Marcy Playground: John Wozniak (vocals & guitar), Dan Rieser (drums), Zeke Zima (guitar)
November 22nd, 1999
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Marcy Playground: John Wozniak (JW): I feel like the expectations that are out there and in all the press we got from the first record was that "Marcy Playground is a one-hit-wonder-band" and sooo, I hope we don't meet That expectation. Dan Rieser (DR): You know, they were calling us a one-hit-wonder six weeks after that first song was on the radio. Which was only three months after the record was released... (JW): I would've hoped that people would be a little more timely with that criticism; like wait until we reached that status: after the band has broken up and we only had one hit song ... then they could say we were one-hit-wonders. But to say such a thing three months after our first record is released seemed a little presumptuous and premature.
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MP: (JW): Comfortable with media coverage - no. My feeling is that if the coverage doesn't originate with our words, then it's suspicious. For example, a lot of criticism we get is considered media coverage, but yet it's not media coverage. It's got nothing to do with us, it's a criticism . If we say something, on TV or not, then the interview is transcribed with us speaking, then I feel comfortable with that kind of coverage. Things like music reviews, comments about our behavior...nobody reads those things. They only care what their own opinion is. So, I've always found that reviews, even if they're good, are kind of ridiculous.
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MP: (JW): No, yes. I've read reviews for other bands and then listened to the music itself, and I had no idea what the reviewer had been criticizing. For instance, the new Foo Fighters. Great record. But I've read some bizarre, bizarre reviews that are so off base. So I don't think anyone cares about reviews.
VV: Maybe that's true if your confidence is high. But I know some artists have read reviews and been truly hurt by them...
MP: (DR): True. That happened to me a couple of times early on, when I stumbled upon something that was a record review or a review of a live show that was really negative. And I thought, "Oh, wow. We suck?" And then, after seeing a few of those and talking about it a lot I've come to realize what I mentioned earlier. We can only do what we do as a band. (JW): I think we've gotten to the point where there's a bit of a shield around us ... an emotional, artistic shield, so that outside stuff doesn't interfere with us anymore. Like maybe a younger band would have a hard time with it. Some of it comes with experience, and the rest is having total confidence in what you're doing.
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MP: Zeke Zima (ZZ): I'm completely happy just to be playing with these guys. I've only been playing with them for two months. The media stuff is all new to me, I'm still digesting it. (DR): Zeke and I and Dylan, the bass player, all share a musical history that goes way back: ten to twelve years . We went to school together in Boston {Berkeley School of Music}, and used to jam together all of the time.
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MP: (JW): The single choice was a group effort to decide what would be the most acceptable "next single" following our last one {Sex and Candy}. Because not all of the songs would have been appropriate. Songs like America, Wave Motion Gun, and Our Generation are more like album cuts. ..more like 1972-take-me-to- Dark Side of the Moon songs. It's Saturday is a more radio friendly song. For us, at least for me, it doesn't matter which song is released as a single because I'm comfortable with them all. For the video, we have always had success with British directors, and we wanted to have a really interesting video. It just all worked out: Peter Christopherson was available to do it, he happened to be British, he wanted to do it in Toronto, and he had a really killin' idea. His idea ended up becoming the idea for the video. He wrote a treatment for the song after he listened to it, and we loved it.
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MP: (JW): That's a big mystery. Because everybody swears on a stack of bibles that it's computer generated. But I remember, sitting there with the dog. And he had a really expressive face. So I'll swear on a stack of bibles that it was really the dog just moving it's eyes and face around.
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MP: (JW): I don't like making videos. I do this for music, which is a totally different thing. That's why we don't play our instruments in our videos, because we like to keep them separate. One is a music thing, the other is a visual thing. (DR): When the first song from the first record took off, I think we were all a little, maybe I should just speak for myself...I was a little shocked to be thrust into doing things like that - making videos. We've been writing music, playing music, and recording music for ten years now. And that's all. And suddenly, we have some success with a song so we then "have to" make a video. But none of us even watch music videos, to be honest. We lucked out for our first video because we got Jamie, and he's a really great guy. But it's been a learning process where we now think we should be a little more selfish about what we want from our videos. This new video for It's Saturday is something we feel good about, and were involved. The first time out of the five videos that we've made.
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MP: (JW): Even after making five videos I still don't understand it. (DR): I feel much more involved. We now actively pick directors who lay the kind of groundwork required to make a good video. We become actors once the director is in charge - which is completely bizarre for us. We think Dylan loves it.
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MP: (JW): Adam Elk from the Mommyheads is one of the most talented, brilliant songwriters of this decade. And the business issues keep getting in the way for him. (DR): A band in New York, called Bonnie Lundy. A little punk rock trio that puts out some of the freshest music I've heard in a long time. Another one called the Bloom Daddies - kind of a freaky instrumental band. Two Ton Boa up in Olympia. - she just did an EP for Kill Rockstars that's coming out in February.
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MP: (DR): Yeah, and it's really nice. Because we get to hear a lot of new things that we wouldn't have heard before. Also, there have been a lot bands along the way who have done this for us, so it's a kind of tradition.
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Are you a child of the Free To Be You And Me generation?
Can you describe this phrase and elaborate on the song itself? {ed. note: This was a strange moment for me, the sentiments that John explains are amazingly similar to themes that I have been massaging for a novel in progress. And our only real similarity is our age/generation...}
MP: (JW): Free to be You and Me is the name of a children's album done by Marlo Thomas in 1972. I wrote this song in 1990, before our generation had the label of "Generation X". My label for our generation is/was Free to be You and Me Generation. I'm 29 now. Back in the 70's we were all told that we could be whatever we wanted to be - we just needed to put our nose to the grindstone but we could just be FREE (waves his hands around). But then in the 80's we had a conservative backlash against the 70's and by the 90's everyone just freaked out. The disillusionment of the 80's was just too much to handle. That "teen angst" that came out in the early 90's was due to being told in the 70's that we could do anything we wanted but then having that ripped away from us in the 80's.
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MP: (JW): Yes and no. Cross generational. In fact, there have been times when a 50 year old father brings his kids to the show and he'll tell me that he's been listening to the cd long after his kids lost interest in Sex and Candy. Our demographic is from 10 to 60 {years old}. It feels great. (DR): The older listeners also tend to be more critical of music, especially new music. (JW): Yeah, because new music doesn't usually sound like the albums they grew up with, that they loved. But for us, we could have pressed this "Shapeshifter" on vinyl and it would have had a first and second side and it would have worked.
VV: Do you keep up with your fan sites and chat rooms? Do you use the web?
MP: (JW): Everyday. I'm there at our bulletin board every day. I read everything. We interact with our fans every day in any way that we can. They're the only people (pretty much) in the record business that we really love.
Interviewer: Catherine Lee
Camera & Photos: Rodwin Pabello
Transcription & Editing: Catherine Lee
© 1999, 2000 Evans Media Group, Inc.
Other Marcy PlaygroundLinks:
The Official Marcy Playground Web Site
Fan Sites:
Recess--The Ultimate Marcy Playround Site
Double Scoop's Marcy Playground Page
Greg Boyd's Marcy Playground Page