Response to Justify Your Existence Column in The Onion written by Olias Nil

Why should anyone buy your record?

I’ll be perfectly honest: I don’t give a fuck if anybody buys The Fire Show. I'm not on the shill. We set out to make music for a lot of reasons, but selling records isn’t one of them. Foremost among our reasons is this: we want to make music which effects people’s lives the way other people’s music effected ours. Making art is about making choices and you can learn a lot about how to live by paying attention to the choices that great artists make. Like Big Dipper said, "For a song to be beautiful the artist must be brave." The commerce that happens between creative impulse and reception — the chat-ups, the pat-ups, the meets, greets and all-you-can-eats — that shit is for the salesmen, the chumps who don’t have anything of their own to offer the world.

Do you think your record will help people?

If you listen closely, if you’re predisposed to art’s transformative powers, if you make an effort to bring something to music so that you can take something away, then The Fire Show is as likely to help you as it is to hurt. If, by chance, you’re also moved by music which is by turns beautiful and ugly; which embraces imperfection as a philosophy; which is honest and at the same time artful, then The Fire Show will hold your hand and stroke your hair as the devouring flames lick at the hems of your garments; as the serpent coils your trembling legs, ascending.