OPM INTERVIEW
Southern California’s OPM has been bumping its summer reggae and hip hop style for many years now and even though the band has gone through many evolutions it show no signs of slowing down. In fact this year saw OPM do some of its most extensive overseas touring to date. Back on the mainland just momentarily, before heading over to Hawaii for a short tour, vocalist John e Necro stops by The Pier for a nice long chat.
The Pier: So you just got back recently from Japan. Were you well received by the crowds over there and do you have any interesting tales?
John e Necro: Yeah definitely. It was our first time over there and we didn’t really know what to expect and it was awesome. Oh, one night we ate raw horse meat. You know it was pretty good once you got over the fact that you were eating raw horse. We also ate raw liver one time too.
The Pier: Did the horse taste like chicken (haha)?
John e Necro: Yeah kind of actually. It had that raw texture of eating raw chicken.
The Pier: Yeah sounds real tasty. Hang on while I go find a bucket. You also toured the UK this year and even filmed a video there for the track Rock Me Slow. What was that like?
John e Necro: That was our second time there this year. There is a castle in the video, which is in a city called Carlisle. When I first saw it I thought it would be a great place to shoot a video. So the second time we went back we brought the guy who does our video stuff and shot the video there and at some other locations where we had days off.
It is a lot of fun to go over there. It is quite a bit different to touring here. Like with the food and customs. While we have a lot of the English traditions here you can see where they hit a fork in the road and went a different direction at some point.
The Pier: Yeah and you are about to head out the door again and are going to Hawaii soon? Now that must be exciting?
John e Necro: Oh yeah we are stoked. We have never played any shows in Hawaii. My dad lives over there so we are going to stay with him for a little bit and surf. He actually has an ice cream factory over there on the big island. So we are going to eat tons of ice cream.
The Pier: Nice. Now OPM has gone through some significant changes of the years, with Matthew leaving the band and Big B coming and going. Has it ever been really hard to deal with?
John e Necro: Yeah the initial band was Geoff, Matthew and myself. Since Matthew was there since the beginning, him leaving made it kind of difficult and the bass player and drummer who had joined the band at that time left too. So it just came down to me and Geoff. We started writing our second record and we brought Big B in.
Since then we have had people weaving in and out. Big B is still around, but he started doing his solo records and they were doing really good. So when it came time to do the third record he could only come in and do a couple of songs. That was ok because we wanted to do that record very live and felt very confident with the band we had at that point. This new record we have already written a bunch of new songs together with Big B. We have enough material now that if Big B can’t tour with us it won’t really affect the set.
(Big B & John e Necro face off)
The Pier: So during that difficult time when Matthew left the band was OPM something you knew you still wanted to keep doing? Did you ever think about calling it quits?
John e Necro: No, because I had pretty much created this concept of what the band was so my vision was still very clear with where I wanted to go. We knew we weren’t going to be on a major label anymore, but we thought we had a really good chance to survive on an independent label. We thought we had a better chance than starting over with something new and to take advantage of the fact that Atlantic Records spent a lot of money getting our name out there. So it just seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.
The Pier: So what’s it like being on Suburban Noize Records compared to being on a major label?
John e Necro: There’s a lot more freedom creatively. When we did that record (Menace to Sobriety) with Atlantic we constantly had A&R guys in the studio with us and that sort of changed things. At that time Atlantic’s strength was in radio and all the bands they had signed at the time were doing well on radio. So they kind of had this formula that worked on the radio so they wanted us to make every song a radio song. Which is incredibly inhibiting when you are writing songs. You want to be free just to write good songs not songs just for the radio.
With Suburban Noize you don’t have to worry about that, but on the flipside there is not as much money around and stuff like that.
The Pier: You did have a lot of guests on that first album (Angelo Moore, DJ Swamp, Ozomatli, Molotov). Did you choose those guests or was that the record company pressure then?
John e Necro: Those were all my picks of people I wanted to work with. It was sort of a dream situation for me to be in. Maybe some of the guys might not have come in if we didn’t have the money.
The Pier: Now that I think of it, was it difficult to get the permission to use the bass line from Jane’s Addiction Mountain Song on Stash Up?
John e Necro: Yeah it was and not only that everyone in Jane’s Addiction has a writing credit on that song, so all of them got a piece. We also used a sample from Biggie Smalls on that record and that took a huge chunk. We basically got zero publishing on that track.
The Pier: When you were writing Heaven is a Half Pipe back then did you think it was going to this huge hit?
John e Necro: I guess, but at the time we thought that every song we wrote was going to be a huge hit. Heaven did jump out from all the other ones though. We actually brought all the demos we had written to MCA before we had written that song and they wanted to sign us before we had even did it. That got a buzz going on us even though at that point we had only written four songs. So we had to write a bunch more and that’s when we wrote Heaven and we did know that was our best song. So when we did our next bunch of demos we sent that out as the first song and it was the one Atlantic bid on to do the deal with us.
