Seeing !!! can be a life changing experience. The change is not a spiritual epiphany that causes you to sell off your possessions and move your family to the middle of the desert. It's subtler than that. At a !!! show, you are not just watching a band -- you are being overwhelmed. Every sense is activated: you see the audience dancing like a bushel of fresh eels; you feel the bass hitting your lungs; the air in the club starts to taste musky and gets hazy with atmosphere. Then there is the band, eight deep, crowding the stage, playing like a bunch of guys who grew up listening to punk rock but found the recordings of Fela Kuti, James Brown and Frankie Knuckles when they hit their twenties. From that point on, you will have a sensory memory of !!! that no part of you can forget.

Talking with singer Nic Offer after !!!'s riotous Michigan Fest set, I was left with more questions than I had before I had spoken with him. I wanted more details about the band with a name no one can say (Chick Chick Chick, Chik Chik Chik, Pow Pow Pow and Clik Clik Clik seem to be the most commonly used pronunciations. And don't forget "bang bang bang" for Unix users. -- Ed.). Following an exchange of emails, Offer gladly spoke with me late one night last month about !!!'s live show, their new home of New York City...and Prince.

Splendid: Why the move to New York?

Offer: It's the best city in the world, based on what I've seen of Europe and stuff. Basically, there came a point during Outhud practice where I said, "The only reason I stay in Sacramento is because of some band." Everyone kind of went around the room and said, "I don't want to live here" and "I don't want to live here, either." So then it was, "Let's move to New York." No questions about it. There was not even another town that we considered for a second. It was just New York, that's what we love. It really has been for the best. The challenge of moving to a new city has pushed us. One of the reasons that we did choose New York is that it has more culture than anywhere else. There is so much here; so many different types of music. We've been immersed in that since we got there. [There are] things that we've learned about music that we never could have learned in Sacramento. Every time the guys from Sacramento fly out -- I don't know if you know the deal, but two of the guys still live in Sacramento, but the rest of us live in New York; we get to practice once a month when they fly out -- we are playing this and this and this because there is so much for us here. The New York City disco tradition is really strong, so for what kind of music we are looking at, there's a rich, rich culture here for us.

Splendid: How does the band handle that -- part of the group living 3000 miles away?

Offer: The two guys in California have families, so moving really isn't an option. They're staying in California. For us, there's no looking back. We love New York. The situation really isn't going to change any time soon. I think it's safe to say that none of us are really happy about it, but it was what we had to do. We are learning how to deal with it.

Splendid: Now, you just brought up disco. Is that what you think you play? Or is it just wanting to play dance music, but not necessarily disco?

Offer: It's definitely dance music. What moves us is what moves on the dance floor, from hip hop to house to disco. I don't know what it is, but I love all kinds of music. I listen to everything, but dance music is to me [the most moving]... I love dancing. Pretty much everyone in the band does. Live, it is the funnest music to play. I've played other kinds of music and nothing compares to playing this kind of music live. It is incredible to make people dance. It is exciting. Disco is a word that has been getting tossed around lately and probably will for the next year or so, then will go out of fashion. But we were there before it, and we'll be there after it.

Splendid: How did the band come together?

Offer: Okay. Me, Tyler and Mike had played together in a punk band a la Black Flag/Nation of Ulysses. We played in that for awhile, but then it was reaching its end. Mike and Mario were playing in the Popesmashers and that was still going strong. We basically did a tour where we were a disco cover band. We went on the tour at the last minute with the Popesmashers. We did this tour, and the tour was incredible. The Popesmashers were in their prime then; no one could touch them live. No one had seen anything like them, at the time. The disco band was just this dance thing happening every night. People were just blown away by both bands every night. The sonic, strange dub energy of the Popesmashers and then the good-time-party feel of this disco band playing covers of Diana Ross and Rick James. Just really basic stuff. When we came home, it was like, "Let's combine the two." I didn't want to play covers for the rest of my life, but that was really fun. I really like something deeper and denser, like the Popesmashers, so [I wanted to] put the two together. So we did. From the first practice, it was like, "This is so easy; exactly what we want to be doing." From that instant, I felt like we had a really different sound, a really different feel. I felt like we had something that no one else really had. We put out a demo, did a US tour where we played probably 13 shows in the whole US and ate shit on money. We've toured ever since then and been together five or six years.

