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"Ima Robot: No Programming Required

The band explains their tour bus sex dreams, and side with the freaks and losers.

by C. Bottomley

In "Here Come the Bombs," a typically edgy piece of pop from Ima Robot's self-titled debut, lead singer Alex Ebert blatantly wants your attention. "Buy our album! Only $15.99!" he yelps in a whine that's a cross between Carrot Top and a car horn.

"We don't charge touching fees/So touch me puh-leeeeze!"

Ima Robot wanna be loved and they wanna be huge, and they don't care who knows it. Big-mouthed Ebert will tell anyone who wants to listen that the Los Angeles band are aiming for world domination. With his curiously shaved sideburns and extravagant mullet, he's certainly a rock star in the making. He even turned up to the VH1 interview in a giant pair of MC Hammer genii pants.

The group started as Ebert and guitarist Tim Anderson's hip-hop project, but quickly grew into something bigger and odder - kinda like the foam suits in their quirky "Dynomite" video. Big ideas work best with big tunes, though, so the band mix the apocalyptic cheerleading of "A is for Action" with comic raps like "Black Jettas," where Ebert finds himself being stalked by ex-girlfriends in Volkswagens.

Ebert and Anderson joke that IMA Robot had barely started when they were savoring the Behind the Music life, and things got weirder when they attracted the notice of drummer Joey Waronker and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnson. Both are in-demand musicians who've played on hits by R.E.M., Beck, and Smashing Pumpkins. But they gave up the studio rat life to join the band.

A scrappy twist on David Bowie and Brian Eno's art rock, Ima Robot deserves to be No. 1 somewhere, even if it's only on Mars. The madcap band's prime mission is convincing us earthlings of their value. Toward that goal, Ebert and Anderson told VH1 about holding spelling bees, dissecting odd dreams, and throwing a little U2 into the DJ sets

VH1: How do you go from hip-hop to mullets?

Alex Ebert: Hip-hop was punk rock for me. Dressing up in big baggy pants and parkas was a really out there thing to do, especially as a white kid in the suburbs. When I was in seventh grade, I was getting picked on and it wasn't easy. [Laughs.] It was all about heshers and metal and all this other stuff that I didn't care for. We never realized what we were doing. We look back and we're like, 'God damn! What the f*ck were we thinking?" When we started off, Tim was the hype man, the Flava Flav. We put on a DAT, and started doing our show. That's something I would never have had the balls to do today. That's the scary thing! [Watch Clip]

Tim Anderson: My older brother was listening to the Sex Pistols and I was listening to Pete Rock. When we got together, Alex already had this [idea] of beats, but with synth lines and acoustic guitar. You wouldn't look at us and go "Oh, it's a rap group" or go, "these guys are a rock group." It was like, "What the f*ck is this?"

VH1: Did audiences give you any resistance?

AE: Tim says we were like VH1's Behind the Music before the music. We had our own scene generated within the first couple of months. We had groupies and the whole nine [yards]. It was just that the [music] industry was like, "We can't market this. What the hell is this?"

VH1: Do you have a lot in common with New York hipsters like Interpol and Stellastar*?

AE: There's a similarity in attitude, but we've never attempted to rehash or create like, a new new wave. It's nice to be representing L.A., because so often people frown upon [the West Coast]. We played a show last night and everyone's like, "Where are you guys from?" We're like, "L.A." The look is always the same: "L.A.?! How could this possibly come out of L.A.?" It's actually an easy place for something like this to happen. There are really no rules there, because it's so spread out. It's [like] social anarchy. You have your personal space at all times. You're in your car, and you're not forced to tone yourself down for anybody. [Watch Clip]

VH1: What bands do you consider to be your peers?

AE: Dirty Ho, Erase Errata, Hot Hot Heat, who we just toured with, the Rapture ... Anyone trying to loosen things up and take it away from this kind of aggressive, no-fun, machismo kind of crap, y'know what I mean? [Laughs.] It's pretty pretentious, but it's kind of fighting pretension in a weird way.

VH1: When you're playing skate metal territory like Akron, Ohio, does anyone show up?

TA: Luckily, we also appeal to the losers, the freaks, the punks...

AE: There are losers in every town. Thank God for the losers, man. Otherwise, I'd have no friends.

TA: We definitely appeal to the punks - or the wannabe punks. We get a good reaction from a very bizarre variety of people; from the little punk kids to their moms.

