Wicked Fun

Insight, jokes and reflection with Mindless Self Indulgence

“That body of Christ, man, it gave us a lot of crackers,” says Mindless Self-Indulgence frontman Jimmy Urine, who talks at a faster pace than Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam. “We’re still eating ’em.”

The band is on tour promoting its new Kickstarter-funded album How I Learned to Stop Giving a Shit and Love Mindless Self Indulgence—which is scheduled to come out May 14—but our interview took place on Good Friday, which brought a flurry of puns, references and humorous antics from Urine. As religious folk around the globe commemorate Christ’s crucifixion, the NYC-born Urine admits to growing up a Catholic schoolboy.

“How do you think I got so beautiful?” jokes the singer, then known as James Euringer. “I got into a lot of trouble because I was very Bart Simpson in Catholic school,” he says.

For those of you who know Mindless Self Indulgence, this fiercely independent, genre-bending band has always had a gift of being aggressively fun—like an Easter egg hunt on fast-forward. The fun they have making music reaches through the speakers and grabs you by your scruff and forces you to have just as much fun as they are.

“My parents allowed me to see R-rated movies, but they were like, ‘We would rather you go see Animal House or Smokey and the Bandit or The Blues Brothers and learn ‘f@$k’ and ‘shit’ than go see Apocalypse Now and be traumatized.’ Most of my classmates didn’t see these movies, and to avoid getting bullied, I would be class clown.

Fortunately, the Euringers were not overly concerned with little Jimmy’s potty mouth. “We were not a religious family at all,” he explains. “It was just cheaper to go to the Catholic school, and you got those wicked uniforms. It was like being in prison, but it was one of those fun prisons. You just had to know how to work the system.”

While others might also compare Catholic school to jail, Urine can make the analogy based on personal experience—and has on more than one occasion. Dressed to the nines in all pink, he once spent the weekend in a Detroit jail after exposing himself on stage and lighting his pubic hair on fire—just one of many shocking acts Urine’s done in the past (hint: one of the acts involves, well, his last name).

And while Urine may not have made his alma mater proud with this Good Friday interview, he is quick to point out an MSI fan who also made angels gasp on this special day.

“We are in Tempe tonight,” he recounts. “A guy came to the show dressed as a giant penis and did a stage dive, but he didn’t make it and busted his nuts. It was great.”

www.mindlessselfindulgence.com

The Secret Stash

Jimmy Urine is no stranger to cannabis, and told CULTURE that when he was younger he discovered his father’s secret stash. He began pinching small amounts to mix with tobacco, but his brother ultimately got them caught. As an adult, Urine says he only partakes once every few years. Still, he seems incredulous that MMJ is not yet fully legal. “Whether we are talking about medical marijuana or gay marriage, this is 2013,” he says emphatically. “Let people do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others . . . How are we still talking about it? How is it an issue? We just need to legalize the whole thing.”