You might know Mark Mothersbaugh as a member of the seminal '80s new-wave group Devo [ tickets ], but he says he got his start with his Devo bandmates 30-plus years ago in the singularly un-seminal surf band, the Wipeouters.

Mothersbaugh has been claiming of late that he, his brother Bob, guitarist Robert Casale and drummer Josh Mancell spent nine months of 1964 in the Casales' basement, mimicking the Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show performances and practicing their Dick Dale scales. Now, the Wipeouters have returned with a "comeback" album of sorts, "P'Twaaang!!!" (Casual Tonalities).

When he's not reliving his childhood basement-band days--whether real or fabricated--Mothersbaugh also composes music for movies and television, with credits including "Rugrats," "Rocket Power," "Dawson's Creek," "Mystery Men," "Rushmore," and "Four Rooms." liveDaily correspondent Don Zulaica spoke with Mothersbaugh about composing versus being in a band, and the fall/rise of the Wipeouters.

LiveDaily: A surf album?

Mark Mothersbaugh: Well, I have to say that we've all done much more surfing on the web than we have on boards.

So the Wipeouters was your first band?

Yeah. We were all about the age of Beaver Cleaver back then--how old was he? Thirteen or something.

How long did the band last?

Other than its recent incarnation, I think we lasted about nine months. We used to rehearse at the Casales' basement. They let us set up our amps and drums there. It lasted all the way up until Bob Casale's dad went hunting and bagged a deer. He was so excited about it that he bought a freezer and put it in the basement, right where we used to set up the drums and guitars. So, there was a deer ... in a freezer ... with a set of antlers on top, that took up our place. So we disbanded. We didn't have any room.

How did the reunion come about?

It was innocuous. I got asked to write a theme song for a TV series called "Rocket Power." It's about skateboards and in-line skating, surfing of all kinds. So before I started, I thought back about this music that existed, and the other guys in the band--Bob #1, Bob #2 and Josh--they're all composers here at Mutato, working on different projects. We started doing stuff after work, figured out we remembered all these songs, so we played them.

It's interesting, because now instead of having these chintzy guitars we used to play, we have chintzy expensive guitars. And we all know how to tune the guitars now, which is something we couldn't do back in the '60s.

When did you get into doing film and TV scores?

I scored an off-off-off-Broadway play in '79, a one-man play where Russ Tamblyn was the actor, and Dean Stockwell produced it. They were Devo fans. So I wrote for that play, and about a year later, Devo got asked to be in this home movie, "Human Highway," that Neil Young was making. We were characters and got to write our own part in the movie. Dean was directing that, so when it came time to score the movie, he ended up using a lot of the music out of the play. That was kind of the start.

But as for the higher profile TV stuff, I think "Pee Wee's Playhouse" was the start of that. I wrote the theme song and scored the early episodes. Paul Reubens had asked me to score his Roxy show years before, when he first created Pee Wee, and I was touring a lot with Devo, so I couldn't do it.

How did you first become interested in scores?

Bands were always interesting, but by the time I got to college-age--and this goes for all the members of Devo--we're all into very different things. My brother was much more of a blues-and-hard-rock, Rolling-Stones kind of guy. Gerry Casale was definitely into rural and urban blues. Bob Casale--[he] came up with the name Wipeouters when we were junior-high kids--he was the most enamored with the U.S. rock scene. And I was kind of fascinated with TV commercials and soundtracks. Even the Devo song "Jocko Homo," the refrain is a permutation of "What is the law? Are we not men?" from "The Island of Lost Souls." So we were always very interested in film.

I got interested in electronic music when I went to Kent State. I heard people like Morton Subotnick and John Cage, and started experimenting with found sounds. I was into the trippy electronic stuff. It made me aware that there was a lot more to music than what was on the radio.

Is there anything amongst your film and TV credits that you're especially proud of?

"Rugrats" is kind of dear to my heart. The music came from some solo albums I released in Japan, just art projects--I did music that I wanted to listen to while I was puttering around the house. I called it "Music for Insomniacs." One of the creators of "Rugrats" collects avant garde music, he had that, and contacted me to write music for the show. He wanted to just take that music and use it for "Rugrats," and I said, "Why don't we create something that's based on what that sounds like?" Because what he liked about it was that it was simple and "childish," as he put it. I went, "Oh, well, thanks, I guess." [laughs]

And I like the stuff I did with Wes Anderson, who wrote and directed "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore." I’m doing a third film with him now called "The Royal Tannenbaums." Because Devo--[we] did our own films, artwork and choreography--I think I feel an affinity with writer-directors.

The big question, even though all of you have such busy schedules as composers--will there be a reunion tour? Wipeoutapalooza?

You know, performing live is its own reward. It's kind of fun, but touring is such torture and punishment, even when you're on a big tour. There's like an hour or two when you're on stage that's great, and the rest of the day sucks. It's not a great lifestyle. It's one of those kind of things that, when you're 20, there's nothing cooler. But when you're in your 40s, it's not at all appealing. So I don't really imagine a Wipeouters tour happening. We've never talked about it. We just did the album for the joy of doing it, and had no expectations of it having any kind of commercial success. We did it with a very small company--they probably only pressed about 200 records. [laughs]

You know, if the Wipeouters have any message for people, it's "Stay out of the water."