Interview with OLIVER DICICCO a.k.a JOHN L. CYBORG            ...   ------------------------------------------------------ Neil Martinson: What was your involvement with Chrome? I saw your name on their album "Red Exposure." Oliver DiCicco: I was the engineer. We did two. "Red Exposure"—does that have the Stench brothers on it? No, that would be Blood On The Moon. Yeah, it's hard to remember the names of the records. I'm John Cyborg. Oh that's you. So you were in the group for some time? I wasn't really in the group. I was just working with these guys to get the stuff to … I mean, they didn't have anything written when they came into the studio. Basically it was all improvised. We kind of all worked on it, and I was a pretty new engineer at the time. I was coming from an experimental music place to begin with, electronic music, prepared stuff, and music concrete, and I was interested in finding different ways to get sounds, and those guys were totally into being experimental, and so it just kind of fit. I was never really a member of the band, but I think I had something to do with their sound, at least on those two records. It's a remarkable sound. "Red Exposure" is so densely produced, and all the sounds are so messed around with. Yeah, I know. They were hard to make, and they weren't the easiest guys to work with either. What's your impression of them? Helios was pretty spacey. I mean, we were going to record a bass part or something, and you'd have to go and plug his bass in for him. He was kind of a space cadet in a lot of ways, but he could play. He had that SG guitar, or SG Junior, I forget what it was, and he could get a lot of sounds out of that thing. I think he's a fairly natural musician in a lot of ways. Damon was kind of, an edgier guy. A little more aggressive? He was more aggressive. He was making music that was better than his musicianship, I thought. (Laughs) He said he studied experimental music at Cal Arts. But if you listen to the Chrome records he did without Helios, he didn't really know how to write a song. Right. I think of Lennon and McCartney. Neither one of them on there own was The Beatles. But Chrome had something. I liked that "Half Machine Lip Moves" lp too. And Alien Soundtracks. Yeah, I was into that stuff. At night I was recording their stuff, and during the day I was working on this new age album (laughs). It was so bizarre. Who else did you work with at that time? I worked with The Dead Kennedys, MX-80, I think I did something with The Residents back then. Romeo Void did an album here, although I didn't engineer that one. What did you do with The Residents? I don't remember. All this stuff, it's almost another life. It's twenty years ago. Right. In fact I still have masters from Chrome sitting in my basement, that I'm owed money for. Now they're probably unplayable. The tape just falls apart? It depends. There was a certain vintage of tape in the mid-80s, if it's been stored for a long time they have to be baked before they can play. So I haven't gone back and listened to any of this stuff. It's all done on 16-track and I don't have that format any longer. I can put it up on a machine, but I can't get all the tracks to come back, so I don't even know what's on there any longer. It was an interesting time with those guys. They were an under … people didn't dig 'em that much back then. That was the feeling I got, and I think those guys were a little frustrated. I think the European community was more into them, but here it didn't fit in with the punk scene or anything. It was pretty much ahead of its time I thought. I've heard that Helios wanted to perform, whereas Damon just wanted to record and put out records, then I guess they compromised when the Stench brothers joined. Another story I heard was that they were telling people that all there equipment was stolen—because they had their own studio where they did 8-track stuff. I guess Damon got pretty strung out in the '80s. Yeah, that might be true. He definitely was strung out. Heroin? Yeah. I didn't realize it at the time, not when we were making the first record, but later on it sort of became apparent that something was up with him. But it was hard to tell with those guys anyway. I think Helios liked to smoke pot in the studio, I can't remember, but Helios seemed like he was on something. That was always the impression I got from him, that this guy is toasted. But he was definitely more mellow. Easier to get along with? Yeah. Damon was a dark guy. He was an edgier character. He had a sense of humor and all, I remember we used to take breaks and drive down to Pier 39 and ride the bumper cars, and gang up on little kids (laughter). The one memory I have of Damon in the studio is, we were looking for this backbeat sound and we got a 55 gallon drum in there. He's