Marquee: The Story of the World’s Greatest Music Venue–Book Review
- Denis Brown
Interview: Steven Roback and Matt Piucci of Rain Parade
Interview: Steven Roback and Matt Piucci of Rain Parade
Jason LeValley:
This is Jason LeValley from Psychedelic Scene, and I’m talking to Steven Roback and Matt Pucci from Rain Parade, who have a new album out called Last Rays of a Dying Sun. Thank you both for joining me. Can you tell us a little bit about the early days of Rain Parade and how the band came together?
Steven Roback:
Yeah. Why don’t you go ahead and give the…
Matt Piucci:
Let’s see, we’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version, as my father would say. So in 1975, I went to school in a small college and south of Minneapolis. And Steven’s brother was there, too. And we both were assigned roommates who didn’t share the same life views about what we should be doing in college. So the school put us together and we became roommates and then very good friends. And then the New York scene happened. And David was in New York and he came back and we got super into music. We had a punk cover band, if you will, or a cover band. We weren’t very good, but we had one and we just thought that that was something we were going to do. And then in 1981, after corresponding and being in different cities, I moved to Los Angeles in the spring of 1981 and got to work on this project.
Piucci:
And within a couple of weeks David talked Steven into quitting school. He came down from Berkeley, where we all ended up graduating. That’s another story. But then we got cracking and we kind of holed up above their parents garage and other places, including Sue Hoff’s grandfather’s house in Santa Monica that he rented us. And we spent the next year formulating this project, learning how to write songs, learning how to get the sounds in our heads into actually realize them and then rain parade was born. We went through several iterations. Rain parade itself probably started Will Glenn came out and originally was playing bass and Steven was playing keyboards. Steven’s a very accomplished piano player. Will couldn’t really play bass. And the drummer we had at the time complained about it and we just had this sort of stroke of genius, if you will. Hey, what if Steven plays bass? Because Steven was a good musician and Will Glenn, who was also a brilliant musician but had played neither keyboards nor bass.
Piucci:
We realized that his highly musical mind would be perfect for these patches that we would do because we weren’t going to have like the John Lord of or Rick Wakeman soloist kind of keyboard. We wanted somebody who could do the atmospherics but play weird inversions and cool chords and stuff like that. So Will played very simple, at least technically simple parts. But he had a…
Roback:
One thing about Will. He was a classically trained musician, so he really understood the music theory and, you know, harmonics. And he was really brilliant at bringing in these kind of ethereal keyboard patches.
Piucci:
Yeah. And we we all…
LeValley:
This is Will who?
Piucci:
Will Glenn. Sorry, Will Glenn.
LeValley:
Is he involved in the new version of Rain Parade?
Piucci:
No. No. Will sadly passed in about 2000. Okay. He was in Rain Parade for actually all of our recorded material. We did some touring afterwards with him. You might know him as William Cooper. He was the same guy who played in Mazzy Star a little bit. He was actually Sue Hoff’s brother’s roommate in college. So we, a lot of college roommates going on here, and that’s how we knew him. And that was when the, that is once we had Will on keyboards. We’ve been through a bunch of drummers like Spinal Tap. But once that happened, then that’s really when Rain Parade became. You know what it was before that. We were experimenting with different sounds. We probably don’t know how much Rain Parade stuff you know, but the song “Look Both Ways”, which is on the UK version of our first album, kind of got that early Stones thing going on or The Bangles did this surf tune called “Bitchen Summer”, which is a song David wrote surfing.
Piucci:
That’s kind of like where we were at before that. And then once Will got to keyboards, we kind of rocketed from the early 60s into like 1967 or 8. And that’s when the sound that you’re probably the most familiar with started to really gel.
Roback:
Yeah, that’s sort of the sound that on Emergency and then Explosions kind of emerged. So in terms of the founding of the band, that kind of that’s sort of the story of how that initial band was formed. And the initial sound was kind of that.
Piucci:
That was pretty long winded. That’s what happened.
LeValley:
Okay. Well, one thing that stuck out for me is that you guys are considered an LA band, but it sounds like you’re all from the Bay Area.
Roback:
Uh, no, actually, we were from LA originally. I live up here now. We live up here now, but.
LeValley:
Okay, but you all went to Berkeley. Did I hear that correctly?
Piucci:
That’s correct.
Courtesy of Label 51
LeValley:
Yeah.
Piucci:
So? So a number of Berkeley-ites, including both Roback brothers, myself and Sue Hoffs, all were Berkeley graduates. But that happened later.
LeValley:
Okay. Well, you’re a well educated band.
Piucci:
Well, we dropped out and then I think David and Sue had their degrees. But we, Steven and I both went back to school in the late 80s. Is that right, Steven?
Roback:
Our record producer or our record company owner used to say “overqualified for the task at hand”. Yeah.
Piucci:
That was Ethan James. But anyway, another person who’s not with us any longer, but yes, so.
Roback:
We formed in L.A. So David and I grew up in LA. Sue and then Matt came out in ‘81. They asked me to join and all of all of the original Rain Parade music was recorded, produced and recorded in Los Angeles. Okay.
LeValley:
That’s correct. But. Okay. And you’re younger. You’re the younger brother, right? I am the younger brother. Okay. What were some of the key musical influences that that shaped the band, shaped the sound?
