At the time of our first performances I was working as the stage manager at Limelight, in New York City. I used the money I made there (as well as the leather jacket that Bill had shoplifted...) to pay for our first demo tape. KMFDM played at the Limelight in May of 1991 and I used the opportunity to give Sascha a copy of the tape. Listening to it now, I am somewhat surprised that anyone liked it, but I was very proud of it at the time. A couple of days later KMFDM played at the City Gardens in Trenton with Pigface and in the dressing room after the show, I hounded Sascha until he let me finish the tour with them ,as a roadie. The tour ended in Chicago on Memorial Day (as all the KMFDM tours seem to do...) and I stayed in Chicago, and got a job in the mailroom at the Wax Trax! office.

I decided to stay in Chicago so Bill and I split up. Soon after I hooked up with Jim Marcus and Van Christie of Die Warzau. I had know Jimmy from a performance art show that he, I, and Vinnie Signoreli of the Swans did at The Building in New York. Jim and Van asked me to join Die Warzau to replace their keyboard player, James Wooley, who had left the band to join NIN. I readily accepted, and promptly got fired from Wax Trax!. (Wax Trax! has a policy that they wouldn't hire musicians, plus I wasn't the world's greatest mail clerk either...)

I remember the conversation with Jimmy quite clearly. He said, "I guess we'll have to get you signed so you can pay your bills..." Jim and Van helped me make a better demo. Grandpa Al played the guitar solo you hear on "Why Not." I gave the rough mixes to Sascha, and he paid for the time to mix them. Sascha gave this demo to Jim Nash, the president of Wax Trax!, and I had a contract two days later. The irony of this situation is that I went from mail room boy, to fired, to Wax Trax! artist, in about a week and a half, and the same person that fired me was now telling me how good I would be to the company...

I spent the next few weeks recording Sins of the Flesh and making the "Not My God" video. I still can't watch that video without cringing. Let me be the first to say that it was a little, well, corny. It did get played on MTV about three times though. Mostly because I was friends with Dave Kendall...

We never toured when Sins came out but we did about 30 shows around New York City. We then went to Chicago to record The Torture Technique with Van and Jim at their brand-spankin' new Warzone Studios. I was doing an unbelievable amount of drugs at the time, and I think the album suffered because of it. In the spring of 1994 TTT was released and we toured with KMFDM and Chemlab. The shows were better but still not great. More drugs, drinking and other childish things made me feel rock 'n' roll, but I wasn't that great at it yet.

After the KMFDM tour, we went out with Course of Empire and Engines of Aggression. I had gone "clean 'n sober" prior to this so it was a much better tour. Damn good fun. I hired a new guitarist, Chris Smits, also known as "Xmas," and got married to a lovely woman named Lisa, and we hit the studio again.

We have just completed our new record Burn after four months at the Warzone with Van and a month in London at Pink Floyd's Brittania Row Studios with John Fryer. Wax Trax!/TVT are putting it out in September. In keeping with the SMG tradition it sounds almost nothing like the other two. But I like it. I think that is enough...

Chris Randall Chicago, May 1995