FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
(reprinted from an earlier version of the site)

What are the respective birthplaces of Adam, Luis, and Rand?
1) Luis: In the hospital
2) Adam: A small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse
3) Rand: In a manger

How do they write those fantabulous songs...?
With a pencil in one hand, a phone to one ear, and a guitar on their laps.
In truth, there is no ONE method. Contrary to common filklore Adam does not write all the music and Rand does not write all the lyrics. In fact Haydn Seek is the only song that was written in this manner, and in that case Adam actually wrote all the lyrics and Rand wrote all the music. The simple answer is that Adam likes to start stuff and Rand likes to finish stuff so between the two of them they are able to "lick the platter clean".

...And what about the drum parts?
When they write a song Rand and Adam may already have something in mind. Of course Luis is always willing to indulge the songwriters but "I'm the drummer".

What were the first songs that Rand and Adam wrote together?
Cliché and Still Can't Buy me Love

Where do they get their ideas?
From a post office box in Schenectady.

Where did Adam and Rand meet?
At college in 1988. However, they didn't start writing music together until Fall of 1991.

What's Luis' story?
Luis and Adam worked together. Luis, who went to music school for a year when he was 12, had listened to the Rand and Adam Tape aka. Poor Man's Copyright (1993) and enjoyed it so much that he wrote drum parts for every song except Baby's Head, Math, Jeff's Corner, and The Lemon-Oh's Song. Luis then approached Adam and the conversation that ensued between the two is a matter of some dispute. However, the scuttlebutt is that Adam told Luis, "We don't need a drummer."

A short while later Thomas Woods signed on as the band's first drummer (the same Thomas Woods whose photographs appear throughout the CD insert in Less Than Art ). The band soon realized that if Thomas was going to be their drummer he would need a set of drums. Fortunately, they knew of someone with a set of drums that he wasn't using, and Luis agreed to sell them.

Of course, we all know that Luis did eventually join the band, and his first gig was at Broadway Joe's in Buffalo. Before meeting Luis, Rand was told by Adam that, "He's not like us, but he's pretty cool."

What's Doug's story?
Back in 1995, Doug White used to live down south somewhere and worked in a Record Theatre. One day, a middle-aged man walked in and asked where the new Kansas CD was. Doug said it was probably under K in the rock section. The guy asked why it wasn't on the new CD racks or displayed up front. Doug said he didn't know. The guy got indignant and started to complain that it wasn't more easily available for him. Doug said, "Listen, that new Kansas album sucks. No one's buying it. And why do you care?"

"I'm Steve Walsh," the guy said sheepishly.

Who was the original bass player?
Tom Ronan. He also engineered the Rand and Adam Tape .

Were there any lyrics for View Master that didn't make it into the song?
Yes. For example: "My slinky never made it down the stairs"

Ookla's Favourite Music Artists (in no particular order)
ADAM: Bare Naked Ladies, Billy Joel, They Might Be Giants, Mightyhead
LUIS: Metallica, Megadeth, Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters
RAND: They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, Pete Townsend, John Wesley Harding, Adrian Belew

Ookla the Mok was almost called...
A list of names that were actually considered before deciding on Ookla the Mok
Bubastis The Genetically Altered Lynx
The Surfing Colonel from Apocalypse Now
The Blinkin' Redlights
The Nerfherders
Mystery Machine
Touch Peepee
The Adventure People
Cowboy Secret Space Detective
And Sometime Y
The Homonyms
Diplodocus Rex
Nerdberg
The 1979 Carter Attack Rabbits
Rand and Adam
rAnDAM
The Rand and Adam Show
Decoder Ring
The Bearded Spocks
The Whirling Uhuras
Ampersand
Urko Aldo
Shadow Animals
Uncle Monkey
The Sucking Chestwounds
The Adverbs
Lick the Fat Elvis
Playdough Republic
The Nerds of Science Fiction
Einstein's Underpants
The Sprats

