagen, Grauzone, which is swiss, but... you know - all this kind of stuff.

A: Well, it was interesting, being an American telling the people: I am going abroad, going to Germany! and the reactions were: why Germany? - why not...France?
My grandparents are also british, and they could not stand the fact that I went to Germany. They asked: why would you want to go there? Oh, these people are evil.
And it wasn't until recently that I watched a lot of footage from London and WW2, that i understood how heavy it was for them, because they were there. I was not there, I cant know how ...

A: Well, the big stereotype ist "SprachKets"... Do you know Saturday Night Life?!
There was this great skit about Germany in the early 90ies, a fake German television show called Sprachets:
The hosts name is Dieter, he wears a black turleneck and little prussian glasses like a monokel and he has got slipped back hair and basically sits there.
Like that is the ultimate German sterotype! There is always the same joke at the end, when Dieter would say: "And now its the time of Sprachets when we dance".
And a bunch of people dressed in black dance with military moves to the soundtrack, which was all Craftwork (Kraftwerk?).

A: The stereotype about Americans are unfortunately mostly true: which is most of them are fat, lazy and sitting around while watching tv all day.
And you think it's a stereotype, until you go there and actually see it. You would recognize that mostly everyone in America is fat and uneducated - it's fully depressing *Amanda laughs*

A: I do it all the time!

A: Yeah, I've thought about it. I mean when the band is taking a break, I wanna go home first, because I haven't been home in so long that I can't imagine I want it to leave.
But I like to live everywhere: I would love to live in Berlin and in Edinburgh; I'd love to go to Melbourne/Australia and Bourgogne in France.
I mean there are a lot of places where I pass through and think: "Ahh! I like to stay here for a while."S

A: No, it's really very expensive to stop the touring machine (paying the people) - and vacation somewhere. Because you pay all these people beeing on tour with you, so once you get on tour its just like rushing. I mean you get a day off and just collapse. You don't see much funny things.
Which is harder than not travelling, because you see what you are missing - you watch it going by in the bus.

A: It's very hard. I try, but it's always a sacrifice. Everytime I go I just sit quietly in a cafe and draw.
There is a voice in the back of my head that says "there are definetely things that you are not getting done right now, things important to do." Thats just the nature of theme.
I was proud of myself this morning, I sat down and I sketched for about an hour and a half, which I almost never do. Its the first time I have done that in - I have no idea for how long.

A: No! If I'd have them, then I would ask them.

A: No, just a joke!

A: My best experience so far was being in that cafe, called SchwarzSauer, in east Berlin this morning. I ate breakfast, sat there for about three hours..that where i skizzed. Just a journal and a pen - the last time I drew for that long was really 5 years ago.