Live, Robin (guitars), Susan (keyboards), and Tina (vocals) are quite a spectacle. With richly textured music that can be termed neo-classical, the band exudes youthful exuberance. Their shows are full of imagery and costuming. Live or CD Switchblade Symphony provide electric aural bliss.

Do any of you have any classical music influences? It kinda sounds that way on "Butterfly."
SUSAN: In general, all 3 of us are influenced by classical music. I couldn't really say any one song that inspired us for "Butterfly," it was more of a person that isnpired the original idea. We all really like classical music. We don't listen to it on a daily basis--
ROBIN: I do.
SUSAN: Robin does. We have a lot of other stuff that's not accessible right now that's more arty-farrty, and I don't mean that in a derrogatory way. It's not making fun of anyone else or myself or my band, but--
TINA: It's more classical-oriented.

What's behind the use of butterflies and flowers?
TINA: Beauty and magic and things that are prettyful.
SUSAN: We like to be more of a freakish, cartoon--We're really more into the imagery than straight-forward type stiuff, like fairy-tales. To regress into the childhood kind of thing, really magical and innocent.

Were you brought up on fairy-tales?
TINA: Yeah, of course.

Do you guys believe in angels?
(both): Yes.
SUSAN: I believe that we have a lot of angels around us all the time.
TINA: That everybody does.
SUSAN: That we have guardian angels. Sometimes you feel that they're not there to help you when you need them, but everything happens for a reason. And sometimes not helping us will help, I guess.

What are the songs "Clown" and "Dollhouse" about?
TINA: "Clown" is about having a relationship with somebody and that person plays the clown in the song. "Dollhouse" is about listening too much to what other people think about you.
SUSAN: We like to write in a way that anyone who listens can draw their own conclusions, maybe read it and figure it out, but we try no to make everything really cut and dried. We try to put a little of different, hidden meanings into things.

Who writes the lyrics?
TINA: I mostly do.

How much time do you spend every day inside of yourelf?
TINA: Too much, probably. But in order to be a good performer and be a good lyricist, you have to. You have to stay inside yourself long enough to know who you are to the extent you can explain it to other people, wheterh it's performing or lyics, so they understand it, without having to explain it to them: it's just your existence on stage. You have to know yourself really well. I want to be understood by people really well. I want people to understand to feel comfortable and walk away from the show and not feel alienated. Like a lot of bands alienate their listeners with their lyrics and their stage performance, with violence and stuff, and I don't want to do that.
SUSAN: I spend a lot of time inside other people, in that I like to put myself in another situation and feel complete empathy, to understand what that parituclar thing or person is feeling. So I guess I don't reaally spend enough time inside myself.

How'd the deal come about with Cleopatra?
TINA: At that point, we really felt it was important for our stuff to be available, because people were starting to get an interest in our music and wanting to buy it. We'd been sellling our demo tape at shows and a couple local stores and they'd been selling out really, really quickly and we didn't have enough money to put them out by ourselves. We had been negotiating with major labels and stuff, but we were a little shy and afraid of dealing with that situaiton early on because we weren't quite ready. Cleopatara came along and gave us the opportunity to have our stuff widely available, throughout the United States and Europe. Good distribution, good creative control, so right now we're with them and we're able to have our stuff available to people who want to buy it, which is the most important thing.

How did you come up with the name 'Switchblade Symphony'?
TINA: It means taking the beauty and intricacy of a symphony and classical music and cutting it up with a blade, and putting harder elements into it to make it stronger. I've always felt that classical music was beautiful but for me, I loved the intricacy of it, but I wanted it to be hard. I love hard guitars, hard drums.

Did any names get rejected?
SUSAN: When we first met, she had thought of that beforehand and when we first got together, we were pondering a couple different names, but there was nothing really clicked.
TINA: There was never really any dispute over it.
SUSAN: It's a good balanced name. It balances the symphony out.

