Because they've been too busy playing arenas in other cities. "People are always wanting us to play headlining shows in their cities," explains MSI singer-songwriter-programmer James Euringer (Little Jimmy Urine to fans), "But then we keep getting these huge offers to go open for all sorts of people in all sorts of other places, so then the other people get pissed off and complain about why we never come to their hometowns to play clubs. So you can't win, really, no matter what you do."

Euringer's not just spouting hyperbole when he describes the magnitude of those national opening offers. To date, MSI have toured with (among others) Rammstein, Korn, the Insane Clown Posse, Staind, Soulfly, Lords of Acid, Orgy and Cypress Hill--in almost every case at the specific request of the bands headlining the bills. Including, most recently, Serj Tankian of System of a Down, with whom MSI are touring when I wake Euringer up by phone for this interview at the crack of mid-afternoon in Detroit Rock City. ("More like Detroit Abandoned City, actually," he notes, between yawns).

Claiming little more than boredom as an inspiration, Euringer formed Mindless Self Indulgence in 1998, recruiting guitarist Steve, Righ?, bassist Vanessa Y-T and drummer Kitty to flesh out the cheesy Atari computer driven sounds he heard in his head. "We were too poor to afford Coleco or any of the more expensive video games when we were little," Euringer explains, "so we were just stuck with the shitty old Ataris that nobody else wanted." After Vanessa left the band last year (allegedly to become an astronaut), MSI posted a call for auditions on their website for a replacement bassist. "We did that just so we could see who would be stupid enough to reply, so that we could bring them in and laugh at them," notes Euringer. "But that got boring, too, after a while, so we got serious and found Lyn-Z, although we hear rumors that she was in another band before us, so she's still on probation until we confirm or deny that out, and until all her papers clear. Once that's done, though, she'll be able to pack heat with all the rest of us."

MSI's cover of the Method Man classic "Bring the Pain" and their self-released debut EP Tight (now out of print, and trading for big cash through the Internet) spawned a bidding war for their services among half-a-dozen major record labels, with Elektra emerging as the winning bidder on MSI's skittery rhythms, warbling vocals, on-stage histrionics and controversial-bordering-on-evil lyrical concerns.

Elektra issued the 30-song Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy (featuring a cover by Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewitt, who, it could be argued, then took a good number of MSI moves on to his next project, the chart-busting, critic-pleasing Gorillaz) in 2000, at which point Euringer and company immediately moved to dissolve their partnership with the label, just because they could. The group is now entertaining offers from boutique labels helmed by the likes of Korn, Slipknot and Marilyn Manson--although they don't discount the possibility that they may release their next album on their own, with the loot that they extracted from Elektra.

At the helm for these negotiations is one-time QE2 fixture and Albany underground mainstay James Galus, who has co-produced and promoted Mindless Self Indulgence from (close to) their beginnings. And Galus isn't the only Albany connection for the band: former Northern Lights booking agent Michele Toch is road managing the group for the System of a Down tour, and the traveling roadshow accompanying MSI to Valentine's includes the O (featuring native Albanian and Wikkid Crew member Greg Poole) and Chaos Twin (with onetime Stigmata and Clay People member Dan Walsh on bass and former 81 Tranzam drummer Todd Clemmer behind the kit).

"Managing a brilliant underdog like MSI is a fuckin' privilege," Galus enthuses. "There is a reason why Marilyn Manson, Jonathan Davis and Slipknot all want to sign MSI to their labels, and that's because Mindless Self Indulgence is the future of electronic punk. Some people won't understand what they do for years and others never will get it. But the people who can open their minds not just to what's cool today, but to that which doesn't even give a shit about being cool in the first place will get it right away. It's the freedom to be inventive without worrying about whether you're part of the cookie cutter, macho crap that's spoon-fed to kids these days. I was fortunate as hell to meet these guys when I did, and to eventually become their manager."

So how does Euringer himself explain his band's allure, or describe the sounds they make? "Y'know, if I knew of any words to describe all this, then I wouldn't be in a band in the first place," he says. "I'd just sit there and be, like, 'Whoa, that's wrong.' So if you've got to have a word to describe what we do, then I guess 'wrong' is probably as good a word as you're gonna be able to come up with."
Copyright 2002, J. Eric Smith.

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