I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

iheartthemusic decided to trade in a typical Wednesday evening of relaxing and catching up on our reading in order to experience a loud night of headbanging, long hair and tight jeans. Yes, we realize that we are now well into 2009, however, head banging and long hair is what you get when you attend a show by The Parlor Mob. This New Jersey band invaded Toronto last week for not only one night of electric stage action, but TWO back-to-back  nights at Tattoo Rock Parlour. This was the second time that Marc Melicia (vocals), David Rosen (guitar), Paul Ritchie (guitar), Nick Villapiano (bass) and Sam Bey (drums) were in Toronto and for those few fans in attendance last Wednesday (February 24), they definitely did not disappoint. Having heard that Marc was feeling a little under the weather we were worried that their performance might suffer as a result (this band is known for their live shows). However, Marc’s vocals proved to be on point as we were blown away not only by the notes that hit, but by the stamina that this young musician possessed. From their stage presence and headbanging abilities, to their sound as a collective, The Parlor Mob are on their way to becoming modern day rock and roll legends. David took time out from watching the hockey game (yes these rockers love their hockey too) to chat with iheartthemusic before the show at which point he revealed how the band really feels about being considered rock and rollers…

iheartthemusic: You guys formed in 2004 under the name What About Frank? Why the switch?

David: It was actually just a joke name to begin with. We started as kind of a fluke, we would just be obnoxious and do the most ridiculous things we could possibly do musically. It was still all the same guys in the band as there are now and we were playing the same type of music, but it was the kind of music that a 16-year-old would play. We wouldn’t repeat the same part twice, there was no consistency, it was just as creative as we could possibly be at that time in our lives. When we got more serious about our music we got tired of people asking, “who’s Frank?” and “what, are you guys, a ska band or something?” So we decided to change the name before we got really stuck with it.

iheartthemusic: But who is Frank?

David: He was a guy we knew who went to the Caribbean on a scuba diving trip and he ended up getting sucked into the jet engine of a cruise ship and we never saw him again.

iheartthemusic: That is the most morbid story ever, I don’t really know what to say to that.

David: [whispers] It’s actually not true!

iheartthemusic: Thank god!

David: But that’s all you’ll get…

iheartthemusic: OK, I won’t push it then! So why The Parlour Mob?

David: Parlor Mob was a New York Irish street gang in the post civil war era. They were a gang that you hired to start riots in places. Like if you had a certain area of town that was giving you trouble you’d hire the Parlor Mob and you would pay them to go destroy that area of the city.  It was the whole vibe of the East Coast thing that we kind of adopted for ourselves.

iheartthemusic: It’s kind of like an ode to where you’re from then?

David: Yah, absolutely, and you know people pay us to start riots!

iheartthemusic: Is that something that I can expect onstage?

David: Yah, we’ll see.

iheartthemusic: You guys released your first EP on your own, that’s pretty cool.

David: We actually re-recorded it on our own. We were signed to Capitol Records at the time and they just basically never released it. We pretty much got lost in the whole Capitol/Virgin merger and they just decided that they were never going to release it. So, we decided to give it away for free and told people to download it, burn it, give it away – whatever. That really helped us to get our name out there because this was when bands weren’t giving stuff away for free, especially bands with no money.

iheartthemusic: Was it a marketing tool in a way?

David: I think the way we saw it was basically that when all was said and done we signed to Capitol, we flew to L.A., we made this EP of four songs and we worked with this amazing producer, and then no one was going to release it. We got a year sucked out of our lives, but we worked and we learned a lot through the whole thing and we got a free recording out of it so why not give it away.

iheartthemusic: Then you got signed to Roadrunner in 2007 and you’ve since released your debut album, And You Were a Crow. What’s the significance of the crow for the band?

David: I think the crow means a lot of different things in a lot of different cultures. For a lot of people it signifies death or change and it definitely takes on a lot of those meanings throughout the record, not physical death or spiritual death, but change. It’s kind of like an open-ended thing for us in that I think there’s no specific meaning behind it. The crow imagery means something different in every song and to give it a specific definition is to devalue what it could mean to anyone else. If you listen to the songs on the album you see that it’s used in different ways, so we like to leave the significance and meaning of the crow open for the listener to interpret it the way they want to… I heard  film director David Lynch talk about this once. He said that to define something like that and give it meaning doesn’t allow other people to give it their own meaning. If you define it for them, they will then have those associations in their head already and have a preconceived notion when they go to listen to a song.

iheartthemusic: You guys have a video out for “Hard Times,” can you tell us about the concept behind this video.