Roback:
Well, we were all big fans of of kind of the contemporary music punk music of the mid-seventies. You mentioned a television sort of the New York scene, Patti Smith. But we all grew up listening to, you know, the psychedelic music and music of the 60s. And of course, you know, there’s the Velvets, Beatles, Hendrix, everybody. So we had that kind of melodic, more melodic rock background, but we were huge music fans in the late 70s. So we kind of I’d say that what what Rain Parade synthesized was our interest in music in the 70s and kind of the darker themes of like punk and the late 70s, early 80s, which I’m sure you remember with kind of that more melodic kind of inspirational vibe of the 60s.
LeValley:
Yeah. Who came up with the band name?
Piucci:
I think that was Will actually, um, who was having a conversation with a professional companion, shall we say. And she had said something about raining on her parade. And I don’t know whether it was David or Will, but they said, Hey, how about The Rain Parade? We like that. So we went with it.
LeValley:
What was it like being in Rain Parade after the release of Emergency Third Rail Power Trip? Was the album heralded immediately or did it did it sort of grow in status over time?
Piucci:
We couldn’t get arrested in LA, to be honest with you. Like I said earlier, we sort of labored in private for all of 1981, the only contact we’d had with anybody was through Sue Hoffs of the Bangles, who Steven and David had grown up with, lived down the street. And we went to see them called The Colors, and we were very, very impressed with how cool they were. But they also seemed to be, you know, using some of the elements of musically that we were. They, they looked great. Both. You know.
LeValley:
We’re talking about the Bangles?
Piucci:
Yes. Their clothes, their gear. We all had that vintage gear, which is even more vintage now. And then when we went out to play in ‘ 82, that was right after the release of our first single. We ran into Green on Red. They happened to be on the very bill of our very first show. We started hearing about this stuff about Dream Syndicate and about The Three O’Clock, who were then Salvation Army, and we’d seen those bands. And then then there was this band called The Last who was sort of a progenitor of this bridge between what I think is erroneously referred to as punk. It’s punk music, what they call in New York. It’s not really punk, it’s just original rock music. Um, all those bands sounded different and not one of them is what I would consider punk. But anyway, the bridge between that and whatever this thing is was that band The Last, the They were garage but they had a 12 string guitar and really good melodic songs and that was the deal.
Piucci:
But as far as how did we feel to be in Rain Parade after didn’t feel any different than it was before, because it wasn’t until people in the UK really got excited about it, our band that things started to “happen”.
Roback:
I think I would add that we, we, we put out the first single. We got a really good response in England. We made some good contacts there, met the guys at Bucketful of Brains, Nigel Cross. I don’t know if you know them, but they were like a psychedelic fanzine back in the 80s. Um, and then we… in the US, we decided to go on tour. So, so we actually, you know, we hit the road and after we went out for a while, people started to learn about us. And it sort of caught on over time. We kind of learned about our scene back in LA and it caught on. So, so it was a slow awareness, growing awareness. Yeah.
Piucci:
It was pretty fertile ground. In the early 80s, there was this confluence of college radio stations and independent labels, and then there were because gas was still relatively cheap and the major labels hadn’t completely subsumed the independent label scene there were what amounted to is individuals who are in each different town. If we played in Jackson, Mississippi, well then Tim Lee was the guy who booked you played in Rochester, New York it was Pat Thomas. If you played in Hoboken, it was Ira..I forgot what his last name is, but there were individuals who really liked music, who were able to talk these smaller clubs into booking these bands. And there was a connectivity between between that and the bands, the labels and then the radio stations. And it wasn’t just in LA. There’s like in Athens, obviously it was like REM and Pylon and Love Tractor. It was all…
Roback:
Over the country. Yeah, it was real grassroots period. And it was definitely fueled by college radio.
Piucci:
Right. The LA manifestation of that was what then later was termed the Paisley Underground, although that isn’t the totality of all the bands that were there then. Um, but the ones that think they were the most, at least melodically 60s influenced. There was a whole other 60s, kind of a different 60s, as somebody once said, people who like dressed exactly like, you know, the Music Machine and Talk Talk and, and, you know, it was like the unclaimed and The Pandoras. And there were bands all over the East Coast, especially Chesterfield Kings. And Cynics in Pittsburgh think they were Pittsburgh. Anyway, that was more, um, very garage and very much, I don’t want to say imitative, but definitely that style as opposed to in LA where there was that too. But also, uh, what I felt was different about the folks that we were playing with was this melodic songwriting– original melodic songwriting, which was also…
Roback:
Yeah, tribute band and more. It seems like there’s a bit more original stuff going on.
Piucci:
Not that. Everybody starts out imitating their heroes, So that’s, you know, we’re not saying we don’t do that too.
Roback:
But we just imitate more people. Better people. A wider group.
Piucci:
Anyway, so, um. Go ahead.
LeValley:
I wanted to ask you to what extent psychedelic drugs influence the band.
Piucci:
You want to take this one, Steven? Not the drug.
Roback:
Well, you know that they…We certainly, you know, a time in our life we did in our own ways sample those things.
LeValley:
There’s no no shame in it, you know.
Roback:
But we didn’t, you know, it’s not like we were tripping on stage or anything like that. We never. We never used those kind of things.
Piucci:
I’ve never tripped with Steven, ever.
Roback:
And it’s been many, many years since I’ve done anything like that.
Piucci:
And we kind of did that already. I mean, like when when I was 14, my brothers took me to see the Byrds and somebody passed us a hit of acid, and that was life changing, to be quite honest with you. I was just talking to my brother about it yesterday, but by the time I’d gotten to LA, I was in my early 20s and, you know, Ringo Starr kind of said it best. It’s like, yes. Oh, sure. That that kind of thing can inform what you do, but you can’t play. I mean, at least we couldn’t. I mean, if you’re in San Francisco, that’s a different kind of music. And frankly, I think a lot of it’s shitty. Not that I don’t like The Dead or the Jefferson Airplane or those bands, but when they’re tripping, they’re not really that good. I don’t think. It’s very hard to do that right. So the answer to your question is yes, those elements informed the kind of music that we did. But music’s, to quote Steven, music’s the only drug that really what does it for us and you can’t really perform if you’re if your mind isn’t… at least I couldn’t.
