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(Winter 2005) by George Dionne
MusicianConnect
profile
Supermercado is the brain-child of Chicago rock veteran Matt Mercado. After
paying his dues in several bands including Daisy Chain, Mindbomb, and Pivot
Man, Mercado has finally found something he’s comfortable with. In
the fall of 2005, Supermercado released their debut album Scary Baby (with
a re-release coming in February 2006). One cannot put into words what Supermercado’s
music sounds like, but it’s undoubtedly a melting pot of musical styles.
Sometimes it can be dance, other times metal, and even industrial thrash.
It’s certainly unique and well worth the indulgence (read
CD review).
Rock-Is-Life had the opportunity to speak with Matt
around the holidays. I found Matt to be quite passionate about his music
(and he has ever right
to be); so much so that he would sometimes fly off on several different
tangents to get across what he wanted me to know. I have to say it was
an editing
nightmare. In fact, it was so difficult at times that there was no way
to fix it. You’ll have to decipher it yourself. I won’t hold it
against you Matt, you’re new CD kicks ass!
RIL: If new absolutely nothing about Supermacrdo how would you describe
the group’s music to me?
MM: We lay it down, if you’re looking to rock. You know a lot of people
don’t like our genre of music, so I’m not going to try to sell
everybody. I’m not going to say to you if you like Madonna you’re
going to like us, that’s for sure. You might, but were veteran musicians
that have devoted our lives to it. We focus on petty intense music. Something
that I learned a long time ago from playing with black musicians is to play
what you feel. I just basically let the song write itself. I try not to interrupt
it too much. To describe the music itself; I would say we’re a rock
band that likes to experiment with all kinds of things. We’re really
devoted to playing music 100%, that’s all we do.
RIL: Your latest release Scary Baby has been floating around for at least
a year now before receiving an official release in October. What took so
long?
MM: Dementia I guess. We were trying to pick the tracks
that we were going to add to it, and we had more recorded but not finished.
We had tracked over
twenty two songs for the record so we wanted to…but just like drums
and beats you know what I’m saying…and ruff guitars…but
while we were tracking there were eighteen or nineteen…I know there
was a lot. We were trying to work on different songs and overworking it.
For instance, I had mixed it for several weeks, but then the final mix took
even more weeks. The very first week the rest of the band was there. It was
like, ‘turn up my guitar,’ ‘turn up the drums.’ No
other musician, except the guy who is actually mixing it, will take himself
out of the mix.
If they’re a drummer, all they want is the drums and
the bass player obviously. I got some help from some engineer friends of
mine. They told me that I wasn’t that far off with the mix. After two
or three weeks I was coming home everyday all beaten. I couldn’t do
it. I couldn’t mix this record for some reason. I lost my effectiveness.
I don’t know exactly what took so long. We took some time off in between.
We were shooting for a release in around eight months, and we actually did
release it then, but we were just picking songs and recording live stuff.
Finally it just came down to look we have to get this out; otherwise we would
probably still be working on it.
RIL: The group shares your namesake. Would you say that Supermercado is
a group effort or more of a solo project?
MM: It’s a group effort, but this is going to be our last project.
We are all getting up there. Legally, I couldn’t use my name in the
band because of a copyright that the label had at the time. I was wanting
to be in a band that was goofy or silly or fun, and a nobody else would do
it…I don’t know how they agreed to it, but we just thought we
could play some old songs and kind of incorporate it with some new It’s
defiantly a group effort. I’m not the type of guy who records everything
with the band and then edits everything. If you play bass guitar and do all
the singing in the background, it just sounds thin to me. There is no way
another person is going to play exactly the way you are. I like it to sound
like a band.
RIL: Correct me if I’m wrong, but mercado in Spanish means market.
Wouldn’t the name of the band then be Supermarket?
MM: It would be Supermarket! It’s a ridiculous name, and we parted
ways with a manager because he didn’t like the name. At that point
I had been Daisy Chain, Mindbomb and couldn’t use them. I’ve
changed my name so many times. I was writing all these songs, in all theses
projects, so it was like starting from scratch every time. We had started
our own kind of…we had already put out the pre-release which had a
lot of the same songs, but we remixed it and cut other stuff out. We had
already gone that far, so it came down to changing our name. At that point
we were like, this is it, change it, we’re done. We’re not going
to change my name one more time. We picked it, and we will live a die by
it.
RIL: Did you shop Scary Baby around to the major labels?
MM: They liked it, but there looking for 19-20 year
old things. We’re
a little to old for the labels. The major labels are trying to stick with
the system. It’s like if in 1995 I was trying to sell typewriters.
I’ve was signed to major label. My first deal [with Mindbomb] was with
these big attorneys and managers coming in with a million dollar deal. As
soon as we signed the million dollar deal, the whole thing turned into the
most miserable time of my life. The managers just tried to get us away from
our families, because they don’t want anybody else involved.
They make
you fire your friends who were managing you before. They don’t want
anybody being a part of it. Then we spent all this money a producer that
had a number one record. When we started the process, we knew it wasn’t
going right. They were telling us to shut up; this guy had a number one record,
so be nice. We had to shut up and let them destroy our music. That was worse
than anything I could think of; to have your life’s work destroyed
by somebody. With the new record, I listened to the whole thing from beginning
to end, and I was happy with the outcome; much happier than I was signing
the million dollar deal.
RIL: Is there any reasoning behind the dollar symbol and cents symbol that
you put in the bands logo?
MM: Not really. That’s related to the supermarket
thing.
RIL: What does your touring schedule look like to promote Scary
Baby?
MM: Right now we are just looking into tours. We’re hoping that in
the spring we will be out. There’s nothing etched in stone yet.
