An interview with Anto Macaroni of Made for Chickens by Robots

When I first became interested in the world’s one-man band scene I had no idea that I would spend so much time in the following months sifting through a myriad of solo artists and the seemingly endless information surrounding them. Singer/songwriters kept popping up; one here in the States, another there in Europe, a cluster in South America, a small handful in Australia, and so on like that.

Actually, it is in Australia — just outside of Melbourne, in fact — that the artist about whom this piece will be centered, indeed about whose music I am attempting to write in detail, resides in all of his bespectacled and disheveled glory, sportin’ country duds and a battered n’ greasy cap. Sometimes one can even find him wearing a soft, open-faced chicken mask which wraps around both head and face to fasten at the chin, playing music all by his lonesome…unless of course you count the broad array of plastic barnyard figurines scattered about. His name is Anto Macaroni, but his one-man band endeavor has long been referred to by the unusual name Made for Chickens by Robots.

Made for Chickens by Robots owns a sound that is just as weird as its name, if not more so. With resonator guitar, a junkyard percussion setup, megaphone and beat-up mics for vocals, and a variety of odd gadgets and gizmos, Anto creates what can best be described as lazy backyard blues, raggedy ragtime, and bizzare white trash lo-fi Americana. It’s a wonderfully sloppy sound, this one, since Anto’s guitar is rarely in tune, his leather suitcase kick drum is amplified by a pair of crappy headphones, his vocals are filtered through, yet made especially dirty, by a megaphone that has seen better days, and his slapped-together sound station of peculiar and imaginative devices oftentimes goes magnificently haywire. But that’s what makes his songs worth listening to. He’s the poultry picker, the retarded ragtime man, the barnyard bluesman — he’s Made for Chicken by Robots!

All that I have described here is evidenced on Anto’s Made for Chickens by Robots releases. Some are in vinyl format, while others are on compact disc. And the titles of those releases are In the Beercan, The Wrong Brain, and Piece of Thing (all three are rare self-released 7-inches), Got Shine (Shit In A Can Records), On the Trash Truck (Gut Feeling Records), M is the Only One Man Band (Squoodge Records), Wump Dang Filla (Baboso Recording Co.), Tasty Like It Is/Get Out Your Gravyspoon… (Baboso), and She’s Fulla Gas/Get Off My Sausage (Gut Feeling Records).

The music of Made for Chickens by Robots, simply stated, is more mad scientist meets dirt farming redneck than anything else. Or rather, it could also be intently tinkering prodigy meets tobacco-chewin’, overalls-wearing hillbilly. Made for Chickens by Robots is where the urban and the rural converge, where the organic and the mechanical become one, where the real world and the cartoon world intersect, where the animal and the human merge, and where the sound and the fury overlap.

Recently I had both the opportunity and pleasure of interviewing Anto of Made for Chickens by Robots. What follows is the content from that interview in its entirety.

As is usually the case, I would like to begin in an introductory fashion, so as to offer the readers of this piece a better understanding of the artist I am interviewing. So…just who is Anto of Made for Chicken by Robots, not just as a singer/songwriter but also an individual, a human being of this mad world in which we live?

I am a man of alter egos. The real me is a confused individual, a smoker, a music promoter, a nervous socialiser, half-blind, no hair on my chest, i own two pairs of the same boots and currently live in the suburbs of Melbourne with a paranoid cat named Thelonious Monk and a half-bottle of whiskey on my bed side table. I have a short attention span. I think there should be more violence in performance, not harm or injury, but more violent passion, intimidation and inventiveness. Made For Chickens By Robots is one of me. It’s the backwards, uneducated me from the country, fumbling and confusing.

Made for Chicken by Robots…a most unusual name for a musical project. How in hell did you come up with that, if I may ask?

People generally pull some kind of political meaning out of it, relate it to battery hens or something. I made a mix CD for a friend once and called it this, for no reason, well maybe because I call women chickens sometimes when they talk too much and the CD was made on a computer. Then a few weeks later (sometime in 2004) I was asked last minute to perform at a club here in Melbourne, where I used this name again, and then I pulled out of the show the night before. A similar situation came up in Antwerp, summer 2005, when some friends there said, “You have a show in two weeks, what is your band name?”

Your sound in Made for Chicken by Robots is also rather unusual. When I listen to your songs I can’t help but dissect them into ragged blues, ragtime, and bizarre Americana. What elements do you deliberately inject into your sound, and how much happens purely by accident…if anything at all? And to make this a two-parter: in a few words, how would you best describe your sound?

I want my recordings to sound worse than the early blues recordings, and I think they probably do sometimes. Sam Hopkins was a big influence from when I was a kid all through, and the last few years I’ve been digging Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller a lot, their unbelievable superhuman guitar picking blows my hat off constantly. Nobody can play guitar like that. Bizarre Americana is definitely another heavy influence — Doo Rag and Uncle Scratch and then other bizarre American things like the films of Harmony Korine, the music of John Corbett, BunnyTuff…and White King burgers which I tried for the first time last november, they are completely bizarre and influential.

The way I record is by accident really, the song is invented as I’m recording. Usually the words to the song come after the song is completely finished, at which point I listen to the vocal track, which is often just me mumbling, and I make up lyrics that fit the vocal sounds I am making. So I deliberately go for this aesthetic but there are a lot of accidents that contribute to the end thing.

