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Ego Plum, interviewed in January 2020 by Lisa Doop of The Mysterious Spanish Ladies
As part of a class project in January 2020, English Residents fan, Mysterious Spanish Lady and administrator of this wiki Lisa Doop conducted a video interview with musician and composer Ego Plum (Harvey Beaks, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Cuphead Show!), a noted Residents fan who purchased the group's ARP Odyssey from their former manager Hardy Fox in June 2018.
Ego Plum wrote an article about the synth, "The Residents & The Odd Odyssey of Hardy Fox's Synthesizer", for Tape Op magazine in November 2019, and would later appear with The Residents at their 50th Anniversary secret show at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in January 2023.
The video was posted to Lisa Doop's YouTube channel Dooper Views with the permission of Ego Plum in May 2021, shortly after the completion of the class project. The interview is (informally and retrospectively) the first in an ongoing series of interviews with Residents-related figures, fans and collectors, conducted as original research by members of The Mysterious Spanish Ladies.
Transcript[]
The below text has been transcribed as accurately as possible from the YouTube video by a Mysterious Spanish Lady. Headings are included to roughly match chapter separations featured in the original video.
Introduction and The Cuphead Show![]
- Ego Plum:
- So we're, uh, sitting in my studio right now, um, here in Los Angeles.
- Miss Doop:
- Mmhmm.
- Ego Plum:
- Uh, I've just finished a meeting with a director. A guy named Dave Wasson, um... we're, uh... working on a new show... um... for Netflix, called, uh, Cuphead. Uh, the animated series, which is based on a video game... I don't know if you're familiar with the game Cuphead?
- Miss Doop:
- Oh yeah, I own it. I own the game.
- Ego Plum:
- Oh, good, so you're familiar. Okay. So, uh, maybe... I don't know if you heard or not, but that's being, um, developed at Netflix as a proper series. Uh, based on the success of the game and how popular it was, they realized this could become an actual... you know, thing, so it's pretty exciting. We were just working on music for, um... a character named Cala Maria, which is this sort of sea... sea monster woman. Uh, so I was writing a piece of music for that. And... he likes it, so... you know, we move on to the next phase. It's going great.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah... that sounds great. Uh... I've been vaguely keeping track on the... of the Cuphead TV show... or Netflix show, or whatever.
- Ego Plum:
- Right. Me, I haven't announced, actually, that I'm actually the composer on it.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah. [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- So, uh... it's... it's new information.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah... if I'm... [unclear] [laughs]
- Ego Plum:
- Oh, right, right.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah. [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- So what are you, uh... what are your... what are you, um... what are we doing this for again? Is it for a school project, or is it a...?
- Miss Doop:
- It's... it's for a school project, yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- Oh, great.
- Miss Doop:
- It's, uh... I'm... I'm doing... I'm doing a media course. And...
- Ego Plum:
- Right, uh huh.
- Miss Doop:
- I have to produce a documentary. Like, a little documentary on sound in animation.
- Ego Plum:
- Great. Okay, that's... that's really good.
- Miss Doop:
- I have to get an interview from someone who's, like... in the field, I guess, and you were... [unclear] you know, so...
- Ego Plum:
- Sure. So, how did you find... how did you find me?
- Miss Doop:
- Oh, I mean, I've been... I've been a fan of yourself for a while, so...
- Ego Plum:
- Thank you.
Harvey Beaks[]
- Miss Doop:
- I was really big into Harvey Beaks when that came out.
- Ego Plum:
- Harvey's a really wonderful show, I feel so lucky to have been, uh...
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- ...uh, on that show, yeah.
- Miss Doop:
- That's so... [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- That's really, really cool. Thank you.
- Miss Doop:
- [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah, uh... we're all very proud of that show. I mean, I... I think it deserved a lot more attention than it got. Um, I wish it had a longer life and a lot more, like... commercial success, maybe? But I think that the people that... the people that found it and like it, really like it. So, that's... that's a nice thing.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah, it's really... [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Well, yeah, we all love Harvey. For sure.
The Residents and Hardy Fox's ARP Odyssey[]
- Miss Doop:
- Right. Um... this isn't for the interview or anything, but, uh, I did read your article you wrote about, um... Hardy Fox's... um, ARP Odyssey, yeah?
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah, yeah!
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah, I really... I... The Residents are my favourite band in the world. [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- That's amazing. Uh...
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah. [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- It's, uh... it's right behind me... [points to ARP Odyssey behind him]
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah...
- Ego Plum:
- ...where my finger is pointing, right there.
- Miss Doop:
- ...I think... [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- [laughs] Yeah.
- Miss Doop:
- [unclear] Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah, I mean... gosh, The Residents are so important to me as well.
- Miss Doop:
- Oh...
- Ego Plum:
- Um... that, to me, always sounded like cartoon music in a lot of ways, you know? So, uh...
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- Uh, obviously that influence, like, made perfect sense for me, um... as a composer in cartoons, it seemed so fitting, you know? And I've... I've talked to them about it, you know... I've... "Why didn't you do more music for TV projects?" Or... you know... animation...