LeValley:
Well I wasn’t asking about you know performing under the influence. I was really asking more like how much it influenced your writing, I guess.
Piucci:
Yeah, that’s that’s kind of part of the package, actually. You know, you can and I’ll be honest, mean, you know, change in perspective from just a couple hits of pot can, you know, that I have come up with songs that way so it’s just the altered perspective is kind of part of it.
Roback:
But yeah and also I think we’ve always enjoyed learning mind expanding in any way, you know, whether it’s through substances or through just learning and reading and listening to music. And so I think, yeah, there’s definitely like a, you know, maybe in our music just it reflects a hunger to kind of explore new things and kind of learn about new things and present new ways of looking at things. So, in that way, yeah, it’s definitely kind of almost like a psychological profile, if you know what I mean.
Piucci:
Yeah, it’s kind of indirect and perhaps it’s through another generation because that may be true of the of our heroes. But what we decided when we were in with it, compliments is how we say when we were straight. What we decided early on is that we really wanted we wanted to write melodic songs, but we really wanted every song to have an element that was different, that, you know, the way the Beatles did. Not that we’re the Beatles, but, you know, they Oh, okay, you’re going to have this weird pan flute on a song or you’re going to have a sitar or you’re going to have some kind of backwards guitar, some kind of keyboard. That doesn’t really sound conventional that…I think that’s what people like about us is that it isn’t completely straightforward that there’s something I won’t say unusual, but it’s a little bit more expansive. Our repertoire of instrumentation that we use is not just bass, drums and guitar, which is fine, you know, but.
Roback:
Maybe experimentation too– kind of enjoyed experimenting with different combinations of sounds. You know, some of them are derived from our love of certain types of music, but you know, also just playing around with different instrumentation for vintage guitar combinations and kind of trying to extract it.
LeValley:
Oh, you’re freezing up a little bit.
Piucci:
It’s not like we’re like post-modern music or anything, but, you know, and we do have a lot of just verse-chorus songs, but sections that are maybe have a different time signature or that aren’t structured as in the standard way. That’s something we really were conscious of and remain conscious of and still try to do.
LeValley:
All right. Well, there were several of you that in the band that that wrote songs and were particularly talented. So what was the collaborative collaboration…
Piucci:
That’s very nice of you to say.
LeValley:
So what was the collaborative songwriting and creative process like in the band?
Piucci:
Well, collaborative art is very difficult, but it’s also very rewarding. And we right now it’s Steven and I have been. The main songwriters and we’ve worked together for years and we sort of got a thing down. We know how to work with one another. But when it was David as well, that was that was very rewarding, but it was also very difficult. It’s really and probably the reason why he only lasted one record is because there were three of us. And the beautiful thing about songwriting, especially if you have people who are in tune with one another, it’s not like it’s not like building the house where you got to build the foundation and then you put up the walls. I mean, you know, Steven will come in. and say, ‘Hey, man, I got this really cool attic’. All right, Really? I have this bathroom over here. Let’s put that together. And pretty soon you have a house and you can’t really do that obviously with architecture. But that’s kind of the way it worked.
Piucci:
There would be, for the most part, somebody would come up with an original idea and then someone else would either enhance it or add a different section or very occasionally, but not all the time where we would actually and we didn’t really jam. We don’t know how well you know our stuff, but a song like “Look At Mary”. That kind of got stretched out. There was a couple of original ideas. A couple of things got pasted together and once we started playing it, then new things emerged from that through playing. But that would be the exception. Mostly it was. And the way we work now is one guy comes up with something and then the other guy dives in and by this time, after all these years, the whole gamut has been covered.
Roback:
Also, I’d say that we, you know, in the early days, we were all coming up with a lot of ideas and there was three songwriters, and we’re all kind of contributing a lot. And so there was less room for each person to feel, you know, satisfied, I guess, which is probably one of the reasons David left the band.
Piucci:
Yeah. And even on the songs that are credited to one person there, those really aren’t any different than the other ones. I mean songwriting is words and music. That’s the definition of it. And one of the things Steven and I learned fairly quickly, I mean, not that we’re Jagger-Richards or, you know, Lennon-McCartney or anything, but it’s just a lot easier to just say there are songs and then just you don’t have to worry about it and then you can work on them together. And by the time that we’re done anyway, the other guy’s stamp is on it. If, if they weren’t like, don’t know. It’s not often 50/50, but sometimes it is and we just don’t care anymore. So like, if you look at some of the earlier Rain Parade stuff, there are songs that, well, take any of them. For example, like there is a song by David called “Look Around” and he wrote most of the words in music, but there’s a really cool bass part that Steven plays that we that we all, you know, he developed in it a riff that I developed.
Piucci:
And if you look at a song like “Kaleidoscope”, which Steven is credited for, there’s stuff that David and I will add it to or, you know, my song “Look Both Ways”. It wasn’t what it ended up like. We probably should have just split all the songwriting is what we should have done.
Roback:
But one thing I want to say, I think that we really what might have been unique about this group of people is that we really complemented each other’s talents. Well, you know, we kind of…Matt had a really strong musical background, which he brought in. David had a sense of production. I think maybe I was maybe less developed musically, but more lyrically. So we all there’s just a really good complementary sort of evolution there, you know, where we kind of synthesizing these things together.
