About 5 minutes into my conversation with Mindless Self Indulgence mastermind Little Jimmy Urine, I realized that, despite the absurd name, wacky antics and lyrics that some consider incoherent or offensive, there is a lot more at work within within this band than meets the eye.
On the surface, MSI, who will perform at Rams Head Live! in Baltimore Wednesday, may seem like another talentless Hot Topic marketing ploy, tricking youngsters into rebellion by conformity. Though Hot Topic has admittingly been very fruitful for MSI, there is a solid musical foundation behind the punchlines. The band's unique sound combines metal, punk, hip-hop and electronic elements. Though basically ignored by any sort of mainstream exposure, MSI has boomed in popularity since releasing it's third proper album, "You'll Rebel Against Anything," which has even the band members scratching their heads.
After a couple high-profile tours, including an appearance on Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution festival, which made a stop at Nissan Pavillion in Bristow, Va. last year, Mindless took some time off and is now hitting the road in support of it's new album, "If," which hits shelves tomorrow.
Mindless Self Indulgence will perform at Rams Head Live! in Baltimore Wednesday.
I had the opportunity to talk to the fast-talking, quick thinking frontman, Little Jimmy Urine.

Hey man, how's it going today?
Very good thank you very much. I just woke up. Waking up is good, because it means I'm not dead, so I can thank God that I can die how I wanted to: strapped to a dynamite rocket.
Hahahahaha......Okay....So you guys are preparing for a European tour right now. Is there a difference between your following there and here?
They all have weird accents and wear skinny clothes. They are just as excited as the fans here. Actually I've been blown away by the similarity of certain areas. You would think it's really different, but they get all the jokes, at least the subtle stuff. It's very much a parallel of here though. When you go to a big city, people go wild and it sells out. New York is a lot like London, the crowds are like "We've seen a lot, impress us." Then when you go off the beaten path, Ohio and Scotland are simliar, the kids are like "Oh my God, let's wreck the place!" I love Scotland. England always talks shit on Scotland, they are like underdogs and I love it. The first time we went there, they did rip the place completely apart.
I usually have a pretty good memory when it comes to how I found out about certain bands. I was trying to remember how I first heard of you guys. I'm pretty sure the first song I heard was "Molly," but I'm not sure how. What do you attribute to how your fan base has built up, considering you aren't played on conventional radio? Was it a word of mouth thing?
It's totally word of mouth, totally old school. It's very much how punk rock used to be back in the day. You're in the know, you know, some punk rock kid and he plays a tape for you or whatever. It's kind of the same with us, but more modern. things people use now, we've been doing for years. We're so huge on the Web. If you aren't a complete recluse, you know someone who knows us. Even if you are 60, you probably has a little cousin that knows who we are. If you don't like us, someone you know loves us. It was definitely a word of mouth thing, and we noticed that and ran with it. We knew how to work it. We're a hexagon, and eveyon wants a square peg that fits into that hole. But we know how to market the hexagon. We know how t o make people excited, so totally, the fan base is created from word of mouth.
It's crazy, because we don't get a lot of video or radio play, though we've had some. The first time we went to (Last Call with) Carson Daly, the audience there was all Mindless kids. Not one or two, basically the TV studio was a sold out Mindless crowd. And they were screaming through all of Carson's stuff and chanting "MSI." I just thought, "This is weird. This is TV." It's supposed to be some kind of controlled environment. Bizarre.
You mentioned earlier that you were a "hexagon," a difficulty when it comes to the marketing side of the businees. Is that what happened at Elektra, they didn't know what to do with you?
Yeah, I think everyont got excited then, it's an exciting thing. I mean this was way back when nobody was doing anything close to what we were doing. Pop music, at least, is kind of catching up as far as the theatrics, and hip-hop to some degree. Now I'll hear a Britney Spears record and I'm like, "Hey that sounds like one of mine!" But back in the day, people where like "What IS this?" There was a huge bidding war. We did a lot of the work ourselves. It was very hard to work with the label. They would disagree with us about things and be like "We do it like this all the time." So we left. We jumped off and lost our minds. It'shelpful we had our own control and we grabbit and ran with it. To know control looked and felt like this, we could do whatever we wanted. We even had a little bit of control at elektra. You could never make an album like Frankenstein (Girls Seem Strangley Sex). We spent a shitload of the label's money, we had 30 songs appear in alphabetical order.
MORE TO COME