6/05/99
UE: I guess we’ll start by introducing yourselves.
Sizzo: I am Sizzo, the singer. And finally I can say singer, because now I sing. Like I used to have to say vocalist, and now I can say singer.
Vayper: I’m the Vayper.
Sizzo: (laugh)
Vayper: Shut up! V A Y P E R, I’m the guitarist.
Group: Whatever Vayper. Vayper.
Vayper: K, I’m done go ahead.
Jim: Jim, aka FKR and now I play drums, cuz I can play drums now.
Sizzo: You can play drums now, that’s cool.
Smokey: My name’s Smokey, I play bass…
Jim: And smoke.
Smokey: And smoke.
(Someone passing through the room): Mind if I interrupt?
Group: No problem. Not at all. Come one in.
Sizzo: Now what do you? Who are you? Say it again cuz I don’t think… I think you got interrupted.
Smokey: I play bass and I smoke.
Sizzo: the name?
Smokey: Smokey, I already told you like twice!
Sizzo: Well no, but the fucking thing might not have gotten it. All right, that was a long introduction.
UE: Hey whatever works. I guess… how did you guys meet?
Sizzo: I knew this guy, I knew Jim, and uh, I worked with him. And then I moved away, uh I never was even into music; like I always wanted to be a vet and I never did anything, and then.. I knew that he played drums, I had watched him play a couple times, and then I moved away. I put together a little thing finally, and then I called him up and he came and watched my band play, and we sucked, and he told me we sucked, and all that good shit. And then uh…
Jim: And then they broke up after the first show.
Sizzo: And then we broke up, and I came down and hung out with him. And I sang and then uh.. go ahead, now I’m done.
Jim: We kinda found Rob (Smokey) through some mutual friends. We found Vaypes through some mutual ex-friends.
Group: (Laughs)
Sizzo: And that’s about it.
Jim: And here we are.
Sizzo: When they came in, I always had to find out what kinda shoes they wore, cuz if they had on white tennis shoes, they were not allowed.
Smokey: Cause that’s important right there.
Sizzo: That IS important.
Smokey: If you had white shoe you couldn’t be in the band.
Sizzo: No white shoes.
Vayper: No white high tops, no cowboy boots, that kinda stuff.
Smokey: Unless you’re the drummer.
UE: What are your major influences or any influence?
Jim: All kinds of shit. from [inaudible] to fucking… anything heavy, anything mellow.. or anything in between.
Sizzo: I listen to a lot of chick singers, female vocalists, cuz they know how to sing. And most guys don’t and that’s my thing. I like to chill.
Jim: Me and Vaypes are always into doing heavy shit all the time.
Vayper: I like all the old school shit, all the old school metal and the old school punk. That’s what I grew up on. I listen to KISS, Maiden, the vandals all the old school shit like that.
Sizzo: I used to listen to [inaudible] .
Jim: I’m sorry
Sizzo: Hey dude my mom never let me listen to all that shit. Anything with any kinda obscene cover I was not allowed to listen to.
Jim: Twisted Sister was kinda scary.
Sizzo: Now I’m going to be a producer.
Smokey: I was raised on Sabbath, Zeppelin, and some weird jazz-fusion shit like primus. Just a whole different genre of music. You name it and we’ve all pretty much listened to it. It’s good and it makes a whole lot of influences and you get something a little different and that’s what we’re going for, I think. Instead of being the average run of the mill backend tracks with the same thing over and over, its gotta be special every time.
UE: What are your writing concepts for a new song? Is it a sound you hear or..
Vayper: We just pick up instruments and make noise, like if we try to write something or like Sizzo would say ‘lets write a fast song’ OK, so we go a whole night trying to write a fast song. But most of the songs come out by accident, b7y dong stupid shit like ok keep it.
Smokey: We come in the next day after trying all night then boom we just let it happen and that’s when the songs happen. When it’s natural, it’s real. Its not anything canned, we don’t try to build a song we try to let it happen if its right it happens if its right if it doesn’t your spinning your wheels.
Vayper: Like if we have one cool groove, we’ll write it for a long time.
Sizzo: We wrote Godsend in like 45 minutes. We all had hellish weeks and then we came in and picked up our shit and it just came out. It’s insane. That song is trippy.
Smokey: We wrote Shame real fast also.
Sizzo: Usually that’s how they come and they come quick otherwise, we’ll really like a part if somebody like a part really like a lot and somebody else doesn’t like it we’ll just can it. Cuz everybody has to be able to do their thing to it naturally. If somebody can’t do anything to it we just can it.
Smokey: That’s where the vibe comes in its for us, we’re real vibe oriented. If it doesn’t feel right and were playing it, it ain’t going to happen. It doesn’t matter, it could be a great part but if someone isn’t diggin it and we work on it and work on it we know the point where we say, you know this isn’t going to happen. Maybe another time, another place. And then we move on.
Sizzo: But we never have brought anything like we’ve never like made something that almost all of us thought was cool and the somebody didn’t or couldn’t come up with a part to it. All those ones that we really liked that night we never ever, we try to pick up later, sometimes, and they still suck.
