Well, where shall we begin? You have the disc and you know what we’re about in terms of what we sound like. We’re big fans of early 70’s glam rock. That’s where it started. We’re big fans of David Bowie, T. Rex, and Mott The Hoople and bands of that nature. Me and the drummer started a few years ago playing with Michael Bruce who was the guitar player for the original Alice Cooper band. We were doing an album with him but then for various reasons that album got shelved and those sessions got shelved. We decided to pick up what we had started, just me and him, and we loved the same kind of music and we loved Alice Cooper, KISS, and Bowie and all that. We decided to try to make a record that sounded like that because we weren’t hearing anybody doing that and that’s what we loved. That’s where we started and it just snowballed from there. We did a few songs and decided that maybe we should add a few other guys and got Deuce and Ricky. We put out our first record and it’s been going pretty well ever since then. We’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Put on a big show with a large stage made of scaffolding, ramps, and risers with cheerleaders and confetti cannons and big balloons filled with money. Crash Street Kids funny money and all this crazy stuff so it’s definitely a throwback to early 70’s glam rock. Not only just the music but the production value and all that stuff as well.

How did you guys get hooked up with Michael Bruce to do a record and why did that shit get shelved?

That’s a long story. Now A.D. is the drummer and him and Michael if I remember correctly, I should ask A.D. on how they first met, I want to say that Michael found him. They’re all from Phoenix originally. All the guys. Alice, Michael, and all the original members. I think A.D. probably was just hired by Michael if I remember correctly so A.D. just gigged with him. When they started doing some new material, Michael’s solo record stuff, A.D. knew me so he hired me for the sessions. Once the sessions got underway, everything was going good but then Michael up and left for Tucson and I don’t know if you know much about Michael but he does have a fairly notorious track record when it comes to substance abuse and overall reliability. The sessions sort of abruptly ended which is unfortunate because the stuff that we were doing I thought was really cool. I still don’t have a copy of it unfortunately.

That’s probably one of the reasons why the original Alice Cooper Group fell apart the way it did.

Right. Yeah, it was. That and management and money and all that stuff. Michael and A.D. were actually living together for a while. Michael was living at A.D.’s place. I actually saw Michael about a year ago. He and his new band from Tucson was playing up in Phoenix and I went and hung out with them. It was a nice little meeting and he was telling me he was going to send me a copy of the stuff but I haven’t heard from him so there we are. It was pretty cool. So we were Billion Dollar Babies there, A.D. was there longer than me, but it was about four or five months. We were rehearsing and then hitting the studio for about two or three weeks there.

That’s such a shame.

I know. Tell me about it. It was cool. I actually had a really great experience with it. I had fun despite the fact that the record is unreleased and I don’t even own a copy of it. I still have some of the demos and so I look back and go “aw dude, that was cool. I was playing with Michael Bruce.”

At least you have some of the demos.

I do, yeah. We’ve actually got volumes of tapes because we do have our own studio. We went to another studio to actually do the official record but we were demoing stuff in our studios so we probably have 10 tapes full of various things. Probably five hours of various outtakes and things like that.

When Michael Bruce passes into the great beyond you can release that stuff posthumously in his honor.

That’s true. I hadn’t thought about that but you’re probably right. The Lost Sessions.

The Lost Sessions of Michael Bruce. What is the average age group in the band?

The average age group? There’s two younger guys and then I’m 28. The two younger guys are 22 and I’m 28. A.D. is 38. What’s interesting about the combination is that we’ve got the youth and energy in the younger guys and then you’ve got me and A.D. who are older and more experienced in the business so we run a tight ship in terms of getting all the production elements together and being able to do the recording and producing of the record. Then you’ve got wild energy coming from the younger guys so it’s actually a good thing. Another thing is that we’re all into the same music even though we’re from almost different generations. A.D. is 10 years older than me and then I’m six years older than the other guys so there are age differences between us but we’re all totally into the same thing. The same music. We’re all trading records back and forth which is interesting as well.

I was wondering about that because I just turned 41 last month and I grew up with all those bands like KISS and Alice Cooper and David Bowie. I think it’s so cool to see younger people who have discovered that music and have fallen in love with it. I think that sort of music is timeless in a way.