There are two things. One is…we sing through loudhailers and crap microphones, and use cassettes and four-tracks and bad equipment because we wanna sound like the old blues records, how the legends sound on their recordings. Somehow we think we can find soul or the real blues via the equipment we screw the sound up with, by trying to make it sound like these old mind-blowing codgers. I’m not sure we do find any soul or real blues this way, perhaps it just makes for some irritating listening experience. The other, second thing, is…it’s a punk aesthetic really, using this kind of home equipment, just turning the recorder up to full and blowing away into it, a DIY, fuck-the-hi-fidelity-world kind of thing, a revolt against digital technologies. Partly about not letting old equipment just disappear and go to the rubbish, and not doing the boring nowadays common thing of bleeping everything through a computer. I’m saying WE, but I can only really talk on behalf of myself.

What instruments do you play in Made for Chicken by Robots?

At shows I play a guitar. I used to always play a Takamine resonator, but for the next few tours I will play a cardboard parlour guitar, a Kay Melody I got sent from your country a few months ago and then drilled holes in it and made it worse. It is better for the ragtime kinda stuff. I use a snare drum, a cymbal, a cardboard bbq box for a kick drum which is powered by a pair of headphones strapped to it and running through a delay machine to replicate John lee Hooker’s left foot on his early sessions, I have a few magic mystery machines that make animal sounds and make my guitar play backwards. I sing through a megaphone, like all the other one-man-jerks. I would like to get a battery-powered turntable to take on tour to do some scratching also. When I am recording I use whatever is around; I am a professional amateur saxophone player and recently got a tenor sax, so that is on the latest recording a bit. Also use alto sax, harmonicas, record players, cowbells, radios, toys, vibrators, cockrings, cutlery, the floor.

What have been some of your most memorable tour/gig moments to date?

My favourite show to date was playing on the back of a truck that reversed into a warehouse full of people. I had a smoke machine on the tray and I asked the driver to keep the engine running the entire show to make people high on gas fumes. My first European tour alongside Tape Man (NZ) in 2007 was amazing, having never done something of the sort, never had been treated so kindly, never had such a sore liver. Sardinia was quite insane — we were abandoned by the promoter on a peach farm for three days. Then playing in Spain with Fela Borbone was a shithot night: crazy lunatic spanish people hanging from the ceiling and smashing glasses everywhere in enjoyment. I’d like to do a show on a trampoline one day.

Confessedly, I have been very intrigued by the one-man band set for some time now. It’s an interesting and unique scene, to be sure, with a good number of amazing artists. Hence my reason for starting this One-Man Band Series. And I always have to ask: What prompted you to start up your one-man band, rather than take part in a full band lineup with other like-minded musicians?

It happened because I wanted to tour Europe. Made For Chickens By Robots was a three-piece band for about a year, with drums and tuba and guitar. It came down to money, not being able to afford three plane tickets, and also to people not wanting to take the risk, financially, again, and maybe artistically somewhat. So I kicked everybody out. This way I only have to be my own asshole. Sometimes I think it’s also easier to execute an idea by yourself, it can be difficult to make everybody’s brain land in the same bowl.

In recent years you took an extended hiatus from Made for Chicken by Robots to pursue the Puta Madre Brothers project, along with two other one-man band musicians. Are you still in both projects? And what prompted you to return to Made for Chickens by Robots?

Yes, still doing both. Puta Madre Brothers are working an a new album at the moment. I was actually injected with the idea to re-hatch the chicken on the recent Puta Madre Brothers tour,… I just wanted to keep on touring, it’s addictive this thing, it’s a tough yet rewarding way to live, you never stop working. The other guys in PMB have various other committments, so rather than go home and find an office job I dusted off the chicken wig and booked too many shows all over the planet. It’s probably also part of my short-attention span, to jump from project to project. I went through a faze from 1998 till around 2004 where I started a new band every six months. Apparently musicians age twice as fast as anybody else.

Having never visited Australia before, I am curious as to the state of the music scene there, but more importantly for this interview I am interested in the part you play in it. Can you talk a little about that?

I keep an eye on it. I am involved. I organise tours in Australia for idiots I adore, like Tape Man, Al Duvall, Delaney Davidson, and most recently Reverend Beat-Man. For the last ten years I was a band booker at several clubs in Melbourne, and I used to write fanzines and do community radio. I occassionally organise a big event somewhere or help co-ordinate a festival. I do all the publicity for Puta Madre Brothers and somehow have become a resource for Australian musicians wanting to tour overseas, helping them with contacts and routing ideas, logistics, the boring shit. I like the boring shit. It’s a small but strong and generally fantastic industry here. There are some idiots and scum but there is a lot of love in the music community here.

So what next for Made for Chicken by Robots? And are you involved in any other active musical projects at present?

Gut Feeling Records are putting out the She’s Fulla Gas/Get Off My Sausage double-B side 7″ this August to coincide with my res-erection tour across Europe. I’ll be playing shows with Becky Lee & Drunk Foot and Shake It Like A Caveman and some other like-minded fools. Going back to Portugal and Spain, which I am looking forward to. I had to postpone a tour of Brazil to do some Puta Madre Brothers things later in the year, which is a shame. But there is a split 78 record (with Al Duvall) coming out in America next year, so I plan to invade the states. I might make a video clip at White Castle; a man dressed as a chicken overdosing on miniture genetically modified hamburgers.

Lastly, if there’s anything I failed to cover, or if there’s anything you would like to discuss or express, please feel free to do so now. The floor is all yours, Anto.

Well….. if it ain’t bacon, it ain’t broken. Thank you, Mister Carlson, you are an honest man (I think that’s what Freemasons say to each other as a greeting).

*Article/interview originally appeared at The National Examiner (One-Man Band Series, #20: Made for Chickens by Robots).