New stuff from Jojo / Nerve is up now

[Morgenthaler]

http://nerve.bandcamp.com/

I dig it.

[deseipel]

IMO this is cutting edge.

[willyz]

Killer stuff... This must groove so hard live. Jojo just slays me with that shuffle and hitting all those figures on the kick during the first track.

[YamahaPlayer]

Good stuff. I like their first album better, but this stuff is also very cool.

[willyz]

I'm downloading all 3 EP's now. This shit is SICK!

[DSOP]

I found this great interview posted over at cymbalholics:

Drum Magic (by Stanley Hall, Talking Drums 9 / '96)

A while back the attendees of one of the Buddy Rich memorial concerts came expecting to hear some big band jazz with some hot drumming and were subjected to a, shall we say, rather intense band called Screaming Headless Torsos, and with a name like that, you can guess it wasn't anything like Count Basie. The Headless ones made a mighty impression on that roomfull of drumniks, and one of the major reasons was their drummer, greyhound thin JoJo Mayer, purveyor of corkscrew hair and drum magic.
An amateur magician (he learned the craft while looking for something to do with his hands when he gave up smoking), he can make tricky sticking seem as effortless as pulling a rabbit out of a hi-hat. As with every magician, the question is always, how does he doit? The answer is simple: there is no trick, it's just the application of drive and determination to natural talent.

Walking the garbage-strewn streets of lower Manhattan over to the building whose basement houses several drum practice rooms (JoJo shares one with Ben Perowsky and Van Romaine's at the end of the hall), Mayer explains how he's playing traditional grip now, something he went to after being overwhelmed by the musicality of Tony Williams. Despite his current refocus on what may seem to be the more basic aspects of the craft, JoJo can still whip out astounding technique at the drop of a stick-as witnesses at last year's PASIC convention can attest-and when you hear it you'll swear it's magic.



TD: I hear you're taking a different approach to practicing now.

JM: Yeah, my focus now is on trying to make my playing more musical and to learn how to control the volume and sound of each individual drum. You can actually start to feel what you play and it makes everything a little more meaningful when you play with a band. I think it's one of the secrets of really great players.

I heard Steve Ferrone at a rehearsal playing on a pretty beat-up set and it sounded like a record. I figured out basically he has a built-in mixing board in his playing: he can change the volume of any individual limb without changing the feel. It's harder than you think, and after doing it for a while, I got a new appreciation for how much you can do with a simple beat. For instance, try to compose a five-minute drum solo at a moderate tempo without using anything faster than, say, an eighth note. It's extremely humbling. After doing that for a while, I felt my playing become a little more centered.

It's also important to make stuff simpler so you can actually hear what it is. It's not how fast can you play, but how fast can you hear? It's hard to hear fast, to hear each individual note in a roll or a string of fast paradiddles or sixteenth notes. It's a lot easier to train your hands to play them than to train your ears to hear them, but I think it's crucial to developing a good sound and clean execution.

With certain fast chopsy stuff, I had a tendency to blur-which I still do [laughs]-but I don't have to play them as fast anymore to make them sound fast. If I'm playing sixteenth note groupings, I can accent the fifth or the seventh sixteenth note; I can actually play the subdivisions and really feel where the fifth not or the seventh note is, it's not just part of a stream.

I may be wrong, but I feel that you can practice stick control or whatever for eight hours on a practice pad and while it might be good for your technique, it won't enhance your playing, really. I think the muscle/hand/nerve aspect only makes up about 30% of the ability to execute something.

What I'm really trying to do is make a connection between the technique and my musical understanding and the sound I have in my head. That's what I'm concerned with-the sound of my hands, not the sound of the drumset. It's being able to play anything and create the sound.

TD: Do you want to be able to consistently create a particular sound or do you want to be able to create different sounds?

JM: Basically I want to be able to create the sound I have in my head at the time in conjunction with the context of what I'm playing. Sometimes you play something that you expected to sound different. For instance, you play a performance and you're quite happy with it. Then you listen to a tape of that performance back and you find out that it actually sounded terrible.

Or the other way around: you think it sounded terrible, but when you listen to the tape, it sounded good. That's because your mind is in a different state when you play.