David: That was actually director Michael Maxxis‘ idea. He is  Canadian too! We got a couple of different treatments for the video from different directors and the thing that we loved about his concept was that it was all about the band performing. It wasn’t some big dramatic story, which we aren’t really into. We just wanted people to see us playing because we are a live band. His treatment was more along the lines of how are we going to show the band performing in the coolest way possible. He used all this old stock film and projection film which is basically film that you use in movie theatres to project onto the big screen, you aren’t suppose to film on it. He shot on that film and used all this colour stock photography and old hand crank cameras. His mentally was, “I’m going to shoot the band in this way. I have no idea what it’s going to look like because it’s never been done, before but I think its going to look pretty cool.” We had seen all the other videos he’d done for bands like Murder City Sparrows, who we are playing with tonight, and they were just incredible. They all looked like major films, not little music videos; we didn’t want a big budget video, but we wanted something to look classic and timeless… That was all Micheal Maxxis and we were so happy with him and the way the video turned out.

iheartthemusic: You mentioned earlier that you are a live band – so what can we expect from your live performance?

David: It’s very unpredictable, even for us. We always have some sort of set list, so to speak, but we move things around all the time so that when it comes to playing, every single show is different. We like to jam a lot and usually try to make each other as uncomfortable as we possibly can while we’re playing.

iheartthemusic: What do you mean by “uncomfortable”?

David: Performing can get stagnant really quickly if you are playing six nights a week and you’re playing four weeks, five weeks, I think 11 weeks was our last tour. So for us we’ll always throw things in there to try and stretch each other to do things that are more interesting. We push each other to mess up because accidents and mistakes are where the best things come from. The only thing I can say about our live show is that we don’t know what’s going on at any point in time.

iheartthemusic: So we are left hanging, as are you!

David: Yes!  But we are all confident and comfortable with each other as musicians and for the most part it works out. We like to play as aggressively and as passionately as we can but it’s a crap shoot every time. We just chuck it in there and shake it up and throw ourselves out.

iheartthemusic: You’ve described yourselves as “straight rock and roll,” what exactly do you mean by this?

David: We feel like a lot of bands say that they are a “rock and roll” band to the point where it’s like a cop-out of an answer. I really wouldn’t know what else to call us and I don’t feel like we are trying to champion any comeback of rock and roll or anything, we’re just trying to write the best songs we can. I can see how other people would see us in that ["straight rock and roll"] way and it’s nice to be a part of something like that, but we don’t fly any flag. It’s also pretty funny that we are put into that category because we don’t even really listen to classic rock at all.

iheartthemusic: Really? That’s surprising, especially because of your whole look and sound as a band!

David: Yah, we hear that a lot. I think your opinion will be changed when you see us play live. That whole classic rock thing is not something that we set out to do; it’s just been pushed upon us. With Mark, our singer, people compare him to Robert Plant because of his voice, but he just opens his mouth and that’s the voice that comes out. He isn’t trying to sound a certain way. I think that when we play live it’s almost as if we’re fighting that stereotype. We listen to more Temptations than we ever do Led Zeppelin and the whole Motown thing is more prevalent in our music than anything else. When I hear shredder dudes, I’m not into that, it just seems technical and studied and none of us are schooled musicians, we all taught ourselves how to play our instruments. I think we just try and play with as much soul and conviction as we can.

iheartthemusic: You’re taking off on a UK tour soon, is that a first for you guys?

David: Yah, that’s a first for us. We’re headlining so we’ll see how it goes. We are incredibly excited to get over there. Our record is coming out there on the 16^th so we’re going to go over and do the best that we can as far as playing. I know that there’s a lot of radio promo and stuff like that going on, and they’ve been spreading the word about us so hopefully there are some people that come out to the shows. We’ve been a band for about five years now and we never thought we’d be in Europe playing, none of us actually thought we’d be in Canada playing. You don’t start off with intentions like that and it’s just great to see things snowballing and getting to where they are at now.

iheartthemusic: Do you feel that you’ve had a moment where you had to step back in amazement at how far you’ve come?

