Sloppy Seconds

More Trouble Than They’re Worth (Nitro)
An interview with Steve Sloppy
by Scott Hefflon

It’s been quite some time since your last album. Your first record, Destroyed, was on Toxic Shock, did that go out of print?
As far as we know, it’s out of print. We never got a sales total from Toxic Shock, so it could’ve sold 30 or 40,000 – we have no idea.

Didn’t the label become Westworld for a while?
Yeah. After that, we did a show in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Brian Slagel, the president of Metal Blade records, flew out to see us, and we mentioned we’d just gotten a deal with Taang! records, but that Destroyed was still up for grabs if he was interested. He said yes, definitely. That’s why Destroyed is now on Metal Blade. Our deal with Toxic Shock, fortunately, was a one record deal, and when it expired, all rights reverted back to us. We’d paid to have it recorded, so we just licensed it to Toxic Shock. But we owned it.

So you were pretty smart right from the get-go to retain all rights.
Actually, it was dumb luck. There’ve been a handful of things we’ve done that, in hindsight, have been really dumb. But that was all years ago, and I see everything as a learning process.

I’ve always wondered about the bonus track, “Serious,” which doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the record in any way.
We just stuck it on the Metal Blade reissue ’cause it was a cover we did for Triple X’s tribute to Alice Cooper, Welcome to Our Nightmare, and, to the best of our knowledge, that thing never really sold very well. We didn’t want the track to disappear.

I’ve seen you guys on a few comps recently.
Really? Which ones?

For one, “The Candyman” was on Countdown’s KPNK…
Oh yeah, Metal Blade licensed that song, and they didn’t even tell us what label it was, just that it was owned by Exene from X. We think X is a great band, so we said sure.

I gotta tell you, I like your version of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” far more than Me First & The Gimme Gimmies’.
(polite pause) I appreciate that. I think theirs sounds better, because it was recorded better.

You mentioned that the comp on Triple X didn’t sell that well, but when it came time to release your first record in some time, the 22 song live record, you released it on Triple X?
Well, you did know we put out a record on Taang! called Knock Yer Block Off!, right?

Yeah, but I think Destroyed is better. What I mean is, there was a long time between those albums and the live album…
We regarded that album as just a live album. We didn’t really have a lot of concern where that record wound up, as long as it was on a decent label that had decent distribution. It was also a way to showcase our new guitar player, and show people that we’re still the same band, with or without our previous guitar player.

If I remember correctly, you guys kinda dropped out of sight soon after Knock Yer Block Off! came out.
We were supposed to go to Europe, but a problem arose just before we left, and that’s when our former guitar player quit. The record did pretty well, we got a ton of mail from fans, and we were really happy with that. We thought the record had some good songs on it, but I don’t think it was as good as Destroyed.

I think it had more mid-tempo, kinda depressing songs, like “Lonely Christmas,” “Color it Gray,” and “Radio On”…
Yeah, I think the new record, More Trouble Than They’re Worth, gets back to the original pace. Song for song, this record is a much stronger record than Knock Yer Block Off! was.

Did you have any 7″s or demos prior to Destroyed?
The first time any of us were in the studio, we recorded The First Seven Inches and then Some!.

Wasn’t that re-released by Taang!?
Yeah, we decided to re-release it because whenever we went out, people would always ask us for it. We’d been in several different shops where we’d seen it labeled as some kind of collector’s item. They were charging $50 or $60 for a 7″, and we thought that was just silly.

You probably recorded the songs for not much more than people were paying for a copy of the record.
Right. So we re-issued it on Taang! for the handful of people who wanted it.

Has Sloppy Seconds been active the whole way through, or were there stretches…
We’ve always been active. We’ve been to Europe twice, we’ve played every major city on both coasts, and we have what I consider to be a really strong following in the Midwest. We had a little bit of downtime trying to find a permanent replacement guitar player. We must’ve auditioned two dozen people before we finally found Ace (“Spice” Hardware). While we were out for about ten or twelve months during that time period, I’ve always considered the band active. There’ve been times when we haven’t had much success with certain lame booking agents, but that’s the woes of being in a band.

How’d you finally decide on Ace?
He moved from Illinois to be part of the band. We were pretty much sold on him because at one time he did a stint as Ace Frehley in a Kiss cover band. We did a few shows with him before making a decision, but he’s been great. And while our former guitar player brought more of a blues rock influence to the band, Ace offers a straight-ahead drive, more of a Rick Neilsen (of Cheap Trick) style.

After the 22-song live record came out…
It’s called Live: No Time For Tuning, by the way.