Splendid: Is playing live more important to you as a band than recording?

Offer: No, not more important, but it is something that we look at differently. I love albums, I listen to albums all the time and I want to make album that people can listen to at home. We treat it very differently. People say that the album sounds very different from the live show. It's supposed to. It is a totally different experience.

Splendid: You just sort of answered my next question. Are you working toward a "live" sound on record?

Offer: We are. Let's be honest, our live show is better than our record, but we're trying capture what we do live on record. There are a lot of things on the album that I think are better than our live show. We're trying to get the energy of our live set, and that is the hardest thing to do, but we're also trying to take the songs to another level -- do things with them that we cannot do live.

Splendid: Does that mean you're looking to really use the studio for manipulating sound and not just as a capturing space?

Offer: Yeah. I think that's what the studio is there for. It's to create another kind of art. One kind of art is playing live and another kind of art is making the record. We utilize the studio to the fullest extent that we can.

Splendid: Performing live, are the song arrangements set or do you just play and follow along with the energy of the room?

Offer: We usually start off with a jam. That usually warms us up. If we're hot, it can take us to levels we've never reached before. That's pretty important to us. Sometimes when we play bigger shows, where we're the opening act, we can't always do that. It's too bad, because I feel like that's an important part of the creative process. For the most part, once we finish the opening jam, it's basically a fairly tight set. The songs are structured as much as any other band's songs are structured. Everything has happened to us on stage. We'll jam at any point. If for some reason someone starts playing a line, we'll go there. We are pretty open and free like that. We pretty much use the beginning time as the time to jam.

Splendid: Are the set lists from show to show the same, or do you vary them a lot?

Offer: I don't know. We kind of got into this weird things; we have this one song where this is "the close", this is "the hit" you should end with.

Splendid: "Intensify"?

Offer: Yeah. So we kind of got caught in that trap of playing that song every time at the end. I'm not exactly sure, because nobody wants to do that forever. I think we are working on a new set right now, but I don't know what the closer is going to be. You have songs that are definitely good openers and songs that are good closers. That kind of happens. It just ends up when you have a set of songs that you play and that you vary, which is what we do, you can't put certain songs next to certain songs. Certain songs just work better opening and closing. As far as that goes, that's the most regimen that we have.

Splendid: Is the music a group effort or is there one person who leads the writing efforts?

Offer: Like I said, we are really jam-based. For the most part, people write their individual parts. There are definitely people who do more than others, but for the most part people write their parts. Every once in a while, someone will come with a bass line and we'll start from there, but pretty much it comes from jamming. We are big, big believers in jamming, and we really think the rest of the music industry could get further out if they jammed too. When you have an idea, when you are jamming... Once we're jamming, ten minutes into it, we can get to a place that we didn't think we could get to before, just by collaborating and getting more "out there and out there". What we do is jam and let the tape recorder roll. We go back and pick out the best parts, where we got the most "out there" or the funkiest, and then we try to put those parts together as a song. We are a jam band.

Splendid: No offense, but it seems like it's taking you awhile to put the next album out. Is it due to this process building songs out of jam sessions?

Offer: Yeah. You're saying that now, but it's going to be a long time 'til the album drops. Most of the album is written right now, but it's going to be a while because it takes us a long time to mix. We are also really busy with Outhud as well. Both bands suffer because they move forward at half the pace that they should be instead of like a regular band. If we're not doing one thing with one band, we're doing it with another. It's going to be awhile.

Splendid: I know you play in Outhud and Justin does the mixing, but what other cross pollination goes on between the groups?

Offer: And Tyler, the one guitar player. It's just the three guys and two more girls. I feel like it's pretty different. Is that what you were asking?

Splendid: I was just trying to get a handle on how you handle the two bands.