VH1: Has anyone's mom tried to force themselves upon you backstage?

TA: No comment on that one.

AE: We're pretty slick, man. We slide out of situations really well, I think. Especially those dicey situations with those younger girls...

VH1: Is traveling around the country in a tour van fun?

AE: Sometimes. When we're in the city, the driver's just stopping and going; you're trying to make tea and it's spilling all over the place and you just woke up ... The one really good thing about it is sleeping. Both of us have the most amazing dreams! [Laughs.] Like it rocks you to sleep and you're in this little cubbyhole. You learn to figure it out.

VH1: Tell me about the last dream you had.

AE: They're a little lewd, but...

VH1: Come on, this is the Internet.

AE: You know what's screwed up? You say "Internet," I think "porn." Every dream involved sleeping with like 12 girls and one guy. That would suddenly crossover to me taking care of some guy's dog that he wanted me to put in a frozen goblet. Then he had these two cats that he needed to be put in separate, tinier, frozen goblets, and put in this freezer. Then I'd get back to throwing the Eros in this mansion. Great stuff.

TA: [Mine was about ] all these mountain/climbing holds being all over everything - that's how you would get around. Everyone was good at it, but it was terrifying for some reason. I can't deal with that whole outdoors/men thing culture. And somebody also died of course in my dream - somebody close to me.

VH1: Tell me about the band's spelling bees.

TA: We're not a bunch of excessive, crazy people, so what do you do to kill time sitting around backstage? We entertain the mind. We play games: board games, video games, spelling bees ... Y'know, wordplay.

AE: At the moment, I am the spelling bee champion. The last one wasn't that difficult. They couldn't come up with a good enough word.

TA: Just because you were good as a kid, don't think if you play like 15 years later you're still gonna be good at spelling. I was good in sixth grade, and now I'm lost. "Palindrome?" I can't spell it.

VH1: How do you spell "myxomatosis"?

AE: I think it's probably spelled just how it sounds: "Myxomatosis..." Can I get the etymology please? [Laughs.] If it's Latin, I don't know, but I got, M-I-X-E-M-I-T-O-S-I-S. [Watch Clip]

VH1: I don't think that's right.

AE: I have no idea what that means. What does it mean? Is it where you can't stop mixing songs or something? [Laughs.]

TA: It's from flipping the fader all day … you get little corns on these two fingers: myxomatosis.

VH1: When you DJ, what's the one record that has to be in the box?

TA: A late '70s German guy named Rheingold that Alex found and hipped me to. I spin Rheingold in all my sets. It's about 210 bpms, with synths flying out of everywhere. I've been spinning the Fat Truckers record a lot. You always got to have your little tricks, which I'm not going to reveal.

AE: Yeah! Take the Rheingold thing back! His big set closer is always like "My Sharona."

TA: You've got to give people something they can sing along to. I spun this remix of the White Stripes' song "Seven Nation Army" that has 50 Cent on it into U2's "New Years' Day" as a closer and I got a standing ovation.

AE: Everyone was already standing!

TA: Well, what do you call it then?

AE: You call it clapping! [Laughs.] [Watch Clip]

VH1: Your lyrics are often described as funny, but at the end of the day, how important are they?

AE: Really important. They're funny, but they're not that funny, you know what I mean? They're actually rather serious. Even "Black Jettas" is dead serious. I find everything funny in a sick way. If a person hits their head, I'm always just laughing. Everything is kind of funny just because we're so out of control.

TA: You have to tune into the dark side of humor, if you're gonna be partaking in any kind of art in this world. I always laugh at reviews that think the lyrics are comical because it's really serious. That dark weight that floats around in all of us, it's really just kind of a mechanism to deal.

VH1: Why Ima Robot?

AE: To me, it's just another one of those funny names, but it's not so funny. Actually, it sums up the whole attitude of our band pretty precisely.

TA: When we had come up with the name, we shelved it 'cause the whole inside joke of where it came from was just too twisted. But I remember driving in L.A. on this street in Westwood. There's this giant workout place facing the street so you can see everyone working out. I remember driving by and there were like 50 people in leotards all doing these exercises in this window. It clicked. It was the whole concept of "I could be a robot and I might not know." You have to cut into me and, "Oh sh*t, yup, I am a robot."