Piucci:
Yeah. I mean, if you look at like Jagger-Richards that’s a very specific thing. I mean, Keith will sit there for like a week and play a riff. And once he has a riff, he’ll show it to Mick. And then that’s what you get for the Stones. That’s not really how we operated. We mean, not that we’re those guys, but in the beginning and even now, it’s a very, very, very open thing. We try to keep our, you know, our feelers up. We have we both Steven and I and then also David and Steven and I, back in the day, we both we all were very sensitive to what was going on. And in music, songs tend to talk to you, if that makes any sense. You just got to be listening to what’s going on and be ready to capture what is there. It’s almost like fishing. You know, You can’t be yelling and screaming. You got to be paying attention and listening and then stuff will come.
Piucci:
And I do believe that we, in the beginning and now, that’s kind of the way we write. And I don’t know if it’s unique, but I don’t know a lot of other bands that do that. A lot of bands that we know is like, Hey, this is this guy’s song, this is that guy’s song, and then this guy song sounds like that. So the guy’s song sounds like that. Or women. Yeah, but I thought we had this amalgam that think that’s one of the reasons why that first. Why, If we’re at all successful, that might be why. Because it’s really a songwriting, not a collective. It’s a word. What’s the word is I’m looking for?
Roback: Collaboration.
Piucci: Well, yeah, not just collaboration, but it’s, um.
Roback:
I think we’ve been very open to bringing in different ideas and working through them. Know it’s a process that we’ve developed between ourselves to generate stuff, and.
Piucci:
It’s not like steak and potatoes and vegetables. It’s a stew or it’s a, it’s a gumbo, right? Yeah. All mixed together.
LeValley:
Well, Matt, you alluded to a couple of times now, David leaving the band and I was going to ask you about that. I know the official reason is that he left to join Rainy Day, which didn’t make sense because that’s like an all star Paisley Underground band that did one covers album, right? So…
Piucci:
That’s not accurate.
LeValley:
Yeah. So that didn’t make sense to me. And I think what you’re saying is that there were just some conflicts with the three of you contributing and that caused some frustration for David.
Piucci:
Yeah, well, I mean, at this stage there’s no real point, you know? I mean, yes, there were tensions and interpersonal tensions that arose from family things. And then from what you described and David was extremely important in the early band in that he had a lot of connections that neither Steven nor I did. And I think he felt a little if I can try to get into his head, um, he felt a little bit like he was doing a lot and nobody else was doing anything, not the musical stuff, but the other stuff. And that was partly true. But I think the basic, the basic fundamental thing was, is that three songwriters, it’s really, really difficult. I mean, the Buffalo Springfield lasted what, like…
LeValley: Three albums
Piucci: Three. Well that the third one isn’t really, you know, it’s really two albums and then some stuff they put together. But anyway, that doesn’t matter. So although you may look at Emergency Third Rail Power Trip and he’s sort of cut out, not cut out, but I mean, Steven and I like hit it off and really started cooking.
Piucci:
And then we did this record a lot of which we’d already recorded in other forms. And David, he’s contributed whatever he did, but he sort of stopped not because not stopped, but took a step back and was kind of like developing his own thing. And I mean, he just he needed to be the boss and he wasn’t. And that’s kind of, for whatever stupid reasons of the moment existed, which are not important at this time. I think that was the fundamental thrust behind it is he wanted to be the leader of a band and he really wasn’t. And, you know, he wanted to focus on his specific songs and he found this person, Kendra (Smith), And they were really good. The tour that we did, he played one show in New York with Kendra and I think Steven played with him a little bit and they were great and I thought he just saw that this was what he wanted to do. It was a little more folky than we were at the time. Steven and I were getting a little bit harder.
Piucci:
Not that this like super rock thing, but if you listen to the Explosions record, it’s a little bit harder than Emergency is. That argument falls apart a little bit, but he was kind of moving on to this more (inaudible) space.
Roback:
Darker in a way.
Piucci:
Yeah, the spacey folk thing. And he had a new songwriting partner and that’s what he wanted to do. And…
Roback:
And one other thing. Matt and I were, not to interrupt you, but like I kind of started working more on songwriting together, like we came up with “This Can’t Be Today” and kind of started generating more material. And then there was also the singing thing where we had three singers, three lead singers, right?
Piucci:
Yeah.
Roback:
It was just not enough room for everybody to, like, express themselves. It’s a big factor, along with whatever interpersonal or sibling things that were, you know. Yeah. In terms of a creative situation, it just wasn’t ideal.
Piucci:
Well, what I’ve said this before, and I think that when David I mean, David and I had talked about having this band for a long time and, you know, that’s not Steven’s fault. He wasn’t there when we talked about it, but he was there when we actually did it. So it’s not like.
Roback:
It’s my fault (laughs).
Piucci:
But I mean, once we he got down, I don’t know this for sure, but I think David thought, ‘Hey, my brother can come be a musician in this band’. What he didn’t realize was Steven was a really talented songwriter. And that complicated matters a lot. I mean, Steven, let’s just say he just played bass and couldn’t write tunes, which is not true. Um, who knows, maybe then he would have stayed, but it was just too much to try to have three people and, you know, it was fine. The world. Instead of getting one band, you got like 2 or 3. So there you go.
LeValley:
Okay. Well, looking back on Rain Parade’s career, are there any decisions or moments you would have approached differently now?
Piucci:
Yep.
LeValley:
Care to expand on that?