Offer: It's just totally different. I don't know how it ends up different, it just is. The two girls, their way of playing music is totally different than the guys in Chik Chik Chik. When we jam with them, we end up in really different spaces. I always used to say that both bands work off the same concepts but that Pow Pow Pow was more dancey than strange and Outhud was more strange than dancey. As of late, with Outhud, we've been working a lot with drum machines, so now both bands are just as dancey. I guess Outhud is more "housey" or something.

Splendid: I have to ask about the name. How did you come up with it?

Offer: It was one of those things. We were talking about The Gods Must Be Crazy, the movie, and whatever dialect that they speak in that movie, they make a [clucks his tongue] sound that is spelled with an exclamation point. We were talking about that, about naming the band that. But can't some people not make that sound? I don't know if everyone can make that sound, so we just said, let's just have it be three exclamation points or three repetitive sounds. This was before the internet ruled music; you can't even do a search for "!!!". This has been ridiculous, somewhat commercial suicide, but I really haven't heard a name that I like better, aside from Born Against, so as far as I'm concerned I'm happy with the name. People can say what they will.

Splendid: Do you all still have day jobs?

Offer: Yeah, yes. We're not paying the bills. I don't think we're ever planning on making money with this. If we made any money, we'd all go home with 200 bucks because there are so many of us.

Splendid: Is it hard keeping together a band with so many members?

Offer: Not really. That's one of the most frequently asked questions that we get. You know, it's like... I don't know. One of the things when we had just started, we picked people that we knew we could tour with. We're really -- I think every band is in a sense -- we're really a family. We have the best time together. It just really works out. Maybe if anything, the advantage to it is if you're getting sick of anyone in the band, it's easy to avoid them because there are eight people. It works out fine; never been a real problem. On our first tour, when we only had a demo tape and nobody thought we were cool, and we were getting stuck in towns for three days and would have to crash on somebody's floor, it looked pretty bad. We did a tour with just us and the Popesmashers in one van. There were eleven of us -- it was insane -- but I would do it again. I don't think everyone in the band would say that, but I'd do it again.

Splendid: Are you guys enjoying, for lack of a better word, the notoriety? The word of mouth on the band is really starting to spread. Is that something you enjoy -- being able to go into a town and have a decent audience and new sells for the record? Obviously every band wants to sell their record, but I mean just the atmosphere being created around you guys. Is that enjoyable?

Offer: It's never been unenjoyable. The first tour was awesome. It was one of those "eight people per show" tours. It was always like when I would go to a big show to see whoever -- especially when people were there to see them -- it would be awesome. It would be so awesome [for us to say] this is our audience and we are making them dance. I've never seen anybody who could make that many people dance. There are certain shows, like Michigan Fest, where I don't know how many kids were dancing. You could say that was sort of a dream come true. It was just awesome to be making that many people dance. There are good things and bad things. I definitely wouldn't say it's more fun now. There are upsides and downsides. It's awesome, and I know it is only going to get better, as far as stuff like that goes, because now the word is really spreading that when you come to our shows, you dance. That's what you do. So now it gets easier. We used to have to yell at people to dance. It was kind of ridiculous. It was like: "Are we crazy? Why aren't people moving?" Now it's nice to show up and people are ready to dance. So, yes, that is exciting.

Splendid: Why do you want people to dance?

Offer: Because we play better if they dance. We really feed off the energy. I believe in dancing; believe that people dancing is... It's fun. I don't know. I feel like if you dance at our shows you'll have a better time and think that we're a better band than we are. If you stand in the back and you don't dance, I guarantee that you will not have as good a time. I remember I went out with a girl for like a month. Before we started going out, a bunch of us went out to a club and she didn't dance. I remember thinking, "Maybe this is a bad sign?" Then I went out with her, and it was a bad sign. I really think that people who let go of their inhibitions and get crazy and get wild and dance and don't care if they look stupid, those are people who are kind of special. I believe in those people and I like making them dance. Is that too convoluted?

Splendid: No. You've mentioned wanting to make people dance a few times, so I wanted to have an official explanation.

Offer: It's definitely one of our main objectives. More than anything, that's what we're trying to achieve.

Splendid: Is it more fun to play a hostile crowd that you win over, or a crowd of people who are there for you?

