Jeremy Wheeler – The Bang!, comics, movies and life in the Midwest.

STI: Speaking of doing something that’s just a balls-out party like this — when it gets so big and there are so many people involved, you were saying it becomes a business, it is a business. It almost has to become a business because it has to be run as such. It has to be streamlined and lean and efficient and purposeful. When did you realize that it’s gone from “the basement” to “the business?”

JW: A couple years or so. It was just like, you know, we have to become legit about this and we got tons of shit for it, you know? People really — there’s some people who were really not happy about that and they thought –

STI: “Aw, you sold out, man!”

JW: Yeah, and it’s just like… Well, you know, “I love you, but fuck you.” This is our lives, this is our future at stake and frankly, if we want The Bang! to go forward it’s gotta be legit in some kind of way. You can’t sell out every time at a venue and not be legit in some sort of way. Not after seven years. And it’s just a way for us to have some sort of building blocks  for the future. We have Bang Media, which covers button making and silk screening, and then there’s Bang Productions for the events that we throw, so it’s kind of like us looking out for, like, “Listen, if we don’t do this now, when are we gonna do this?” And if we ever do get bigger than where we’re at, how are we gonna explain for it? Cuz people gotta look out for themselves in that kind of way.

STI: So you kind of get that reaction where the band you’ve always followed at all the small clubs finally gets a major label deal — “Oh, they sold out. They’re on the radio.” You kind of get that kind of throw back in your face like you guys went corporate or something?

JW: Yeah, we did get that and it was kind of like, “Give us a break. We’re DJing with tapes.” You know? We still slave over cassette tapes and put plenty of time and effort into this.

STI: You’re not even burning CDs.

JW: No, no. Not at all.

STI: You’re still straight analog.

JW: Yeah. Yeah.

STI: You’re old school!

JW: Yeah! What’s crazy is I put together compilations of songs on CDs. Just about a CD for almost every Bang! for — I’m on my fifty-something’th volume or something like that, and then I take stuff from there and I take stuff from records and all sorts of stuff, but you know, we’re still doing it the same. It’s just a matter of watching out for our own backs, frankly, when it comes to this. Frankly, we’re just getting by, but that just has to do with where we’re at and where the economy is at and where Ann Arbor is at.

STI: See, that’s where your cred remains. You’re just getting by.

JW: Yeah.

STI: You can still buy a beer here and there, I’m sure.

JW: Oh, yeah. Sure.

STI: Well, there you go. It’s not like you’re fat cats going, “Yes, dance my little friends. Dance and pay us!”

JW: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I don’t own a condo in Ann Arbor. I don’t own a house. I’m still renting, I’m still feeling my way through all of this stuff. Whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing, I don’t know, but we’re here, we’re still doing it and we still have these parties for people. If the people didn’t show up, we wouldn’t throw them anymore.

STI: What’s the web address, by the way?

JW: MySpace is MySpace.com/TheBangLovesYou

STI: There you go. My point exactly.

JW: Yes. We love them. Yes. Yes, we wouldn’t do it without the people. And the people have changed. Ann Arbor is a transition town. That’s not unknown to us and certainly our crowd has changed throughout the years but each and every year we get more and different beautiful people than we had before.

STI: Plus the rabid diehards.

JW: Plus the rabid diehards, yeah. But you know, every couple years we get new rabid diehards and the face of The Bang! changes. People move to Chicago, people moved to L.A., people move to San Francisco, people move to New York and they’ve taken a little of The Bang! with them and they’re doing things in those areas and we’re very proud of that. We’re very proud of them and we’re very proud that, you know, if there was any influence at all on our parts then we’re very happy that we had a hand in doing something.

STI: Mission accomplished?

JW: Absolutely! Why not? Fuck it. [laughs]

STI: How do you keep The Bang! fresh every month? Do some ideas get recycled or pulled back by popular demand or do you always strive for something brand new every month, on and on and on?

JW: Well, [when] you do The Bang! as long as we have, you do something for seven years, there are certain themes that click. In a college town, you can depend on every September when the students come back, there’s going to be a “Back to School” one, and that one is consistently the biggest of the year every time. There are some things, you know, like the first Valentine’s, actually the first Valentine’s one we did was still at the Halfass ,so we’ve had one of those every February. Other than that, we’ve just had wild lists of different themes that we’d like to do. Most of them are completely joking and just out there. You know, shit like “Bang Marley” and, you know, “Back to The Bang!” which we might do one of these days. People always request it but we’ve never done it before.

STI: Woo, daring.

JW: Yeah, yeah, you know? [laughs] It’s just like, part of me says like, “Oh, that’s really shitty” and then another part of me is like, “Oh, well, you could probably do something like that.” But what’s surprising is no matter what we come up with, it seems to work. It’s rare that something doesn’t work.

STI: Yeah, I’ve never seen a Bang! where people are standing around going, “Man, what a drag…”

JW: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

STI: Never. I mean, people are hanging from the rafters and clothes are flying and people are grinding and, you know, stuff’s happening!

JW: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, my big thing with The Bang! is, I like to look around and see people smiling. If people are smiling, I know we’ve done our job right, whether they’re looking at the crazy videos that we have or whether they’re just enjoying a song or, you know, if they’re enjoying themselves then that’s what really matters and so far, we’ve done it pretty good.

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