Details – “Techno for Tyros” – July 1996

Techno for Tyros

Surfer Girl talks to Perry Farrell about his new web site, TEETH

Hello, this is Surfer Girl.  Can I speak with Perry Farrell?

Hey, what time is it?  I’m just getting up.  I haven’t even smoked a joint yet.  Can you call back in a half an hour?

Hey there, it’s Surfer Girl again.  Everything okay?

Yeah. Go ahead.

Your new Web site, Teeth, it’s so… dental.  Why?

It’s called Teeth because everybody’s are different.

Right.  But everybody’s body parts are different, too.

I know, but teeth are just so expressive, so full of personality.  Also, when a people are destroyed, it’s how they’re identified.  I actually wasn’t thinking of that all, but its kind of ironic.

Your Web site is hyperinteractive, with lots of hot buttons to click on, and video, audio, and text hidden here and there.  But all of those freebies come at a cost-time.  Any suggestions for what to do while we’re downloading files from Teeth?  What do you do?

I don’t know what to suggest.  When I’m downloading, I get up and walk away.  I get pissed off and frustrated.  If you’re going to be downloading, you should be able to browse while that’s happening.  I’ve suggested it, but it can’t easily be done yet.

Tell me about your best time online.

The best moment was being on a chat line and talking with fans – they can be brutally frank online.  If you happen into a chat room and it happens to be about you, you get comments you’d never get to your face, and that’s kind of wild.

You’ve been quoted as saying, “I won’t fail if my intentions are good.”  What would it mean for you to fail in cyberspace?

To fail for me would be if I didn’t have a really great line of communication, if the information and what I had to say was not pertinent, cheery, motivating, or exciting.  If I wasn’t daring, if it was a rehash or stale, then I’d be failing.

How do you make sure it is daring and motivating?

You work with a collective of people that have courage, have insight, and are clever and artistic and inspiring.  Some people work strictly for money.  My attitude about money is that one day it’s going to be outmoded.  It’s and old format for people who can’t see colors very well.  Do you know that around the time of the Bible the only colors people could see were, like, reds?  There’s no mention of blue.  Green is the last color that we as human beings actually get to see.  The reason I bring this all up is that I think in the faraway future, we will be able to swap work through color identification and we won’t need money at all.  So if you’re driven by money, then you’re kind of an outmoded person.

So do you think that someday we’re going to see new colors that we haven’t seen before.

Yeah, I do.  In fact, I think races are going to evolve that are those colors.

You mean there might be purple people?

No, blue.

I’ve heard people compare the place where Teeth is being created to Andy Warhol’s Factory.  If Teeth is the Factory, are you Andy Warhol?

Andy Warhol never had a computer.

What have you learned from your friend Timothy Leary?

Being with him made me look at people more as children when they make mistakes.  Then I find that I can love them a lot easier and see their suffering a lot more and hang with them and enjoy their company and find their shortcomings beautiful and enchanting in a weird way.  The way he lives his life is what I get from him.

What do you hope to teach the rest of us?

Well, maybe nothing.  I don’t know.  You’d have to see something in me for yourself.

Why the Web?  Why now?

My dream for working with the Web is to get the whole world to change, say on the count of three.  I would love to be an active part of the world, connected with it, connected with earthlings.  And then get out there and to other galaxies and star systems and be connected with them.

What’s your Web-site address?

http://www.teeth.net/

There was a review for Good God’s Urge in this same issue:

Perry Farrell will always be remembered fondly for inventing the Lollapalooza tour that helped wake up America’s dozing rock audience.  If only how own music were up to this noble intentions.  In retrospect, Jane’s Addiction have come to symbolize the whole sorry state of alternative rock before Nirvana, and Porno for Pyros aren’t much better.  Perry can write incandescent pop nuggets when he wants to, like the Jane’s shoplifting anthem “Been Caught Stealing,” or Porno For Pyros’ “Pets,” but he’d much rather work at cultivating his sinister antihero image with labored anthems and ponderous sociology.  Good God’s Urge is a typical Farrell production, with plentiful guitar craziness yielding a few nice moments and way too much overacting.  Most of the album consists of soft hippie-dippy acoustic ballads; the prettiest (“Kimberly Austin”) has a harmonica solo, for crying out loud.  As for the lyrics – well, let’s say that hanging out with Timothy Leary hasn’t done much for Perry’s grip on Planet Earth.  As an elder statesman of youth rebellion, Perry has always been able to walk the walk.  What a pity he still can’t talk the talk.

Score: 4/10

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