Susan, are you doing any film score stuff?
SUSAN: Not right now. I'd like to, but I really haven't had any offers from anybody in a while. I've hada couple here and there, but nothing that was really serious or things fell through or someone was working on another project. I don't havea whole lot of time and I am trying to focus on this band, this project right now. We're trying to work on a tour and more recording, so this is always my top priority.

Where did the name ''Serpentine Gallery' come from?
TINA: Well, there's this artist called Man Ray who I really like and I have his pictures all over my room. His whole life was really interesting to me, very insane, and he did all these different things. He did sculptures, he did paintings, photographs, and all different kinds of art. He's got a gallery in Europe called The Serpentine Gallery, it's like a tribute to him and has all of his works in it. The album that we did is like all of our different works, from when we first started, our first recording, we've changed a lot. It's like a compilation of three different stages that we've gone through and, at least to me, they're distinctive.

Do you plan on doing a tour before finishing up the next CD?
SUSAN: We don't know yet. It depends.
TINA: We're concentating right now on doing a few remixes and maybe a new track and then maybe we'll go back into the studio again, maybe in August.

How much new material is there?
SUSAN: We've got lots of songs that we're always working on, it's just a matter of deciding what we want to do. We always try to write new things and work on new ideas with old songs, pieces here and there. We have probably 3 that we know of right now that we want to put on our next recording. We can't really rush our creativity. It has to be right. We don't want to put anything down that doesn't feel right to us.

Do you believe that there is a difference between God and religion?
TINA: Yeah, I do. I think that God is an entity and I think that religion is created to make sense of it. I don't think that they're the same. I think that some religion is okay, but a lot of religion makes you feel bad for being human, which I don't really agree with. I think the good thing about religion is that it brings people together. I'm not religious, but I believe in God.
SUSAN: I believe in God and I'm religious, but I guess in a way that God is religion because every one has their own belief system on what their religion and what their God is, even if you make yourself your God, if you're the one that you look up to most or any person that you look up to or any belief that you look up tois your God whether it's Judaism or Catholicism or Muslim, anything. My music is my religion, my band is my religion, my relationships, everything, is part of my religion to me. It's my own personal thing and everyone should have thier own personal thing to believe in.

Do you consider yourselves a gothic band?
TINA: No, I don't.
SUSAN: That's a really tough question. I think the word 'gothic' is totally overrated, it's so mainstream now, it's just like grunge. Half the things that are labelled 'alternative' are not alternative at all. 'Gothic' when it was first starting out was part of the alternative to mainstream. I consider us more romantic, the way we write is more from the romantic period, we fit more under that title. But for the term gothic being dark and moody, I think we're definitely dark and moody but we also have other things here and there. To generalize, to put us in a label, I guess you can say we're gothic, because gothic is used so widely now.

How is the music scene down in San Francisco right now?
SUSAN: There's a really big gothic scene here and a really big music scene in general. There's a lot of venues in which a band can play and there's a lot of college radio airplay. It's just totally thriviing right now and it's good to be in this scene here. It's huge right now, and the gothic scene in particular is very big.

What other musical influences do you have outside of classical?
SUSAN: I listen to a little bit of everything. We all like different things. Tina one day likes to listen to Faith No More and then the next day Nina Hagen and then she likes Danielle Dax a lot. Sometimes I listen to Public Enemy, sometimes I listen to Patsy Cline, sometimes I listen to Pink Floyd. I love Skinny Puppy, I love the Cocteau Twins, I love Beethoven, I love Billie Holliday, I love Frank Sinatra. Robin likes the Beatles, he likes Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin... We've all turned each other on to different kinds of music that we listen to, which is really cool because we're all open minded when it comes to listening to music and appreciating it.
ROBIN: I'm kind of burnt on most commercial music. I was raised on 70s music and learned to play during the 70s and can play any 70s rock song and I got really burnt on that and couldn't listen to anything old for a really long time. I listened to metal for a long time and got pretty burnt on that. Now I'm kind of in a 70s revival and I'm disappointed with what is available right now. As far as bands in the past 5 years that I've really liked, I would say there's probably only like 5, which would be Dead Can Dance, Nine Inch Nails, Coteau Twins, Primus, Ministry. As far as my major all-time influences, I would say Pink Floyd is probably one of the biggest. They are my musical and production idols.