At the end of the day you can never tell if a song is going to be successful. I think we have written songs that are better than that and would never be a hit.
The Pier: Geoff and yourself have always been a part of the band. That’s quite a few years together. That must be a really special relationship?
John e Necro: Yeah he is like my brother you know? We have done so much stuff together and it seems like the only part of my life that has any meaning is me being in this band. So he is a big part of that. Even the whole band we have together now is very tight knit compared to anything else that was there before.
That’s because the tours we do now are a lot more work. When we were on Atlantic we had all this tour support so it was all pretty easy in a sense, however the guys in the band then complained all the time and if they had any idea how difficult it is now there is no way they would have stuck around. The fact that Geoff and I have stuck together as long as we have is pretty incredible.
The Pier: So when you started it was basically just you, Slightly Stoopid and LBDA going around at the time. What do you think of it about the scene today, now that there is hundred’s of bands playing this reggae rock hyrbid?
John e Necro: I am super down for it and super supportive of it. I feel like what happened during that time when Sublime came about, the third ska movement became huge like with No Doubt and it became so big that it burned itself into the ground. During that time Sublime took the ska and punk rock and were mixing in the reggae and the hip hop at the same time. At that time that is what seemed like the evolution of music. It was so new and fresh compared to anything related to ska or punk rock. It seemed that’s where the music needed to go.
So when ska crashed the labels wanted nothing to do with ska bands. So Slightly Stoopid and us tried to take it to another level where we were incorporating more hip hop and picking more reggae influences that were in hip hop. So we tried to steer away from ska and now its catching back into that style. It’s crazy, cause a lot of the kids now weren’t around back then and never saw Sublime play live and for them Sublime is like Led Zepplin to our generation. Something that was over, but never got old.
Hopefully now, this reggae hip hop rock style can be the most dominate genre and we can sit back and say well we stuck with it through the hard times and didn’t change when other popular music was changing. We still love doing what we do anyway so that’s what matters.
We are always looking for bands to play with around home and a while ago we always had to try and fit in on a bill with bands that weren’t even close to what we were doing. Now we are doing shows where the whole line-up seems like we should play together. So it’s really cool. We try to be as supportive as we can. Geoff and I also produce a lot of stuff and work on records with these guys.
(OPM live in Japan)
The Pier: So you have started work on your fourth album, what can you tell us about the recording process for it so far? Are you recording it at your own MNO studios?
John e Necro: Have you heard of band called Dumbluck? We are good friends with the singer Jim. We have done a couple of tracks with him in the past. One was Lion’s Pride from California Poppy and another one with him that will come out on the b-sides CD/DVD. He and his partner have a production team in a big huge house out in the Valley. They have basically converted the whole house into a recording studio. So we are going to do it there with them.
The last record we wanted it to be sort of live, but I wanted to be able to go back and program some beats like the other two records which is a big part of our sound. You know like the David Kahne element on the Sublime record? We had a deadline on California Poppy and we went through and recorded everything so fast I didn’t get to spend the time I needed. I only got to spend 10% of my time actually doing the vocals and never got the chance to go back and do the other production stuff. So on this record we have put together a team of people instead of just myself working on it.
We have about 20 songs written and we are going to start narrowing those down. We are going to get five songs done before we leave for Hawaii, do five more before Xmas and then spend time in January and February doing some songs, doing the vocals and mixing the thing. It will be pretty much non-stop till March 1st.
The Pier: The band has also started work on its first DVD (Open People’s Minds) and are aiming for a Spring release. What can you tell us about it at this stage?
John e Necro: It’s basically a documentary from the beginning of the band and actually even before that it kinda goes into what Geoff and I were doing before we were in this band together. It covers the whole history of OPM and we are still filming as we are editing and it keeps getting longer and longer. We really wanted to get the UK stuff, the Japan Tour and hopefully we will get the Hawaiian Tour on there too.
It is also going to come out with a CD that will have remixes of tracks we have done over the years. Including newer versions of Heaven is a Half Pipe and Stash Up and b-sides that have come out on international releases over the years.
The Pier: Is it going to have the Luffly video on it? You can see where I may be going with this? (For those who don’t know Luffly was shot in conjunction with a porno shoot)
John e Necro: Oh yeah. It is going to have all the videos we have done over the years. We are going to have footage from the Luffly shoot on the video including behind the scenes of the porno shoot. They also did interviews with us on that shoot, so that will be included.
The Pier: Did you actually get to see them filming the porno movie as you were making your video?
John e Necro: Oh yeah, we shot some of our video, take a break, watch them shoot their stuff and go back and forth. It was pretty awesome. Basically the director had used some of our stuff in some of his movies and he didn’t have any money to pay for the rights so instead he offered to do a video for us for free. That movie he did was pretty big budget so he could easily work our video into the whole thing.
They have actually started playing that video on the Playboy channel, so we are getting all these phone calls now asking if we are in this porno. And I guess we are (haha).
Thanks John for spending some time with The Pier and be sure to check out the following web-sites: