Roger Manganelli: Stuff

“Roger: i'm stoked that we have such hard core fans but I've never thought about it. It's been there all along,, and I think we are really lucky. I think all of the singles, and picture diskc, and toys and that sort of stuff has kept the collectors out there stoked.”

“Roger: Uhh.. You know.. I'm really picky and I don't actually like very many bands. The only like new band that I really like is System of A Down. I think they are amazing! It's good stuff. It's aggressive and unpredictable and I love it!!”

“Roger: It does a little bit of both I think it depends on the band. On a band that is enormously huge like Metallica it definitely hurts cause people are just going to download their stuff-period. But a smaller band maybe that hasn’t sold anything but has been able to have some good shows and get some fans out because of their MySpace or whatever you know what I mean. Using the Internet as a tool to promote the band is awesome. My sisters’ band doesn’t have a CD or whatever but they constantly pull 100 kids at their shows because they promote heavily on the internet and they stay in touch with their fans that way so it can be either or. For Less Than Jake we’re right in the middle. We definitely get a lot of paths to talk about the band, and interviews, and stuff for sale, and you know what I mean MySpace’s and Facebook’s all that kind of stuff there’s a presence there that definitely helps the band. But at the same time I know we’re one of the bands that is a victim of a lot of downloading so there you go.”

“Roger: We will be hanging out for an extended amount of time in Europe. From November 1st until the end of our lives, it’s a very long tour. We’re playing the Fest on Halloween, which is my birthday in Florida – in Gainesville. We’re playing the Fest, my other band, Rehasher, is playing the Fest and we’re just going to be taking a little bit of time to breathe in January and probably be out on the road again pretty soon in the states. We’re doing some international stuff Australia, Japan, South America – that’s going on but nothing going on in the states quite yet.”

“Roger: Umm.. I had a lot of different phases when I was younger. When I was really little, I liked a lot of stuff like, Iron Maiden, Kiss, and Def Leppard and like Aerosmith. Stuff like that. That's what I grew up on in the '70s you know. Metal like Slayer and Metallica and then I got into punk rock and metal when I was in junior high. like The Descendents and like Operation Ivy and you know.. that whole era of stuff.”

“Roger: No, not anyone in the band. No, not really. We don't get that. There was one time where we played a show and we were playing at Sunlight Convention Center or something and they just had no idea what they were doing security wise. Kids were dancing and stuff and kicking stuff on the stage and this security guy had no idea on what to do so he just pushes this kid right off the stage and he just falls and breaks his leg in like a second! There's been some stories like that. Faulty employees, I called it. (laughs) You have no idea what to expect. Sometimes we'll play a college show and we'll just show up and start doing our thing and security's like stop, no moshing, no crowd surfing, no circle pits or whatever. Well, why did you have us play here? Don't you know that's what we do? Haven't you ever heard of us before? That's what we do! We get people excited, get them running around! They're going to jump around! That's what we're trying to do!! (laughs) Get some energy flowing between us.”

“Roger: See.. that's a tough question 'cause I went to a lot of really small shows for bands that nobody knew who they really were 'cause that's the kind of thing that I grew up on - was like going to clubs and stuff. The first like real, real concert that I went to was U2 at the Orange Bowl in Miami for the Joshua Tree Tour. I think it was in '87? Something like that. Yeah… I think that was it. We were way up in the nosebleeds and Bono was like this big! (Roger shows thumb and index finger really close) (all laugh) But, that's what I thought a concert was at that point - really huge. Everything else was more like a rehearsal or you know.. club shows. Like oh, that's nothing - 500 kids. It doesn't seem that weird. I've played in front of 500 kids at my piano recitals and I didn't think it was a big deal.”

“Roger: Umm.. I don't know! It's kind of um.. a little more.. it's more in the darks of being really singy songy. It's nothing super blazing fast. There's not any super slow reggae kind of thing that we've done before. It's not like that. It's sort of in the tempo and sort of really poppy and really catchy. There's some really good stuff. There are some songs I'm really excited about. It's always been melody based I think. When we did our last record, we wrote like 32 songs and they ended coming out on two separate CDs. And this time we didn't really do that! We kind of just took 15 ideas and used those as the focal point and then we wrote around those and just improved on those 14 and kept bringing things in and out of those songs as opposed to having a whole bunch of songs. Whether that's better or not, I don't know. It definitely seems a bit more focused. We don't have a bunch of extra songs or anything like that. When is was time to actually record, we have everything pretty well sorted and that was cool. There's definitely some good stuff on there.”

