|
Sex, Candy & Rock 'N' Roll
04/22/1998 7:24 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dave DiMartino
John Wozniak, leader of Philly's alt-pop trio Marcy Playground, says when he wrote the tune "Sex & Candy" his intentions were to "go in a different direction than all the other pop songs and love songs" he'd heard before. And he succeeded: saturated with superfly sex appeal and delivered in Wozniak's dreamy, dirty drawl, the sumptuously slinky "Sex & Candy" sounded totally unlike anything else on the radio. Listeners couldn't help but take notice, and "Sex & Candy" quickly shimmied to the No. 1 spot on the alternative radio charts.
But Wozniak didn't always have carnal confections on his mind, as the following interview between the sassy singer and LAUNCH executive editor Dave DiMartino indicates. Read on to find out how Wozniak's carefree boyhood days spent frolicking on the original Marcy playground eventually inspired him to create his own unique brand of grown-up schoolhouse rock.
LAUNCH:
Marcy Playground is a unique name for a band. I know it has something to do with the school you attended, but can you give me a little more insight? It was an open school, right? Do you get tired of explaining this to people?
JOHN:
Am I tired of it? I don't think I'm tired of explaining Marcy Playground or where the name comes from, because it's so much a part of my past and my life. Maybe if the name of my band was Lizard Feet or something, I'd be annoyed. I'd be like, "Oh yeah, I was looking through the dictionary and I saw the word lizard and the word feet..." Marcy Playground actually means something significant to me, so I don't really ever get tired of explaining it.
LAUNCH:
What was it like attending an open school? Tell me more about the actual experience you went through.
JOHN:
Well, Marcy is a well-respected public school in Minneapolis. For me, it developed my sense of storytelling, my sense of social issues. I learned to socialize with other kids in a way that you can't in a school where you sit in rows and you're not allowed to talk in class. When there's no ceiling on your learning, there can be just a huge developmental leap. Kids just develop at quantum rates anyway. I think schools stifle that. This school didn't. You could learn at any pace you wanted to. They didn't grade you. In a regular public school, the best you can get is an "A." I think there's something wrong with that.
LAUNCH:
More questions about your past. Tell me about some of the other bands you played in prior to Marcy Playground.
JOHN:
I played in a band with Sherry Frazier. It was called Emily Rose--we were in Olympia, Washington. Sherry was my songwriting partner for nine years. She's a very special person to me. That's the only band I like talking about--that was the only band where I was happy other than Marcy Playground. The other bands were like cheesy cover bands where we played at battle of the bands doing Zeppelin covers and Grateful Dead songs. Stuff like that.
LAUNCH:
In fact, one of the songs on your album is called "Sherry Frazier." What does she think about that?
JOHN:
Sherry loves the fact that I wrote a song about her. She laughs about it all the time. She's like, "Isn't it ever going to be a single?" She thinks it's cool. Sherry's a very hip person. I wrote that song because I missed her a lot. We'd split up as partners, but I still missed her a lot. She's just such a special person that I had to write a song about her.
LAUNCH:
Speaking of singles, does the chart success of your debut single "Sex & Candy" surprise you?
JOHN:
Does it surprise me? Um...
LAUNCH:
It's a very unique pop hit--your phrasing, the lyrics. Where did the song come from?
JOHN:
I wrote "Sex & Candy" as a love song and a pop song that was going to go in a different direction than all the other pop songs and love songs that I know. When I realized this pop song was turning into a love song, I didn't really want it to be, "I love you, baby, I'm so sad that you walked out that door on me." I wanted to do anything to steer away from that. "Sex & Candy," the lyric, came from my past, an experience I had with this girl back in college. It's just a funny line that we came up with.
LAUNCH:
The record has gotten some great reviews. How much credence do you give to rock critics and their opinions of your work?
JOHN:
Critically this record has done really well, which has led to--in my experience--no record sales. I see all these records that are critically acclaimed and no one buys them. But people come to our shows and do buy our records. We don't care what the critics say. The critics are so low down on the totem pole for us. The most important thing is that people respond to what is that we're trying to get across, which is, "This is music we think is important," and if you get it, you're part of this feeling we all have and if you don't get it, that's cool. It's been received well from the fans and from the critics.
LAUNCH:
People are buying your CD, but can you tell me what CDs you'd like to buy?
JOHN:
I want to run out and get the Crazy Diamond boxed set--the Syd Barrett box. I want to get Bright Side Of The Road, Into The Music, Van Morrison. There's a lot of records I grew up with that I don't have on CD--some of them I don't even know if you can get them on CD--like Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by the Small Faces.
LAUNCH:
Hey, how do your parents feel about your band? Do they support you in your role as a professional musician?
JOHN:
My dad is a professor at the University Of Minnesota. He teaches developmental psychology. My mom's a bit of a hippie. She lives in an earth ship in Taos, New Mexico. She's an artist. She doesn't refer to herself as a hippie. But my dad is so enthusiastic about this band that he listens to the radio: Y100 in Philadelphia all the time. And just last week, he was writing down all the songs in the top 10 countdown and the DJ comes on and says, "So the first person who calls in the with the top 10 songs this week will get two tickets to Chumbawamba. "My dad looks at the list, looks at the phone, looks at the list again, and picks up the phone and calls. He wins the tickets and he's going to Chumbawamba!!! That's my dad.
LAUNCH:
Any relation to Steve Wozniak?
JOHN:
To Steve? No, I don't think so--but maybe somewhere down the line. He's a Wozniak and we all came over on the boat at the same time.
LAUNCH:
You guys have a pretty healthy presence on the Web. Do you spend much time surfing the Net?
JOHN:
We've always had Apple computers hanging around my house. I just bought a new computer to take on the road with me. I can't wait for it to get here. The website has been this forum for the fans to just come and check out what we're about if they don't know, or if they do know, to see what other people are saying about us. There's a bulletin board, some pictures. I'm going to get one of those digital cameras and start taking pictures of the audience or the people backstage. And then we'll post them that night on the website, so people who come to the show can go back to their house, look up the website and get pictures of themselves from the show, freaking out, chugging a beer, falling down. You know...
LAUNCH:
What's up next for you, John? Are you guys busy writing the big follow-up album yet?
JOHN:
We recorded 40 songs just for the 10 or 12 songs we needed for the first album. So a lot of those songs could go on a second record. There's a lot of new material--there's close to 60 or 70 songs total. But what would probably be in the nearest future would be to put out a b-sides record that maybe isn't widely promoted or doesn't get on the air, but just goes out to our fans, people on our mailing list or people who buy the Marcy Playground record. They'll get a four-track CD of something they can't get normally. I think that's in the near future.
|
