Name: Marty E
Location: New York
Relationship to music: My relationship with music…. I would say it is a mutually abusive relationship. It gave me my life and ruined my life. It justifies drug and alcohol use. The money is shit but the fringe benefits are fucking amazing. We are bordering on divorce.
Industry: Musician, I sing for Midnight Crisis and drumming for Dirty Pearls (on hiatus) former drummer of Sex Slaves.
I have known Marty E the longest out of all of my contributors. We dated for all of five minutes in high school in that way that high schoolers do. We have been friends ever since. He had the most to say about his relationship with music, not surprising for someone who has been a musician as long as I have known him. This is one interview that I wish were a podcast. Oh, yeah and we swear a lot as part of our everyday language use, so..
On his relationship with music continued….
[On your relationship to music] I knew about music was before I knew what love was. When we were kids I loved music so much. When I heard a song that I loved, it is the same feeling as when you are in love with someone. I loved music first. When I write a song by myself or with someone, when it is turning out beyond what I imagined, you make this thing, and you reread it later you ask yourself who did that? And it was you. Music is an extension of yourself. You want to be music and you become it, live it, and it inspires you. You write songs about how much the music is a part of you. Music is as essential to me as my heart, my lungs, my spleen. It has definitely given me some liver problems and some brain damage.
I am a drummer, but I have been writing lyrics since I was fifteen. There is such an infinite amount of stuff to write about. The fight you had with your girl last night and you knew you were a dick, your city going down the drain, politics and bullshit.
Did I answer the question?
5songpjct: When you were growing up, did you always know that New York is where you wanted to be? Did New York signify something bigger and better?
Marty E: Not really. That was later. I think I got into New York in college. Remember in high school when we were listening to alternative music before it got big. I would say around 1992, remember those shitty bands like Collective Soul, Bush, Sponge…I guess Sponge wasn’t so bad..Stone Temple Pilots were kind of rip-off band, the Spin Doctors were bullshit. These bands were all marketing and it wasn’t real.
The whole point about anything to me is that it had to be real. About that time is when I dusted off my Hanoi Rocks albums, New York Dolls, and even Mötley Crüe. They all felt real and genuine. Even Poison was real and sincere, even when they were singing about stupid shit…Hollywood shit, they were at least sincere about it. When Brett Michaels sings “I got a girl to the left of me, a girl to my right, I know damn well that I slept with them both last night” I know that he probably did do that.
5songpjct: It wasn’t an act. It wasn’t like these bands were trying to sell this lifestyle, or idea.
Marty E: It wasn’t intellectual, but it was real. I think getting back to the New York thing… I really took with the New York Dolls side of things, the Johnny Thunder, the Ramones. When alternative music was starting to lose its luster, I started realizing that it doesn’t matter the package you put on it, what matters is music. Whether it is punk rock, hair metal, alternative it is the music that matters.
The most real music was coming out of New York. I bought a copy of the book “Please Kill Me” about the Dolls and the Dead Boys and the Ramones and all of those bands. Also, in the late 80s I was listening to all of these obscure New York bands like the Throbs, the Electric Angels, Circus of Power. I am friends with half these guys now which is funny. New York seemed to, the music that came out of here was real and sincere and had a lot of meaning.
I almost fucking moved to L.A. actually. There was a band out here called the B Movie Rats. They were a cross between Motörhead and Rod Stewart, from the Faces years. I was going to drive my white pick up out there an tour with them. Have that whole Neil Young, daydream nightmare, then I chickened out of course for some reason. Shortly after that I decided to move to New York and ditch the car. You don’t need a car in New York. That was eighteen years ago, June 1st 2018. I headed to New York with $3,000 in checks rolled up in my socks. It’s wild to think about.
New York is losing its rock n roll.
[When I interviewed Marty it was the day he was playing his last dj gig at Three of Cups, a rock ‘n’ roll bar which Marty described as the Rainbow Bar & Grill of New York. It closed on Easter Sunday]
5songpjct: That seems to be the story of New York, everything you love closes. Last time I was there, five years ago, Motor City Bar closed. What is New York like now? Is it all H&Ms and coffee?