It is. Great songs are timeless. If you’re talking David Bowie like the Hunky Dory record, that’s a timeless record. Whatever style is currently popular I think great songs will always be around forever. There are a lot of great songs from back then that often, especially in this country, get overlooked. You don’t really meet a lot of people that remember Mott The Hoople. I mention that to a lot of people and they go “who?” I tell them you have to go and check out “All The Young Dudes” and go buy that record. Do yourself a favor because it’s fantastic.

It’s kind of funny because Mott The Hoople, people have covered his songs. There are so many musicians out there whose songs have been covered over the years and you mention the name of that artist and everybody knows the song but doesn’t know anything about the original person who did it.

Yeah, exactly and the Mott The Hoople is definitely one band that falls into that category for sure. Or like T. Rex. That’s another band that a lot of people don’t know of here. You say T. Rex and they go “who?” If you hum “Bang A Gong” they know that song because it was covered by Power Station so everybody knows the tune.

You mention Marc Bolan and they’re like “who?”

Go buy the album The Slider and there you go. You’ll be set. While you’re buying that record, go a few aisles over and buy a Crash Street Kids record too. You’ll probably like that too.

I grew up when all this really cool music was being churned out and there were some bands I didn’t really pay attention to that much at the time because I was overwhelmed by other bands. I find myself going back and connecting with some bands from the past that I hadn’t connected with at the time. Something drives me to connect with them now for some reason.

Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of great bands. I would think that at some point we would have discovered all of the bands from that era but it seems that we keep unearthing new bands from that timeframe to inspire us. Bands like Sweet, Slade, Silverhead, and all these great bands. You’re like “oh, I’ve never even heard of those.” A.D. has this record of Neil Merryweather And The Space Rangers we’ve been listening to. All these oddball bands that are from that era. You’re like “oh, these guys are great and I’ve never heard of them.” We’ve definitely got influences that I guess are unique to a lot of bands.

It seems like these days the music industry is kind of going downhill really. A lot of these bands come out sounding the same. The only time I ever come across really cool bands that sound different than everyone else that’s being churned out is when someone sends me a CD for review. Like you guys.

Well, that’s good. At least you’re finding that there are a lot of bands out there that are really good that are undiscovered still. New bands. With the music industry the way it is, the big record labels are dwindling and becoming harder and harder to get hooked up with. There are a lot of undiscovered bands out there which is unfortunate.

I made a joke once that I have enough CDs to start my own radio station and my friend said since he’s running an online station I can have my three hours on the air every Monday night so here we are.

And here we are. How many CDs do you think you have all together?

I think I have over 300.

Oh, that is a lot.

Probably more than that. I haven’t counted lately.

Do you have the iPod thing going?

Yes, I have my little iPod.

I finally got one of those last year and I got to admit I really do like it.

I got my little iPod for my birthday last year and it goes with me to the gym. It’s a lot less cumbersome than having a CD player with you.

Right and it doesn’t skip. That’s the best part. It doesn’t skip.

You guys put out a record called Transatlantic Suicide. Where did you guys dream up that album title?

You know what’s funny about that album title is it’s a song that was an unreleased Crash Street Kids song from our previous album Chemical Dogs. We had the song called “Transatlantic Suicide” and the main character in the song was missing home and he’s in a plane going from Europe to America and he just wants to go back home. I think that’s where that title came from just because of the story of the song. The original album title for this new record was going to be Supersonic Teenage Dream. We did the photo shoot for the album cover. We’re standing in front of a jet plane like a private jet and the insert of the photos are all inside the jet and outside of the jet. Somebody suggested we should call the album Transatlantic Suicide after that song that we did. The Supersonic Teenage Dream doesn’t make sense with this album cover. That’s why we chose Transatlantic Suicide. It was actually a run away track from our second album.

When you go in the studio and record songs, of course you always record more stuff than you have room for on the record. Do you ever find it hard to decide what you’re going to narrow it down to?

Oh my God, yes. Oh dude, it was so hard on the second album. I remember it being hard. This is our third record and on our first record we did 18 songs and narrowed it down to 10 or 11. I think there’s 11. Then on Chemical Dogs, the second record, there were 20 songs and we narrowed it down to 11. On this one it wasn’t so bad. We only have maybe four songs that didn’t make the cut just because we had the story to tell and rather than losing songs, we ended up rewriting them more on this album just because we had the story in place that we wanted to tell over the course of the record. This album was more of a rewriting type of record where the previous albums we were fighting over what songs were going to go on the record. Especially the second one. The second one I remember duking it out with A.D. and Deuce and Ricky over a couple of the tracks on there. “Not that song. That song sucks. We’ve got to put this song on there.” But at the end of the day I wouldn’t change a thing. I think the album turned out good and another thing too, the songs that didn’t make the cut, a lot of the time it wasn’t because we didn’t think the song wasn’t that good but that it didn’t fit with the story because of the concept of the record. On Chemical Dogs, there were songs that didn’t make it because we were introducing characters and plot developments in the concept of the album that just took away from the impact of the story. Like the song “Transatlantic Suicide” that I spoke of a minute ago, it was one of our favorite unreleased Crash Street Kids songs. It’s a great song but it just didn’t fit with the program of the concept in the story. The theme of the record.

Basically we have this new record but there’s no song on it called “Transatlantic Suicide”.

Right. But there is a song called “Transatlantic Suicide” that was supposed to be on the other album.

What’s the story behind the new record?

I guess in order to fully tell that you’d have to go back to the other record and talk about that story. We have three records out and each one of them is a three part story that’s been going on for three records. Transatlantic Suicide is the third and final part of the saga. You’ve got to have all three parts to the story. It started as I said before coming out of the Michael Bruce sessions and then into doing our own thing. We wrote a couple of songs and then I wrote a song called “Come On, Come On, Come On” which basically was saying this character who is this big rock star dude. Imagine Marc Bolan, that kind of era. Big glittery outfits and elevator shoes. One of the things that we said was a supersonic star show was part of the lyric of that song. We ended up pacing that first album as if it was a glam rock, glitter rock concert from 1974. That was the theme of that record. It didn’t really get in depth and into any kind of story but the thing begins and ends with crowd noise and it just has the feel of KISS’ Alive!. That was what we wanted to accomplish. When it came time to do the second record we decided to go in and tell a story about this big rock star. What do rock stars do? Well, they get into drugs and they have fights with their managers and they have groupies. The second record, Chemical Dogs, is about life on the road and actually it’s told from the perspective of one of the groupies whose name is Mary Ann. She comes up on the third record. It develops through there. This girl Mary Ann gets picked up by the band and she travels with the band and gets kicked off the bus. It’s that theme. Then on the third album we figured okay, we’ve got to finally find a way to kill off the main character whom we call The Kid who is the big lead singer rock star guy. On the third record we find out that The Kid is actually from the future and he’s part of an experimental time traveling program that he’s been sent back to go anywhere he wanted to go and he’s chosen to go back to 1975 and be a big glam rock star. That’s where they sent him. Well, there are problems with the mechanic to get him back there and they are trying to contact him to tell him he’s got to come back otherwise he’s going to die because they screwed something up back there. These characters, the engineers, are contacting him in his sleep. They can reach him in a dream and tell him he’s got to come back otherwise he’s going to die so he has a decision to make. Does he want to stay here or is he going to go back. There’s a conflict in the record within The Kid. Does he want to go back to nothing or does he want to stay here and see what happens. See if he can survive it. He decides he needs to go back because he’s going to die anyway so he tries to take Mary Ann back with him but she tells him that she’s not going to go and then he goes back. That’s the basic in a nutshell of what’s going on in the context. It developed over time as I wrote songs and brought them in and we would tweak them lyrically and that’s one of the best things about this group of guys. We all throw out ideas and even though I’m the main songwriter of the band, we all sit around and in terms of the story we have all the guys put in their input. Like we would make The Kid do this or we should write a song that the manager does that kind of thing. Even though I’m the principal songwriter I still get input in terms of storyline and concepts from all the other guys in the band so it’s kind of cool.

You guys are all part of the story.

