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Mr.

Craine Goes to

Hollywood

Smashin' It Up with the

Pumj

by Mark Binelli
Hooray for Hollywood!
That screwy, ballahooey Hollywood!
Where any office boy or young
mechanic
Can be a panic
With just a good-lookin' tan...

- "Hooray for Hollywood,"
Richard Whiting
and Johnny Mercer
Joey Craine graduated from the
University last May, with a
degree in theater and
communications. And now,

somehow, a mere six months
later, in spite of a commencement
ceremony which featured a
jingoistic cry of "Hail to the
Victors!" by Governor Engler and
a call for a Good (not Great)
Society by President Bush,
Craine has already made it. Sort

I

of.
"I went in for an interview for
a show that was on last season
called Davis Rules," Craine said
from his Los Angeles apartment
during a recent phone interview.
"I got the job that day, actually.
They were starting up the
following Monday... They didn't
have any (production assistants)
yet, and they needed someone to
come in and start hauling
furniture..."
Wait a minute. Did he say
"hauling furniture"?
Yes.
But it's not as bad as you
think.
Maybe we should start from
the beginning. Which would be
Craine, at a very young age,
already realizing that he was
"headed toward television."
"I'm not sure why," Craine
admitted with a laugh. "Maybe
it's because I just watch an
inordinate amount of television. I

always have. From couch potato
to production assistant, right?"
"I was acting in college (with
MUSKET, Soph show and
Comedy Company) and then, I
don't know, somewhere in
sophomore year I said, 'Hey, wait
a second. Maybe I'll wanna
pursue something a little greater.
Maybe I'll head out to LA,
Craine continued. "I don't know
what hit me.
"Sophomore year, for the
summer, I came here to Los
Angeles. I didn't go about it the
normal way, where you'd go to
the Communications
Department and there'd be a
listing of a million internships. I
was in a meeting with Professor
Beaver, who's the head of the
department, and I was talking to
him about how I was thinking of
going to Hollywood, and I
wondered if he had any
suggestions for the summer, and
it was just kind of coincidental.
He had just gotten a postcard
from a struggling actress out here-
telling him about what she was
doing, and for some reason, he
gave me her phone number and
said, 'Give her a call. Maybe she
knows.'
"There's a certain networking
of U of M alums in Hollywood. I
called her and I talked to her for a
while, and two weeks later I got a
list of 15 or 16 different people,
Michigan graduates, who had
various positions in the industry,
and from there I started calling
them, and I actually hooked up
with a couple of people who were
very gracious and felt that strong
U of M tie and took~a liking to
me."
Craine ended up getting an
internship that summer on Rescue
911. He described his experience as
a "typical intern job, unpaid, but
it went further than that,
because they were still new. They
were sort of short on help."
"We ended up doing a lot of
research for the show, trying to
find stories," Craine explained.
"We met a lot of people. We also
ended up doing a couple of three-
day segments of Unsolved Mysteries.
Because of that, the next summer
I ended up getting a job with
Unsolved Mysteries in their offices. I
was getting paid, which was
nice."
After graduation, Craine
returned to the Land of Make-
believe and, he said, "just started
making cold calls, which is very
depressing."
So what are the odds of a
graduate making it so quickly?
"It's possible," Craine said. "I
wouldn't say that I had a one-in-
a-million shot. I talked to the
right people. That's a lot of it, too
Continued on page 13

Crashing through sucA marvelously
guitar-brushed tracks as "I Am One"
and "Tristessa,"theSmashing
Pumpkins' new album, Gish, has
made them notorious for theirsound,
reminiscent of Hendrix, Black Sabbath
and the Velvet Underground. Currently
touring with the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers, the bandfeatures a four-man
lineup (or rather, three-men-and-a-
woman) - vocalist guitarist Billy
Corgan, drummerJimmy Chamberlin,
guitarist James Iha, and bassist
D'Arcy.
After a few zillion phone calls,
Daily Arts Staffer Jeff Rosenberg was
able to interview the group'sprolific
lead singer and songwriter Billy
Corgan.
Jeff Rosenberg: Where'd you get
the title for the album?
Billy Corgan: I just made it up.
JR: And the name for your
band?
BC: Same type of thing. That
pretty much sums up my thought
processing. I find things that I
attach myself to that maybe no one
else understands, but it doesn't
really matter to me whether or not
they get it.
JR: How'd you meet members
of your band? Did you recruit
them all?
BC: Well, D'arcy's from
Michigan... I met (her) on the
street on accident- I got in an
argument with her.
JR: Do all of you get along well?
BC: It's a really hard relationship to
explain, y'know? On one hand, you
wonder how close you would all be
if it wasn't for the band. And
obviously four years of playing
together bring people together in a
way that you can't really explain.
On the other hand, the stress of
being in a band mutates a
relationship - so, as far as I'm
concerned, whether or not we get
along is kind of invalid. Whether or
not we can work together is
probably a better way to explain it.
I mean, you don't always get along.
I think at our core we all love each
other.... The closest thing it
probably resembles is a marriage.
You're trapped, you know it, and
you just gotta deal with it.
JR: When did you start singing
or playing, or did you do both
from the beginning?
BC: Well, originally my plan was to
conquer the world as a guitar hero.
I started when I was 15, so it won't
be too long now before I'll have
been playing 10 years, which is
pretty weird to me. I can
remember, it just seemed like I
started playing guitar yesterday. So
I played for about three years with
the idea of being this amazing
guitar player. And then one day I

