The Darkest Of The Hillside Thickets: An Interview With Toren Atkinson

Photo from thickets.net

Popshifter: You definitely want to avoid any Spinal Tap instances of props malfunctioning.

Toren Atkinson: Yeah, for example I’ve worn a spacesuit with a long antenna, and we’ve played places that have very low ceilings, so that’s been a challenge. Once I had what I called the Space Lamprey, which was a really huge worm that was completely cut from foam, which was really just a helmet. It was a hat that I wore on my head and it was probably about ten to 15 feet long altogether. On the rest of my body, I just wore a black suit so with the correct lighting it just looked like this giant worm was just floating around onstage. But it was also really impractical and the tail would often smack into the other band members and knock them off balance and all these other sorts of things. So I think if we ever got to the point where we were popular enough to play in really big venues, then we’d bring that sort of thing back. But the dingy bars we’re used to playing to are not really the best for those sorts of shenanigans.

Popshifter: And I guess you’d want to keep the costumes fairly easy to transport, right?

Toren Atkinson: Yeah, that’s another thing. People want us to come out and play. We used to play over the border more than we do now, but we wouldn’t want to have to answer this huge array of questions from the border crossing guards as to why we’ve got this fifteen segment worm costume that couldn’t possibly be of any practical use ever. So when Spaceship Zero came out, we went to the jumpsuits—the standard DEVO-esque jumpsuits but ours were more space-y and more like outland jumpsuits with patches on them and those were really our easiest and most practical outfits. They lasted for a long time until we decided that we had to do some more exciting stuff. But we have a large assortment of old costumes now so if we had to break them out we could choose per venue and concept as to what we want to do for the next show.

Photo from thickets.net

Popshifter: Does it ever become a storage problem?

Toren Atkinson: Yes. Absolutely. Luckily I’m in Vancouver but a large portion of our band lives in the suburbs, Chilliwack and Abbottsford, so they have a little more space. My brother for example, he has a garage, so that’s where all my costumes wait to either bust out or slowly decay or go on eBay or God-knows-what.

Popshifter: Have you had to sell any of them?

Toren Atkinson: We haven’t sold any yet. Usually what will happen is our costumes will either get stolen or lost. So it’s not a huge problem with them building up.

Click to read more about. . .

New music and number of costumes
Wardrobe malfunctions
DVDs and PAX
Rock Band
Halloween

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