Offer: It's more fun to play for people who are there for us. We never win by the pure end of the show. If we win, we win the second time we come back. We only play for like thirty or forty minutes, so we can't "break" people. Maybe we need to become a better band to be able to do that some day, and then I'll be able to answer this question differently. We've definitely played crowds who are like, "What the fuck," and by the end they're kind of dancing and into it so they go and buy a bunch of stuff. That's cool, but, seriously, if we get there and the audience is there to see us and they start dancing as soon as we start jamming, then it makes the jam better and that makes the whole rest of the set better if people are....if there's love in the audience.

Splendid: Have you gotten a lot of "conversion stories"? I originally saw you in Chicago opening for At the Drive In, and it was nuts. There were three of us there and immediately after the set we ran downstairs and bought the CDs. I was just completely taken with you guys. Do you get a lot of that -- people just won over by you because it's so exciting?

Offer: It really does happen a lot. I believe that if we're having a good night, we are undeniable. That does happen a lot, because people aren't really expecting it. They think, "What the fuck, eight guys? What the fuck is this name? Oh, they're gonna try to play dance music." I feel like we're always walking into a hostile environment. Now it's like this thing where we're "cool", so now people must be thinking, "Oh, they're cool so they must suck." We get it a lot, where people are like, "Fuck, I didn't expect that." That happens a lot.

Splendid: As you start headlining more shows, will your set break the forty minute mark?

Offer: That's what I feel like is good length. We played once with this go-go band, and they played for three or four hours. It was insane. It was awesome. They were fantastic. I see a point, with the type of music we play, playing a really long set. I can see that happening, maybe, once it turned out everyone was showing up to dance. That is what happens at go-go shows: everyone comes to party. Maybe once we get to that level, where that's what people came for, we would do that. As it stands now, I never see a band play a set that is the right length. I think everybody plays too long. I don't want to be guilty of that. We are pretty strict about not outstaying our welcome. I feel like most bands, after two or three songs, I've got it. I figure if we play four or five songs, and our songs are long, like ten minutes sometimes, I feel like that's fair.

Splendid: Is the move to Touch and Go a permanent switch from GSL, or is it just a one-off?

Offer: You know, I have no idea. Basically, we'll see how it goes with them. I'm really excited about it, though, as they seem really great. We'll see how it goes. In the past, it has always been interesting to work with a label.

Splendid: Did Touch and Go approach you or did you go to them?

Offer: I think they approached us. I don't know. Mario was like, "Touch and Go is going to be at the show." I assumed they contacted us because we've never gone about submitting our demo to them. The only times we've submitted a demo to a label, it's backfired miserably on us, so we don't do it anymore. I think we've done it two or three times.

Splendid: Do you have anything left to release on GSL or anything to release on Touch and Go before the next album?

Offer: I think GSL is going to put the split 12" [!!!/Outhud single] out on CD. I keep hearing that they are going to throw the 7" singles on the CD, but I don't know if that will happen for sure.

Splendid: Is Dirty Mind/Controversy-era Prince any influence on you guys?

Offer: Absolutely. Prince changed my life.

Splendid: How so?

Offer: He was probably the first disco artist I listened to after I grew up. I remember when I was in high school, when I was a new-waver, there was this other new-waver, who was a couple years ahead of me, that I looked up to. When I finally got to talk to him, I was like, "New Wave is more progressive," and he said, "I don't really listen to that stuff anymore. All that I listen to now is Dub and Prince." I was like, "What's Dub? Prince, really?" I think he kind of... Before that, I only really listened to "white" music and Prince kind of opened a whole other world for me. You can't get me started on Prince. I honestly believe he is the most talented musician of the rock-n-roll-era. I don't think anyone can touch him in anyway: songwriter, dancer, performer. In all efforts he is just the absolute best. He had a longer reign than pretty much anyone. From the first album right up to the "Symbol" album. Aside from the Batman soundtrack and Graffiti Bridge, everything he did was fucking brilliant.

Splendid: You don't like Graffiti Bridge?

Offer: You know what, do I need to give it a second chance?

