How long have you been together? In October of 1993 we began having conversations about what would eventually become Number One Cup. We had our first formal rehearsal November 12th, 1993. Recorded our first single in January of '94. And our first show in March of 1994.

How did you get together? We met at a Stereolab, Unrest, Gastr del Sol show in Chicago, discovered our musical affinities and quit our current bands before we ever played together.

What are your influences? It's easier for us to talk about what inspires us than what has influenced us. The influences are for listeners to ponder. As with most bands, we've all arrived at a similar musical outlook via different routes. But the things we all have in common include early 70's Bowie, The Velvet Underground, late 70's angular, English stuff like Wire, the first three Cure records, and The Fall, late 70's American new wave like Television, Devo, and The Talking Heads, Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth, etc. At the moment we're all taken with what we see as the common thread running from Motown to Bowie to New Wave--tight production, a sense of space in the playing, and songs that deliver hooks. Of course, if anyone can hear the traces of our inspirations in our music, we're flattered.

Do you consider yourself lo-fi? No. We've made some lo-fi recordings in the past due either to economic neccessity or aesthetic choice. For example, Ohio Arts was a song we had been playing live as a big, anthemic rock song, but when we recorded it that way it struck us as bloated and ugly. So late one night after we got home from the studio, we tried it with a Micro Jammer toy drum machine and a guitar through a Pignose amp set up on either side of a stereo condenser mic going in to a Walkman. Then we took that tape and dubbed it on a dual cassette deck, adding the vocals live, sound-on-sound. That's the version we put on the record. Not because we wanted to be lo-fi, but because that version sounded better. We're always interested in using whatever technology we can get our hands on.

Is lo-fi valid? As valid as hi-fi. If the recorded version of the song kills me, I don't care what "fi" it is. But I'll say this about lo-fi: contrary to what Lou Barlow says, he or Robert Pollard or whoever don't release lo-fi recordings just because they're quicker and cheaper and easier to do. They know better than anyone that those recordings have a realism and an authenticity that is as important to the feel of the song as the chord changes or the melody. In the end, recording choices become a compositional element.

How dou you feel about dance music/electronica? Dance music is music meant to function in public, communal settings, as a social lubricant for group activity. We're more into music with a private function; music meant to be listened to. None of us dances or goes to raves, so dance music doesn't really serve our lifestyles. But there's a lot of cool sounds and technologies being explored with electronica. Our feeling is, like the first Punk or Dada or Surrealism or any radical new movement, electronica is too restrictive a form right now. Like those other movements, it will be most valuable when its tenets are absorbed and its aesthetic cross-pollinates with other music. When sampling and loops and electronic drums can be employed organically in service of great songs they will be an enhancing, expanding element.

How do you feel about post-rock? It's a bunch of musicians playing music.

What are you listening to these days? The first three or four Cure albums, Home Elf:Gulf Bore Waltz, the new Iggy re-mix of Raw Power, Urusei Yatsura, the new Karate record.

What's with the nature shows? Pat used to watch Marty Stouffer's Wild America on PBS late at night after delivering pizzas. The middle of the night is a fertile time for the imagination. By the way, Marty's been taken off the air for staging an antelope stampede by chasing them with his truck. evidently a couple of the little critters plummeted off a cliff to their death.

What's with the dream references? We like the illogical logic of dreams. But we're not into dream analysis or making life choices based on dreams. For that we use dice.

Tell us about your lyrics. They seem pretty obscure. Our lyrics are not that obscure. Language is a net. We're as interested in what falls through as in what gets caught by words. I think we feel that to explain our lyrics would be an admission of failure. To use words to explain other words seems counterproductive. Besides, explaining the meanings of songs would be like ripping open a machine to see how it works--we'd rather just let the machine do its job.

Describe your music. Well, we're not a band with a manifesto. Probably because we don't have one person calling the shots. In music, as with life, we're into figuring it out as we go along. We each have our own ideas, but, to our credit, none of us can be bullied into belief. We believe in music that is not background music. It's foreground music. It's pop rather than experimental, but with experimental touches. Our songs are built from the collisions and combinations of instruments and parts. Our songs are like four people quarrelling. As a result, no one member can write a Number One Cup song by himself. We're trying to fill in the blanks in our own record collections; to make the music we always wished existed in the spaces between other bands; and to fix the little mistakes other good bands have made due to bad judgement, bad drugs or bad times. Ultimately, though, our music is Indie rock--meaning it's personal and real and not motivated by record sales. We're making the music we want to make.

Were you surprised by the success of Divebomb? Yes. Particularly when we arrived home one day to find a strange message on our answering machine. It said: "This is John Peel of the BBC." And he was calling to say he was playing our song Divebomb on the radio. He held the phone up to the speakers so we could hear the song playing and said "There you are, the truth of what I say." It was months before we believed it was actually John Peel and not one of our friends playing a prank.

Where do you picture yourselves in 5/10/15 years? We'll probably be describing the music we want to make to a computer which will then compose, arrange and perform it for us.

What have you done for work? We all quit our jobs in January of 1996. Before that John worked as a Veterinary Assistant and then as a software salesman. Michael was an adult literacy teacher. Seth worked in an artificial intelligence research lab. And Pat delivered pizzas.

What do you make of England then? Get us a decent cup of coffee, a fresh green vegetable, chill the lager and you've got a perfectly respectable little island here. As far as the music scene goes, we feel like the British system is really reductive and stultifying. Because you have only two magazines and one radio station that count, bands either have to ascribe to the tastes of those outlets or resign themselves to obscurity. That doesn't leave much room for invention or idiosynchracy. America has dominating media too, but there's room for an underground, what with thousands of college radio stations playing whatever they damn well please and tens of thousands of smaller and home made magazines and fanzines available.

What music changed your life/got you interested in playing music? For each of us it was different. Micahel grew up in DC and used to go to see Minor Threat and other DC hardcore bands. Pat grew up in Painesville, Ohio and he had an uncle who worked at the studio where Pere Ubu used to record. His uncle used to give him tapes of the stuff those guys were up to. John's older brother turned him on to the Velvet Underground. And Seth's earliest memory of music being important was 4th grade, when he had a crush on Linda Jencks, and found out she was going to be in a local production of the Nutcracker. He spent about a week listening to his parents' record of the Nutcracker Suite, hoping that being familiar with the music might help me win Linda's heart. (It didn't work.)