I had the chance to sit down and take some time out with Marko of Sugarcult on January 29th, 2004. This interview was so much fun to do. Marko is such a cool guy. If you guys haven't already seen them live, make sure to do so. :)
First off, why don't you tell us a little about yourself?
My name is Marko, M-A-R-K-O. I play guitar, G-U-I-T-A-R, in a band called Sugarcult, S-U-G-A-R-C-U-L-T. We're from Santa Barbara, California, and we've been around for about five years.
If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be, and why?
Oh, my gosh. I would say, I don't know. Describing yourself is kind of weird. I would say eclectic, stubborn, and nice.
Now the name, Sugarcult. Is it really a "sugar cult"? Or how did you get the name?
Our singer used to live next door to some lesbian girls who all lived together and they would call themselves the "sugar cult," so it was like a lesbian gang, and they told him to name the band after them [laughs a little]. They were really big lesbians, so they could have kicked his ass. He really didn't have much choice in the matter.
How would you describe your music?
Guitars, bass, and drums. Three chords, a bunch of words, just put together in different orders. It's kind of loud. Sometimes it's kind of quiet, sometimes it's kind of energetic, and I don't know. It's so damn catchy that the whole world is singing along.
You're currently on tour with Simple Plan and MXPX. How is that going?
Marko: And Motion City Soundtrack.
Stacy: And Billy Talent on select dates [laughs a little].
Marko: But Motion City is one of my favorite bands right now. It's been going great. We're about a week into the tour and so far so good. The shows are really fun. We're actually getting in front of a lot of people. We toured in the United States for two and a half years straight, so it's cool to be out on a tour where I feel like we're getting in front of people that have never seen or heard of our band before. I think we're making some new fans and it's fun. It's fun to be out on tour with a band like MXPX that has been at it for probably close to 15 years. You learn a lot from all the bands.
How would you describe your stage show?
We feed off of the audience a lot. I think our show is only as good as the crowd is, so we really like it when we play in front of energetic crowds. We're not very rehearsed. We rarely ever practice. We just go up there and play our songs and wing it. To me, it is what live shows are about. Kind of working with the moment and just freestylin' it a little bit.
What's one of your favorite songs to perform live at a show?
"Pretty Girl," off of our album, Start Static. I really like playing that song live because there are parts in the song where there is room for total improvisation, depending on how it sounds on stage and how the electricity is wired in the club and how much fun you're having with your guitar that night. The noisy parts of the song that get all chaotic and crazy always come out sounding a little bit different. No two nights are the same. Every single night comes out differently, so that is sort of a unique thing.
If you weren't doing music, what do you think you'd be doing?
Oh, God. I don't know. Finding some other way to express myself and definitely be in the entertainment world. I think acting is cool, but I don't have the patience for acting. I like rock and roll because it's instant and it's in your face and it's live, in the moment. That's not something you can capture when you're rehearsing lines over and over and then going and performing it in a theater. Doing like 100 takes in front of a camera. There's something about live music.
Maybe I'd be a stripper, which is something else you can do in the moment. You never know if it's cold and your dick is going to look really small, if there's a really hot girl and you're going to get a hard on, so it's kind of like rock and roll. Stripping. Rock and roll.
Are there any times when you just want to quit and go home? If so, what do you do to keep yourself 'going'?
Well, it's kind of crazy after touring for so long, because touring feels more like home than home feels like home. So, when I go home, I really don't know what to do with myself [laughs a little]. It's weird. It's like having to do dishes which is kind of a novelty. I really enjoy touring, I mean it's not like, "Oh, God. I gotta tour in order to sell my records;" it's like we make records as an excuse to tour. We love touring and seeing the world and meeting people and meeting other bands. It's such a fun adventure.
However, when you get sick, touring becomes a total, total nightmare, because you're on stage and snot is flying out of your nose and you don't have your mom to make you chicken soup, and you don't have your own bed to curl up and sleep in and get all sweaty and gross and wake up in the middle of the night and change your sheets.
Being sick on the road is really hard, and then everyone in your band gets sick because you're all in close quarters. As soon as one person gets sick, everyone gets sick. You play "pass the sickness around." If you're the first one who got sick and you got well and you gave it to your bass player, and he gave it to your drummer, and he gave it to your singer, and he gave it to your tour manager, and he gave it to your guitar tech, and he gave it to your merch girl, by the end of the tour your merch girl gives it back to you, and then when you get home and have like five days off, you have to spend the whole time in bed. Getting sick is a real f*ckin' hassle [laughs].
