Exclusive Interview

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music received responses to an e-mail interview with Cosmic Jester (Jonathan Gillott) on December 9, 2004 and July 13, 2005.

Xtreme Music: I’m extremely interested in your lyrical parodies based on Mike Patton’s selected discography.

Cosmic Jester: That’s cool that you’re interested in these parodies. I haven’t had any recorded yet as there never was too much interest with the text versions to do a recording. Although I did have someone ask if they could record one a couple times, but I don’t think they got around to it.. I parody a lot of songs most of which are unrelated to Mike Patton, because the more well-known songs make for more well-known parodies on web sites.. Feel free to e-mail me if you want to hear one recorded, or want to hear a parody of any particular song.

Xtreme Music: Please tell us briefly about the writing processes behind each of your Mike Patton parodies.

Cosmic Jester: “Breakfast” was a parody that needed a lot of research to do, as I couldn’t have remembered all of the Trix flavours myself. Not my favorite parody for a few reasons but more of a “one-liner”, meaning that it was just based on the main chorus line and everything else was just a filler.

“Grade Five Crisis” was like “Breakfast” as this started with just the one line, about how red and blue make purple, but this one had a lot more substance in the original lyrics to form a half-decent parody from.

“Ultimate Patton Band Tribute Song” took a very long time to write, so I’m pretty happy with this one. Since then it’s not completely updated with new projects and other projects that I hadn’t heard of back then. I might consider revising this one soon, seeing if anything new fits in better. Probably one of my favourites though. I love parodying songs with a lot of words, cause it keeps the reader or listener interested and they don’t have to hear the same lines over and over again, which may only be funny the first time.”

“Hamburger To Go” was my first parody, and also one of the most well-recieved. Generally really happy with this one.

“God Hates A Friday” basically sums up what I hate about waking up so early to go to work. It tries to convey the feelings that someone has when they just don’t want to do anything but lay in bed all day… I’m sure we’ve all been there!

“Maybe” is simple and more tailored to my odd sense of humor, but a parody nonetheless.

“Mr. Rice Guy” uses Chinese food as a topic, I believe any song can be parodied to incorporate this subject area. People seem to like that, it’s one of those topics that can just be funny without really having a reason. This is also my favourite of my parodies to date because it combines all the aspects that make a good parody song, with a topic that anyone can have a laugh at.

“Mother Goose” is simple but creative… the idea was fun, until I started to run out of good nursery rhymes.