Piucci:
Well…
Roback:
The parade parade of regrets.
Piucci:
There’s not a ton. Um, I kind of think that we should have stayed with Enigma and with our producer from Explosions because the Crashing Dream album we did for Island, we just mean we were excited by major label and we were afforded a bunch of opportunities and got to play on the BBC and all this other cool stuff. It engendered some touring in England, although we were kind of already doing that, but they didn’t really get us. They didn’t really know what to do with us. And we had always previously been a very intensely focused, like tight ship, if you will. And then there were all these other people around and thinking they knew what to do with us, and they didn’t really. So I kind of wish we’d stayed with our producer. I think that record would have turned out okay. But, you know, that’s about it. Fortunately, we we went on to do a bunch of other stuff and we should probably talk about the other stuff we just did as well.
LeValley:
We will. We’re getting to that.
Piucci:
But yeah, that would be… Not that we shouldn’t have signed with Island. We should have put our foot down and insisted that we can keep our producer because the guy we got was a nice guy, but he didn’t get us.
Roback:
Yeah, it’s kind of your typical major label story where they’re kind of chasing a trend. You know, they saw like the Paisley Underground. They’re like, Oh, you know, and they descended and signed a bunch of bands and made a lot of promises and then moved on to the next thing before they even, you know, we’ve got a record out. So so that happens all the time. It wasn’t interested in developing us as a band and, you know.
Piucci:
It was almost like a colonization process, like they come flying in, you know, like take your pick. The Europeans get blamed for everything, but they’re not the only ones who did it. But they come flying into this foreign country and don’t speak the language and start bossing people around. And that’s a little bit over the top but didn’t really get it. So, you know, they they got bored pretty quickly and we didn’t last very long with them. And then they put out this live album for us, which is a little bit weird. We were lucky, though. We did get to put out an album. Which, of the six bands they signed, I think only us and The Long Ryders actually put albums out.
LeValley:
Oh, so Island signed six Paisley Underground bands?
Piucci:
Well, they weren’t. That was the point is, they sent somebody to Los Angeles who didn’t, you know, they were just doing what they thought they should do, but they didn’t really tap into that. The people that the other people who are nice people and I’m not saying their bands were bad or anything, they just didn’t really have anything to do with what this thing was. Yeah. And then they thought that’s what it was, which meant that they didn’t know what it was. And I mean, even The Long Ryders who are, you know, they’re a cool band and their pals and all that other stuff, but they’re not really a psychedelic band. They never had been.
LeValley:
No, they’re not. I mean, I actually haven’t listened to them, but I’ve read about them and I know that they’re like folksy and…
Roback:
Like roots, roots rock, some country inflection, you know?
Piucci:
Yeah. And they were doing it. Obviously, you know, later.
Roback:
Later Byrds, maybe. Yeah, well.
LeValley:
The Bangles weren’t psychedelic either. I mean, jangle pop, yes.. But, you know, I’ve listened to a couple of their albums and I just don’t hear any psychedelia.
Roback:
Yeah, I don’t know if you heard their really early stuff though. They were actually pretty garage, you know? So that kind of garage psychedelia. They had the Mamas and the Papas vocals too. So they had some some of those elements.
Piucci:
The whole idea is a little bit silly because to my ears there were maybe two other bands that were psychedelic really. I mean, The Dream Syndicate kind of is in their own way.
LeValley:
They’ve become more so now.
Piucci:
But they were then too. They were a punk band with guitar solos and they played longer and they sort of got there in a different way. Um, early Green on Red was very psychedelic. And the Salvation Army was very psychedelic and The Last was a little bit psychedelic, but Island didn’t sign any of those guys. They signed us and the Long Ryders. And I think that we were, I mean. It’s not like ‘Oh, you’re not psychedelic, so you’re not cool’. That’s not what we’re saying at all. What was musically interesting to me personally, not that we didn’t love, I mean, like, hey, we like Chuck Berry and we love the Ramones, but that’s, you know, that’s not what we did. Anyway, Michael Quercio was the guy who came up with the Paisley Underground thing, and then his band kind of wasn’t that. They got much more pop, although…
Roback:
He came up with the name Paisley Underground.
LeValley:
Who did?
Roback:
Michael Quercio of The Three O’Clock, formerly the Salvation Army.
Piucci:
And Salvation Army was. They were. Well, I mean, they’re both they’re great bands mean Michael’s super talented and like The Three O’Clock and I loved and liked the Salvation Army. But it’s just like what they refer to as punk from New York. That’s a ridiculous term. I mean. Patti Smith. Okay, that’s like rock. Television. That’s sort of like modern Grateful Dead with really cool razor guitar. The Talking Heads are like the first autistic rock star.
Roback:
Well, I don’t know if I would call it Television “Grateful Dead”. I’d call them some kind of jazz on guitars, you know.
Piucci:
Yeah, but I mean whatever.
Roback:
Anyway.
Piucci:
Yeah, but none of those bands to me, not even the Ramones were punk. They were just like. You know, the Beach Boys on glue or…
LeValley:
Power pop maybe. I don’t know.
Piucci:
Right, Right. Punk to me is like The Damned, the Sex Pistols of the early Clash. And you know it, I suppose, like some bands in LA, like maybe The Circle Jerks or.
Roback:
Maybe X.
Piucci:
Really isn’t that punk either. They’re like, they’re melodic songwriting band who play, you know, it’s all just rock music anyway.
LeValley:
Yeah, I agree with that. Well, what’s one thing that you wish more people knew about? Rain Parade?