Jim: I can’t play something I didn’t groove on every night.
Sizzo: Ya, no kidding.
Smokey: Everyone of the song that we have, everybody asks us if we get burned out on playing the playing them over and over and over and every time that we play the song, especially live or anything like that you’ll start to notice different aspects and different way and different feels that we play it and people start to ketch on they go wow, this is some real shit instead of somebody getting up there and playing their canned part over and that’s their thing.
Sizzo: It’s pretty much different…
Smokey: it’s pretty much different every time but we follow our format and it comes out really good that way.
Sizzo: like live I’ll sing a part at the end or something that maybe I’m not totally happy with and I’ll change it for like a year until I’m happy with it and I’ll find it on stage usually that’s how it happens.
Smokey: That’s pretty wacked.
UE: Ok. I read this in a magazine a while ago, what’s the one thing that no one knows about you?
Sizzo: About us as a band?
UE: As a band or personally.
Sizzo: Behind closed doors we’re pretty cocky.
Group: (Laughs)
Sizzo: That’s true, you know, whatever that’s true. We like our music.
Vayper: We’re just about having a good time.
Jim: Here’s one thing, we’re like the most politically correct there is.
Smokey: We’re not really known for being the band to talk shit about people or talk about people behind their back cuz most, or all the people we play with and generally we like the bands, we got a lot of good friends out there, its helps us a lot.
Vayper: We know a lot of bands out there a lot of people out there talk shit behind out backs and they try to be bros with us, we’re cool with it you know.
Sizzo: No biggy.
Vayper: You know if they are buying T-shirts and going to the shows, fuck em.
Jim: Here’s what nobody knows. We know all the shit that’s been talked about.
Sizzo: Exactly.
Jim: Whether we act like it or not, we know.
Sizzo: We got a lot of little birdies out there telling us, but that’s fine you know.
Jim: We take the stab in the back, grin and bear it, and move forward.
UE: What’s the strangest thing you ever had happen on stage:
Sizzo: The first time that someone moshed to us.
Jim: A tree fell on me.
Sizzo: Ya a little fake tree fell on him.
Jim: I’m fucking gardening and playing drums at the same time.
Smokey: Vaypes baseball batted a few candles with his guitar before, I’ve seen that. I’ve almost split open my head one time.
Sizzo: Ya we’ve run into each other a couple of times.
Smokey: Were constantly rushing around to get everything together before we play so we get like two or three minutes to hang out and chill before we play, that’s when we go out there and get crazy and have our fun.
Sizzo: The coolest thing that happened is when we played here at the glass house for the first time in the little room and the kids went nuts.
Vayper: In between Human Waste Project and Coal Chamber it was cool.
Sizzo: Cuz before that we had pretty much played 21 and over show, cuz we didn’t know of any all ages venues. 21 and over venues suck. People just go there to drink and have attitude there not really there to find out what going on in the music scene.
Vayper: They show up late, the kids they just eat us up.
Jim: Never go to a Black Sabbath show cuz the older people don’t care.
Sizzo: It’s really cool cuz the young people, they want it and the older people their like I’ll hear it when it comes out on the radio or something.
Smokey: We actually get a bigger response from the younger people because we hang out and talk with them, we know who they are, most of the people that come to the shows we know just about everybody there.
Sizzo: We know faces.
Smokey: We know a lot of people and most of them are under the age of 21 and they seem to be a lot better you know, at coming to shows and wanting to see shows and really getting into the music then setting the scene somewhere in a 21 and over gig. That’s what we run into a lot in Orange County, but you know Hollywood, the Glass House, out in Arizona, San Diego and stuff like that, its really cool. It’s nice to get out and check out different people.
UE: What’s the best show you’ve ever played?
Sizzo: One of them here I’m sure.
Vayper: Almost all the Glass House shows.
Sizzo: All the Glass House shows kick ass. This is like are favorite place to play by far.
Smokey: See the thing is, we play a lot of shows, we play a lot of shows all over the place and every show they have their moments and that’s whets always so cool about it. If not we wouldn’t keep coming back. We played for 5 people and had a great show; we’ve played for 800 – 1000 and had great shows. It’s all in the body of the people and who’s there to see ya.
Jim: The studio party was a great show.
Sizzo: Ya we had our studio packed in with 75 people in this little room. We’re all playing and singing like this. People are right in front of us.
Smokey: That was cool.
UE: To wrap it all up, where do you guys see yourself in 5 to 10 years from now?
Group: Recording artists.
Vayper: Helping out our friend’s bands.
Sizzo: Being thought of as recording artists.
Vayper: Hopefully 5 years from now our third record is coming out by then.
Mark: (Laughs)
Vayper: It could be 2 years, you know, whatever.
Jim: Shut up Mark.
Smokey: We couldn’t have done all this without Mark. Mark Thompson is the best.
Sizzo: He works for MA Entertainment.
Jim: Mark is our peeps.
Smokey: Anthony is a very happening guy, he does our website.