How did you two originally get started?
SUSAN: We met through a mutual friend and we clicked. We met over the phone, actually. I was talking to a friend of mine and she had come over and he said 'There's this girl that you should meet, you would get along.' So we talked on the phone briefly and just really got along. We talked again for like four hours and then we met and were like--
TINA: Inseparable.
SUSAN: Inseparable from then on, we just became like the same person. We totally clicked.

So how did you start working on music together?
TINA: That was the original idea of why we met. Susan and I were each previously in other bands and those bands didn't work out, so we were each looking for somebody to work with and the person knew that and put us together.
SUSAN: We were a little bit stagnant at first, we were a bit shy performing live. She used to come over to my house and I had like two keyboards and this karaoke machine and we used to make these horrible songs, they were so bad. Her parents helped us out getting better equipment to work with, a sequencer and a 4-track. Then we started making a lot of progress.

Why'd you decide to add Robin to the band?
SUSAN: Because he's rad.
TINA: ...and it's something we couldn't add.
SUSAN: He's got a completely different feel that you can't get from a keyboard. You can't get the feeling that a good, crunchy guitar gives, and he's also extremely talented and can play anything, so we totally fell in love with his style. We've worked with a lot of different guitarists and what they were playing could be good by itself, but it was almost contradicting what we were trying to do and it just didn't work out.
TINA: He added something that needed to be added, whereas the other guitarists added something that didn't need to be there.
SUSAN: Yeah, he lays all these cool textures over what we are doing and makes it full.
TINA: And it makes the guys come to our shows.

Robin, what do you think you add to the band?
ROBIN: I try to add a different layer of texture. I don't play guitar-oriented music. I'm a pretty intuitive player, pretty fluid as far as playing what I can hear in my head. I try to add some intensity and dynamics in the places where I see that happening. A lot of times, it just really falls into place. I get really inspired by the music that Susan writes and once things start to gel, it just kind of speaks to me and calls out for something. I don't feel actually like I'm writing the music, I feel like I'm just verbalising what it's asking for.

Do you see yourself as a live performer or more of a studio musician?
ROBIN: I think more of a studio preson, but at that same time, I think that what I come up with that I like, I really want to play for people. I do see myself as a live performer, but I don't see myself as writing music to perform live.

