Cory Cullinan, the musician/genius/madman behind Doctor Noize is both a very funny and a very loquacious man. The interview below, which was conducted in late December, was even longer what's printed below. I left out jokes and I left out even more of the obvious passion Cullinan brings to his unique family music project. Even if you've never heard of Doctor Noize (or even if you have and can't forgive him for writing that "Banana" song that's still stuck in your head), read on find out more about his musical upbringing, crazy musical plans, and views on U.S. Men's National Soccer Team coach Bob Bradley. Zooglobble: What are your early musical memories growing up? Cory Cullinan: Well, my parents used me as a drum. I think. My head's a little fuzzy on that. Pretty much the only rock band we listened to when I was a little kid was the Beatles, and they're still probably my favorite band. Other than that it was musical theater and classical music. I took piano lessons, sang a lot, and played saxophone. The sax I play onstage as Dr. Noize is still the Yamaha student model I played in elementary school. The first records I bought were Queen's The Game and Saturday Night Fever... I met Howard Jones in my teens and he was super cool to me. I loved his DIY approach to making music and his unabashedly positive, anti-whine philosophical message. I learned to play a bunch of rock songs and started writing and recording my own songs on cheap Yamaha and Casio synths I bought in Hong Kong. My most significant early musical memories were in high school with my friend Mark Van Horn. His parents were not rich, but his dad nonetheless somehow funded a makeshift eight-track recording studio in the janitor's room at the apartment complex he managed. Mark and I spent virtually all our time there when I wasn't playing soccer. We wrote and recorded entire albums together in our teens, learning both the artistic and technical craft of songwriting and recording. One of those recordings -- "Gotta Teach Others To Enjoy Life" -- is actually used unchanged in our new Doctor Noize online game, Who Dropped The Block? That's 17-year-old me writing and singing all the harmonies. We went deep. So Mark introduced me to the recording studio and my future wife, then he died in his twenties of a brain tumor -- just like my brother. Crazy. Mark and my brother inspired much of my life's philosophy, really -- I sort of do a lot of things in honor of them -- and they were two of the funniest and most naturally brilliant guys I've ever met. And I was hooked -- on both the music and the girl. I listened to and played a lot of rock and pop music, then started to find the genre a bit too musically conservative to keep my fire intrigued. I know everybody in mainstream America thinks rock is rebellious and challenging and classical music is conservative, but musically speaking that is precisely backward. That's a whole other conversation. So I went to Stanford and enjoyed degrees in Music and Political Science. I performed in the Stanford Chamber Chorale with both Dave Kim (co-founder of Outblaze) and Kyle Pickett (the amazing conductor of CA's North State Symphony, who I now play concerts with). I forged a lifelong friendship with Jay Kadis, who runs the recording studio at Stanford and taught me a lot more about recording techniques, and Jay and I still get together to record some of the Doctor Noize tracks at Stanford when I'm in town. (Don't tell the university -- this interview isn't gonna be published, right???) What specific event or two made you turn to family music?