Thanks. How’d you end up on Nitro?
This is just me speaking, but we weren’t happy with Taang! and we were looking for a label that would give us support and solid distribution – a group of reliable, dedicated people to work the record. We’d talked to a handful of labels after we got out of our Taang! deal, and we were approached by Jason McLean from Nitro. He was the guy on The Offspring’s hit, “Come Out and Play,” who says, “Ya gotta keep ’em separated.” He’s a huge Sloppy fan, and he got a hold of me when he heard we were looking for a label. He sung the praises of Nitro, I sent him a demo for this record, and he gave a copy to Dexter (Holland, owner of Nitro, singer of The Offspring), and he thought it was great.

And you feel comfortable there?
I feel very comfortable there. They keep a line of communication open, and that’s very rare. Any of them can call me up with an idea of what they want to do with us, and it’s like Bingo!, that’s exactly what I want. They’re intelligent, solid, and their distribution is amazing – domestic, European, Japan, and all over the world. In the past, we’ve had our stuff exported overseas because we do really well in Europe and Japan, but the difference is that Nitro has several people taking care of specific responsibilities, whereas other labels might have one or two people trying to do everything, and at the same time not being all that interested in the band. They’re interested only in the bands they’re friends with.

I kinda picked up in “Forced to Suck” that you’ve had some bad experiences…
Yeah, but that song is more a fuck you to the back-slappers, the people who are just there to be cool. If they can get by on meager efforts, they will. There are a lot of distributors, labels, and bands that go major label bashing, but I ask you, seriously: Isn’t it worse to be ripped off and taken advantage of by an indie label, rather than by a big corporate monster? Which is truly more insulting to the independent music scene? When a indie label rips off an indie band, isn’t that like stealing food from your brother’s mouth? Aren’t we all in this together? Isn’t this a shared quest, a combined battle? I say it’s a lot of horseshit. It’s a big back-slapper society, that’s about all it amounts to. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I agree with a lot of the bashing that people seem to like to do these days, but keep this in mind; in the late ’70s early ’80s, long before everyone and their brother owned a record label, think about all the early punk records – Ramones, The Clash, Blondie, Generation X, The Stooges, The Sex Pistols – all those early classics were put out and distributed by major labels. Whether or not they did it for the “right” reasons, if it wasn’t for the distribution the major labels gave those early punk records, think about all the punk bands today that might’ve never been exposed to punk and never started their own punk bands. Think about it.

Right on. You mentioned before that More Trouble Than They’re Worth gets back to the faster punk, or junk rock, as you call it, style.
Yeah, junk rock, because junk culture is our main influence.

It’s interesting because you’re on the same label as Guttermouth, another fast and furious irreverent junk culture punk band. Do you feel any camaraderie?
I haven’t met them, but I’m familiar with their music. They’re a good band. But they’re more Southern Californian junk culture, and ours is more Midwestern influenced. There might be some affiliation from a creative standpoint, but I think that’s about as far as it goes.

Late night cable TV and b-movies are available anywhere, at least I hope they are.
Oh yeah, I’m a huge video junkie. I probably have 1,200 to 1,500 videos. I collect b-movies and sci-fi movies and have for ages.

You seem to have outer space themes on the new record – “The Queen from Outer Space,” “The Thing from Uranus”…
“The Thing from Uranus” is more about inner space, don’t you think?

Oh yeah… Things, the cultural climate, are a lot different from when your last record came out, and even more drastically different than when Destroyed came out. What new comics or TV shows have really inspired you this time around? What changes in the culture have inspired you to write songs?
Great question, unfortunately I don’t have a good answer for it. We didn’t stop and think about it, we just ran with what we thought were good ideas for songs at the time. Something like “Let’s Kill the Trendy,” that goes without saying. It’s all about phony bandwagonists. And the song “Just Because You’re A Girl” is about girl bands who wind up on the cover of national publications, then six months later they’re totally unheard of. I mean, more power to them, but many of the bands I’ve heard blow. That’s not the rule, of course, because I think The Donnas are a great band. But some bands just blow regardless of the fact that they have girls in them.

I like the line in “Forced to Suck” that goes, “12 more songs, two minutes long, all about fucking and beer.” Songs like “Smashed Again,” “Drop that Chick,” and “I Don’t Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” are all classic Sloppy Seconds songs.
Right, they could’ve been written seven or eight years ago, those are songs that just happened to come out now. We write what we’re about at the time, and sometimes we get into trouble…

How so?
A lot of people misinterpret “I Don’t Wanna Be A Homosexual” from Destroyed. They think it’s a gay-bashing song. The song is about anyone who’s ever been mistreated or outcast because they’re different. Using homosexuality as the example was nothing more than the vehicle to express the point, it was never anything about gay-bashing. And there are people that are going to misinterpret “Just Because You’re A Girl” and think we’re sexist, misogynist pigs. And that’s so far from the truth. We certain aren’t about bashing homosexuals or insulting women.