If you can listen objectively after the gig, you should be able to listen while you play; it's difficult, it's almost like a zen thing. Don't get too caught up with what you thought you were supposed to play or what you wanted to play, but be creative with the situation, with all the risks that go along with that approach.

TD: Isn't that the definition of music?

JM: Of course, yeah. After studying the art of music and studying technique and independence and whatever it takes to get yourself to a level of physical competence, your mind is full of systems and concepts. At some point, I think you almost need to learn how to forget about them and learn about the real importance of what music can be. And that's a big challenge because the more you know, the harder it gets and the scarier it gets to get rid of all this knowledge.

To make an analogy, something that probably everybody struggles with is having a bad sound.-your drums just don't sound the way you like. I talk to a lot of talented drummers I admire and respect like Dennis Chambers and Terry Bozzio about how they deal with that, 'cause we're all human, but whenever I see them they never cease to amaze me with what they do no matter what situation they face. Especially Dennis, he would always sounds good on any type of drum set.

Dennis told me, "I can't afford to be bothered by a bad drum sound because usually the sound is bad." [laughs] In most of the places, you may not even get a sound check, so don't expect much. You can't afford to let it bother you, so just go with it.

Whereas Terry has more of a spiritual approach. He says playing the drums is kind of like a sacred circle. You go there to do just one particular thing like you go to church to pray. So when he goes there, he just does one thing: he serves the drums. And whatever he's provided -drums, P.A., the room-he tries to be creative with. And that's a great attitude, too.
My attitude is I want to learn how to be able to project as best I can the sounds that I hear and the music that I hear into the drums.
Therefore, to do that, I have to really know myself and know how I react.

For instance, if I don't hear the bass drum, I tend to play it harder and then my whole body will get tense; I will get into an anxious state of mind, and I will start overplaying. And you only have to overplay just a little bit, force-wise, to spoil your sound or your texture or your touch.
It's almost like talking to someone and they start yelling at you. You have two choices: you can yell back, and that usually that leads to everybody yelling at each other and nobody can hear what's going on. Or you start really quietly so they have to bring their voice down to hear what you're saying. That's usually the more fruitful approach. Learning about how I react in all those situations is very helpful.

TD: To use your shouting analogy, what if when somebody yells at you with their amplifier and you pull back, they don't come down to your lower level? Then you die sonically, you just disappear under all that wattage. How do you get them to turn down without slinging a stick at them?

JM: With someone like that I think you'll die either way. If you come down, they'll just bury you and if you bring it up, you'll die because they'll just turn up more. Playing with people like that is a no-win situation. [laughs] Every situation is different, but as a rule I like to participate in music with people who are sensitive. I like to be with people who give me something that makes my life more interesting.

As a professional sometimes your choice of who you play with is limited because of economics: you have to work and you have to be professional and be able to master every situation as good as it goes. Therefore you just use your imagination to get through it.

Okay, this guitar player hired me to play with him and he wants to play loud. I'm gonna put some stuff into my ears and I'm just gonna play louder, that's what I'm gonna do. I know I'm gonna lose density with my playing and I'm not gonna play as much stuff, but I'm really gonna concentrate on this simple beat and play it as loud as I can and hopefully he's gonna like what I do. Maybe it'll turn out to be fun, or maybe if I have an opportunity not to work with this guy again, I won't do it. It's like that.

TD: Just make lemonade, make the best of a bad situation?

JM: The average guy thinks that if he works with players stronger than him, then he will get elevated to their level. On the opposite side, if he plays with people who maybe are not on his level, then he might get dragged down to their level. But I don't really believe in that because you can't bring people up to your level, but you can bring yourself up to the best level you can reach and automatically the whole situation will get better.

TD: How do you do that? It's one thing to say that, but it's a difficult thing to do.

JM: I know! [laughs] I think it's the same in life: sometimes things are not as great as you'd like them to be. You need to have the attitude to realize, okay, I'm here to play music-which is one of the greatest things you can do in life-and when it's great, it's really great. Your motivation is: I'm either here wasting my time or I try to make it as good as it goes because for the next three hours I'm gonna be here, so let's make it as good as possible! [laughs] It doesn't matter if the sound is not so good or if the saxophone player ain't happening or if the owner has an attitude, it's really simple: if you wanna be a musician, you wanna play music, then try to enjoy as much of it as possible and have fun.

