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Interview #2 with Mike Cross and Joey Mazzola

Stubble Interview by Ken Zebbyn

Ken: Since the last time we talked at Club Baby Head, right after Rotting Piniata came out, you've been busy with the release of Wax Estatic and the video which is doing really well. How is it different now that you're getting a little respect?

Mike: Umm, we're getting respect? I don't know what that is. You know, life since we put out Rotting Piniata has just been a lot of touring. The biggest difference is we're just not at home. We're on the road all the time. We got off the road December of '94 and we were back in the studio January of '95 recording Wax so there hasn't been a lot of time off. It's just been constant touring, playing doing television, doing interviews, and recording the next record. We actually just took a three or four week break. It was our first break in two years where we didn't have anything to do.

Joey: Our first substantial break.

Ken: With the new album I hear a different sound than before. Are the songs all interrelated thematically or are they all just individual concepts?

Mike: Basically, when we sat down to do preproduction, some of those songs were based on an idea we were going to call the record at one time, "Drag Queen From Memphis", and we actually named a preproduction session as that, like a concept. I think Vinny was writing around that concept lyrically and some of those songs ended up on the record but we kind of felt the concept idea being... we felt a little confined. Especially when some other songs came down when we actually recorded the record so we really couldn't hang with that but lyrically the thing that ties them together is Vinny's really not talking about himself. It's all about other people or other people's experiences and not so much about his own personal experiences. I think that's probably the common thread.

Ken: You guys were joking with me that the title Rotting Piniata was inspired by GG Allen in his casket. Is there a particular person or persons who inspired the drag queen theme in your latest release?

Mike: Well, I know the song Drag Queens From Memphis was inspired from an actual experience we had in Memphis. We were doing a tour and that was one of the last stops on the tour and we got there and this tour was really successful. It was going really well. We were selling out a lot of venues and stuff but when we got to Memphis for some reason...I think it was just a one off gig. We opened for Mike Watt and it wasn't really our crowd and I know Vinny's told me that when he was up there he felt like the people were so like taken aback by what we were doing he thought that they were looking at us like we might as well have been drag queens up there. We were so odd to what they were expecting and, yeah, that explains it.

Ken: Besides that gig, is there one gig that stands out in your mind as being particularly tragic or comic or whatever?

Joey: Well, we were doing Lollapaloosa when we actually got not rained out, we got sanded out of Phoenix. I mean there was actually a sandstorm right before, twenty minutes before showtime when we were supposed to go on stage. This giant cloud of sand just comes across the desert and completely blows out the whole place. I think people in Phoenix kind of thought we were wimps because we didn't get up there but we tried.

Mike: We tried to get up there but they wouldn't let us play. I think we made it up to them by playing a show in Phoenix not too long ago but that was interesting.

Ken: Did the sand damage your equipment

Mike: It was incredible. I mean, sand. I don't know how fast the winds were but it was almost hard to stand up. There was no way you could perform. They took a stand from the safety viewpoint that it wasn't safe for people to be...to have the PA towers and have people near that in case they fell on them so I understand they were covering their asses but we were going to try.

Ken: Are you just concentrating on promoting Wax Estatic or are you working on anything new?

Mike: We're always writing. Joey's got his tape player, I got my tape player, Vinny's always writing songs so we're always writing but, yeah, we are concentrating. This is actually the first U.S. tour, I think, that we're headlining a consecutive string of dates for this record to where it wasn't a thirty minute set like we would do at Lollapaloosa. I mean it's an actual show so, yeah, we're definitely supporting this record.

Joey: That's the main focus right now.

Ken: What progression do you see in yourselves between the last record and this one?

Mike: I like the fact that we're stretching out instrumentally on this album where as we've used keyboards and saxophones and cellos and stuff like that. I think that's really interesting to us as a band and to the listener also. I don't see the point in doing the same album twice so I don't think taking a departure from what we did on the first album...I don't see that as being a negative thing. I think it shows growth and I'm sure that's something we'll probably always continue to do is to evolve and change as a band but it's all in a Sponge style. I mean you can't say; "Oh, this isn't Sponge. Sponge is Rotting Piniata." Well, that's not true. Sponge is many things and this is our style.

Ken: Besides your own stuff, what are you listening to these days? Do you even have time to listen

Mike: We have a lot of time to listen to new music on the road or old music for that matter. We have plenty of time while we're traveling from town to town. We all have our CD players and cassette players and stacks of CD's. I like this new group. It's not actually a new group but I like the new Wallflowers record. I think it's an excellent record. I love Prince. I don't listen to a lot of alternative rock music. I think my roots are definitely based in more like rock'n'roll in the 70's so I like good songs and I like good bodies of work, whether a two record set or one record or whatever. I listen to records as opposed to just certain songs. I'm carrying around an assortment of stuff. I've got The Who, Quadrophenia with me. I've got Jr. Brown's album called Get With It. I've got a country music compilation called Hillbilly Fever. It's actually old country music from the 40's and 50's and it's really cool as well as newer stuff like Garbage and Beck and things like that.

Ken: Are there any cities you prefer to play and any that you just want to get in and get out of in a hurry?

Mike: Philadelphia rocks.

Joey: We love Philly...