playing it with a two-by-four, smoking a cigarette, and there's wood splinters flying everywhere while he's doing this take. There he is in this pall of smoke, just beating the hell out of this drum to get this cool backbeat sound (laughter). Now I'm looking at this photo of Chrome on the back cover of the Ralph Records compilation Subterranean Modern, and there is a photo of Chrome that includes John L. Cyborg, dressed up as a droog with them. Yeah, sitting there in sunglasses? It looks like you're peeing against a wall. Is that possible? It's possible. There's a picture of the three of us in the control room, and I think we're all wearing sunglasses. I don't know if I'm pissing on the wall, that may be somebody else. They played pretty fast and loose with the John Cyborg persona. It was me when we were doing the records, but it could have been anybody. Their earlier records had a bunch of other people. The group as I always knew it was the two of them. I actually introduced them to the Stench brothers. What band were they coming from? They were in Pearl Harbor and I think John might've played on the Romeo Void record. I forget how I met those guys originally. I knew them as a rhythm section, and I think I suggested it to Damon to do something live with drums and stuff, so I think that's how that came to pass, but my memory is faulty now. Did you also engineer the "Inworlds" ep? It came between "Red Exposure" and "Blood On The Moon." I don't know. I don't remember titles of the stuff, I just sort of remember sessions. If I went into the basement and pulled out those tapes and looked at track sheets, I might have a little more information about what was what. From the sound of "Red Exposure," they must have had a fair amount of studio time. I think they got a fairly decent budget from Beggar's Banquet. That's a finely crafted album, whereas their earlier stuff is similar but more low-fi. Yeah, they had more time to spend. They were here for a while. At the time it seemed to me like they had a big budget, it may have only been like $10,000 or something. That went a long way back then. Yeah. They ended up owing me like two grand. I think the bill came out to ten grand, and I got like eight of it. And then (laughs) I let Damon come back and do the next thing, which I did get paid for, although I never did see that other money. Then Damon disappeared to Europe, and I never heard from him again. Then I heard that he died. I don't even know the circumstances of his death. He died in Paris or something? In L.A. I guess the cause of death was heart failure, which could mean anything. Did you know his girlfriend, Fabienne? I met her. She used to come around to the studio. I do remember meeting her, or at least he talked about her. Any impressions? No. So you mainly had a professional relationship with them? Mostly. I was involved creatively, but it was definitely their thing. They had final say. But I contributed some ideas, even a couple snippets of lyric. "Meet You In The Subway" was one of my lines. I said, "Damon, that sound reminds me of subway wheels screeching." Is there anybody else around from that time that I might contact? Not that I know of. You might try getting in touch with John Hanes, that's John Stench. He lives in the East Bay. He plays with this group called Orchestra Nostalgico that plays Nino Rota music and stuff, at Bruno's every so often. He plays around. He had a band called Engorged With Blood. I just ran into him the other night, he was playing with Victor Crumenacher. You should be able to hunt him down at a gig and ask him something, or try calling him up. What kinds of stuff do you record now? We do all kinds of stuff. The studio's been around for 25 years. It's all digital now? No. Still all analog. Fantastic. Good for you. And I'm not going digital. It's twenty-four tracks, eighty-five an hour. Did you work with Tuxedomoon? Yeah, and Winston. Around the same time as MX-80, Luther Blue (?), all that stuff, in the early '80s. Then I started getting all this Windham Hill work (laughter), and we became a Windham Hill studio. I needed to make money, and they were paying. These days, a lot of Bill Frisell stuff has been recorded here, Charlie Hunter, and T.J. Kirk, and Trance Mission, and we're doing a band called Laughing Stock next week, and I have a group called Mobius Operandi. I build my own instruments. What are those like? They're one-of-a-kind sculptural, experimental instruments. Some are strung. There's about 15 instruments, we're a quintet. We're actually working on our follow-up cd right now. They're on my web site, mobiusmusic.com and when you go to the Mobius Operandi page you can and click on the instruments, so that'll give you some idea. I'll do that. This has been helpful. Thanks a lot. Take care. Yeah. Take care.