I know it's hard sometimes, but life isn't simple either. I try to motive myself by envisioning myself having fun. Listen to what's going on and be sensitive to the situation because then you might hear what's missing or why it's not happening. If you just bury yourself in negative attitude or fear, you might never find out.

It's very difficult because sensitivity is required to play music and if you open yourself up, you become vulnerable, too, so it can really hurt. If you're trying to show good attitude and be really nice, it can hurt your ego or your sense of honor or dignity.

Unfortunately greatness in musicians or artists doesn't always equate to greatness in personal character. Some people that I admire artistically I would never wanna work with. I wouldn't say who they are! [laughs]

TD: Beat me to the punch on that.

JM: [laughs] They are heavy, talented people but life around them can be...very difficult. I personally like to have a good time and I believe that if the vibe on the way to the gig is good, then the gig is gonna be good, too.
Positive thinking is important: it takes the same amount of energy to have a negative thought as a positive one. That doesn't mean that certain things aren't screwed up and that you have to accept everything the way it is-in some situations, positive thinking will not be enough, but when it comes to creating music, I think it can help a lot.

I speak from experience. Back pain, for instance. Back pain is a very common problem among drummers: you're lifting stuff around, you're sitting in your car driving around, you slump at the kit. I used to suffer from back pain for a long time. I tried gymnastics and a lot of exercises but nothing really helped until I figured out what the cause of my back pain really was.

I started making notes whenever I had back pain: what did I have to eat for the last six hours; what did I do before the gig; what did I do at the gig? And after a couple of weeks, a pattern started emerging: I always had back pain 1) if I'm in a situation where the music is really loud and I have to overplay; 2) if there wasn't enough air and everybody chain smoked; or 3) if the light was insufficient. If there was just one spot and it was shining in my face, I'd slouch and try to hide myself almost like a turtle.

It was totally psychological: once I was aware of this and I made the appropriate changes, I never had problems with my back anymore. Unless, of course, I lift up a trap case the wrong way! [laughs] So just a simple thing like saying "We have to get some fresh air in here" or "We have to change the light" can make all the difference. That's what I mean by positive thinking.

TD: What have you been doing since you left Screaming Headless Torsos?

JM: For the last couple months, I've been doing a lot of clinics for Sonor and Sabian in Europe, and I've been doing quite a lot of bread-and-butter recording these days, commercials, stuff like that.

TD: What's a typical commercial session like in New York?

JM: Just come in and do play some hi-hats and leave. [laughs] A lot of the stuff is programmed and they just need some something on the top. I don't know if that's the typical way for everybody, but since I work with the same people, that's they way they work.
I've just started doing it recently here, but in Europe I've been doing it for a while. It's different over there because I program too, and I work with samples.

TD: When you program, what equipment do you prefer to use?

JM: I've been using ProTools a lot; it's a hard drive optical disk recording program on the Mac. I still use the Akai S-1000 sampler: I have them, they do the job and they're reliable, and everywhere you go they have them, which is convenient.

TD: Do you carry your own library of samples?

JM: Yeah, I do. I have samples I made in the Power Station, and I have samples I made in my shower. I just go in with a DAT player and record stuff. I have some samples I use very often that I recorded with a really cheap mike because they have the sound that I want. I'm not a freak with that stuff; to me, if it sounds good I will use it even if it's only 8-bit or if it hisses or it has a hum on it. I'll let other people deal with that. If it's too funky to use, someone will probably tell me.

I don't do as much electronic stuff anymore. I used to endorse ddrum. Ddrum are great instruments, but it's just so much equipment to carry around because you really need good monitors to feel the drums in the right way. I might go back to it at some point because if you want to trigger drums, it's probably the best system.

I just did a record in Europe a few weeks ago with a project called Pop Low Resolution. It's like the European stream of stuff that's been coming out lately: ambient jungle drums & bass, trip-hop thing. Very interesting stuff, they had an unbelievable producer: Roli Mosiman. He's originally Swiss but he's been in New York for about 20 years. He did a bunch of records: New Order, Smashing Pumpkins, Faith No More, Marilyn Manson, and a lot of independent stuff. He's very much into that new rock music vibe. He made the drums as big as a nuclear bomb.

TD: How did he do that?