RIL: Are you hoping to tour across country or just some local stuff?
MM: Were going to do something nationally for sure.
We have not nailed down anything yet though. We’ll get some kind of
opening slot.
RIL: Here’s the most important question of the interview; who’s
the girl on the cover of the album?
MM: That was Godess Severa. The guy who did the
artwork also does erotic photography. That was one of the girls he does work
with. We were looking
for some girls, and he sent us some really gorgeous ones, but she was kind
of scary-ed up. I didn’t think she was that scary, but that’s
the one the label liked. We went through a million things and I’m happy
with it. I’m about the music anyway; I don’t really care about
the artwork so much.
RIL: Is it true you were selling an action figure to coincide with your
song Supermercado?
MM: It was the Supermercado doll song originally. The
whole thing got axed by the label. They said that they didn’t want me to be goofy and felt
that we were talented enough as a band to not have to be goofy. I’m
into the tongue-in-cheek stuff, but I agree with them. The funniest thing
is that Darkstar Records makes a lot more sense than any major label that
I have been with. At least when they talk to me, they make a lot of sense.
I can understand that they’re out for what’s best for the band,
and they’re not just trying to eek out every penny they can. That’s
what the major labels or any major business do.
RIL: You used to front the band Mindbomb, tell me a little bit about that
group and how it differs from Supermercado?
MM: When Mindbomb got signed, the band was disjointed
and everybody hated each other. From the time we were recording our record,
the whole time we
were on tour, and we toured for a long time, there was just no unity there.
The band turned into rockstars, so they let go of trying to be better musicians.
With Supermercado, if we need to work on something, we work on it. We’re
more about the music and that’s about it. That’s what we have
been doing our whole lives.
RIL: Would you say sound-wise they differ?
MM: I would say it’s relatively the same style
of music.
RIL: Mindbomb opened some dates for Kiss; did you get to meet with any of
them?
MM: We were actually on Mercury Records together. Gene
Simmons said it was his favorite record. Actually, he came up to me and said, ‘I love the
first song, but your record sucks.’ I’m not a huge Kiss fan,
but I like Gene’s personality. He was just so frank and honest. He
doesn’t have to worry about anyone else’s stuff.
RIL: Did your former band Pivot Man break or did they morph into Supermercado?
MM: Pivot Man had signed a record deal, then they sold
it off to Warner Bros. It was a done deal at the time. Then we started getting
a big buzz and
we had some big time managers come in. They were like, ‘fuck the
sixty thousand; we're going to you six hundred thousand.’ There was
kind of a loophole in the contract, because they didn’t contact us
about selling us off earlier. We opted not to go with it, which was just
retarded. We should have gone with it and let them put it out through Warner
Bros. distribution. The whole thing ended up with us getting screwed, and
the label deal didn’t go down. They stopped taking our phone calls.
That’s what I don’t like about the business. It’s a bait
and switch label business. They made me fire my manager at the time, who
was also my friend, and for a week I was trying to convince them to work
with him. He helped me out; he got me back on my feet, and got us the deal.
They said no, I had to fire him. He was a good friend of mine, and he won’t
even talk to me to this day.
RIL: Have you thought about starting up your own label?
MM: It’s so much work doing the label thing. I was thinking about it,
and I tried a little bit on the internet, but I just want to focus on making
music. I don’t want to deal with calling record stores and all that
stuff. That just takes too much time. There’s no way. I just want to
make records. The whole industry needs to be rethought at this point. How
do you feel about it?
RIL: They have to change something, because they can’t keep putting
out a CD for twenty dollars. That’s number one, number two is; you’re
getting ten songs of crap and two songs that might be good, so then you’re
pissed off about that …okay, so you get it on sale for ten bucks, there’s
still only two good songs and you want to beat the hell out of it!
What they
need to do is nurture the artist and help them develop, as they did in
the past. Judas Priest wasn’t good when they came out, but three albums
later they were at the top of there game. It’s because the label believed
in them. The label made them a great band. A lot of band’s early stuff
was questionable, but they got better as they went along. Today you get one
or two records to release for a major label. If you don’t sell platinum,
you’re out!
MM: And they wonder why they’re business is hurting. I agree they’re
not nurturing their artists, but some of the production and producers they’re
using are also questionable; taking the band out of the process all together.
A lot of the labels with make band’s use a particular guy and they
take their music and change it into something they’ve never heard before.
If you were dead in a gutter, [the major labels] would just keep on driving.
You know what I mean?
RIL: The other issue is; all the labels keep merging. When mergers happen,
people lose jobs.
MM: You were talking about how they used to develop
artist in the past, they’re doing less and less of that now. They’re giving them
less time, ‘Lets give them thirteen weeks.’ now it just doesn’t
make any sense to put your own life into something, and have them put it
out in just thirteen weeks. I think the most import thing for any artist
is to keep releasing records somehow. It’s expensive; it really is
a lot of money. We had a big bill for everything we did, but we are getting
some rewards for it now. We’re on an indie, so we don’t have
to sell million records to get another deal.
RIL: You’re also listed as a music producer, are you working
on any projects?
MM: Yes the last band I did, Escape from Earth, ended
up winning the Coke/MTV “Making
It Real” contest. They were featured on a special with P. Diddy. It’s
hard for me to watch MTV because of my time with Pivot Man. They used twenty
of our songs and my songs in 2001. I would watch it to hear my song. I can’t
watch MTV now, I just can’t do it. I saw the teaser, it looked really
cool. I can not sit through a whole show on MTV anymore, even to watch for
my own music.
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MATT
MERCADO
