 SOUND REWARDS "Oscar Wilde Come On Down" By Richard Cody Rock and Roll has always been about the here and now. The immediate rush and excited push that have made The Beatles and Presley precious icons. The type of here and now that while it is happening, stakes its ground so loudly that forty years later their here is still our now. My youth was spent with loads of albums piled from floor to table to bed to shelf. Voices, sounds and visions of gods in flowing velvets and striped trousers stole my heart, thus slaying my so-called allegiance to studies and social gatherings. I knew I was a hopeless wreck without that precious spinning vinyl. Nothing, but nothing placed me more swiftly into a softened idyllic coma than reading song lyrics off the inner jackets of the legendary 12 x 12’s. I learned about my heroes’ triumphs and personal traumas. I saw their worlds. . .wordsmiths who could summon visuals and emotions. I wondered what that girl looked like and how she walked. Because of their lyrics, I saw the great streets of London when it swung and realized the government was not always my friend. I learned to live and found a voice of my own and the sound that came out gave me confidence. Where have all the writers gone? Michael Mazzarella, speaking slowly and cautiously while Pachelbel’s Erbarm’ dich mein, o Herre Gott floats lazily in the backdrop, has a problem. Not really HIS problem as he sees it, but a burden that I feel obligated to place on his shoulders. . . The burden of being a literate lyric writer. Many songwriters, especially of the pop kind, sound like they write their lyrics while overdosing on large quantities of Bazooka and grape drink. "I love you, I lost you , I hate you. It was June and the moon was. . . cool." Get the picture? Mazzarella, songwriter extraordinare for The Rooks, New York City’s finest pop band, would rather recite Verlaine’s (Paul not Tom) PARISIAN SKETCH rather than try to remember what the hell Eric Carmen was singing about in DON’T WANT TO SAY GOODBYE. You would probably find him more at home watching a documentary on The Shroud of Turin than camped in front of some lame VH-1 70’s weekend special. Not that he told me this, mind you. For all I know, Peter Frampton might be one of his faves, though I doubt it. It’s just a gut feeling that I have, and I’ll bet I’m right. I have become a fan of The Rooks, and in particular, of their songwriter ever since a journalist friend of mine made me a cassette (complete with a xeroxed lyric sheet) of their 1994 debut (The Rooks/Guardian Records). They also have follow-up releases (A Double Dose Of Pop and Chimes) on the ever-growing pop label, Not Lame. It was in my car that I heard that guitar blast of LOVE SAID TO ME fight its way out of my four strategically placed two front-two back speakers. By the time REASONS’ magic filled the spring morning, I was hooked like a trout. Only when I returned home to my own privacy was I pleasantly suprised that the lyrics were just as interesting as the music, in this case. This writer has the rare ability to make you want to listen to what he is saying. No, it has nothing to do with politics or culture as a whole or even the way girls walk. Sometimes I don’t even know what he is singing about but, it’s the way he writes it. Short passages of positive counseling; "In a pinwheel spin depending where in the wind you are standing/You can rise or fall or feel nothing at all without landing/In a pinwheel spin you can survive" (IN A PINWHEEL SPIN), or the Sandberg Americana meets Poe macabre; "We fought a war the way they fought the war at Valley Forge/It crippled and it maimed we asked for more/We had no bayonets but words that tore the flesh around the heart completely" (WAR), or the all-knowing "Many times our lives ride raging tides/We can’t decide if we are the lonely people/On a climbing endless steeplechase" (STEEPLECHASE). What can be more frightening than LOVE SAID TO ME’s psychochemically inspired "Love said to me that our love was a no-end hallucination/That’s what you dropped on me/Your flashback infestation/Makes me cry out in misery," or the down to earth bite of "All dreams can’t come true/Your perfect world is just a lie/I showed you how to break it down before you/I apologize" (APOLOGY). I had an opportunity to speak with this pop poet recently and found that the confident writer of some of the prettiest and heaviest imagery on the newly revived power pop scene to be modest and taken aback by my, as he called it, "over the deep-end praise." SR: As a writer, how much of an influence was television, radio and newspapers for you growing up? MM: Those mediums were influential