Splendid: Yeah. I hate Diamonds and Pearls and I haven't bought the last three albums that have come out, but I've got everything else. Graffiti Bridge has a lot of good songs. It holds up well.

Offer: I remember I liked The Time songs and the Tevin Campbell song, but I remember being kind of disappointed in the rest. Honestly, I haven't listened to that album in ten years, so maybe I need to give it another shot. I'll give Graffiti Bridge another shot if you give Diamonds and Pearls another shot because I think that album... Definitely the last best album he made was Sign of the Times -- did he make Lovesexy after Sign of the Times?

Splendid: Yeah. It went Sign of the Times, Black Album and then Lovesexy.

Offer: Right. Lovesexy then, was the last really excellent, excellent album. Diamonds and Pearls and that "Symbol" one were just -- "Get Off" is just such an incredible single.

Splendid: The "Symbol" album has "Blue Light".

Offer: And "Sexy Motherfucker". I really like both of those albums too.

Splendid: Is that a song you could see yourself covering, "Sexy Motherfucker"?

Offer: Sure. Yeah. That's pretty much Prince doing his James Brown impersonation. Sure, that's one I'd like to do.

Splendid: Do covers interest you?

Offer: I feel like if you're doing a cover, then you have to one-up it. There has to be a reason why you're doing it. It has to be... This guy brought into work this CD of punk covers of pop songs. I fucking hate that. Who got the idea that you'll take a song, speed it up and put on a distorted guitar and it will sound great? I think that is the most bogus idea I've heard in my life. The CD was a bunch of different bands, but it might as well have been one band. It was the most ridiculous CD. I'm totally for covers, but there has to be a reason you are doing it. Devo's cover of "Satisfaction" or all the covers that Grace Jones did -- I really feel like she one upped them and took them to the next level. She made it a different song. So if you are going to do it, then you have to give something to it. As Pow Pow Pow, the only cover we've ever done was a Grace Jones song. I don't know if we did it better than her, but it taught us a lot. It taught us how to play different. It's good for that, too.

Splendid: Do you guys consider yourself to be political, or do you each have your individual feelings that you want to keep divorced from what you're doing as a band? The reason I ask is that you always seem to be engaging the audience, and I wonder, since you have this dialogue going, if you want to bring things up. Or is it a case of just being there to dance, and politics can wait?

Offer: I would talk about politics if I felt like I had something to say that would enlighten people. But that's one thing I don't know a lot about, so for me to go off on it would not be very beneficial for anyone. I feel that I know as much as anyone else does. I figure most people who show up know what's going on. I don't feel like I have to point out that the "pig system" is the "pig system". I feel like most people at our shows know. I feel like I did my time with that in the Yah Mos because I always wrote real political lyrics. I like those lyrics, I was proud of them and it was stuff I was working on at the time, but I don't know, I haven't been inspired since then. If I was inspired, I'd say something. To tell you what, I would have said something at the Michigan Fest if I had know that in all three days, in all the bands, only one woman (Roby Newton of Milemarker) was in any of the bands. That, to me, is why that was so stale -- why it wasn't as exciting as it could have been. I would have said something about that, had I known it at the time. There are no rules. If I'm so inspired, I'll say something. We pretty much agree as a band on politics, so I don't think it would be a big issue. It's so rare in all my years as a punk -- I've been going to punk shows since I was 15 years old -- and I've seen maybe five or six bands that had something interesting, politically, to say. I've seen umpteen more that tried to say something, but just didn't say anything. You just have to be yourself. It's not me. I'm just not a political guy, so for me to talk about it would be useless.

Splendid: How long do you see the band lasting?

Offer: We don't want to suck. If we started to suck, then we'd quit. As it stands now, we have a really good time together and we're still great friends. It could easily go on another ten years. If we started to suck next month, we'd probably break up next month. We'll see.

Splendid: Are you looking forward to getting sampled? If I had to come up with a list of bands playing now who will be sampled in twenty years, you'd definitely be on it.

Offer: Totally. Fuck, I hope it happens. It is so exciting to think that could happen. I'd hope to see someone do something good with it. That would be awesome. Shit, that might be how we end up making some money.