About Suffering Fools

The following information about SUFFERING FOOLS is
presented in the popular "Frequently Asked Questions" format.  If we're frequently asked any other questions, we'll include them here.

Is creative rock music dead?

Who are Suffering
Fools?

Suffering Fools were formed by a chemical reaction between a
tungsten filament and a smoked kipper. We operate on a variable frequency between 10-40,000 Hz, depending on the humidity.

• Fool 1 is our producer/engineer and supplies drums and miscellaneous sound defects.
• Fool 2 plays keyboards and other stuff and is the only one who knows anything.
• Fool 3 plays guitars and other stuff with great feeling and without an excess of skill.
• All of us sing, Fool 3 more than necessary.

How long have
Suffering Fools been together?

It depends on how you measure time.  We've been together for a lot of milliseconds but very few epochs.  Some would argue that we're still not together.  We've been suffering fools all our lives, but we've been using the name Suffering Fools since 2003.

What names did you
have before Suffering Fools?

Those would include Gentle Pipe, Shameful Shoe, Believe Anything, Various Artists, and Wasteband.  We like to think they were all pointing inevitably toward Suffering Fools in some tiresome Gadamerian way.

What are your albums?

Speaking of Biscuits, released in 2009, and Sounds Important, released in 2012.  (The hundreds of albums by "Various Artists" we don't claim as our own.)  Incidentally, we release albums.  We don't "drop" them.  That could hurt.

Is your song Star Trek Continues about the web series Star Trek Continues?

Um, yeah.  Figured that out, did you?  This song was issued in December 2014 as a not-for-sale tribute to the talents behind the not-for-profit series Star Trek Continues.

What exactly is the
song Infant Fever about?

Catching a fever from an infant.  What else would it be?

Are any of your other songs about anything?

Sort of.  "Sixty Cycle Hum" is about the noise generated on audio equipment by household electric current in North America.  "If I Had Antlers" is pretty self-explanatory.  "Hole in the Wall" is about working in a cubicle.  "White Whine '89" is about how difficult it must have been to retain one's identity in the yuppie culture of the late Eighties.  "First Monkey Laugh" is about the meaning of meaninglessness, or the meaninglessness of meaning.  "What's the Point" is about the cult of self-esteem.  "Animal Farm" is about the experience of being superfluous.  But that's just our guess at what the songs mean, and if you get some other and better meaning out of them it's equally valid.

Are any of your songs parodies?

Not directly, but some of them have elements of that kind.  For example, "Gonna Dance" satirizes extremely bad electronic dance music, while the vocals on "What's the Point" parody the turgid-voiced grunge singers who dominated the airwaves in the Nineties.  And "Dakota '63" is supposed to sound like an early British Invasion group doing a song that Lennon and McCartney rejected for The Beatles.

Why don't you do
social networking sites like SpaceFace and Blither?

It's just a personal preference, the way some people don't
do self-flagellation or rat poison.  We do real life occasionally, though.

Update:  In a stunning abandonment of principle, Suffering Fools have set up shop on Facebook.  Go there and give us hell.  Or go to hell and give it to us there.

If you did do social networking sites, what musicians would you want to be 'friends'  with?

They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds, Dave Grohl, Herbie Hancock, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, the Meat Puppets, John Williams, Weird Al Yankovic.  But it'd be cooler to be friends with them in real life.

Why this obsession with real life?

Some people say we don't need reality anymore.  But are those people real?  (Sorry, we're not supposed to be asking the questions.)

What are your views on important issues?

In our opinion, Issue #200 of The Amazing Spider-Man is unjustly overlooked.

Who was King Zog?

Zog I was King of the Albanians from 1928 to 1939.

Why should I buy your stuff directly from SufferingFools.com rather than somewhere else?

It helps us more because we don't have to pay a fee or commission to somebody else.  And you'll be hard pressed to find a more reasonable price.  In fact, tell us if you do and we'll try to be even more reasonable.

Why should I buy it at all?

Good question.  Only a loser pays for music these days, right?  But we don't have some swanky record label paying our expenses.  Ear Chaos Ventures is just us by any other name.  We make our CD's with our own money, so it would help us get back some of the cost if people buy them.  And our circumstances make it difficult to play live gigs, so this is the only way we can offset our production costs.  Consider it a donation to a worthy cause, or just to a cause, or just because.  From one loser to another, eh?

Do Suffering Fools ever do live concerts?

Not at the moment, but never say never say never say never.  Maybe if we're asked nicely.

Do you have any videos?

Yes, we have a playlist on YouTube.  Check it out.

How about a free download?

Well, there's "Crossing of Us (Live at the Green Room)."

Are there any infrequently asked questions of Suffering Fools?

There's an interview we did for a college newspaper in 2012.  You can read the results here.

If you have a question for Suffering Fools, including about music licensing, please use the contact form on this site.