in ways that completely transcended any scope or thought for me as a songwriter. The news events and radio were the focus of everyone’s lives when I was coming into my own. Even the news was cool, yet I was many years away from writing songs. By the time I was writing them full-time, I didn’t watch television and barely listened to the radio. If you read my words now, they are mostly about me and the people I have been directly involved with. SR: Is there a fear that sometimes your work becomes so personalized that it may leave a listener somewhat in the cold? MM: No, because everyone feels. Everyone knows rejection and everyone knows anger and all the other emotions that I use in a lot of my work. I suppose that would be true if I or any other writer personalized their work using specific names, but that doesn’t happen with me too often. When I wrote "You think the world around you revolves when you want it to" (A CIRCLE OF FOOLS), I am sure that a lot of listeners know of someone who actually thinks he or she is the center of everything. I certainly don’t try to write above anybody. I don’t think I could, even if I wished to. SR: Where did the source of the power of the word come from for you? MM: Many places. Books and stories. . . the imagery from Suess. A great influence for me was a book by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese called The Story About Ping. My aunt used to read to me when I was maybe three or four and the illustrations in these books would become magnified in my own imagination. It started there even before I realized what a song lyric was. At that stage music was only sound, albeit a great and powerful sound. Later, I turned myself onto bigger and better books and writers, poets and the like. SR: Who are your favorite poets? MM: Baudlaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Blake and Gibran. There’s lots more. SR: Your words range from very subtle imagery like ALWAYS YOU AND ME’s "It’s just a kind of world that breaks you down, the love-lost jagged edge that cuts you down, the ever-present fear of all alone," to the very picturesque "Every vine that is strung from your door" (WAITING) or "The full moon appeared and spread, the hands of the clock went dead" (HOUSE OF FORTUNE) or even "Know your way in the clearing/Feast the rain I am nearing/Mingle long are you weeping?" (GLITTER BEST). That is very poetically written work. Does it stem from your love of poets and does Dylan’s word imagery seep in? MM: It’s all there. Everything. Even conversations between strangers can be of use. A writer should not cut himself off to any source. A good writer has to rise for the bait of an inspiration. Words, sounds and images breeze along every nanosecond. Only a fool should let them slip away. SR: What about social commentary writers? Do you ever wander down that road? MM: No. They are mostly boring to me. It’s like reading a newspaper. The music better be very appealing in order to hold my interest or else it becomes silly. I’m talking about pop music now and not so much folk and that. Dylan did it for a period and then he even divorced himself from it. (Dylan’s) HURRICANE CARTER worked because it was an interesting story line that happened to be true, or so we thought. I’m happier with "Ramona come closer, shut softly your watery eyes" (from Dylan’s TO RAMONA). If I want the news I will watch it. I’d rather be swept to a pastoral world than the one I live in. Some writers try to be too clever for their own good and that’s dull. SR: How do the other Rooks react to your lyrics? MM: They don’t. . . openly. I don’t even know if they are aware of what I’m saying or if they even care that much. I think they start thinking in terms of color schemes and that starts with the music. . . which crayons to use for this certain picture we are trying to paint. SR: Would not the words be very important as to which crayons they will take from their boxes? MM: They absolutely should be, but then you would have to ask them. I think I set up enough of the canvas for them before we even begin. I set the tones and they take it from that starting point. After all, these are musical pictures we are after. Words may or may not be extra icing. That is up to each listener. SR: You have printed the lyrics to all of your work so far. Will this continue or will you at some point, leave them off to try and make the listener more involved with what you are saying? MM: Music should be pleasurable. It should not be like school. For a start, I have very poor singing diction, so the work without word sheets becomes compounded by the fact that nobody can understand what I’m saying. We