David: For me it was Lollapalooza. It was August 1^st and my birthday, ironically enough, and we were playing on a side stage but there was probably eight to 10 thousand people in front of the stage. They were there getting ready for the show like half an hour before we went on! When we started playing it was the most incredible feeling looking out and seeing that many people. You see a lot of people singing and everyone is just having such a good time. There was nothing like that in my entire life. Not to mention that Mark, our singer, mentioned that it was my birthday and the first few rows started singing me “Happy Birthday.”

iheartthemusic: What’s the plan for the next year?

David: I think we’re going to be touring a lot. We just booked a festival in the Czech Republic, which is cool. So we are just going to be doing a lot more touring and at the same time lots of writing. We have one new song we are playing tonight and, once again, we don’t really know how it’s going to go when we play it live. We aren’t looking for any overnight success, we want to build slowly and just play in front of as many people as we possibly can because that’s where we feel the strongest, up on stage performing.

check them out online at: www.myspace.com/theparlormob

It was a Wednesday night (not the most appropriate night to go see a rock concert considering some of us have to work in the morning), but nonetheless iheartthemusic ventured out to Tattoo Rock Parlour to check out New Jersey rock & roll band The Parlor Mob. Though that’s who we originally went to see, we  got side swiped by the opening act, Vacuity. This Kitchener-Waterloo band consists of Rob McFee (vocals/guitar), Greg Osborn (guitar), Paul McGough (bass) and Emeri Schweigert (drums). Having heard from a fellow photographer at the show that this was a band to watch, I anxiously awaited their arrival on stage. Being under the impression that I was attending a hardcore rock concert, which is usually not my style of music, my ears were pleasantly surprised by what they heard.

Vacuity opened their set with a softer edge, which was a nice way for me to transition into what was to come over the course of the evening. Rob’s voice was reminiscent of Chris Martin and as I looked around the room (even though there were’t many people in attendance), I could tell that my fellow listeners were equally impressed. Vacuity played a mixture of soft and hard rock songs from their recently released album At the Command of the Blanket Sky, which melded perfectly together to create a listening experience that was both pleasing and soothing to the ear. What struck me the most by this band was the mixture of musical techniques incorporated into their stage performance; at one point guitarist, Greg, was on the keyboards while simultaneously playing the glockenspiel! They even used sound decks and a computer to mix different beats which filtered seamlessly into the background (courtesy of “sometimes” bandmate Jamie). If that weren’t enough, by the time their sixth song, “Beckoning”, came around they produced  a rather satirical homage to the state of the economy as an announcer proclaimed over the speakers,  “Anything that goes wrong you blame the government… corporations have no defect… focus everything on the government…” (this was rather appropriate considering the band is unsigned and giving away their record free online!). Although there was one minor technical glitch during the set (technology at its finest), one thing was undeniable – these boys really do know how to play and the skill level of each was evident on stage.

The band told me that they owe their comfort level on stage to having known each other most of their lives. “We’ve been around [each other] for about 12 years because we went to high school together,” said Rob, ” but 2004 was kind of our first attempt at becoming a band by putting out a CD.” The band has grown a lot since their high school years and recently released At the Command of the Blanket Sky(on their own, we might we add). When asked why they decided on this title Rob explained, “It was just an all-encompassing thing. The songs are a lot about life and there is a large variation of different themes on the CD and that title brought it all together.” Guitarist Greg added, “The themes we were dealing with were a lot of blankets descending, so really it was taken from lyrics from the CD and thematically it works.”

What you may be pleased to know is that this album is available free for download on their website, vacuity.net. “We’ve decided to release the record online for free,” said Paul.  “We just decided to do it because we want to get our music out there and the best way to do that is to just give it up. If everybody likes it that’s great, we would rather people were hearing it.” So what’s next for these up-and-comers? “We are releasing a whole bunch of EPs free this year and then after that we will try and make another physical album out of them,” said Rob. “We are just trying to get the music tuned into as many people’s ears as possible and using the Internet to do it!” The boys are hitting the road in March to do their SECOND cross-Canada Tour in support of Blanket Sky. Be sure to check them out when they hit your town, and in the meantime, go download the album (trust us, you won’t be disappointed!):   www.vacuity.net

photography provided by Kristin McCormack