Piucci:
Um, our bank accounts and how to transfer money to it. Nothing really. I mean, I’m not sure what that means. Um, that we’re still doing it. I don’t know. We don’t. Don’t really have. Don’t have regrets.
LeValley:
What can you tell me about the making of the new record? Is it. It’s just the two of you working on it or you had other musicians come in?
Roback:
Yeah. Well, I mean, the songwriting. Matt and I do all the songwriting.
LeValley:
Yeah. And singing.
Roback:
And so we have other people that are contributing to the arranging and playing, including John Thoman, who’s a guitar player, who’s actually been with us since 1986, since our third album or second album.
Piucci:
And John was also in the same school as David, Stevens brother. And, actually he was in a band with that goofy punk band, punk cover band we had. John was… We couldn’t figure anything out. And John came over to David’s house to purchase something and we’re trying to figure out a song and like, Hey, John can’t figure this out. He goes, Give me that guitar and he could play it then. So then he joined our band and he’s he’s the the longest standing member. It’s worth mentioning these other people. John’s been around for a while. Our drummer is Stefan Junco, who I’ve known for a long time. And he, I know from playing with Billy Talbot from Crazy Horse, and then Mark Hanley, who is a friend of ours who plays on about half of the stuff, those are the musicians. And of course, this guy, Derek C, who’s from Los Angeles, who’s played in a number of bands, um, really, really super good guitar player and all those guys kind of throw in.
Piucci:
But predominantly it’s Steven and I writing songs and I think that’s kind of because we learned to…I mean, not that those guys aren’t capable of doing that. It’s just we got this groove going, we have a thing going where we can really communicate to each other musically. We have a really strong sense of what we want to hear and what.
Roback:
Yeah, We should also mention Jim Hill, our producer. He’s been really instrumental in kind of helping us realize our ideas.
Piucci:
He might as well be in the band. He’s he was the producer of our EP and he was the one who did not produce the album after that. And then between the late 80s and the early 2000s, well, even up to 5 or 6 years ago, Steven and I have made several records as Viva Saturn or the Hellenes, and Jim helped mix some of the Hellenes. He wasn’t on any of the Viva Saturn stuff, but, um, and I realized that all the stuff he makes sounded better and all the stuff he didn’t mix. And then once I realized that when the next Hellenes album came out, so basically in about 2005, I think Steven moved back to the Bay Area and that’s kind of when we got rolling again. Is that right, Steven?
Roback:
About that. Maybe a little bit later. But yeah.
Matt Piucci photographed by Ali Blair
Piucci:
And then then we were in the same town again because there was the period, um, I moved up here in the 80s after Rain Parade and I’ve been up here for a while and then John has been up here for quite some time. And then Steven moved up in 2005 and then he and I slowly started to work on stuff again.
Roback:
And eventually we got started working with Jim Hill again.
Piucci:
Correct. Because he did. Yeah, he worked on the Hellene’s project. And then this 3X4 thing, which was a sort of round robin of doing each other’s songs with the Dream Syndicate and…
LeValley:
Right? That was for Paisley Underground bands doing three songs each of another band, right? Is that correct?
Piucci:
Correct. Okay, that was fun. I’m not familiar with anybody else doing that. That kind of got the juices flowing again. And then we played a few shows with those guys and it was all really all the all those other bands had sort of gotten together again. And it’s it’s really kind of a unique thing because things tend to fall apart. They don’t tend to come back together once they’re fallen apart. And so that was really a cool thing. And we, you know, it’s not like we were like best friends or anything with these guys, but we always liked them and sort of kept in touch. Some more than others. But re-experiencing this, it was like, Wow, these guys are great! This is fun. So we are actually more in touch now. And those guys, some of them, like Danny Benair, plays a little bit. He’s a drummer from The Three O’Clock on the 3X4 stuff of ours and Vicki and Debbi Peterson sing on some of that. And then when we did this new record, they did the same.
Piucci:
So I guess Steven and I have had a backlog of songs for a long time. And we once we got going again with the with the 3X4 stuff, we just started to write together again and then about four years ago we realized– 4 or 5 years ago– we realized we had enough to actually try to do a record and we’d started to play with all these guys again. And we were working with Jim and we…
Roback:
Actually kind of came back together. It was a little bit earlier, around maybe 2012 or so, together for we were invited to play a show in Atlanta for a friend of ours, Bobby Sutliff, who was in an accident. So it was a benefit. And we started playing at that time. And then right after that, there was a Paisley Underground concert series. So we came together for that. And then out of that the 3X4 idea, which happened a little bit later, and all that evolved into us working together again, writing new songs.
Piucci:
And that’s the flow. Steven moves back up here. We start working on Rain Parade again, but that was more just gearing it up and somewhat nostalgic, right? Hey, it’d be fun to do all this stuff again. And we finally geared up the band again and then we started to play with the other Paisley bands. And then we got into the studio and recorded and we realized this was doing the three by four stuff. We realized how much fun it was and how much we enjoyed doing that. And frankly, we think we’re pretty good at it so then we got Jim involved and then the songwriting which came last, started to happen again. And he had stuff lying around. I did. And by the time you get through with all of it, I mean all the stuff on this record says written by Steven and I because, you know, maybe one guy started it, but by the time it’s all said and done, it’s a collaboration and we…
LeValley:
Okay well let’s let’s talk about specific songs on the new album. Do you have any like behind the scenes stories or tidbits about any of the songs?
Piucci:
Sure. Pick a song.
Roback:
They all have a story.
Piucci:
They all have their own stories
LeValley:
Anything of particular interest to to fans?