JM: I don't know, but I gotta find out! [laughs] We recorded the record in Europe, but we're gonna mix it in New York in a couple
of weeks. When we recorded it I just had the sequence stuff in my headphones as a background and we played all these jungle tunes, trying to get as much of the live energy vibe as possible. I don't know if it's gonna be commercially viable, but it's definitely some ground-breaking stuff. I hope so, and probably more so in Europe than here.

TD: What kind of room did you record in?

JJM: It was a really big room, probably as big as the Bottom Line in New York. We recorded at the Academy of Contemporary Electronic Music in Basel, Switzerland. A lot of contemporary artists like Stockhausen and Boulez record there.

The great thing was they have all this vintage electronic equipment like old Moog synthesizers that you can't find anymore. It's all been sitting there for the past 20 years, and now a lot of people are really interested in that stuff. A lot of the new house stuff is recorded on analog machines and the new stream of analog freaks record there on those old machines. Fortunately the room sounds great, too, and Rolle really knows what to do with the drums, since he's a drummer, too.

TD: What did you use on those sessions?

JM: I used a birch Sonor Lite kit with a 20" bass drum and 10, 12 and 14" toms, just like this kit I have here in my practice room. I used to use a lot more stuff, but the older I get, the smaller my drum kit gets, although I did use four different snare drums, sometimes simultaneously. I used a Sonor 12" piccolo drum set snare, a Sonor HD-400 4x14 stainless steel snare, a 6-1/2x14 Ludwig Black Beauty, a 13" Ludwig metal piccolo-all metal snare drums except for that 12" Sonor. The snare drum I use the most is the 4" Sonor with the birch shell. Personally I prefer the birch shell even though this kit is maple.

TD: Why's that?

JM: The birch sounds much better to me. It's a little more difficult to handle because it's more sensitive to the way you tune it, but I can get more different textures out of it than from a maple drum. I get a more personalized sound out of the birch, and I like that punchy mid-range attack.

I think it's a more contemporary sound than the dooooh you get from maple. Birch is sharper and more in-your-face.

TD: How do you tune the heads on the birch?

JM: I keep them about the same tension. When I put new heads on, I first tighten them up really hard and then I tune them really low, only finger tight. Then I go around approximately 4-1/2 turns, still pretty low, and then I will tune maybe another quarter turn with the top head. Once I have an even tuning with the top head, I will tune it up to the pitch I like with the bottom head, which usually amounts to approximately the same tension as the top head, sometimes just a little higher.

TD: What kind of heads?

JM: Coated Ambassadors as batters and clear Ambassadors on the bottom. Sometimes I use a Powerstroke, but I don't like double-ply heads because I think I lose bass frequencies with them. The way I usually tune the bass drum is to get both sides just tight enough to get the wrinkles out of the head. This bass drum is padded right now because it's in a practice room but on gigs I don't usually put anything inside. I carry something with me because in certain rooms you have to muffle it, but generally I don't like to have anything inside the bass drum; it's muffled just by the impact of the beater.

Live I tune a little higher on the toms just for projection. It also gives me more separation and more presence in the mix on a live gig.
The first time I realized it, I had the guy in the band who opened up for us play my kit while I went out into the hall and listened. I just tuned it the way I usually had it and he played on it and it sounded decent. But before I played, I tuned it up just a little bit and a friend of mine said, "Man, your drums sounded so good and bright."

It was not a really big deal, I just tuned it up slightly on the top head. I think you should be able to do that kind of tuning a good drum with just one lug-you definitely can do that with the Sonor Lites. They are very responsive, and it doesn't even matter if the tuning is even or not; if I approximate the tension of the head, it usually sounds good. That's the mark of a good drum: you don't even have to tune the drum and it sounds good! [laughs]

TD: So you prefer to play Sonor Lites?

JM: Yeah, that or the light shells. I'm getting a new Designer kit in birch, probably the same sizes-20" bass, 10,12 and 14, although I've been playing on an 18" bass drum lately just to do something different.

TD: When a lot of guys use 18" bass drums, they tune it up and use their foot like a third hand instead of using it for conventional bass work. Do you do that?