What is Switchblade Symphony's main purpose?
TINA: I think that's gonna be different with each band member. I want to affect people and I want people who wouldn't necessarily listen to our type of music to listen to it and I want people who wouldn't necessarily listen to any other types of music to listen to it. I want somebody to come to our show and get something out of the show like Susan's harpsichord parts and go 'God, what was that sound that keyboardist was suing? Was it a classical sound?' and then maybe go out and get something that they wouldn't necessarily buy before they came to our show. I want our band to create its own scene by bringing rockers to our show and bringing gothic people to our show and club kids and having them all meet and realize that everyone's basically the same. That's what I want out of our band. And success, money. (laughs)
SUSAN: I want to affect people in a major way. I feel like there's too many people who don't really listen. If it's not right there in their face, they can't be bothered. I want them to understand that beuaty is in the eye of the beholder and just because it's not R&B and it's not a love song, doesn't mean that's it's not a bad thing. I want them to just listen to it and feel from it. I think that we evoke a lot of emotion and that we're basically really good people. We get a lot of fullfillment from performing and writing, that's the basis of what I feel my purpose is, my outlet, what makes me ffeel good. I want to be able to do it for the rest of my life and when I'm gone, I want it to still be around.
TINA: It's really important for all of us to make people realize it's okay to be themselves. One thing I find that is really unfortunate in the gothic scene, and I think the gothic scene is great, and this is probably true in most scenes, but I feel it's more so in the gothic scene that it's really really pretentious and filled with a lot of attitude. In order to be eccentric you have to maintain this eccentric attitude, which I also feel is very alienating to a lot of kids that are younger that are coming into this scene. I think that it's okay and that's it's great, the eccentricity of the scene and the beauty of it, the dressing up and all that is great, but you can also be human and laugh and have fun and it's okay to be truthful to human emotion. Because everybody has them and I think it's very important we all realize that people can relate to people as long as they are true to who they are and are not faking an attitude that's not theirs just in order to fit in or to maintain.
SUSAN: In the scene that you're in you can go to one area and you might be dressed up and you'll be standing out, but in a room of that same group of people it's a lot harder to look different. It's a lot harder to be weird in your own way.
TINA: I think what we want to portray, that with me, the eccentricity of dressing up and everything, I love it! That's my foundation, I love clothing, I love style, I love fashion, but I think it's important, no matter how strange you look, to maintain that your human. To bring across on stage, that sure I look really strange, but I'm just like you are. We all have the same emotions. We may not feel the same way about the same things, but we all communicate. As one person, I'm not going to be judgemental on you and you shouldn't be judgemental on me.
SUSAN: It's important not to lose yourself in the clothes. If you take all our clothes off and we're all totally naked...
TINA: We're all the same.
SUSAN: We're all the same on the inside.
ROBIN: I feel that Switchblade Symphony is an entity unto itself, that I happen to be a part of. It called out to me; I didn't choose it. I feel like it was the perfect thing. I think its purpose is to express something that's really important to people. I feel that we all have a lot to say philisophocially and that, for me, I feel obligated, if I have influence over people, to state my beliefs and use that influence in an effective way, as opposed to just use it to make money. I don't really care about success in the sense of getting rich and making money. Money doesn't really mean much to me, but of course I want to be able to do what I want to do with my life, so the idea of making money off my band is great. I don't know where we're gonna go. I see things in a really near-future sort of sense. The band as its own being kind of has its own agenda; we're just part of that.

Did you teach yourself to play guitar?
ROBIN: Yeah, I took a lot of lessons when I was young: guitar, piano, brass and some other things. My ear was really good and I kind of fooled myself out of ever getting past a certain point. So, once I got into guitar, I moved a lot faster on my own. I think we're all pretty much self-taught in the sense of us developing our own unique style.

How much are you into the whole image?
ROBIN: Image? I think that our band's image is not something that we create, it's more something that comes from inside of ourselves and we're very genuine and sincere in that sense and I think that's a strength in our music and in our show. I'm very concerned with how to present that, but it's not so much 'What are people gonna think?' but 'How can we say what we want to say?' I think image is, like the girls were saying in the gothic scene, misnuderstood. Let me say something about the gothic scene. To me, the idea of gothic is very intellectual and I think that people see it as a scene that they want to be a part of and that that intellectual aspect and aesthetic aspect gets lost. People always have to find out what everybody else likes because they don't know what they like. To ask other people, 'Is this gothic? Am I gothic if I do this?' makes no sense to me and it compoetely contradicts the whole concept of what gothic means to me. I don't consider myself a goth, but I think that we are all very gothic personalities in a more realistic sense of the definition of the word. We're not in the scene just to be part of the scene. We happen to be in the scene because of shared interests, because this is who we are. We don't go out of our way to be in that scene and it's kind of a drag when the people who are in the scene to be part of the scene get down on us because we're not elitists in the scene. We want to be seen by everybody. It's like what Tina was saying about people who wouldn't listen to us, to our kind of music, would like us, but we can't get exposure to them because we're in the gothic scene. To us, we don't want to be limited to that, but we totally appreciate it and like being in it.