An Interview with Peter McCulloch of This Island Earth
By Don Sill
This Island Earth has been jamming within the local circuit for close
to 8 years now and have earned quite a strong reputation as one of Long Island's
premire acts. Their secret is their diversity.
As a group of 5 completely different people with varied musical influences
they cover everything from funk, pop, rock, blues and so on- As a result of
their diversity there is a less formulated consistency in their overall
sound that is refreshing from the rest of the pack. Through the years, as they
developed as a unit they discovered that it was that mixed sound that
would become the staple for the band.
The Valley Steam based 5-piece, also includes Peter McCulloch - Lead
vocals, bass, rhythm guitar, songwriter; Dean Pascarella - Lead guitar,
Chapman Stick, backing vocals, songwriter; Patrick Sciacca - Rhythm guitar,
songwriter; Chip Sciacca - Keyboards, backing vocals and Pete Angell -
Drums- find that their real love is to perfrom their music live and give their
all to the audience and entertain their butts off. LongIsland.com spoke with
singer Peter McCulloch via e-mail about performing on Long Island and
here's what he had to say..
What is your opinion about the current Long Island music scene?
Peter: There are good people in the scene that really want to bring awareness
to local artists and create some sort of "next Seattle". Unfortunately,
it will never happen, as the land mass itself is quite large, artists continue
to exist in a vacuum, and efforts often go mis-focused. The goal should
be to develop a healthy artistic community appreciated by people with a healthy
view on the arts for the purpose of preserving and nurturing art (as opposed
to selling beers), but that would take a complete retraining and educating
of society's present value system.
How can we improve the local rock scene?
Peter: Improving the scene requires a whole change of a community's interests
and value system. You might be able to get a few bands together to pool
their resources and efforts, as we did with our PCP events (Pop Conspiracy
Productions), and drag enough friends who drink down to a local bar, thus
appeasing everybody, but that doesn't really solve the long term problem,
does it? Unity is a good step one, so bands should stop competing and
start forming coalitions and supporting one another. Step two, the media should
embrace local art and expose it to the masses as often as they can regardless
of how much corporate advertising money they're getting to push "chosen"
artists backed by corporate dollars. Step 3, the media should promote
independent art as a good thing and not continue to perpetuate the myth
that artists are discovered overnight or are worthless if they don't have a
major recording contract. Nearly every positive review I've read about us ends
with a statement like, "These guys are so good, why doesn't some major
label snatch them up now?" Why didn't you ask us first before making such
an atypical statement that does nothing to help local music grow and be appreciated for what it is?
Where do you think you guys fit in among the local music circuit?
Peter: I think we've quietly established ourselves as mentors or elder
statesmen, primarly due to the fact that we've been at it for 8 years
and everybody knows us, whether we're the biggest drawing band or biggest
record seller or not.
What separates This Island Earth from other rock acts on the local scene
right now?
Peter: Musically, putting the song first before all else, and arranging
it to best emphasize the melody and vocals. many bands get caught up in a
self-conscious mindset to need to appear cool or edgy, and often obliterate
their music as a result. On the business side, our long term experience
and business savy. We respect what we do to a fault sometimes, because we're
not willing to compromise what we do in order to "make it" or play
some dive at 2am on a Tuesday because "some record execs MIGHT be there to check
bands out." It's nonsense, and unfortunately many newer bands will do anything
they can to get noticed because they believe that that's what it takes - to
be constantly moving like a shark but with virtually no plan or logical game
plan. It's a complete misdirection of energy, and it will sap you of creative
drive soon enough. If you're going to play music, then make sure you play
it for reasons that you can live with. So many bands focus on the aspect
of making it, that they deliberately alter their sound or mold it into whatever's happening in the music business at the moment, thus dilluting
and stagnating our culture with non-creative, non-challenging, market researched
"art" that does nothing to expand our hearts and minds.
What other local bands do you think rock?
Peter: There are many: Iridesense, Ucada, Jackalope Junction, Early Edison,
Pop Mafia, Vic Thrill. The list goes on.