JJM: No, I use it as a bass drum. Okay, if you have to compete against a guy with a stack of Marshalls, then I won't bring my 18" bass drum, but for most club situations in New York it's sufficient. Do you know Macke from Bad Brains? Heavy guy. He plays hard-core speed metal on a deep 18" bass drum. And all that double bass drum stuff comes out clear because it's so responsive and fast.

TD: Plus it's easier to haul around.

JM: Yeah. I wish I had one kit and one set of cymbals that would work for everything-that's really what I want. I'm not so hip to carrying five cymbal bags and eight different snare drums to every studio gig. It's good to have them, but I usually end up using the one I like anyway! [laughs]

Usually if I bring five snare drums to a studio, I normally end up with the one that I know I'm going to end up using, that 4x14" birch snare drum. It seems to work with almost any type of situation. If I'm doing a lot of side stick, then I'll use another drum because the side stick sound on the 4" birch is a little on the thin side. I can usually get away with it because you use side stick only maybe 8% of the time.

TD: What's the deal with your cymbals? I heard you switched from Paiste to Sabian.

JJM: I liked the darker sound quality. When I switched, Sabian was the only manufacturer of that size who could make genuine hand-hammered cymbals. I just wanted that sound, and Paiste didn't have it. The people at Sabian were very nice and supportive-Bill Zildjian has kindly sent me some special models-so I decided to switch and I've been with them for about eight or nine years now.

TD: So you're using the HH series?

JM: Right now, yeah. I've been playing a lot of amplified music with electric guitars lately, and we've been working to get the hand-hammered sensitivity with enough edge to cut through distorted guitars. Personally I prefer small cymbals to big ones. I'm not a sustain fan; I like my cymbals to be more splashy with about the same sustain as a drum.

TD: Obviously you need to have a wide range of cymbals to cover various situations, but what do you prefer to use?

JM: What I have here in this practice room is basically the main axe. For hats I use HHX 13" hats or 14" AA's. Sometimes I use 15" AA's with sizzles for heavy rock stuff, but most of the time it's the 13" HHX. I've been using a second set of hi-hats every once in a while. They're either 10" mini-hats or the 15" sizzles set slightly open.

Next to that I usually I set up a 12" HHX splash followed by my main crash cymbal, a 17" HHX. On the right side I have a 15" HHX studio crash, and a 16 or 18" HH thin Chinese. Sometimes I'll stack a 16" crash on a hi-hat clutch above the Chinese cymbal with a with just a little air in between. I do it because the response of just a Chinese cymbal would be too prominent within the set. This way I still get the trashy texture of a Chinese cymbal but it blends better with the rest of my set.

Ride cymbals-oh, my God. Sometimes I use the 21" Ed Shaughnessy ride, but I've been working with Sabian on a special ride. This one is like a Leopard ride, but it's shaped more like a crash cymbal. It has a similar response to the regular Leopard, but it's a little more lively.

We're still working on it. Ultimately it will be darker and have a little more spread, not be as dry. I'm looking for that Tony Williams sound when he was playing with Miles-a deep, cooking kind of sound-but with enough definition to cut through amplified music. If I get that sound and this type of feel from a ride cymbal, I'll be very happy and I'll use it for everything.

TD: Let's get a little background on how you got from Switzerland to here.

JM: I was a commercially successful as a drummer in Switzerland but artistically unsatisified. I saw myself becoming a corporate drummer in Switzerland, getting called for studio gigs for dumb stuff. I just always wanted to play with my heroes, and very much informed myself about what was going on over here. Switzerland doesn't have much of a music scene so I left and lived in Vienna; I was also in Germany a lot.

Then when I was about 26 I decided that if I really wanted to do what I wanted to do, it would be impossible in Europe, so I took the plunge and came to the United States. It was a great economic sacrifice because I was working a lot in Europe. The thing that gave me the confidence to come over here was that I had backed up a lot of American musicians who played in Europe, people like Monty Alexander, Dizzy Gillespie, James "Blood" Ulmer, lots of guys. I also did some recording with John Zorn, and when I got here immediately things were happening.

TD: You came directly to New York City?

JM: Yeah. The first day I got to New York, I met John Zorn on the street and he asked me to do a gig that night, but then I went through a period when I did not play.

TD: How come?