Mike: ...and New York. We love playing New York, umm, Los Angeles.

Joey: Seattle's awesome. It's great.

Mike: Florida, we do really well down there. Texas...

Joey: ...Texas is about the rowdiest state in the union.

Ken: Which country outside the United States is most familiar with your music and which is your favorite to play?

Mike: I think Germany is probably the most familiar with our stuff. We've been there the most and they're probably the most hard rock zealots in Europe I think from what I gather from my experience over there. The market's a little weird because the radio is a totally different animal out there than it is here. You do well out there by going there and playing which is the same as here but a lot of the press really has a lot to do with your exposure there as opposed to here it's radio and MTV. Radio and MTV in Europe is very very different than American.

Ken: Are you happy with the overall image you're getting from the video Wax Ecstatic and any other videos being shown? Do your videos describe an image you're comfortable with? What about the album cover?

Mike: I think that we've yet to do the definitive Sponge video. I think we've done some really good ones. Especially the last one, 'Have You Seen Mary?'. It's directed by Rocky Shank. I think it's a really really good video but...You know I know what you're talking about. When you used to look at those album covers and try to get an idea of what the band was like. I don't think that, until we possibly direct something ourselves, will you really get the true picture of Sponge because what we do on the videos is basically the directors idea. Yeah, his idea, which you know, is just put to our music. In that respect it's really a collaborative thing. It's really a director's visuals and the Sponge music. It would be really interesting to see us do something ourselves I think.

Joey: I agree. I think today's music is so hit single generated that MTV comes right along with that and nothing against that, you know. MTV doesn't show bodies of work. It doesn't show albums and when I grew up I listened to the record because there was more to it than the A side or that one modern rock single on the record. There was more to that record. That record said something to me. To me it almost takes the focus... MTV and radio the way it is today almost takes the focus off the record buyer. You get a lot of people that are really impatient about a groups music and they want the next single. The next thing that's going to move them for three and a half minutes or three minutes and twenty seconds.

Mike: It's that MTV short attention span and you're right about albums. I used to listen to the whole album, like the whole Aerosmith album or the whole Led Zepplin album and I'd know each song, what order the songs and it all had a, like a nice flow and there wasn't like; "Let's go buy the latest Led Zepplin single or the latest Aerosmith single." It wasn't like that. You bought the whole album.

Ken: That's one of the things I like best about Sponge. That there's a sense of continuity in your albums that makes you look at it as one big work and not just a few good singles worth of your attention. I don't think that exists on most of the albums that we review. There are many albums that we joke are just EP's or big singles.

Mike: I go back and I listen to some of my favorite albums like 'Let It Bleed' by the Stones and there's rockin' songs and then there's slow blues ones but that's what I loved about that album. The same with the Beatles 'White' album. There's songs on that that just rip, you know 'Helter Skelter' and 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'. Then you got really cool quiet ones like 'Julia' and 'Blackbird' and things like that. That makes a great album.

Ken: How do you feel about compilation records?

Mike: It's a tricky thing to do especially when bands are being generated to cut through teeth basically with that in mind. I think, maybe not even consciously, that we always had the idea to put good records together. We weren't a 'single' band. We write so much music and we spend so much time choosing the music for the record and producing it ourselves and going to the editing room, I mean, we're there every step of the way so it's very important to us. Every sound on that record is very important to us, every guitar note, every vocal line, every drum track. That's what we do.

Ken: What other name besides Sponge have you considered for the band if any and could you see yourselves being called that now?

Joey: I don't think we would have been any of the names that we f**ked around with in the first place but we do have some interesting ones. We used to do some shows as The Mordents.

Mike: Yeah, we did.

Joey: And I think on one of our first gigs was The Cattle Gods.

Mike: Electric Cattle Gods.

Joey: Electric Cattle Gods, yeah. I think Sponge is the right name for us.

Ken: Why?

Joey: It's probably the one name that when Vinny suggested it no one broke out in laughter going, "Ha, yeah, that's funny!", we took it serious. From the very git we're like, "Yeah, that could be it man. That could work."

Mike: I remember, yeah. Exactly right.

Ken: Being from Michigan, have you seen any bands in the area that you really like?

Mike: Well, I like the band Charm Farm a lot. I like the singles that I've heard. I don't own the record but I really do like the stuff that I've heard by them. Man, it's been so long.

Joey: Howling Diablo's are a really good local band in Detroit right now. They're going to open for us on New Year's as well as another of my really favorite bands in Detroit that probably nobody's heard of, The Detroit Cobra's. I think they're awesome. A couple of my friends are in the band and they're going to open up for us.

Ken: So, you're looking forward to this New Year's Eve gig?

Joey: It's starting to be a tradition now. We did it last year in Detroit. The club holds about one-thousand and we're doing two nights in a row. We're doing the 30th and the 31st. Its called St. Andrews. It's a great club. It's one of the best in Detroit, very cool place.

Ken: Parting remarks?

Mike: One of the cities we left out when we were naming our favorite ones was Providence, Rhode Island. [Laughter in the background]

Joey: Get that in there! That's a good point 'cause you know what? We've probably been here more than most any other city in the U.S.

Mike: Many, many times. Club Baby Head at least five or six times.