Interview: with Steveggs of   "PILE OF EGGS" by Eden Gauteron

    " I could have done that." How many times have you heard someone say this about a paint-splattered work of modem art or things from popular culture like Beavis and Butthead? It's so easy for some people to say this after the fact. The big problem with this way of thinking is that it completely disregards the importance of inspiration and being the first. Keeping one step ahead of the rest is what creativity is all about.
    Pile of Eggs, a self-described "noise/grind band from Parma, Ohio," has been keeping one step ahead of, or below, or beyond, the rest since the early '90s with a massive output of home recordings. Following no musical formulas, Pile of Eggs' songs range from wacky minute-long metal blasts to extended screamfests to ambient, atmospheric soundscapes, alI recorded on the spur of the moment. Over the years, POE ringmaster, Steve Eggs, has self-released seventeen demo tapes of his band with titles like Yuck Core, Crucifried and Assholes Forever. Yet the band certainly doesn't fit nicely into any local music scenes. They are too goofy for most metal heads and too unfashionably metal for the punks. Pile of Eggs has to reside in its own realm of noise.
    Recently, Steve Eggs has taken his band, who mainly record in his basement, to the next level by releasing The
Egg Files, a "Best of" CD compiled from the POE library as well as from the tapes of POE side projects: God Damn Jerks, Nut Screamer and P.U. The Egg Files shows the band's varied creativity with every track living in its own noisy surreal world. Grind/punk tunes with heavy vocal effects like "We Don't Belong in Society" and "Oooowwa" are mixed in with lo-fi sci-fi freakouts like "The Sounds of Crazy Alien Creatures Destroying the World" and "Borg." While most of the songs are under two minutes, there are also longer pieces like the noise jam "Screaming Makes Me Feel Better" and the murky sixteen-minute meditation "Stink."
    Pile of Eggs is, as the kids say, all about noise. "I don't like playing the guitar," Steve explains, "I like misusing it and trying not to play it, to make sounds that don't really exist." The group has an ever-changing set-up of members and sound-making devices with no one sticking to a particular instrument. "One day we can have seven people. The next day will can have two. One day we'll use a drum machine, next day real drums. One day we'll make a wall of noise and the next day we can put together riffs into a traditional song." Of course, noise isn't always loud and earsplitting. Steve says, "I think the coolest musical scene that's going on nowadays is the ambient, mellow weird trippy scene. There's this one band called Lustmord, they record the weirdest stuff. They stole these space sound tapes from NASA. It's mellow, zone-out music."
    After a long hiatus, Steve recently had a "noise war" recording session at his house. "Everyone brought over some effects and drum machines and everyone was plugged into something else and everybody was doing their own thing and screaming. You're just waiting for the next person to freak out. And it all turned out pretty good."
    In fact, Pile of Eggs was born out of a noise jam. Back in 1990, Steve and a bunch of friends were sitting around and, on the spur of the moment, just started to pick up instruments and have a free-form jam. Everyone was screaming, hollering, jumping around, switching instruments. Steve recalls, "We were doing it for fun. We didn't say, let's start a band, let's do something. It kind of happened unexpectedly, for no reason at all. And we just had a real good time with it. Then a couple days later we were talking and said, let's do it again just so we could record it."
    About six months later, Steve met Jim Konya who gave him a 7" of his experimental grind band Minch. Hearing this Minch record made up of screaming, guitar, bass and beating on a dryer, Steve had a revelation. "It was just total crazy beating on a dryer type stuff -- bang bang bang. If someone can put out a record like that, I can put out a tape of unrehearsed crazy stuff."
    Around the same time, Steve started to get involved in the world of underground noise tapes through the mail. He began sending away for underground zines like Gore Lunatic from Japan and Nyktophobia from Finland and getting into noise bands like the Meat Shits. He also made his own underground zine called Scab Mag. Steve says, "I was really involved in doing mailing. It was the thing that made me happiest in life."
   Soon he put together the first POE demo tape, Yuck Core, from the earlier noise jams and sent it out all over the world without the other POE members even knowing. When they finally saw the copies of the tape, they were perplexed, "What's this?" Alas, they didn't see the point of noise. This original lineup of Parma-ites ended up recording some more and putting out one more demo, but eventually they wanted to focus on their other bands. Steve was left in the lurch. "I like being involved with jamming more than being in a band that practiced the same six songs over and over. I'm not knocking it. I like that kind of stuff but I'm more into doing unrehearsed fun stuff. I wanted to keep it fun."
   Fortunately, Pile of Eggs was reborn through Steve's involvement in the noise underground. Steve had made friends with a circle of like-minded fr:eaks from all over the country through the mail. There was Billy from upstate New York who had a tape label called Stupidity Records and a noise/grind band called Traci Lords Loves Noise, Mike Duncan from Akron who had a one-man band called Black Mayonnaise, and B.C.A. from Spokane, Washington, who put out tapes of his band the Earwigs. When they finally all met in 1993, Steve was surprised find out that his mail friends wanted to keep POE going. "They thought it would be pretty cool if we would just reform POE with new members and keep the old name. The guys liked the vibe that the old tapes had so they said, let's just form a new band with the old name." They've been meeting in Parma every year since to noise out.
    "The whole concept behind the band is friendship." Steve contends. "That's what it's about. It's not about doing shows or let's do some records and make some money." POE is the product of a bunch of insane friends bouncing their creativity off of each other. One of the most hilarious songs on The Egg Files is "Back 'n' Forth Jam," an extended noise war that's interspliced with everyone taking turns to yell absurdities like, "I love Enuff Z'Nuff" and inside jokes like, "Billy went to college and now it's called Intelligent Records," and "I don't even like eggs." This oft-the-top-of-the-head, uncensored energy is what makes this noise captivating.
    Steve Eggs is nothing if not forthcoming. He readily admits that he had to weed through a lot of "crappy stuff" an the demo tapes to make The Egg Files. He also doesn't claim to have any special musical skill; "I'm a music fan, I don't aspire to be a musician." This self-aware honesty shows up in songs like, "Bullshit Artist," in which he screams, "I lie about who I am and what I am about!" The videotape companion to The Egg Files shows Steve taping himself while riding a roller-coaster, screaming his head off about how he sucks. This stuff could be called confessionalist performance art if you wanted to be highfalutin' about it.
Blurring the distinction between art and just having fun, Pile of Eggs is a labor of love. "Kiss is a really big influence. They put together a band that they wished they could have seen. POE is the kind band that I wish I could find out about. I almost wish
that I had nothing to do with it just so that I could enjoy it."
    Pile of Eggs has always been an underground band, or as Steve calls it, "a mail band." He's been interviewed in Japanese noise zines and done split tapes with noise bands like Herb Mullen from Norway. Yet he wouldn't object to putting out a record on a label. "I wouldn't let it stop what we were doing in the past. I'd still want to be a tape band, an underground band. A lot of bands get to that point and then want the label to do all the work for them. It's sad. Even if nothing does happen, I'm still going to keep it alive because it's a band about friendship, about having fun. It's not like we're a metal band, or we wear black t-shirts and bang our heads when we play. It's seriously about having friends that you like being with and pressing the record button and seeing what happens."
              
   If you want to join in on a noise war with Pile of Eggs,
send them a letter at 3329 Torrington Ave. Parma, Ohio 44134.