Brainiac: Transmissions After Zero

Hotshot Robot.

- Up next, it's the latest from the Dayton, Ohio band,

Brainiac, who in their four year history has opened for,

among others, The Breeders, Jesus Lizard, Unsane and

Girls Against Boys, here it is, Timmy Taylor and the guys.

- They sound like you might get zapped if you touched 'em,

you know, like, they were Brainiac, you know,

there was this like, they sizzled.

I didn't know you could do it like that.

Legends and myths behind it, like, they set the standard.

They set the bar really high.

They had so much momentum.

That band, the fervor was insane.

- Watched that right as they arrived at that moment.

- Meanwhile, it was a bad news week for fans of the

rising indie band, Brainiac, whose leader singer,

28 year old, Tim Taylor, was killed in an early morning

single car crash near his home in Dayton, Ohio last Friday.

Brainiac was being courted by the majors

at the time of Taylor's death.

All right, we're recording.

Hello, my name's Tim

and this is my second cousin, Tyler Trent

and we are with the group, Brainiac.

I'm sorry.

- My name's Todd Yunglen, I already mentioned.

All right.

- I'd like to introduce you to our bass player, Monasterio.

Hi.

Buenas noches.

Monasterio, cool.

I'm in a band.

You're probably one of our biggest influences

as a matter of fact.

- I like it, all right. - It sounds good I don't know.

I think in 20 years, people are still gonna be listening

to it, that's the thing. - I hope so.

- But with that, every time I listen to it--

- We just need more people like you to rip us off

and that'll sort of give us more credibility.

- Yeah. - Keep the myth alive.

- And now at last, we turn the stage over

to those mad geniuses.

The answer is, hybrids, half conservatory trained and

half trained at the College of Hard Rock.

I'm not quite sure what they're going to do with this music

and wherever they take it, whether you approve or not,

one thing is sure, it's going to be fun and who knows,

it may even be beautiful.

Hello.

Dear Brainiac, I miss you.

You were a symbol of a dream and an explosive energy

that meant everything then and still now

and I still describe it like this to this day.

Brainiac, the perfect symmetry of energy between

childhood friends from Dayton, Ohio, Devo robot

meets punk rock James Brown in a one of a kind

new wave industrial band.

There is no other band like Brainiac.

Timmy Taylor,

you are terribly missed.

There is a quiet place in my heart held for you

that will never disappear the way that

you did to the outside world.

A Brainiac torch burns every day for all of us that have it

and I can see yours and it is burning

very fucking bright tonight.

Thank you.

- So, Tim, you say you and your buddies are

going to visit one of Jupiter's moons.

- Yeah. - Well,

how do you suppose you're going to do that?

- Well I don't know if you've heard about it or not

but they have this new type of gum out

and all it requires is that you learn how to blow a

bubble and you too can space travel.

The first day of fifth grade

I just have some

memory of Tim walking down the hall

clapping his hands and saying, Quasimodo, Quasimodo

and I didn't even know who Quasimodo was.

I thought he'd made that name up and I was like,

man that is such a cool word.

And then we pretty much just started

hanging out all the time.

Right away we were just interested in the same things.

We liked comic books and music and yeah just weirdos.

- Tim, you know, he always had the creativity

going on even as a kid.

Then he started playing cello in the fifth grade

and Juan was his band mate.

- I remember we got in front of the school and we had to do

like this duet, you know, we practiced it forever and I just

got up there and I saw the thing and I just like blanked.

So Tim kinda played the song and got us through it

which is just amazing to me because like,

Tim was like an amazing musician.

- He listened to everything, I remember he loved The Beatles

but he listened to everything from Charlie Parker,

Ella Fitzgerald to classical, he'd go to the library

and bring home lots of classical records and just kind of

listen to them and study the sounds.

Timmy was pretty much a prodigy.

Comin' from parents like Terry and Linda,

he was inundated with music.

- Growing up, I started piano when I was six

and then I also played cello.

It's amazing, like, Linda is a cellist.

Terry is an accomplished jazz musician, you know.

Both well respected in their fields and

we have Tim.

Just had turned 19 and

I went to hear Terry play one night

and I was just really impressed with his talent.

Man, he was just a brilliant guitarist.

He'd go into a solo, they give him a solo and a half hour

later, you know, their jaws are all dropping and you know,

then they all come back in but, you know,

he took it a lot of places, so.

- I think what really impressed me was some drunk that

just kept pestering me, poking me and tried to

get my attention and I remember Terry had grabbed this guy

by the arm and he says, "You touch her one more time and

I'll break your arm," so it was, I was in love.

Back in those days he was on the road more than he was home.

He said, "Come and join me and we're gonna do this,

we're gonna get married," so I said, "Okay."

So I took a Greyhound bus to Butler, Pennsylvania 'cause

that's where he was on the job at that point.

What was the urgency?

Timmy.

This was Tim's favorite place to sit when he was a baby.

His dad's guitar case.

It was usually open because Terry was always playing.

Tim just loved to sit there and listen to him play.

So when Tim was about three, Terry bought him a drum set

and it wasn't a toy drum set, it was a nice drum set

and that's how he learned how to read drum notation,

he learned how to read rhythm.

Basically how to read music.

- My dad is so talented, my mom is so talented

and my brother was so talented, it's something that

I just like couldn't believe.

I think he was bit with the show biz

bug at an early age.

I remember him entertaining a lot of the kids

out in the driveway one day.

I think he was about six

and he had a Cheech and Chong record.

It was song on there that was a little dirty.

But I didn't know he knew until I was watching him

hold court in the driveway with about six of the

neighborhood kids singing this song.

It was, goin' downtown, gonna see my gal,

gonna sing her a song, gonna show her my ding dong.

And I, Tim, get in here

and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have

parents calling me.

So yeah.

- His sense of humor was so dry but so goofy.

Do you know the words to the familiar

pop melody, "Mary Had A Little Lamb?"

- Very unique but you knew he was super, super smart

just talkin' to him, you know?

Tim had a jazz background.

He had heard records that none of us had heard until

our adult years when we decided to go listen to Coltrane

but he is immersed in that.

- My brother and my dad were in a band with Michael Bashaw.