Piucci:
I’m not sure what interests fans other than the final product, but most of them are relatively… you riff, we’ll go from there.
LeValley:
Well, I was going to say one thing I noticed about the new album on Spotify is that it’s listed under compilations, and I think that’s a mistake.
Piucci:
It’s funny you should mention that. I’m guessing that with our record label and that’s going to be the next thing that we do. We’ve never been… our interest has always lied in the musical side of things. The business side really has never been our forte. So whatever is out there is sort of, kind of randomly out there. Um, so we are going to make an effort in the next couple of months to, since it is what, 30 years on and all this stuff is reverted back to us, we’re going to make a serious effort to clean all that stuff up and put this stuff out on, on those formats which exist now that did not exist when we were doing this. So yeah, we’re going to clean all that stuff up and present it in a way that is a little bit more truthful. So…
Roback:
Regarding the compilation thing. I’m not sure why, why our new thing is coming up under compilations. It might be like a, you know, like one of those stations or something they’re trying to or whatever.
Piucci:
Don’t even use it.
LeValley:
So it appears just to be a Spotify mistake.
Roback:
Yeah, it could be.
LeValley:
Okay, let’s take “Angel Sister”. What’s what’s something you could tell us about that one? That’s one of the singles.
Roback:
Well, “Angel Sister” was actually a song that has a history. We actually recorded a version of that a while back under the name Viva Saturn and it was a pretty good version. I really still like it, but unfortunately, the record never got released and the master tapes somehow went missing. So the tapes were lost. And then these guys, I guess the song I originated, but Matt contributed to greatly. Um, these guys convinced me to re-record it. So we, there was an original version, but we recorded a new version for this album after some arm twisting.
Piucci:
There’s a couple of songs like that. Uh, “Angel Sister” is one and the other one is probably “Got the Fear”. Those are older songs. We never actually did it in a studio. And the, there’s some weird live thing that’s out there and we didn’t really like it that much, but most of the stuff is new, but those two were older songs that we decided to just, you know, get under the hood and really change the perspective on a much more so with, um, with “Got the Fear” then with “Angel Sister”. “Angel Sister” we worked on pretty heavily at least 20 years ago, maybe even longer than that. So Steven and I had got, I mean, obviously he started the song, but we arrived at a version we liked in an arrangement that we liked but we didn’t have a mix that we liked, and that’s all we had. So it took a little convincing, but we decided that we should re-do that.
I’m really glad we did because I like the way it sounds better and we…
Roback:
Also got a chance to get the the Peterson Sisters from Bangles to sing background on it.
LeValley:
They sing background on what song?
Roback:
On “Angel Sister”.
Piucci:
And also on a song called…
Roback:
They’re the angelic choir.
Piucci:
Right. So we did. That is mildly interesting. We did employ a bunch of singers. Employ? Like we can pay them a ton of money, but we used Debbi and Vicki, who are buddies, great people and singers and musicians, and they came in and sang on “Angel Sister” and also on the song “Share Your Love”, which is an acoustic song that Steven and I wrote. Um, and then the more brothers Greg and Tom Moore, who are fantastic band, I highly recommend you check them out. Um, they sang on that song too, on “Angel Sister”. They also sang on “Green”, and they also sang and “Bring You Back”. And then there’s the guys from the Beach Boys band. Uh, Darian Sahanaja, who was in The Wondermints. And also, he’s responsible for resurrecting Smile by Brian Wilson– masterpiece right from the late Beach Boys. I mean, that guy is something else. He came in and sang with a Rob Bonfiglio, who’s also a member of Brian Wilson’s band.
Piucci:
They sang on “Forgetfulness” and on “Couldn’t Stand to Be Alone” and also “Left the Fire. So there’s a lot of guest singers on that stuff. Anyway, getting back to “Angel Sister”, yeah, Jim and I talked Steven into doing it, so that’s what we did. And we like this version better. It’s got a little bit clearer acoustic guitar arrangements, a little bit different, but not much.
Roback:
It’s a much better mix also.
Piucci:
Jim didn’t mix the other one, so that’s…
Roback:
Just recording value. You know, it’s less, less mushy, more more clean and kind of crisp and a little bit more driving, which is nice.
LeValley:
Yeah. I wasn’t able to see anything or notice anything online about a tour. Are you guys going to be touring in support of the album?
Piucci:
Well, we would like to play live. Touring is, um, it really is a matter of finance more than anything else. Steven and I recently, not that recently– it was in March. We went out and did a tour with the Dream Syndicate. In the Dream Syndicate we played with those guys. But it was just Steven and I, and that was kind of a revelation. We really enjoyed that, getting stripping things down. He played acoustic guitar, played electric and acoustic, and it was very nice to open that stuff up. And also our friend Vicki Peterson from The Bangles ended up playing guitar with the Dream Syndicate because their regular guitar player couldn’t do it. So that was great and we enjoyed that and we like playing live, and that’s kind of where we are. In fact, when we’re done talking to you, we’re going to head down to the studio, got some new gear, and we’re going to start working on that live sound. We will probably play in Los Angeles, but…we will play in Los Angeles in September.
Roback:
I think we’re looking for some kind of a tour, though, in Europe in 2024, maybe like spring in a few months down the road.
Piucci:
It’s really difficult to tour in the United States. I mean, unless something miraculous happens with our record. Um, which could happen, I suppose, but it’s just too economically difficult to do that. And you can’t make enough money to make it. I mean we don’t mind not making money, and we don’t even mind losing a little bit of money, but we can’t, like, lose thousands of dollars just to go play. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Roback:
Yeah, it’s a labor of love, put it that way.