What song really stands out for you?
“The Last Drive-In in Town.” We’re really sick of seeing a part of Americana swept under the rug. We’re all drive-in junkies, we’d seen all the classic trash horror and sci-fi thrillers at the drive-in when we were kids. The spirit of the drive-in has all but disappeared. In Indiana, at one time, there 30 to 40 drive-ins spread throughout the state, now there’s only one in Indianapolis. It was an event to go to the drive-in. What a great, cheap evening out. I draw a lot of my influence from the drive-in, and know the rest of the band does too. Everything’s just become so convenient. I don’t want to blame video tapes, but they’re what killed the drive-in. Everything went straight to video, or got limited distribution in the theaters. The genre of film that the drive-ins catered to largely went immediately to video tapes.

And then you lost any community or shared reality surrounding the b-movie drive-in scene.
There was no event. There was nothing special about it, the charm was taken out of it. Instead of going to the drive-in to see Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, or Phantasm, now you go to the theaters to see G.I. Jane or some big-budget popcorn film.

And if you do watch the b-movie classics, there’s the risk that your friends don’t get the same cable channels as you, or they didn’t watch TV that night, and then the shared experience, even after the fact, is gone. Not only did you watch the movie alone in your home, but no one else has seen it because the video store near them doesn’t have a good selection.
People are so used to being spoon-fed, in many cases they’ve stopped looking. It’s almost impossible to go into a record store and discover something cool, something unknown. There’s very little self-discovery anymore. There’s so much homogenized crap shoved down people throats that there’s little room left for anything else.

A topic that didn’t exist a few years ago is Ephedrine.
We actually pronounce it ef-ee-dreen in “Ephedrine Machine.” Yeah, B.A. was hooked on them for months. He finally got that monkey off his back, but he was on them pretty hardcore.

They do weird shit to you. They make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I can’t concentrate for shit. I end up talking a mile a minute in random sentence fragments.
B.A. would sit there and knock his knees together a lot.

It makes you feel like you have to pee, even though you don’t. Kinda like when you take a lot of cold medicine.
Really? We just thought he always had to pee.

I think my favorite song, a song that really, really needed to be written, was “You’ve Got A Great Body But Your Record Collection Sucks.”
We’ve all been there, right?

God, I always felt so alone, so shallow and alone, for worming my way out of relationships because I couldn’t fuckin’ stand the music they listened to all the time. Thank you, Steve, thank you.
We’re also stating our amazement at how many bands are named after inanimate objects. Perhaps if we really wanted people to pay attention to the band we’d call ourselves Oven Mitt…

Too many syllables, how about Stool?
Stool, hey that’s good. As in wooden stool or bowel movement…

That’s why I get paid the big bucks.
I’ll bring that up to the guys. Maybe we’ll release our next album as Stool.

You have your one cover song on this record, I see…
“V.A.C.A.T.I.O.N. (In the Summer Sun)” by Connie Francis. It’s an old ’60s surf song. The Go-Go’s did a song called “Vacation,” but it’s far from the same one.

And there’s the theme song to Vacation that I’ve only heard covered once, and it wasn’t covered very well…
“Holiday Road?” That’s a great song.

Yeah, with the dog barking the Descendents-esque drum line during the chorus… “arf-arf, arf, arf-arf, arf.”
I think the song’s only a minute and a half, but it’s really catchy. Short but sweet.

Another song I really like on your new album is “Why Don’t Lesbians Love Me?” Bloodhound Gang did a kinda similar song with “I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks.” I think they’re both really funny songs that state what many people think, but most don’t have the balls to write songs about. I think Jimmy Pop’s a great lyricist. His “singing” ability, well…
Are you talking about Jimmy Pop’s singing ability or B.A.’s?

Jimmy Pop’s. I’ll bash B.A.’s singing ability in someone else’s interview…
OK.

I compare the two mostly because both bands have lyrics that poke fun at areas many people get really sensitive about.
I don’t want people to get the wrong idea and get all mad about stuff. People are more than welcome to have their own ideas, they just don’t have the right to be wrong.

If you’re going to be hated, you’d at least like to be hated for the right reasons.
Right.

So what’s the concept behind “Why Don’t Lesbians Love Me?”
“Concept?” B.A. has always… liked… ya know… watching…

Lesbian porn?
Yeah. I mean, not that he sits around all day watching lesbian porn, but when he has the opportunity to… watch porn, speaking for him, I’d guess his favorite is … ah… lesbian porn. If you listen to the lyrics, it’s a very tongue-in-cheek song…

No pun intended.
Like the line about wearing sexy lingerie and string bikinis everywhere they go. It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at a naive perspective of a stereotype.

Doesn’t it suck to have to explain lyrics like this? What? The guy likes watching beautiful women fondle each other? … And you don’t?
I hope every lesbian in America buys our record. In fact, everyone who knows a lesbian, or knows someone who knows a lesbian should buy our record.
(7151 Warner Ave. #F-736 Huntington Beach, CA 92647)