The story behind The Lemon-Oh's Song (as told by Rand)
I got the Lemon-Ohs in a care package as a freshman in college. Also in that package was a Butterfinger, one of Dave Lennon's favorite candy bars. (Dave Lennon lived next door to me my first year of school, and is one of my very best friends to this day) When he asked for the butterfinger, I said, "Sure, under one condition: you must take the Lemon-Ohs as well." I didn't hate them, but lemon cookies aren't my favorite either. He took both. The next day, I couldn't help noticing the Lemon-Ohs in my desk drawer. So I put them in the pocket of the ugliest (and least worn) shirt I could find in Dave's closet. As I was packing to go home in May of 1988, I found the Lemon-Ohs in the very back of my sock drawer. Not wanting to be stuck with them all summer, I put them in one of Dave's suitcases.

I next saw the Lemon-Ohs (same packet, mind you) taped to the back of my refrigerator. (This was our sophomore year and we didn't even live on the dorm floor.) I opened Dave's computer and taped it to one of the memory cards with a note indicating the date, just so he'd know how long it was sitting there. Unfortunately, within weeks, some comp sci major opened Dave's computer and was confronted by the little cookies.

This went on for some time. While I think the computer one was pretty good, I will say that Dave won the contest by getting permission from the dean of students and college president to have the Lemon-Ohs package inserted into my diploma tube!

Later that summer at a weekend get together, while Dave showered, I hid them in his glove compartment. It wasn't until he sold the car two years later that he found them, and the sad truth is I don't know where they are now. If Dave hid them on me, I fear they are lost, since I've moved twice and changed cars once since Dave last had them.

Stranger In The Mirror (with annotations provided by Rand)
--It was time to make the donuts
Adam assures me that this is a reference to a commercial for a donut company, but i haven't
seen it. (possibly Dunkin Donuts?)

--It was very, very early it was 2:37 in the afternoon
--I turned off my alarm clock and I stumbled over several pizza boxes
--And my girlfriend on the way to the bathroom
One person thought that was "several people boxing with my girlfriend" !

The next verse doesn't have any references, so I'll leave it out

--Don't get me wrong
There's a pretenders song called "don't get me wrong" that is sung almost exactly the same way. This isn't a reference, but it explains why I sing it the way i do as opposed to the way Adam wrote it, which is exactly the way the pretenders sing it.

--I'm not talking about some kind of figurative stranger here
--No existential bullshit from Camus or Billy Joel
Existential Bullshit was the title of an album by John Valby, perhaps the filthiest man alive. Camus, of course, wrote The Stranger , and Billy Joel's breakthrough album was called The Stranger as well.

--I'm not saying I didn't recognize myself in the mirror
--Or that I didn't like the kind of person I saw
--No I'm talking about an actual literal kind of stranger here
--Like the villain in issue 104 of the Flash
Flash 104 features the first appearance of the Mirror Master, one of his more popular villains, who was recently brought out of obscurity by Grant Morrison in Animal Man .

--There was no question this was not your everyday reflection
--This was some middle aged balding Jewish guy and he had a moustache

--There's a stranger in my mirror there's a new face on the wall
--After that Newcastle incident I thought that I'd seen it all
Okay, we're talking Alan Moore' Swamp Thing here. He had a supporting character named John Constantine (who has his own series now, called Hellblazer ), and he was this really enigmatic magician who had seen/done it all. The only thing that bothered him was what he always referred to as "the Newcastle incident." We thought it would be funny to frame the song as if it was another of John's odd adventures.

--Things like this are always happening to me

--So I stood there looking stupid in my $20 bathrobe
I have a 20 dollar bathrobe that everybody (Tanya included) makes fun of.

--With my indicator toothbrush sticking in between my teeth
Remember these? They had the middle bristles dyed blue, so that you could tell when to replace the toothbrush.

--My eyes just opened wider when I looked back in the mirror
--And saw the stranger with his toothbrush staring back in disbelief

Again, I'll skip the parts without references. . .