will always print out the words. . . mostly as a courtesy. . . and from keeping me sounding like a drunk (laughs). SR: Are you ever stumped for a topic to write about? MM: Lyrics are just so very easy for me only because they are about me. All I ever need to do is ask myself what is happening here? SR: IT’S A CRYING SHAME starts out so care-free and lilting yet, lyrically it sounds like one of your most bitter songs. MM: It is very resentful. Where I came from, you had to take quite a bit of ridicule if you had one ounce of desire to be yourself. This never happened at home because my family were always behind what I did and handed out great encouragement. This happened in the open playing fields of clubs and bars. Drunken, hick attitudes and backwards thinking. "Hey boy, nice haircut." Comments of that kind. I mean, if you wore an orange shirt with dots you were asking for grief. I didn’t care. . . I did what I wanted to but I had to swallow a lot of piss. It’s not worth fist-fighting over, although that happened as well. I have never run into that sort of problem in New York City. I’m sure the situations that I had in Hartford (Connecticut) are more the rule than the exception but it still hurt. I was very angry when I wrote those words. These attitudes scare kids from becoming writers and poets and healthy eccentrics and that’s what the world could use more of. Oscar Wilde come on down. SR: I love the way you resolve the song in the final verse "I suppose the scene would change if I were a famous name/Then they would accept the look and have me sign their memory books." MM: Isn’t is true? It becomes accepted and cool if you are a celebrity. Even the jar-heads applaud it. Try and do so as a nobody at age 16 and see what you get. That’s where my hostility was born. The "memory book" is synonym for autograph book. Ironically, the ridiculers become the seekers. It is a crying shame that that is the way people function. Money and fame are pale redeemers. Let the converts be slayed by their own paradoxical swords. SR: The piece inside of your first album (Essays) is a wonderful work. Will you ever include more of that kind into future CD releases? MM: You’re with me all the way. I plan on enclosing one with each album. I did so to a smaller extent on the Chimes EP with the bit about "ungenial winds" that was scrawled across the disc itself ("What should we care if such ungenial winds blow cold in our faces/With them comes the jingling of Chimes"). SR: That is very beautiful and I wondered who wrote that. Was that written very specifically for the Chimes record? MM: Yes, just for that. SR: Will you write these pieces as they are needed or do you have them stashed away, waiting for the light of day? MM: Probably both. I have so much poetry written that I figured I needed a stage in which to get some of it read. One per album may be a good starting point. I already know which poem I will include for the next album (A Wishing Well). Whether I write poems specifically for future albums remains to be seen. There is a lot stored away now. SR: Would you ever consider publishing your poetry? MM: Sure, but who would want it? Does it sell? Does anybody care about poetry in 1996? We’re having enough trouble getting our music heard. I suppose if the band took off I may have a slim chance with some minimal interest. I write it for me mostly, anyway. SR: If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to end this article with one of your written pieces. Would you be willing to submit something to me? MM: Well. . . I suppose. . . which one? Ummm. . .ask me later. SR: Has a song ever been dictated by your lyrics? Do you write words first? MM: No, but a song has been dictated by a title. Sometimes a title can take on a life of its own and breathe new life into what the song becomes. That happens a fair amount of time with me. A song called MEDITATION from our next album is a perfect example. The title hit me and you can’t help but write a somewhat hypnotic, dream-like song around it. WAR was the same way. I had the title first and you know that the music is probably going to be either downcast. . . . or loud! I chose dreary over explosive. SR: I look forward to the next Rooks album (due in early 1997). How about that poem now? MM: Let me think it over. I don’t know what I would give to you and I certainly can’t recite anything here as I don’t know them that well. The next day a fax was waiting for me at my house. That softened idyllic coma came to pay me yet another visit. Thanks, Mr. Mazzarella. It is beautiful. SEND Send for my heart -Michael Mazzarella-
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