MuzikMan: How do you think drugs and alcohol has affected your life, the music industry and people you have known over the years? I am sure you have witnessed many great artists' lives destroyed due to addictions. What are you doing to stay on the straight and narrow so you can focus on your film business and reawakened recording career?

James Lowe: Sorry, can you repeat the question?

My grandfather used to tell me "don't get all hung up on any one thing....ANY one thing". I think the wisdom in the statement is that too much peanut butter can kill you. I have always kept a close eye on things that threaten to take my control of myself away. I like to get all "undone" as much as the next one; but there is a time to make some contribution and the thing about substance abuse is you stop making a contribution to anyone but you. THAT is boring. I used to think I played and wrote better songs stoned....until I listened to them. Everyone has their own way of working; but if I were going to play in the Super Bowl or The Masters I doubt I would be fixing a hole or lighting up a fat one beforehand. Call me square.

MuzikMan: Does everyone in the band have their own side projects going on besides recording with the Electric Prunes? What is everyone doing these days to stay busy and make a living?

James Lowe: We're musicians, we don't make a living. If you are driven you just can't stop. I think each member has had to come to the place where this is "what you do" again. Mark and I have started Prune Twang Records as a place where we can record and release material by our group and bands that we would like to help along. Our next release will be a punk band called Epileptic Hero. The way Mark and I have justified it is that we are not likely to become Supreme Court Justices, we probably won't be the next dot com millionaires, and today we wouldn't even get to the elimination round of American Idol. So the question becomes what shrapnel do you want to leave behind? How 'bout this music about a better time in California? Yeah.

MuzikMan: Are there any closing comments you would like make James?

James Lowe: The hardest part of all of this has been trying to explain to family and friends what this is about. We are not trying to recapture our youth "seventeen won't come again". We are not trying to outdo the tyranny of a couple of minor hits from the 60's. We realize no matter what we do everything will be compared to that past material. We would like to think we still have something to say. Sorry, but the world doesn't seem like it has much more figured out today than it did when we left in 1968. I thought we weren't going to get into this fix again? And what's up with that faceless crap on the radio? This music is something we know about and we had a hand in the start-up. There are so many great bands out there today and there is never a gig where I don't find some real talent as the opening act. If there is anything we can do that makes all this past and present music come together we are for it. When the time for the hook comes, and it will, we will go off in a shower of electrical sparks. When it is over we will vaporize. We promise!