Yeah, exactly and we sort of portray ourselves as The Kid’s backing band. As the sort of Spider From Mars in a way. There’s Ziggy but then there’s the Spider From Mars, Weird and Gilley, and so we kind of see ourselves in that role.

Talking about the younger guys, how did they get into listening to that type of music? Was it because it was something their parents listened to?

Yeah, I think there’s some of that and I really don’t know so much in terms of what makes them like it so much but I know that we’ve influenced them to a certain extent. I know I remember turning Deuce onto T. Rex. I know the first time he heard T. Rex was in my car and he was like “whoa, I like that.” I gave him the CD. Ricky was chosen to be in the band because of his love of glam rock. We’ve known Ricky for a long time. I’ve actually known Ricky since he was 14 or 15 years old and he loves Guns N’ Roses because that was his era so he’s big on Slash and that whole sort of junkie rock scene. He was always this cool kid that liked Guns N’ Roses who happened to be an amazing guitar player and when we were kicking around the idea of putting a band together, it was a no brainer in terms of who was going to play guitar. It was like we’ve got to get that Ricky dude.

Guns N’ Roses was such a badass band. You couldn’t help but like them.

Oh yeah, totally.

I like so much stuff. I like a lot of the stuff that my parents listened to like Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones. I like a lot of music from the 70’s and the 80’s. I’m even digging on music coming out now. Not so much what they’re playing on the radio but I’ve really gotten into really heavy metal. Death metal and black metal.

Yeah, I’m all over the map too. If you saw my iPod you’d be like wow, there’s a lot of weird stuff in there. There’s certainly all of the Bowie records and KISS and all of the Alice Cooper records. I like heavy metal from the 80’s because that’s still a part of my life. I like Nirvana.

I finally got all of Nirvana’s releases.

Pantera. Old school metal like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden in there too.

A few weeks ago I saw the final badass concert of all badass concerts. It had Testament, Motorhead, Heaven And Hell, and Judas Priest.

Guess what? That show was just in Phoenix last week and me and Dave went.

That was the badass concert to beat all badass concerts.

Yeah, it was good. I was there with Dave. It’s funny.

I have to put up my photos of that. I got to photograph Motorhead so I got some really cool shots of Lemmy and everyone.

I thought Motorhead was one of the best bands on that bill. I thought they were great. I enjoyed Motorhead’s set more than I enjoyed Heaven And Hell’s set.

Isn’t that funny how you can have three guys up there and they can just blow you away?

Yeah, totally.

I enjoyed all of it. I love Rob Halford and his changing his jacket every two songs. He reminds me of Stevie Nicks. I went to a Stevie Nicks show once and she changed clothes after every other song.

Well, you have to keep them entertained right?

Absolutely. Now that you guys have that record out are you touring around?

Yeah, we are in the process of putting together an East coast tour which will kick off in Minneapolis on November 14th and swinging around down the East coast and then it’s going to be the early part of 2009, we’re going over to the U.K. and doing some shows over there. So we’re trying to get the word out and hitting the road. Doing that touring thing which will be fun. We love playing. There’s nothing better than just playing. That’s what we do.

What other plans do you guys have?

Right now in the immediate future what we’re doing is we’re shooting a couple of videos. We just finished a video for “Do You Still Believe In Rock N’ Roll” and we’re shooting a video for “Destroyer” in the next few weeks which will be fun because we’ve got these roller derby girls that are going to be involved in the video. It’s going to be centered around roller derby which will be interesting. I think we’re making one more video. We’re shooting all of the videos and then we’re going to hit the road and hopefully those videos will be done and then we’ll be ready for the tour. We can keep the promotion team working while we’re gone. That’s what we’ve been doing. We haven’t really got any plans right now to release a new record yet. We haven’t thought about what we want to do yet in terms of that. We’re just pushing the new record right now. We’re thinking about maybe doing a live record next year because that’s what you did back in the 70’s. You do three studio records and then your live one. KISS Alive!. You do KISS, Hotter Than Hell, Dressed To Kill, and then you do KISS Alive!. That was one of our plans as well so we’re going to see if we can record some of the shows on the tour and then see if we’ve got enough for a live record.

Then you do a few more studio records and then you do the live DVD, man.

Oh yeah, totally.

Any other thoughts or comments?