formed what is now Secret Agent Bill. We had the name even back then but we've metamorphasized quite a bit.

I got kicked out of my first grade school. I think I threw my teacher's grade book out the window or something. Dan was a smart ass. We clicked. We hooked up and started jamming in the basement.

I had been into music my whole life. Dan was pretty fresh in the game, maybe a year on guitar. But I had been playing piano and trumpet and stuff since I was really young. I played trumpet in school band, but I always wanted to play a full drum set. Finally, I was around 9 or 10, and I had been asking for a few years for a drum set, and my dad came home one day for my birthday with the drum set I still play today. It's a Rogers set, the same model that Suicidal Tendencies played on for years.

Five-O: That's one cool dad.

Stefan: He was in the clear because he didn't live with us. My mom was used to it already because my older brother was in several heavy metal bands at the time, and he's now a jazz musician. We started rocking out in my basement just literally drums and guitar and writing our own songs and calling ourselves a hundred different names, but Secret Agent Bill stuck that same summer we started jamming. Ever since it's been a rotating door of musicians that have come in to be a part of Secret Agent Bill.

Our singer Ben Stupid is quite a character. He's versatile in what he does. He's a hell of a writer more than anything. Really knowledgeable. He has a very Frank Zappa mentality, I guess you could say. He's also a smart ass, but a hell of nice guy. Extremely smart Jewish kid from Whitney Young magnet school in Chicago. He was in choir. Went to Puerto Rico with the choir.

We've worked hard over these years. Completely DIY punk, did everything ourselves and we're still doing it.

Five-O: I heard about some mentorship from Blackbyrd McKnight & Jeff Fogerty.

Stefan: Absolutely unforeseen. It was a total awakening and a dream come true. Blackbyrd is a hell of a teacher and a great guy. Jeff Fogerty is one of the best engineers I've ever seen. He's the son of Tom Fogerty, the rhythm guitarist and a founding member of CCR, the oldest Fogerty brother. I was closing my eyes one day in the studio sessions and saying, this is exactly what I want to be doing. When you open your eyes it's unreal - these cats that have been around the world so many times and played with so many amazing people, done everything you would want to do as a musician.

ORIGINS OF A NEW STAR UNION

Stefan: Kei-Key "Bu" is from Chicago and she raps her ass off. We got together with her because of Sonny Cool. None of this would have happened if I didn't meet Sonny. It all boils down to that. I was doing a studio session one day. They said they need a conga player to come by. Sonny was there producing the project. Sonny was from Skokie, Illinois, the girl he was producing was from New York and they needed a bunch of musicians and things, so I just started networking, making phone calls, helping them out and hanging out, and at that point Sonny didn't even know I played drums. He though I was a percussionist, conga player, period. He didn't know I had a punk band or nothing. After about four or five days of hanging out every day all day, I finally played him some of my stuff. And he flipped his lid. He's like, "I've been looking for something like this! I want to work with a punk band. My daughter raps. We can mix the punk with the hip hop."

We came up with out first song with his daughter while Sonny was out of town. He came back and we had written "Smoke That Dope." It was awesome. We blew his mind. We immediately started recording it and tracking. After that, George Clinton jumped on it so now it's "Smoke That Dope" featuring Secret Agent Bill, Kei-Key "Bu" and George Clinton, with Blackbyrd, produced by Jeff Fogerty and Sonny Cool. It's just wild.

We're definitely some of the only people doing what we do here in Chicago. When we came out to L.A., it was so nice to have a warm reception. We had no idea how they were going to accept us. As a matter of fact that was our first 21-and-over only show ever. At the time three of us weren't even 21 yet.

We were plugging away at a rehearsal space six to eight hours a day just on music alone, just plugging it, and with our high energy stuff. At the end of the day we're covered with sweat, we're barely walking straight. Man, it's amazing what that did for us. It totally improved our playing and our musicianship towards each other.

When we were doing those rehearsals, that's when Jeff Fogerty came and saw us sweating it out every day. And then he ended up sticking around for literally three months living in Chicago and worked on our record with us. That was amazing to me that he would do that. About six months before that, we had jumped off a show in Chicago with Blackbyrd. Which was the first incident live of anything that had to do with the P-Funk family.

