1. David Minnick: Absolutely
Crabid
By BRAD GLANDEN, Published: February 11, 2009 | 16,863 views
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David Minnick has emerged from the densely populated
Internet music marketplace as an exceptionally talented
and unique composer. Based in Waterford, Michigan,
Minnick once served as the guitarist for Detroit's
legendary ska outfit Gangster Fun, and later co-founded
the Crabid Music label with his brother and fellow
Gangster Fun alum, Chris Minnick. Along with the
enigmatic Oven Mitt Johnson and the free jazz trio
Zermos, Crabid's label roster is dominated by David's
genre-hopping band the Sursiks, whose music draws
ingeniously from pre-recorded, non-musical material.
Absurd humor is a defining characteristic of David
Minnick's work: the music on the Sursiks' 2006 debut I
Didn't Know I Was Singing (Crabid, 2006) is built around
answering machine messages; on Lydia Grace (Crabid,

2. 2007), the songs are written and sung by Minnick's then-
three-year-old daughter.
Christmas in March (Crabid, 2009), is a sidesplitting
combination of media satire and compositional virtuosity.
News broadcasts, infomercials, spoken-word recordings,
political speeches, and other sources are dissected and
rebuilt as highly melodic, rhythmically engaging tunes,
and each listen reveals new layers of intricacy. As a
composer, Minnick occasionally crosses over into jazz
territory, but fans in any genre will appreciate his fresh
take on music—provided they have a sense of humor.
All About Jazz: Where did you get the idea for
Christmas in March?
David Minnick: Christmas in March used to be [a group]
called Weapons of Mass Consumption. We practiced at a
bar, and anybody could just walk in and hear us practice.
The backing track was drums with sampled voices, and
everything else was live instruments. But the guy that
was putting money into it wanted to make it so huge,
with dancers and video, all this stuff, and it just sort of
crumbled under its own weight.
AAJ: The CD is relentlessly funny. How did you put it
together?
DM: Every song on the CD was redone many times. One
new sample could change the entire focus and subject
matter of a track. Every time I thought a song was
finished, I'd end up taking it apart and putting it back
together with new instruments and an entirely different

3. arrangement. Miraculously, it finally did reach a point
where I knew each song was finished. Linking the songs
together was a relatively late decision, two months prior
to mastering. I just wanted to highlight the connections
between the songs that were already there.
AAJ: The variety of sampled sources is pretty staggering.
DM: "That Lovin' Feelin" is sung by the guys on some old
episode of Survivor. Most of the other voices on that are
from a Jehovah's Witness tape. Every time they'd stop
by, I'd ask them for tapes, till they started inviting me to
their meetings—I figured I had enough tapes then. The
"I'll Eat You For Dinner" clip is [children's TV character]
Mr. Dressup doing his rendition of Three Billy Goats Gruff.
AAJ: How would you describe your early musical
experiences?
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DM: When I was a small kid, I used to set up an entire
room full of pots of pans in a big circle around the room
and bang on them. My parents finally forced me to take
drum lessons when I was 11 or so. By that point I had
already figured out how to make multi-track recordings
with two cassette decks, and I figured out guitar and
piano for that purpose.

4. I took drum lessons for an awfully long time, and then
went into college as a percussion major. I got tired of
dressing up in a tux to play three triangle notes, so I
switched over to composition, and found that that's what
I ought to be doing.
AAJ: Which artists have influenced your work?
DM: I’ve always gravitated toward composers and artists
who have their own sound and their own way of working;
artists whose work can be identified simply by how it
sounds. That said, some favorite composers and bands of
mine are Negativland, Devo, Cardiacs, John Cage,
Luciano Berio, Bela Bartok, Olivier Messiaen, Conlon
Nancarrow, Philip Glass…this list could go on and on.
These artists remind me that it’s ok to create new ideas
about music and new ways of creating music from
scratch.
AAJ: Let's talk about Gangster Fun. How did the band
form?
DM: [Gangster Fun member] Josh Silverstein set up a
studio in his basement. I was monopolizing the studio a
little bit. A few of my other friends wanted to get
something together that had nothing to do with me,
because they were tired of hearing my stuff—that's how
Gangster Fun started. Then they needed a guitarist, so I
ended up joining in 1987. I graduated from Indiana in
1990, and that's when the band started playing some

