DREADED DOPE

With token name and big dog aim, Edsel hits the gas

Don't bother asking Edsel Dope his real name. "It has become Dope, and
until someone finds my yearbook picture, I ain't saying nothing!'" says
Dope from the New York offices of Epic Records.

What Dope will talk about without hesitation is where his new name, which
is also the name of his band, came from. Dope says that he and his brother
Simon dealt drugs in New York City.

"Me and my brother were the 'Dope Brothers,' " says Dope. "We were selling
it all - very bad things," says Dope.

When the band signed a recording contract, the illegal business was laid to
rest. Dope espouses drug legalization and wonders just how many times he
and his brother might have been close to being arrested.

"That's the thing, you never know how many close calls you've have," says Dope.

Dope and his brother Simon (who also goes by the last name Dope) grew up in
South Florida. When the boys' parents divorced, Edsel lived with his mother
in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Simon lived with his father in Melbourne.

"It was a middle-sized town, normal neighborhood, dog-in-the-front-yard,
really-redneck mentality," says Dope of growing up in West Palm Beach.

Edsel admits that as a young man, he even "drove a pickup truck and wore a
baseball hat."

As a boy, Dope developed a love for the drums. "My first hero was Animal
from 'The Muppets,' " says Dope. "Then I saw Motley Crue ... ."

It was as a drummer that Dope first joined a Florida rock band. After the
rest of the band would leave rehearsals, he'd play the guitarist's
instrument and come up with his own songs.

When Simon moved to New York City to study chemistry at Polytechnic
University in Brooklyn, Edsel came for a visit.

"I just asked if I could crash on the couch," says Edsel.

Armed with a stack of songs and some demos, Dope immediately began working
to put together a band in New York and abandoned drums to become the
group's lead vocalist.

Dope says his brother hadn't intended on being in a band, but the group
needed someone to play keyboard and samples, and Simon was available.

The group's first album, "Felons and Revolutionaries," was released in
1999. The follow-up, "Life," is set for release on Oct. 30.

Dope says the group's look is very premeditated.

"The band has a definite presence," says Dope. "Everybody is sort of molded
after my image. They all get dreadlocks. I always wanted to have that, so
that if you see a guy out somewhere you know he's from the band Dope."

The group's angry metal squall, he says, translates everywhere - except
maybe Los Angeles.

"You meet a kid in Florida or New York or North Carolina, they all have the
same issues," says Dope.

"Los Angeles, they've seen it all and they really don't care. Nobody's got
any excitement for anything."

Despite Dope's rock star aspirations, his true desires are simple - maybe
unchanged from when he drove a pickup truck in Southern Florida.

"I want a compound, a big dog, a nice porch swing, a shotgun and big
barbed-wire fence."