just decided I didn't want it
anymore... I realized what a dumb
idea it was. Y'know I could play, I
could play solos and I could do all
this funky freaky shit, but it didn't
make any difference to me and it
definitely didn't make any
difference to anybody around me.

- the fact that the guitar was still a
main instrument, but it was
decentralized. It wasn't the end all.
It started to be used as a textural
type thing as opposed to; like, all
these chords. It just appealed to my
senses, and that's when I was about
18.

was like, well, I might as well sing
- I have all the elements except
for the voice. And, people really
discouraged me, and said I couldn't
sing. The greatest thing is that I
persevered through all the criticism
and luckily found my own voice.
I'm not saying this to pat myself on
the back, but I don't really think
there's anybody that sings like me.
And I think that if everyone arrived
at it the way that I did, there'd
probably be more original-sounding
songs.
JR: Instead of trying to sound
like other people.
BC: Well, that's the first thing you
do when you don't know how to do
something -you imitate
something. My problem is that I
couldn't imitate because I just
didn't have the physical capability.
I don't have a big singing range. So
I learned how to make the most out
of what I have. I mean, it's worked
out totally to my advantage that I
couldn't sing. Kind of reverse.
JR: What methods do you use to
write your songs?
BC: It happens all different ways. I
definitely kinda start off with a
general feel - sometimes it'll
mutate with the band, but not
often. It's more of a process where
we as a band kind of weed through
ideas. I know what I don't want.
There's a color or feel you've got in
your head and it's just a matter of
arriving at that. And, the more
complex my songwriting has
become, the more it's not as easy as
just like, oh I made up this new
song, here's how it goes. I've left
some more room for the
interpretation so that I can add in
other elements, because a lot of
times when you write a song and
you write it all at once it kinda
sounds all similar. And if you listen
to our songs, there's always
different parts and stuff. We arrive
at those in different ways. Some
songs are written off the top of my
head. "Rhinoceros" was written in

like 1
JR:
all t
BC:Y
peopl
That
I just
differ
only
witho
help.
JR:-
sim
song
BC: N
hard.
caugh
some
from
Some
thing
those
times
mou t
know
always
start p
would
And 1
me so
music
some
out ci
phras
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it's ki
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JR: I
espec
play
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BC: w
revels
that p
Can

The Smashing Pumpkins - Jimmy Chamberlin, D'Arcy, Billy Corgan and
James lha - open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers tonight and tomorrow
night at Clubland. Pearl jam, whose Eddie Vedder is featured in the
accompanying article on page 4, is also playing with the two groups. As of
press time, tickets were only available for Saturday's show; they can be
purchased through TicketMaster.

So that was right about the time I
started to find, you know, this other
world of music. The weird thing is
that, if you listen to the way I play
guitar, I mean I arrived at... a lot of
those ways naturally.
And then when I started to listen to
alternative music, guitar players
like Robert Smith or Johnny Marr,
or stuff, I was already playing kinda
the way they played. It's kinda
strange, y'know? So that was my
first interest into alternative music

Then we formed this band with
this friend of mine who was going
to art school, and this other freaky
dude, and that was the Marked, the
band that ended up going to
Florida - and that's when I started
to sing. I mean, I had no intention
of singing, it just worked out that
way. It's just one of those things
like ten ideas kinda converge at
once. I was already writing my own
music, and I'd always written
poetry and stuff. All of a sudden it

t. ' .


T o .: t i ii d l
AAIWA
IN
A-,

GREAT'NRCGT4#
FALL SPECIAL WITH THIS AD
(R EGULARLY$10
SUP RUTY
715 N. UNIVERSITYI


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......

November 22, 1991

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