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah. They made a.... There's this one thing that I... I know of that they scored. It's called... I think it's called Lower Bob in the... I think it's called Slow Bob in the Lower Dimension.
- Ego Plum:
- Oh, wow.
- Miss Doop:
- It's a short film for MTV.
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Miss Doop:
- And they scored it... [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- That's great, I didn't...
- Miss Doop:
- It's really good.
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah.
- Miss Doop:
- And it's on YouTube, you need to see it... [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- Have you had a chance to see The Residents live?
- Ego Plum:
- Oh, great.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah.
- Miss Doop:
- It's my only time I ever saw them, 'cause...
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah. I saw 'em, um... about two weeks ago, at...
- Miss Doop:
- [unclear]
- Ego Plum:
- ...they were doing a dress rehearsal for, uh... this thing called God In 3 Persons that just happened in New York, um... but I saw it up in the Bay Area, up in San Francisco.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- Always amazing, always, uh... a treat to be around them and to see what they do. A constant source of inspiration for me. And for you too, I'm sure.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah...
- Ego Plum:
- Yeah.
- Miss Doop:
- Definitely.
- Ego Plum:
- So, uh...
- Miss Doop:
- [unclear] Yeah. So...
- Ego Plum:
- What do you want to know?
What defines animated sound for you?[]
- Miss Doop:
- Well, I'll get to my first question. Okay, uh... what do you think defines animated sound, for you? Like, what... is it?
- Ego Plum:
- God, I mean, it's... it really is a broad question, right? Because... you consider animation, it's, like... it's... it's not necessarily one thing, it's a... it's a... it's a style of... of telling stories, right? It's... it's like saying, um... paintings. It's, like, there's a million kinds of paintings.
- Miss Doop:
- Mm.
- Ego Plum:
- The stuff that I gravitated towards are cartoons, and I mean that in the traditional sense of cartoons. I love... you know, I was brought up with Looney Tunes and that kind of thing, you know? The music of Carl Stalling, which was the, you know, musical director for...
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- ...the Golden Age of Animation. And Carl Stalling, and by extension Raymond Scott, um... the composer who, you know, a lot of his music was used throughout Looney Tunes. Um... repeat the question one more time, before I start... going off on... uh...
- Miss Doop:
- I said, um... what defines animated sound for you? I've been really...
- Ego Plum:
- Ah--
- Miss Doop:
- I'm sorry... I've been really doing... I've been doing a deep dive on Raymond Scott's stuff.
- Ego Plum:
- Oh, yeah. Well... for me, Carl Stalling music, and Raymond Scott music, is sort of the... to me, that defines animation. The sound of... of cartoons and animation. The... the, um... there's... there's a sort of a... schizophrenic quality to the way they wrote music, that could go in multiple directions very quickly. Uh... jumping into... you know, thirty different emotions in... in the course of a minute. You know, just... the way... the speed in which they could just turn left and right and backwards and forwards, and express different feelings... uh, with the instruments, it's just tremendous to me. That's always been, like, the goal. Like, can I reach the heights of Carl Stalling? And, it's... the answer's always no.
- Miss Doop:
- [laughs]
- Ego Plum:
- But you al... you... you always try, you know? That's always the trajectory. You've got to have something to aim towards. Um... and of course, Raymond Scott as well. Just... what's more fascinating about Raymond is that, you know, he did not write music for cartoons.
- Miss Doop:
- Yeah.
- Ego Plum:
- His... his music just so happened to be used in, uh... a lot of cartoons. Uh... his... he was just wired in that... in that sort of crazy cartoony language, before he knew it was a thing. Um... and, uh, yeah. That's... that, for me, is, um... is what defines the sound of animation. I mean, at... at this point, animation has become a lot of things. Like... like, pop music would... could score, uh... a cartoon just as easily as a Carl Stalling score, you know? Um, and it's turned into... it means a lot of different things to different people, but I get... and it's sort of rooted in that sort of classic sound, and then the influences I've brought, which have been from stuff like The Residents, and punk rock, and anything unconventional, frankly. And I think something about animation is that there is room for a lot of strange experimentation and unusual things. And that's why my influences, like stuff like Devo or Oingo Boingo or The Residents... um... I... I keep pointing up because I'm looking at a poster of them... right in front of my desk. Um...
- Miss Doop:
- [laughs] I've got a poster right over my...
- Ego Plum:
- [laughs] Really! Okay, good. So, um...
- Miss Doop:
- [laughs]
- Ego Plum:
- Um... yeah, that sort of seems to fit so well with animation, too, so that's a big thing for me. You know, um... the... the... the quirkiness and the strangeness of... of this music... it... fits so perfectly in a lot of animated projects, too. And sometimes you don't get those projects, but when you do, it's wonderful.
--TRANSCRIPT INCOMPLETE (8:31-59:30 YET TO BE TRANSCRIBED)--