Saccharine Trust
Thomas and Joe interviewed
Saccharine Trust at the On Klub. They were in a hurry to go, so it was cut
a little short, but we managed a few interesting facts.
ID: Have you guys known each other
for a long time?
T: So, what did you ask? How long have we been together? Or, how long
have we
known each other?
ID: Both.
T: Well, Saccharine has been together about four years now. I have been
in the band
for a little over two years.
J: The other guys (Earl and Robert) don't count. They were Saccharine
Trust training
wheels. We didn't need them anymore.
T: It took us a little while to find the first Saccharine Trust.
J: After those guys left, we realized that we were able to cruise faster
on two wheels.
ID: How did you pick your name?
J: We recorded for "Cracks in the Sidewalk" and we didn't have a name.
They were
gonna put the album out soon. So, we just gave them that. We could
have thought
of something later but we never got around to it. It's just like how
it took us a while to
get around and do the album.
ID: Who writes your music?
J: We all do.
T: Everyone writes their own separate parts and then we put it all
together. It's not like
one guy sits down and writes the whole song. We fit it together like
a jigsaw puzzle--
overlaying each part.
J: Once in a while, one of us will contribute in other areas.
T: Like in a song, someone will think of the main idea.
J: There are two songs where I just wrote bass riffs to them. Mark wrote
the lyrics to
one song, "The House." When we were recording this song, I realized
that I didn't
have the song finished. So, I said, "Mark, write some words right
now!"
T: "The House, The Concrete, The System," which is on the "Surviving You,
Always"
album is a song which I wrote before I joined Saccharine Trust. Earl,
our old bass
player, came up with a cool bass line for it. It was kind of my song,
but again you
have the group effort, even though you have a main instigator,
everyone puts their
two cents in.
J: During that time "Remnants" was recorded on New Year's Eve, a couple
minutes
before the clock struck twelve. At the beginning of the sermon you
hear "pussssss
sshhhhhh wheeeeeehhahhhhhh." That was all these people at New
Years. So I
went out into the parking lot and took my earphones and microphone and
started
yelling ,"Satan...". A few minutes later the police came. They must
have thought
there was a nut out there.
ID: Are you guys going on tour?
J: Yes, we are leaving with Black Flag on Monday.
ID: How long is this tour going to be?
J: A month.
ID: Where are you going to go?
T: We start in Chicago and then we go to Michigan and then into the Great
Lakes area
and then into Canada-- Toronto, Montreal-- and then down to New York
and Boston
and then North and South Carolina-- all those fuckin' states. If we
have enough
drugs, it should be a good time.
ID: Haven't you already been on a couple of tours?
All: That was half the band. That was the old Saccharine Trust.
J: That's when we still had our training wheels.
T: When they came back from their last tour, I joined the band. Nine
days later, we
did SST night at the Whiskey. A year later Earl decided to quit the
band (so he
could join the Circle Jerks). Mark joined and we were really happy
about that.
ID: You seem to have a lot of religious stuff in your songs.
J: Our themes are all about society. The Bible is the basis of our
culture. From all the
little myths they tell you, are the basis for the way we think, the
ways we react to
each other, and the laws we have. I sing about culture and life and
the basis of it.
There is the idea of Lot and Satan. If you read the story in
Genesis. I am not sure
if it's chapter 17 or 19. You find at the end of it that Lot had sex
with his two
daughters. That is really strange. There are so many bizarre things
that happen in
the Bible. And these are God's holy men!
T: You have to question our ways.
J: He wants you to.
ID: Is the picture on your new album of a lady who fell off the Empire
State Building?
J: Yes. The album was recorded months before Joe Baiza put the cover
together.
The cover was holding everything back. It would have been out in
March otherwise.
Honestly, does the cover look like it took five months to put
together?
ID: It looks good.
J: Yeah, but it should have taken fifteen minutes not five months.
ID: So the guy gave permission for the picture and everything?
J: Joe Carducci got his number. I called him up and he was telling us
about the
picture. He sent us some other shots of it. In one, she was really
ugly. Her face
was down, with blood pouring out. In the one we used, despite her
100 story fall,
she looks like she's only sleeping. Her beauty still remains,
captured forever on
film. That's how we got the title to "Surviving You, Always." I
have to get going.
ID: Can I ask one more question? I noticed that a year ago at all your
Vex shows, you
would pass the microphone back and forth from one hand to another
while you
would sing. What happened?
J: I still do it. At every show, I do not know what I am going to do or
what is going to
happen. (Jack had to leave but he told us about his job before he
did and all the
injustices there are in the work place.)