--Then I grabbed my girlfriend's Lady Bic razor and ran it down. . .
Someone online informs me that there is no such thing as a Lady Bic, only a Lady Schick. And yet no one has figured out that it's Webster and not Roget, who puts out the New World Thesaurus. (from Cliché )

--I am young enough to be this old, bald, fat guy's son
--I've never even met an Arab and I don't even own a gun
These are references to Camus' The Stranger , where the main character needlessly shoots and kills an Arab man. (of course, for the less literary, you can say that this is a reference to the Cure song Killing an Arab ("I am the stranger, killing an Arab") which is of course a more straight adaptation of the Camus novel. And you non-art types can just assume that I'm referring to the Israeli-Arab conflicts.

--There was that time when the shopping mall devoured my Aunt Sue
This isn't a reference to anything, but I have an Aunt Sue (but Adam wrote this line -- honest Aunt Sue!)

--And when my pet canary turned to stone I didn't know what to do
--I scolded my basilisk from behind my mirrored shield
We all know what a basilisk is, right?

--The was the same week Adrian Veidt removed my intrinsic field
Another Alan Moore reference, this time to Watchman . Adrain Veidt was Ozymandias, and he tried to kill Dr. Manhattan by removing his intrinsic field. All he accomplished was killing his own pet, Bubastic the genetically altered lynx (which was a name that Adam and I performed under once. "Bubastic the Genetically Altered Lynx" that is. Catchy huh?)

--I had nothing to lose so I played the lottery
--It was run by Shirley Jackson
The famous occultist and writer of The Lottery , that short story we all had to read in high school where the poor woman is stoned for "winning" the town lottery.

- -I said put down those stones somebody dropped my canary
That's my favorite part of the song, because it references back to an earlier lyric in the song! I have no idea if that was me or Adam, though, who wrote this line.

--I had a friend in a convent, Nergal said, "get thee to a nunnery"
In Hellblazer , John Constantine had a friend who encountered a demon named Nergal who advised her "get thee to a nunnery," so she became a nun. Why she followed the advice of a demon is anybody's guess

--And another friend who stuttered and quoted Lovecraft
In Swamp Thing , Constantine had a friend named Ben Cox who stuttered and was constantly quoting H.P. Lovecraft (duh!)

--I had a girl in New York city
Again, in Swamp Thing , John's girlfriend lived in NYC

--They were all killed by the Invunche
All these people were killed by the Invunche in Swamp Thing . The Invunche was made by taking an infant and doing horrible, horrible things to it (like twisting its head around and sewing its hand into its back and what not). It was very effective in the comic to have John Constantine (who was otherwise a cold-hearted bastard) weep when he described the making of the Invunche to Swamp Thing. I have no idea why I decided that we should pronounce it "in-vun-chay" as opposed to the more obvious "in-vunch." It just sounded more esoteric, I suppose.

--Or the time when I awoke from unsettling dreams transformed in my bed Into a monstrous vermin
This is, of course, the first line of Kafka's metamorphosis.

--Or those three days each august when my shadow is replaced by that
--Of Ethel Mermin
This is all me, no reference. It just rhymed with vermin so I blurted it out. We also wrote an alternate line that's a comic book reference but I don't think we're ever used it. It's the same line, but in place of Ethel Mermin we use Myra Ferminn, who was a supporting character in The Question , one of Adam's (and me, too) favorite comics of the late 80s.

--Well it was all quite interesting to have my doppleganger
--But it was getting boring and I had to use the loo
Randy Hoffman pointed out that we are simultaneously interested and bored. By substituting "well and good" for "interesting" the problem is solved. Of course, Randy also pointed out that we couldn't tell he was bald since the only way to tell he was Jewish would be if he was wearing a yarmulke over his head. Not wanting to bring up the whole foreskin issue (we didn't say the stranger had clothes on) I just said six words, "Judd Hirsch, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen. . ."

--I tried to help him but unfortunately I lacked the ability to phase
--Through solid objects like mirrors
Kitty Pryde of the X-Men has the ability to phase through solid objects like mirrors.

We refer to the ending as the "Beethoven ending," and I'm sure you see why. Adam really, really likes it when I make odd noises in between the guitar hits at the end. I do explosions, and thunder, and tires squealing, etc.

Oh dear lord, let it end. . .