Why should someone go out and see you guys live?
Peter: Live performance gives us the opportunity to entertain. And we
do entertain, whether power pop music is your thing or not. I'm sorry to
say that as good as I feel some of our CDs are, they have yet to capture the
energy and enthusiasm we put across live. Perhaps the next CD we do will
be a live one, warts and all.
What can we expect to see at your live performance?
Peter: Pure, raw, hairy chested controlled chaos performed with near abandon.
And perhaps a cookie monster puppet thrown in for good measure.
Any crazy club stories?
Peter: Pants fell down once during an inspired performance. Had to hold
them up for two more songs. Another time, the ultimate rock and roll fantasy
was fulfilled: I was playing in a NJ bar one weeknight with no one in attendance
but a couple of bartenders and a couple of women at the pool table. I
guess one of the women felt bad for us having no one in attendance that she
decided to strip down to nothing but a G-string. She made her way up on the stage
and proceeded to gyrate and rub up against each member. Why the bouncer didn't
stop her is beyond me, but it was a slow night and I guess he was equally
curious as to what was going to happen. Typical me, I can remember being
petrified that the woman's rubbing and dry humping would distract me from
singing on pitch or playing the right bass notes. I guess I'm a
perfectionist.
Any rituals before you go onstage?
Peter: I try not to drink alcohol or eat burpy foods a couple of hours
before performing, unless it's a low profile gig, then I like to get as lit as
possible. ;^) I also like to listen to high energy rock or great vocal
performances on the way to a gig, i.e. Chris Cornell, Freddie Mercury,
or Tool, just to get inspired.
Any talks from labels or anything brewing?
Peter: We're ALWAYS talking to labels, and they're always telling us what
they're willing to do for us, which is usually far less than we already
do for ourselves. We played that game for a while, jumping through hoops
to appease them by racking up Soundscan numbers, getting national airplay,
cutting hair/growing hair, etc., and there was always "just one more
little thing" they'd want before making a decision. "You've sold 5,000
CDs, that's great. Now can you just sell 5000 more and then we'll really take an
interest". We actually had one A & R knucklehead from a major
label call us raving about how many hits he thought we had on our last CD, only to follow
the statement up with, "So how many CDs have you sold?" There
is no such thing as artist development anymore, as labels are looking for full-fledged,
mini-cottage industries that fit tightly into their mold so that they
don't have to have any creative insight or do any creative forcasting. And then
they'll grant you the "luxury" of signing you and putting you
so deep into debt that there's no possible way to make a living unless you go triple
platinum 3 albums into your contract. I can name no less than 5 bands,
good friends of ours and bands that you would probably know, who took the major
label plunge and faded into obscurity and depression within a year. Fact:
less than 7% of ALL national releases make a profit, at least those were
the statistics a couple of years ago. I suspect that percentage is even lower
now. I'm happy to say we're in that 7%, not necessarily because we sold
a ton of CDs, but because our overhead was low to begin with. What is the point
of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, on recording
a CD? We are a full fledged, independent artist and record label, and we've
accomplished a lot more than many signed artists have. Before we sign
to anyone, they've got to prove to me that they can do more for our careers
than we could do for ourselves, and I've yet to see that when we do the math.
What are your ultimate goals?
Peter: To get our music to the public and hopefully attract people who
will understand where we're coming from and continue to buy our music and see
us perform. When it works, you can do that until you're dead.
Whats next?
Peter: We released our latest CD, "Welcome to the Merry-Go-Round"
in April and we're basically performing as often as we can over the summer to support
it. We'll be playing The Dublin Pub on July 2nd and Mulcahys on July 18th.
We're also trekking out of state to expose our music to people outside
of New York. Our CD is presently on over 200 stations across the country, and
has made CMJ top 30 charts on over 20 stations. Hopefully, at the start of
the fall, we'll start writing new material and do it all again!
Thanks for the opportunity to vent a few things off of my raw, hairy,
chaotic chest