JM: I was not connected enough to get into the gig circuit, to get the sideman thing. Right now, if you look at the city of New York, it's like the capital of the music and recording and entertainment industry, and considering its size and potential, I have to say at this point the music scene in New York sucks. There's not too many really great bands out there and yet the potential is enormous, there are so many great musicians in New York. Compared to what was going on in New York 20 years ago, it's really kind of sad.

So I looked around and realized everybody was just trying to survive. I came over here to make something special, so I tried to do a band thing. With the Torsos I found the people who had the right chemistry, the right vision, and the right aesthetics, which is very important to me.
Also, they had the commitment to do what it takes to put it together. It was David Fiuczynski's band and they had different drummers before I joined, but I realized it was the kind of band I wanted to join and put my playing and writing effort into.

I put a lot of work into that, and it turned out to be the right thing to do because it took a while, but people eventually began to notice the band. Unfortunately the record business is not necessarily inclined to develop new stuff which is borderline, which the band definitely is, so I don't know what the future of the band is gonna be.

I split for personal reasons plus it's probably time for me to do my own thing. I've written a lot of material that I wanted to do but that didn't quite fit into what the Torsos do. I do write music and produce a little bit too, so my next endeavor will probably be to find the right people to do the material I've already got.

TD: What kind of sound are you going after? You did "Wedding in Sarajevo" and "Word to Herb" on the Torsos album and they're distinctly different kinds of songs.

JM: "Wedding in Sarajevo" is not the kind of song I would typically write. I wrote that song for Dean 'cause I thought he could sing it; it's a harmonically complex tune with a lot of changes, and I don't usually write things like that. I like music with energy, I like music with the element of surprise, and I do like improvisation a lot. I like drama in the sense of pacing or seeing a Hitchcock movie or a good show. I like the visual and entertainment aspect of music, too; they come second to the sound, but it gives me a chill if it's well done.

Musically I've been trying to assimilate all these different influences which are sometimes totally contrary, but I'm definitely gonna use the textures of modern dance music, as far as sound goes: all that jungle drums & bass stuff, hip-hop, trip-hop.

TD: What is trip-hop?

JM: It's kind of an instrumental version of hip-hop. They use the same drum loops, there's a lot of analog synths; it's an ambient kind of thing. What they call it changes every week, but it's interesting 'cause it's changing and that's what I'm interested in: evolution and change. As much as I love jazz, I don't consider myself a jazz musician in the traditional sense. I'm just a musician who's looking for borderline stuff or new stuff.

TD: All that stuff sounds like what the Torsos are already doing, so how is your thing different from their's?

JJM: That's the element which is the same. The element that might be different is that I'm not sure yet if I will do my stuff instrumentally or with vocals. That's a big difference for marketing because if you have a singer, everything will focus on that singer. If you have a great singer, everything will be great; if you don't have a good singer, it won't do anything.
If you don't have a singer, people focus more on the music, which is a positive thing. On the other hand, commercially speaking, if you do have a singer you get a lot more attention and that will be reflected in record sales.

I never did anything because of the money; I was always doing well without pursuing money. There are always compromises you have to make, and this is important, so I'm going to take my time.

I consider the decision about using a singer to be an important one, so I don't want to rush it. Probably if I find a singer who blends in with what I want to do, I'll use one, but if not, it's gonna be some new stuff. It's hard to describe, but the Torsos were hard to describe, too. What do you say? It's kind of like Living Colour with a little bit of Ornette Coleman and some other stuff.

When Santana came up and people asked what do you do, how could he describe it? "Well, it's kinda like Hendrix but with Afro-Cuban influence." Uh-huh. [laughs] And now if a band does that, people say they sound like Santana.

And that's the big tragedy about the music scene: if you're different and you have something that doesn't fit into an already existing category, executives freak out because they will have to open up a whole new market segment. They're confused because it's unknown territory and they're not good with something they've never dealt with before. They can't say, well, Springsteen did this and Whitney Houston did this, and this the new band like this, and now Bjork is the new shit, so this is what we gotta do.

They're good at doing the same thing over and over again-they've got that down-but they don't know how to deal with something new and unknown. In all fairness, there are a few really great people in the record industry, but most of them are lawyers.

The days of music people in the music industry are over. [laughs] If you're not signed, your difference is your biggest problem; once you're signed and successful, your difference is your biggest asset. And that's the big problem bands have to overcome: you have to be similar enough to get in but different enough to stand out.