If you could give the aspiring bands/singers any tips on the music industry, what would they be, and why?
Get your priorities straight. It's not about getting a record deal and "making it." Those are things that happen in time. Focus on the important things, which is having fun, and playing music that you believe in, not just worrying about "making it," so not like "Oh, sh*t, if we want to make it big we've gotta start wearing Atticus t-shirts and cutting our hair a certain way, and screaming in our songs because that's popular right now." Don't follow the trends because by the time your band gets discovered that trend is going to be gone.
Sugarcult, we don't follow trends. We never have. We've just always followed our own vision and as a result, hopefully we'll never go in or out of style. We'll always just be Sugarcult. I encourage other bands to do the same thing. It's more of a chance to have new, interesting music/bands come out. Think about The White Stripes, think about Jane's Addiction, think about the bands that really do something interesting.
The next few questions are just some random, fun questions. You can't be serious, when answering these questions.
Okay.
Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera?
I personally like Christina Aguilera better. If it was between having sex with one or the other or watching them sing, Christina Aguilera. I mean, they're both trained. They're both incredibly sophisticated, highly trained musicians, but I personally just think that Christina Aguilera is a little sexier and spicier.
I'd probably rather have sex with her. She'd probably be willing to try more positions, whereas Britney would probably just be missionary. It just seems that there would be a lot of french kissing for months and then she would finally let you get going, but with Christina you'd probably be going out to a club and drinking Cristale, and then she would pull you into the ladies room, give you a blow job in the stall, and when all is said and done, I like her voice better. She's a better soul singer.
I guess they're musicians and not just sexual objects, like they're portrayed in magazines [laughs]. So you have to remember that. Like, "What's Christina wearing? Oh, my God. Did you see what she was wearing? Did you see what she just did? Did you see that picture?" But you realize that they're just musicians, and they're better musicians then we are [laughs]. They're f*cking amazing musicians. We're punk rockers. We don't know how to play our instruments that well. We just try our best, but they're highly trained, professional singers. I can't even talk about them.
If you could pick any one singer/band to remake one of your songs, who would it be, what song would it be, and why?
Oh, wow. To remake one of our songs? I think that would be really interesting to see. One of our biggest heroes in our band is Elvis Costello. We really liked the first few Elvis Costello records and that was a huge influence when we were drawing up the blueprints for this band. Elvis Costello, early 80s, late 70s, music was a big influence on our band. So, I think it would be really cool to see what would happen if we handed Elvis Costello and The Attractions a Sugarcult song. We covered one of their songs, it would be cool to see what would happen. It's always a new band covering an old band song. It would be neat to get some old bands to cover new bands songs.
Last but not least, do you have a message to your fans?
Palm Trees and Powerlines, our new album. I promise it's worth the wait. We're really excited about it and if you look at it as a bottle of red wine, we will be opening that bottle in April and hopefully pouring hundreds of thousands of glasses out of it to all of our thirsty fans all over the world. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it.
And the most important thing to remember is that when you think about Sugarcult, we are a band, not a song. So, even though you like the song you hear on the radio, you like the song you downloaded, we put a lot of attention into Wrap Me Up in Plastic and Start Static. We put a lot of attention into not having any filler on our albums. Every single song is handcrafted with total love and affection, as if we had thirteen kids and each one of them is getting just as much attention and love. And every song is put together on the record in the order for a total reason because it fits that way and that's the way we want it to be presented.
When you buy our record, for whatever reason, because you like our band, you saw us opening for MxPx, you heard a song on the radio, you think the artwork is cool, for whatever reason draws you into buying our record, make sure you sit down, go on a long drive or something, and listen to the whole record. At least the first couple of times around. Don't just skip through to the songs you think you like, because the other songs will grow on you. That's what I encourage you to do with all records. And if they don't sound good all the way through, then just burn the songs you like and sell the f*ckin' thing [laughs]. Or send it back to the band "Return to Sender." That's what bands should do nowadays [laughs]. When they sell CDs, they should include return postage and if people buy it and don't like it, they can send it back and the band has to reimburse them. That will make bands try harder not to make sh*tty records.
Stacy: [laughs] That works.
Thanks for your time and good luck with your career!
Cool. Thanks for the interview!
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