We met Kei-Key December, 2000. One year later we were in Hollywood doing that show with George. For 2003 we got new songs, new attitude. We're honing it and getting it ready to go.

First George heard the tape when Sonny and him were driving around his farm and he says, "You got something there." Sonny knew we weren't quite ready but it was a taste of what he was working with.

Then a few months later, after Jeff and Blackbyrd were working with us and we had some studio stuff done, Sonny takes it to him and George listens and goes, "Oh, yeah. They're ready now." That made Sonny feel really good.

So our first show together with George was in Hollywood at the Dragonfly. We did rehearsals first in Chicago. As a matter of fact George was sleeping, and he heard us playing "Nobody Knows," the song he sings with us, and he woke up and ran into the room and started singing it and jamming with us. It was do or die, because the whole P-Funk army was in that room, watching us. But we were ready, man, we were ready for it.

THE TESTIMONY OF DAN AGENT

Dan Agent: George Clinton is a very interesting person to work with. His personality is completely different in the studio. He's very serious minded in the studio - fun to work with, though. He laughs a lot. Didn't take him very many takes. He enjoyed working with us. When he gets in a performance mind-state, George is very high energy. Playing with him in Chicago and L.A., we'd love to do it some more.

As for writing, my best stuff is scribbled on the back of matchbooks and napkins. Usually I write songs when I don't even have an instrument in front of me. Then I like to arrange it on an acoustic guitar, as opposed to a bass. I come from a guitar background. It all happened in a weird way how I became the bass player. We basically wanted to have a four piece, keep it tighter. Bass players are a little wilder. It doesn't make you weird, it just gravitates weird people. I've met a lot of wacky bass players.

Stefan, me and him work well together, because we're opposites in many respects. He's more serious, business-minded. I'm stronger on creative and melodic music writing. He's the foundation, the rhythm, the beat. I put the colorings in and the musical creativity. He's a wacky individual too. His stars don't always shine the same way as mine do.

Ben writes mostly lyrics. He loves poetry and spoken word. He's always writing. A lot of notepads wherever he goes. He writes on the train, the plane, on the bus - wherever he is.

Sonny played some material for us when he was wanting to produce us. One of the reasons he liked us was because he liked heavy bands and he wanted to hear a collaboration between us and Kei-Key. When it happened Sonny was very happy. We enjoyed it. We got a song with her called "Smoke That Dope." For a while we were acting as her backing band. Whenever she had a gig or an opportunity, we would rehearse and do the show. Secret Agent Bill and Kei-Key "Bu," we've thrown many parties together in Chicago and had all styles of people mix together. It's a culture clash. You had punk rock kids standing next to thugged out gangstas listening to a punk band play heavy music, followed by the same band backing up Kei-Key "Bu" on a hip hop set. We would usually play her set second, because it's more of a funk danceable sound. So we'd open it up with the heavy stuff and that was the segue into the rap stuff.

Kei-Key's fun to be around. I don't like traveling with women, though. Anywhere I go, I don't like traveling with women over a long period of time. Touring - I think the men should stay with the men in their vehicle and the women with the women in their vehicle. It's not a religious preference. Men rough it better. And are less concerned with hygiene. Don't get me wrong - we're not missing teeth or anything.

Five-O: You didn't take your girlfriends on tour?

Dan: No. We make girlfriends at the show. Usually all the women that are hitting on us are ten years older than us. They want it young!

SHOW BIZ, DAN AGENT-STYLE

Dan: I like N.E.R.D. I have respect for them. Cross-culture band. We're the kind of band, you'll never see the same thing twice. When people come and see us several times, it's always something new and we always have tricks up our sleeves, spontaneous things we're gonna do. We still have a lot of ideas, like wrapping ourselves in tin foil and having disco balls and strobe lights. We want to blind people, make them deaf and titillate all their senses all at once - we want to spray them with water, blind them with strobes, deafen them with loud music, completely captivate all their senses. You should get entirely lost in the show. That's what a show should be.