TD: You were with the Torsos for about four years and tore it up at the Buddy Rich concert. You made a real impact with that, and the CD's out and selling. Wouldn't that be a platform for you to operate from for a while?

JM: Definitely, but you have to be honest with yourself. Okay, we can do another record maybe and do this and this and this, and it will take another one or two years. In the meantime I might as well do my own stuff 'cause I know it works.

TD: But knowing it works and getting someone in the record business to back it are two different things. The Torsos finally got the CD out and things are starting to happen.

JM: You never know what's going to happen. It's still a young band. We're still in touch and I just recorded something for Fuze's solo record. A band is like an organic thing that changes over the years. There are so many things that you have to deal with: outside pressure, people want you to sell more records, want you to compromise the music, want you to market it a certain way. And on the other hand, the financial returns are not that great anyway, so you might as well do some bread and butter stuff or do your own thing the way you want it and not compromise.

TD: There are only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. If you have to do the bread and butter thing to pay the rent on your drum shack here and your apartment and you gotta eat and you want to put your own thing together because it's important to you, how do you do it?

JM: Get a rich girlfriend! [laughs] Actually I've been able to work out a balance. For me, there's the bread and butter stuff; there's the industrial thing; there's drum clinics; there's recordings. I don't teach, but sometimes I do seminars.

I consider jazz to be an American export article; the appreciation for jazz is not here, it's abroad. Most of the bread to be made playing jazz is in Europe and Japan, so I've been traveling a lot.
It kinda works out good. The bread and butter stuff lets me not only play drums, it also gives me the opportunity to produce a song, to write a commercial (for a German/Swiss joint venture telecommunications company).

Stuff like this pays your rent, definitely, and actually I like doing it because it's a real challenge: you have 15 seconds of music which have to be distinctive. But it's something that I wouldn't want to do exclusively. And that's a problem because if you really want to make a lot of money, that's the way you have to do it: just focus on doing commercials all the time.
Also I went through a phase for a while-I like this, I like that-where I went more horizontally than vertically, but now I'm getting my focus together and I'm moving more vertically again.

TD: Do you have specific people in mind for what you want to do or are you still working on your own?

JM: Actually I do, but since I haven't approached them yet, I'd rather not say. [laughs] I can say they're people from the New York downtown scene-very good players and some prominent players.

TD: What kind of instrumentation are you looking at?

JM: Definitely bass, synths, and some guitars. I'm even thinking about using a DJ.

TD: Sounds kinda like Masque, Vernon Reid's outfit.

JM: [laughs] Yeah, but that's just like what I was talking about. If you're the first guy to do something, it's like you get the copyright on it. The reason for me to use a DJ is to get those textures. Hip-hop without a DJ ain't really hip-hop. They create certain textures.

I'm also thinking about doing a power trio project, just guitar, bass and drums, where the playing side is the focus. The other project will be more product-oriented. I might tour with it.
But you're right; it will take more time if you have to support yourself while you do that, but everybody does it, so I will have to do it too. [laughs]



NOTE:
"This interview was one of the first major press features on me in the US. The way Stanley Hall (editor of Talking Drums) conducted this interview was remarkably competent and sensitive. It was also very rare to be granted the privilege to fully express myself in any way i wanted. Unedited and uncensored! The interview, in retrospect, still stands the test of time in regards to many of the views expressed. Also, the attention to detail and the vast amount of information are unusual.This interview's the one I would take to that desert island...

Unfortunately, probably to its relentless journalistic spirit and the unwillingness to compromise its content comercially, Talking Drums went out of business. But this beautiful and exquisitely crafted article stands legacy to that great magazine. Thanks Stanley! J.M ."

[Terry Branam]

Yes, I remember picking up that magazine when it first came out. I was already well aware of Jojo. It's cool to read through it again with a new perspective. Great stuff. There was another interview with Gene Lake in another issue that I liked a lot as well.

I'm glad to see Jojo getting the recognition he deserves. He's certainly earned it 10x over.

The new Nerve stuff is real cool.

[Andrew<3'sVinnie]

i'm loving this, although i have been mainly using it as music to do work to. is their previous album this good?

[Lucas Ives]

I think it's better.

[amoergosum]

Studio BPM, 11/13 - Nerve:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18512751