INTERVIEW: Mike Trash – The Erotics

The Erotics have a new album out: ‘The Songs Remain Deranged’ is thirteen red hot tracks of what they do best – sleazy, dirty Rock and Roll that bridges the gap between Shock Rock, Punk and Metal via AC/DC.  It’s another great album, full of searing riffs and huge hooks, and as a fan myself I couldn’t be happier. I caught up with Mike Trash just as the guys were about to head off for the UK for the ‘Call of the Wild’ Festival and a handful of other dates. If you get the chance, don’t miss out!

Mark: Hi Mike, it’s great to finally talk, I know we’ve communicated a lot over the years but never actually got around to a phone interview.

Mike: It’s great to finally get the chance.

Mark: Taking it all the way back for me, which is only part of the history of The Erotics, I think the firs I heard f you was when a friend from my hometown Rob Lane (Then in ‘Teenage Casket Company’) sent me an album by The Erotics.

Mike: I just spoke to him earlier ironically!

Mark: That’s so cool. That album would have been ’30 Seconds Over You’ back in 2007 which was already your fifth album. After that of course I started tracking back to check out the older stuff. But, as I keep telling people, The Erotics is a band that keeps getting better over the ears and the new album ‘The Songs Remain Deranged’ is one of my favourites. What keeps you going 22 years after your debut?

Mike: I haven’t the slightest idea! (laughs) I wonder that myself – why am I doing this? But every year I get another burst of energy and another batch of songs drop out of the sky and there you go!

Mark: So how does it work for you? Are you someone who constantly writes because you seem to have this incredible knack of writing a really catchy tune with a huge hook?

Mike: I don’t really have a method. If I try to write I can’t – they just come out. For some reason I’ll sit down and write a song and when I get one I really like the next thing you know there’s another eight or nine that follow! They can go from six in one month to not writing a thing for ages.

Mark: Let’s take it all the way back them, what started it all? What made you want to be a musician?

Mike: Um, I think for me it was in sixth or seventh grade me a and a bunch of my friends were getting into hard rock and heavy metal and decided we were going to start a band, an imaginary band of course! And only two of us actually followed through on learning and instrument! (laughs) but as the years went by I got more and more into it and then this band came along in 1996.

Mark: That’s a long time with a band 23 years and some great records under your belt. Who were those primal influences when you were getting started? Who inspired you?

Mike: Well even before I picked up an instrument I was into music, I was born in the late sixties so I grew up in the 70’s and in the mid-seventies I was really into like Alice Cooper and Kiss, that to me was the heaviest stuff as a seven year old! But I also liked Elton John, Stevie Wonder and a few others you wouldn’t expect. And then towards the eighties I started discovering other stuff, heavier stuff that I didn’t know about. Someone turned me onto Ozzy’s Blizzard of Oz and I had no idea that he sang for Black Sabbath! I was only ten years old at the time, and I thought wow that’s the guy who sings ‘Iron Man’ that I’d heard on the radio! (laughs)

Mark: Can you remember the first album you went out and bought with your own money?

Mike: With my own money? I used to buy a lot of 45’s. I used to hear stuff on AM Radio that I liked and every week my mom used to take me to the record store. I remember one of the fits ones was the single ‘I Never Cry’ by Alice Cooper. That was such a pretty ballad I had no idea that on the B-Side was ‘Go to Hell’ the title track of the album it was from, that scared the living heck out of me!  But I must have liked it because I kept playing it and I ended up buying his albums. But then in the 80’s for some reason I got turned onto Punk music so I wanted to see if I could mix them both together, and I guess that’s kinda what I do now.

Mark: You can definitely feel the punk and the Rock and Roll in the new music and that’s what I love about it, one minute there’s a hit of AC/DC, then a shot of Punk, then some nice Sleazy Rock and Roll. Where did the album start for you ‘The Songs Remain Deranged’ – how long does it take from that first song till when the album comes out?

Mike: Well we started writing stuff right after we released the last EP ‘Stuck Between Venus and Mars’ – we were in Wales after the Hard Rock Hell show and we went to visit this Castle called the Raglan Castle on a day off and some of the townspeople told us that Led Zeppelin had filmed some of ‘The Songs Remains The Same’ there at the Castle, so as a joke I came up with the title ‘The Songs Remain Deranged.’

Mark: (laughs) So that’s where it came from!

Mike: Everyone thought it was quite funny so it became the working title and while I was over there I wrote ‘Things We Do In The Night’ and ‘Dirty Little Secret’ in the hotel while we were waiting to go to the next gig.

Mark: That’s so cool. And you’re just about to head back now!

Mike: Yeah it’s a really short trip, just four dates –we got asked to play the ‘Call of the Wild’ Festival last year while we were there, one of the organisers asked us. We’re playing the same day that The Wildhearts are on the main stage. And since we booked that we decided to book a few other shows.

Mark: That Festival is actually just down the road from where I grew up as a kid. I would have loved to have been back for that.

Mike: That’s so cool.

Mark: Are you someone who has favourites when they release a new album? Any that you prefer to play live maybe?

Mike: It varies really day by day. ‘Blood Of The Wasted’ we play live as an opener at the moment and that goes down well, and ‘Things We Do In The Night’ goes down great too, and ‘Angel Devil and Me’ is getting a good response too.

Mark: That’s cool. How about the slower numbers how do you work them in? Never having seen you before I wondered if one of my favourites ‘Best Song of the Night’ gets a run in the set?

Mike: Yes we do play it and it goes over really well, we usually do it in the middle of the set just to give everyone a breather and slow out down for a second. Then right after we might play another slower tempo one and slowly build the set back up again.

Mark: And the question I have to ask of course is that the album features a bonus track that might take a few by surprise – ‘Cherry orchards’ by Celtic Frost! What is it about that song?

Mike: Yes! (laughs) That was actually Johnny our drummer’s idea, he’s really big into Death Metal and Celtic Frost and all those bands. He’d been pressuring us for a long time to cover that song, but I always put him off, ‘till I finally decided to sit down and do it – we played it at rehearsals and I thought “Wow this will definitely surprise some people!” It’s not what most people might expect.

Mark: I think they got teased about it a bit back it the day, I mean it was a bit catchy!

Mike: Yeah they got a lot of flak for it (laughs). I must admit that is off my favourite album of theirs.

Mark: Not a big Death Metal fan here, but I like that! So yet another reason to go out and grab the album which is out I think June 22^nd?

Mike: Yeah, June 22^nd but we will have copies out on the road at our UK shows if people want to pick them up.

Mark: That sound great! Thanks so much Mike and have a safe trip over, best of luck with the album.

Mike: Thanks Mark.