Piucci:
Yes. I mean, I think that actually is another reason why, uh, to to the degree that we’ve had any success in producing music that’s good is that we have, you know, Steven does have a day job. And I I’m retired from my old day job and we can do this without like worrying about where the next meal is coming from. And it’s, you know, not that we want to spend lots of money recording or anything, and we’re lucky to have a record company who’s helping us now. But I think that’s probably why, if people do like what’s going on, that’s that’s kind of a major reason why. It’s because we’ve had the opportunity to take the time and do it right, because we don’t work super fast, but we hope people notice the care that we’ve taken. I mean, there’s probably 50 different instruments on this record–guitars of all stripes, keyboards of all stripes, weird percussion, sitars, you name it. It’s all there.
Ali Blair
LeValley:
Yeah. Well, the album sounds great. I mentioned to you before, I think it’s fantastic. Last Rays of a Dying Sun. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Piucci:
Yeah. We didn’t really talk about those songs that much. That song really, really came together. And I think that was, that song in particular is kind of emblematic of the way Steven and I work. I had this, uh, the beginning riff, that sort of whammy bar thing that’s a little reminiscent of “No Easy Way Down”, that kind of vibrato guitar. And then the other section I had wasn’t very developed, but, you know, Steven dove in and fixed it up good. And he sings that too. And the one thing that we did want to say that is really rewarding for us, not not the things that we regret, but what we’re very appreciative of and makes us really feel good about having done this is seeing all the bands that have come since who have appreciated it and incorporated some of the same things that we have. You know, bands like Rot, Ride or My Bloody Valentine and those guys, that sort of whammy bar thing that we were doing, they’ve turned into a thing.
Piucci:
You know, the Beachwood Sparks, The Charlatans UK.
LeValley:
Yeah, I would think that maybe some of The Elephant Six Collective were inspired by you.
Piucci:
We don’t know those guys, but when we played in England, for instance, we went up to Glasgow and Gerard Love from Teenage Fan Club showed up and is just a wonderful, sweet man. And we love that band. And he told us, he goes, “We weren’t going to do this until we heard you guys”. And then we met the guy from the Stone Roses– the bass player, Mani. in Manchester. And he basically said the same thing. And that’s, like, so rewarding and inspiring and, you know, makes us feel really good. So I guess that’s why…
Roback:
You know, contributed to the the world of music.
Piucci:
Yeah, that’s what does it for us, even though you didn’t ask, but that is what is really the only… If I had to say hey, what what was it you wanted to do when you started out doing this stuff? The idea that we could be that to somebody else, you know, like the way we loved television or the Talking Heads or something like that, that there were bands that exist.
Roback:
Now underground or something like that.
Piucci:
Right? Yeah. You know, said nobody bought, you know, 30,000 records were bought, but everybody who bought a record started a band. I don’t think that’s true about us. But that that same that same thing is really inspiring. And we’re very pleased and we hope to… We’re working on new stuff and we’ll just keep doing it.
LeValley:
Yeah. And I would think that, you know, with the rise of neo-psychedelic bands today, that more and more artists are going to discover your music and and be influenced by it.
Piucci:
Well, it seems like in the great scheme of rock and roll, these things sort of cycled through. I mean, I think people are going to always come back to melodies and to guitars and to honest expression. I don’t necessarily mean like, you know, Americana was a big thing and that’s not, um, that’s not a bad thing, that sort of stuff. But there is this other lineage of like the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield and the Beatles that I think really people respect that. I heard some bands that I’d never heard of called—It’s a dumb name. They’re called The Car Seat Headrest or something like that.
LeValley:
Oh, I’ve heard of them.
Piucci:
They had this really long song called “Hey Space Cadet”. That was it. And it was about seven minutes long and it was like, Man, this is really beautiful. It’s like really cool. Not jangly guitar, but it was spacey and had a lot of emotion to it. Uh, you know, it’s great. It’s great to, to have something other than the pounding, you know, even if it’s like, you know, Portishead or whatever, psychedelic to us just means kind of mind expanding and not it’s it’s the upper regions of the body as opposed to the lower regions. Rock and roll’s got both, right? You know, you got to have that that lower region too. But the mind, the mind is the coolest organ. Anyway.
LeValley:
Anyway.
Piucci:
But I digress.
LeValley:
Your first album is on my list of the 100 Greatest Psychedelic Albums of All Time.
Piucci:
Thank you.
Roback:
Yeah, Thank you.
LeValley: Anyway, I think it’s going to continue to inspire for years to come.
Piucci:
Maybe the new one will make your top 500.
LeValley:
Well, maybe. You know, you’ve got to get Spotify to fix it because that could be hurting your streams.
Roback:
Yeah. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.
Piucci:
It does seem to be. Some of our singles seem to be doing really well on YouTube and you know, we do need to fix that. But the thing about… What we realize now is that we can never be new again. You just can’t. And we understand that. I mean, that first record…
Roback:
We’d king of forgotten about this whole record review process. It’s been a while. I forgot. Yeah. People can actually review these things and talk about it.
Roback:
I’ve got to reset my mind. Like, Oh, yeah. So thanks for thanks for having us, you know.
Piucci:
We really appreciate it very much and we appreciate your attention and your consideration. Thank you so much.
LeValley:
Well, I really appreciate your time and it was great meeting you. Matt and Steven, thank you so much.
Piucci:
Well, if we’re ever in Arizona, we’ll see you.
LeValley:
Please do get in touch with me.
Piucci:
If it cools down enough for human beings to live there again. So be safe.
LeValley: All right. Thanks.
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