1989 should have been the best year ever for Rock Sugar, the big haired heavy metal band that had just broken the top 41 on the rock radio charts with their solid brass debut album “Bang You Like A Drum”. But instead of headlining concerts, Rock Sugar made the headlines when they were presumed lost forever after playing an extremely ill advised gig celebrating the bat mitzvah of 13-year-old Lisa Rosenberg.
Shortly after the chorus of Rock Sugar’s second song “Nail You Like A Hammer”, a drunken and violent brawl broke out involving the band, the rabbi, a clown, the captain, a guy in an Smurf costume, Schlomo and well over a hundred infuriated and now thoroughly sexually confused children. In the midst of the fight, as Jesse, the lead singer, was pummeling the Smurf and no one was steering the damned ship anymore, it struck an undersea stone wall. As the boat was sinking, the extremely unhappy and now yacht less Schlomo refused to let Rock Sugar climb aboard the life rafts to safety.
And so, the hardcore degenerate heavy metal members of Rock Sugar spent the last two decades stuck on an island with nothing to do but drink schnapps, catch hard to digest wildlife, befriend monkeys and dream of their long lost groupies while listening only to, and being slowly and systematically brainwashed by, every favorite pop song of a 1980’s preteen girl. Bored, full of schnapps and wasting away on a tropical oasis, they built a stage out of driftwood, bamboo shoots and tree sap and got to work. Against the odds, Rock Sugar was alive… and they were practicing.
Fast forward twenty years when a tuna boat with a screwed up compass discovered a group of long haired castaways on a deserted island far out in the middle of the Pacific. Finally rescued and now violently thrown back into the real life of present day Los Angeles, and with absolutely no clue whatsoever of anything that’s happened, developed or changed in the world since 1989, Rock Sugar is back and ready to electrify audiences with their brand new, razor sharp, psychotically original sound.
The first twenty years of their lives spent listening to heavy metal followed by a twenty year forced diet of little girl pop, their own influences have permanently collided with the unknowingly very influential 13-year-old Lisa Rosenberg. And now Rock Sugar is performing “re-imaginings” of the world’s favorite songs in ways that the world has never even dreamed of. Twenty years of what started with a shipwreck and turned into history’s longest reluctant rehearsal has paid off and the band, as well as the wild originality of what they have created, are beyond belief or explanation.
But while you may be able to at last take the metal band off the deserted island, apparently you can’t take 20 years of exposure to 80’s pop out of the metal band. Prepare to have the line between pop and metal blown to smithereens and pour yourself a shot of Rock Sugar.
Having appeared on the music scene in 2010 with the aforementioned backstory and the rather amazing album “Reimaginator”, Rock Sugar have brought a managed to bring a smile to the faces of just about every person that has heard them. Having performed at the Download festival for two years running, in 2010 and 2011 and moved from a tented stage up to the main stage the audience for their “unique” brand of rock has grown significantly.
I know that everyone that I have introduced to the band’s CD have loved it and now it is the pleasure of Rock-Zone UK to introduce even more people to the pure, unbridled joy that is…..Rock Sugar.
I am delighted to say that Jess and Chuck from Rock Sugar recently took the time to talk exclusively to Rock-Zone UK and the interview was so good we felt that, rather than read it, you lovely readers should get the chance to hear it.
Jess and Chuck talk about the reasons behind the band, what influences the guys as musicians, their appearances at Download, their friendship with Steel Panther and many more things.
It was such a great interview we have had to split it into three parts for you. If you click on the link, you will be taken to another page. Once there, click on the link and the clip will play via your media player.
For more information: www.rocksugarband.com
Interviewed by David Wilson
No part/parts of this interview may be used or reproduced without the expressed, written permission of David Wilson and Rock-Zone UK
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