Sizzo: And Peter. Everybody is like totally key parts, you could be a great band and not have anybody; not have had anybody to work us and push us like Mark has, then we’d be shit. We’d be Livid that local band, that’s it. Right now its Livid that local band that’s all over the world, a couple people here a couple people there, 50 people here, 100 people here.
Smokey: We got a great crew, we got a great sound guy, engineer, producer that we are working with that’s..
Sizzo: We’re building our family.
Smokey: We’re building a family, that’s what Livid is all about. Even the people that see us at our shows are a part of our family and that’s the way we want it.
Jim: With all those people behind us, you know 5 years, we’ll still be around.
Sizzo: That’s very cool.
Smokey: We got a good dude taking pictures, Nick, he’s in the house all the time.
Sizzo: Fuck ya.
Smokey: We got people like yourself hook’n us up.
Sizzo: We’re getting every aspect all the people that have their means of pushing us that are totally are into us, they are helping us and its great. It’s trippy, cuz like back in the day when we would play some shows 10 people would come, 10 people would come. Those 10 people will like come with girlfriends, a couple of their friends and that’s about it. That’s like people that generally like it or they totally like it and even people that like it they end up going from “just a fan” to being “friends”, it’s cool. That’s how we got these guys. Big J use to come to our shows; drive all the way to San Diego just to watch us play. And then we decided, Hey lets work this guy and have him do all our shit for us. (Laughs) And he did so its cool. Little J right there. These are like the 2 guys that are like at every single show so its cool. They do pretty much everything.
UE: Thanks a lot for your time..
Sizzo: Thank you dude, totally.
Vayper: Thank you very much.
Sizzo: Totally. What do you think about us, do you understand our music as a whole or do you just like.. What do you think of us?
UE: You guys are really good, I like the sound; it’s very unique.
Sizzo: Cool. That’s very cool, cuz most people try to compare us to somebody, you know and if you say it’s unique, that means a lot to us. Its weird cuz like when from like all over the place, cuz we’re.. We’re pretty much worldwide, we don’t have everything, but we have parts in every part of the world, people that like us. It’s just trippy.. to think that people actually dig on it you know, all the stuff that’s coming from you.
Smokey: One thing about our music is if you really start to pay attention to the music and what’s going on with every one of the players and the vocals and everything else you really start to get the meaning of what’s going on.. We’re not out there to pick up chicks, to swing our dicks around, its more like we have a message and we want to get it out there, help bring people together really hook it up. All these different societies and races and religions and cultures and everything, put your differences aside just live your life and do the best you can. So that’s what we’re trying to do and it sometimes gets lost cuz people don’t pay attention, there more into the aspect of the scene and this and that and that’s why the younger people come into play so much. They are willing to listen, because they haven’t been tainted by society and shit like that already, so that’s basically what we are trying to do, what its boils down to. If you really pay attention and listen, especially to the singer, this guy right here, there’s a lot of shit to be said, we’re going to say it no one is going to stop us until we are done, until we feel that we are done. And that’s going to be a long time from now. I can guarantee ya that.
Vayper: We haven’t even started yet.
Smokey: Ya we’re just now getting our feet wet, we’re going to jump in the ocean and swim.
Group: We’re going to get Sea-Doo’s.
Vayper: Once we get a label, get singed and start doing it for reals, touring and stuff, we’re going to work our asses off.
Sizzo: We went from Livid being nothing to Livid being something because we work our asses off. We’re out promoting all the time. You just drive down the street, see some kid, pull over take two seconds, talk to them, introduce yourself, give them some fliers, whatever.
Vayper: Even the kids that take your order at Taco Bell, “What up dude, here’s a flier.” They get on the internet, go to the website, you know and leave messages.
Smokey: That’s on livid.net by the way.
Vayper: Brought to you by MA Entertainment.
Sizzo: and Rhombus P Creations.
Smokey: We’re going to have a CD out soon and once this CD comes out its really going to help us out, cuz right now we haven’t had anything that we were really happy with and right now we have something that is really special, cuz its real its not some studio trick, its live and people are going to recognize. So as soon as the CD comes out people are going to be able to get a hold of it and listen to it.
Sizzo: Most people have no idea what I say, you know and when they hear the CD they be like…
Jim: “You guys are so talented.”
Sizzo: Some people do, but we’re not.
Smokey: Exact opposite.
Sizzo: Religion is a sin of mankind doesn’t mean “f God” is has nothing to do with that, it just means put all your differences aside and all come together and just be happy that you can be yourself. We all have our little religious animosity and we kinda just throw it together and it all comes together. I think each of us are from a totally different background.
Vayper: It’s funny to see people preach about the same book, Christians preaching to Jehovah fighting about the same book.
Smokey: What else do ya wanna know?
Vayper: We like Jack Daniels. We’re trying to get a sponsorship.
Sizzo: Lit has Jegermiester. I wanna pass out Jack Daniels shot glasses.
UE: I can’t think of anything else to say so thanks for your time and have a great show.
Sizzo: No problem bro.
Smokey: We are going to tear this one up.