Marty E: All the old schoolness is gone. It is all yogurt shops and bullshit. Franchises and…well, bullshit. Not even cool bullshit. I don’t know what I am doing here. (Laughing) Don’t get me wrong, New York is still an international city. I love it and there is still a lot of places to drink, but the special ones are gone.
5songpjct: All of the grittiness is being cleaned up and windexed.
Marty E: It really has…it has been sanitized. My ongoing unfunny joke about it is that New York used to be filled with beautiful poor people and now it is all Jared Kushner’s classmates. It’s terrible, but largely accurate.
5songpjct: Music has been part of your being ever since I met you all those year ago, who were your early influences growing up?
Marty E: A little background: I’m the youngest child of eight siblings, all boys. When I was in preschool, most of my brothers were college-age Rock n’ Roll fans. Consequently, when they came home for visits, they gave me an awful lot of records. Gifts that have proved to be beyond invaluable in countless ways to this day.
5songpjct: Why did your brothers think it was a good idea to give a four year old records?
Marty E: When they had friends over I was kind of the entertainment, They would hand me a tennis racquet and that as my air guitar, like I was Gene Simmons or some bullshit. So there there was that aspect. I think that they thought it was something we would bond over. When they would give me records we would listen to them together. I also think my brothers did it in a way to amuse themselves and something we could do together. My parents begrudgingly accepted it. My dad thought it was fine. My mother begrudgingly accepted it. I think she thought that if she took it away, it would become more attractive. Not that there was anything that could have made the records more attractive than they already were at that point.
Because I broke four or five portable record players, my dad grabbed this enormous old hi-fi from the crawl space for me to use, with a trap door on the top, with the turntable underneath and a big speaker in the front. For some reason, my mom felt that it was necessary to paint it, tan, to match the carpet in my room. Ok, then.
5songpjct: You are such a huge audiophile and rock n roll encyclopedia, what was the hardest thing about this project?
Marty E: Man picking songs was hard. I could have written you fifty-five song project. Maybe I still will.
Narrowing it down to one idea, then narrowing it down to five songs was pretty impossible. I had all kinds of ideas, love songs, New York songs, drinking songs. I wanted to do something that no one else would necessarily do it the way I would. That wouldn’t 100% be something you would expect from me. You wouldn’t have expected me to have something from Simon and Garfunkel….
5songproject: No.
Marty E: But the reality is that I fucking love that shit. I wanted to pick songs that had a certain amount of range and that was real and accurate and true. Not just picking songs to sound cool. The hardest thing was to focus on one idea I could have easily picked five other songs. I could have picked something from Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Patti Smith…. shit I listened to with my brothers. I think if one of my brothers, if he reads this, he will be pissed that I didn’t pick Deep Purple. Well tough shit, he can write his own.
I am sure that is what everyone says about this project, narrowing it down.
5songpjct: Yeah. It is such an open ended project. If I were to give people an assignment, like pick five songs that feature the best drummers in history, maybe it would be easier, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted people to pick a theme that spoke to them. It is hard for people like you and me and a lot of others I picked for this project to pick five songs because our taste varies so much. We absorb music like sponges.
What is the theme of this week?
Marty E: Here are five, of the many, songs that have stuck with me, along with a little about why they mean so much to me; as well as how that meaning might have changed since I was…well, four years old!
Assignment for Sunday, May 6, 2018
If you have been reading Five Song Project for a while, you know that today you get a sneak peek at the songs coming up this week. These are on the Spotify playlist or you can click the song title to watch it on YouTube.
[1] The Beatles. “Norwegian Wood.” Rubber Soul, Capitol Records, 1965
[2] KISS. “Black Diamond.” KISS, Casablanca, 1974
[3] Alice Cooper. “Caught in a Dream.” Love It to Death, Warner Bros, 1971
[4] Simon & Garfunkel. “The Boxer.” Bridge Over Troubled Water, Columbia, 1969
[5] Mott the Hoople. “Whizz Kid.” Mott, CBS, 1973
NEXT UP...we continue the discussion with Marty’s first song in the project.