“Roger: I think it's different in the way of how they handle stuff. I don't think they were really trying to. They wouldn't want us on it if they didn't like our music, you know what I'm saying? They obviously want us to create what we create and then they do what they're going to do. It's more things like interviews and more videos and photo shoots.. things like that with a major label kind of brings to the table. Which I may or may not be into - but it's a cool chance.”

“Roger: Yeah, we got out of our major label stuff and we’re just doing our own thing.”

“Roger: We’re playing like three songs and the old stuff that everyone wants to hear too. We can’t play just all brand new songs you got to mix it up a little.”

“Roger: The new Metallica. The new Metallica record is pretty rockin’ I’ve been listening to that. I’ve been listening to the Josie and the Pussycats Soundtrack on repeat since about 2003. Les Paul the guitar player, Les Paul and Mary Ford – check that out, it’s good stuff. I’m like really picky. I don’t like very many new bands. I feel like I’m in trouble, not naming the hottest five bands out right now. Actually I heard a pretty good Hillary Duff song the other day, I was impressed. It was catchy. It was good pop.”

“Roger: Well no I think it goes a long way with people who are actually fans of the band. I understand that people who do buy the records are stoked when it’s something that has some value and some thought and actually looks cool. Hopefully slowly that will start to get people motivated to buy vinyl again. Not only does it sound better but you get more of an experience with the artwork and stuff and the lyric sheet in your hand rather than on your computer screen. There’s something more intimate about that. I think slowly but surely vinyl will continue to kind of hold steady even with people not buying CDs anymore.”

“Roger:I don't think its odd. I think these days, with the internet and DVDs with every CD, fans want more content, so you give it to them! I always loved watching the making of videos of bands that i like, so we thought that our fans wanna know some of our behind the scene stuff.”

“Roger: Umm.. I couldn't tell you! I don't really know what the secret is. I've never been in any other situation. For us, we just really try to really deliver when we play and make that the focal point of what's going on. And then there's the live show. We try to be really good to our fans in the way of musically by having things up. Fans that have been fans of our records will always have something to relate and not have a record that is completely different ever, but also not doing the same thing over and over and over again. Trying to have a steady change on what kind of music we're writing and stuff like that. I think touring is the key to it. We've always been a touring based band. We play a lot, a lot of shows and that's what keeps us fresh in peoples' minds.”

“Roger: It depends.. A song is melody and lyrics and the music, you know? For our band, Vinnie the drummer writes like 95% of the lyrics so he's the main songwriter if you want to look at it that way. But he doesn't write any chords or melodies or any of that kind of stuff. So, it's kind of hard to split up or dissect a song that way, you know? On this record.. it's pretty fair, you know, pretty even between myself and Chris.. Actually JR and I. JR's the first song writer outside of Chris, Vinnie or I to like actually sit down and reword a song for the record. So he's becoming like a bigger part of that sort of thing. I don't know. It just depends. I definitely write a bunch of them!”

“Roger: To some degree everyone is involved ya know what I mean. Chris doesn’t really do that much, he’s the lead singer he’s allowed to do whatever he wants. He’s that guy. I kind of deal with all the audio stuff and Buddy [Schaub, trombonist] deals with all the video stuff and [Peter] JR [Wasilewiski, saxophonist] deals with all the online stuff and Vinnie deals with everything else and we have a great publicist named Rey [Roldan] he totally does what we need him to do. It’s a different world but a lot of bands are doing it and you know it’s a way to stay on a smooth track not to have any kind of weird outside voices.”

“Roger: I don't pay much attention to what is popular to be honest. It's a never ending cycle - style comes in and out of style - I try not to get caught up in all of that, and just listen to stuff i like, and play what I like; popularity is overrated.”

“Roger: That was our tenth Warped Tour, it’s out of control, we’ve played six full Warped Tours and partial Warped Tours, Australia Warped Tour, European Warped Tour, bits and pieces of US Warped Tours. We’re like those hookers that have been around so long that they don’t even have pimps anymore. Actually it’s really organized, we hadn’t been on it in three years, the whole thing, and it seems really on, not only the bands and stuff but the crew has done it so many times that they didn’t screw anything up.”