5. pretty big shows. We recorded a few records, and never
really thought to get signed or anything like that.
AAJ: Why a ska band?
DM: Because it was the most ridiculous sort of band to
start in 1986. Ska had just fizzled out, so it was a joke
band. We ended up being the only ska band that didn't
listen to ska and didn't take ourselves seriously. We'd do
classic rock tunes but not in a ska vein, every once in a
while—just to mess with people. Every time we did
interviews, it was complete lies. We'd make stuff up to
see it printed and play it all totally straight. I think we did
one radio interview where we pretended not to speak
English.
AAJ: What led you to start the Crabid Music label?
DM: In 2000, Gangster Fun just sort of fell apart, for one
reason or another. I decided it was worth the investment
to buy some recording equipment. I put together all
kinds of weird projects that seemed impossible when I
started them. After years, though, I managed to finish
them. I didn't know what to do with these things, and I
talked to my brother [Chris Minnick], who does web
pages for a living, and said, "You know, we ought to start
a label. I've got all kinds of music we can put out." So
that's how Crabid happened. Any crazy idea I get, I can
sell at least 20 copies.

6. !
AAJ: Give me some background on Crabid's CD releases,
beginning with the Sursiks' debut, I Didn't Know I Was
Singing.
DM: Josh [Silverstein] gave me ten phone messages on a
CD. I'm listening to this like, "I might be able to use this
for something." I couldn't chop it up and rearrange it to
make it any funnier—it was already pretty funny. What
else could I do? So one night, I tried to notate one of
them. And with that stuff, it's so tedious—I would go two
seconds at a time, play four words over and over, figure it
out, record that piece, and go on to the next two
seconds. After a while, there was a melody, but it was a
mess. It didn't make any sense rhythmically, and I
couldn't harmonize it. But if I put drums to it and kept
amplifying the melody, it started to sound more
legitimate.
I wasn't planning on a record, but then [saxophonist]
Gary [Robertson] came over and said, "Dave, you've got
to hear this message I got." He had no idea I was
working on any other phone messages. I figured that was
a sign, so I just kept going.

7. AAJ: And the Sursiks' follow-up, Lydia Grace.
DM: My oldest daughter would always come into the
studio while I was working, and she always wanted to
grab the microphone and say things. Over a period of a
few months, I amassed a couple hours of a three-year-
old girl talking and singing. Working backwards, I figured
out what notes she was singing and put music to it. The
things a three-year-old comes up with are actually better
than a lot of the things adults come up with for songs. I
learned that if you stop excluding the kids from the
music, it takes a lot less energy, and plus you can get
some really great stuff.
AAJ: Oven Mitt Johnson, Hot Guitar (Crabid, 2005).
DM: All the guitar solos and a lot of the rhythm guitar
parts are done with an oven mitt. You should try it with
an oven mitt. It's very free—you don't worry about
hitting the right notes. The bass and keyboards and
everything else is just played normally.

8. !
The Sursiks (l:r): David Minnick, Gary Robertson, Judith
Teasdle
AAJ: Zermos, The Last Night of August (Crabid, 2006).
DM: Gary Robertson does sax on just about everything—
Gangster Fun, the Sursiks records, Oven Mitt Johnson.
Zermos was me, Gary, and my sister-in-law's friend
[Ryan Enderle], who plays jazz stand-up bass. We
recorded two hours of totally free improv for bass, piano,
and alto sax. The nice thing about that is that I didn't
have to master it; very little time was spent on it,
because we just edited it down to an hour from two
hours, and didn't try to fix anything. That worked out
well. It was cheap and quick [laughs].
[Before Crabid], the hassle of trying to put records out
was more than I wanted to deal with. I'd just go on to
the next [project]. It's nice now that at least a few

9. people can hear them. I usually get tunnel vision when
I'm working on something, and I don't even think about
it coming out. I just get into the individual notes,
rhythms and sounds. When it's done, I don't know what
to do—I usually get sick when I finish something! But it's
a great feeling to create something that didn't exist
before.
Selected Discography
The Sursiks, Christmas in March (Crabid, 2009)
The 180-Gs, 180 D'Gs to the Future! (Seeland, 2007)
The Sursiks, Lydia Grace (Crabid, 2007)
Zermos, The Last Night of August (Crabid, 2006)
The Sursiks, I Didn't Know I Was Singing (Crabid, 2006)
Oven Mitt Johnson, Hot Guitar (Crabid, 2005)
Gangster Fun, Graphospasm (Self-released, 2000)
Gangster Fun, Pure Sound, Pure Hogwash, Pure
Amphetamines (Jump Up, 1998)
Gangster Fun, Time Flies When You're Gangster Fun (1
Cupp, 1992)
Gangster Fun, Come See Come Ska (Ska Records, 1989)