mattinterview2

VOX: You write on the topic of death quite a bit. Why the fascination?

MG: It's one of those eventualities. It's inevitable.

VOX: I like the concept of being dead longer that you're alive.

MG: Well, it's the truth. You can spend your life pondering meaningless shit or get it through your head that death is eventual and feel much better about things. All I know is I hope heaven isn't some place you spend eternity with a bunch of over-exposed Presbyterians. That would be my idea of hell. I bet there'll be no fucking orgies there. It'll all be with the lights off. I want none of that.

VOX: Obviously, you write plenty. What's the last thing you read or are currently reading?

MG: I kinda have two things going; a collection of poems and a commentary on Dante's Inferno. In terms of proper novels, I recently finished Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky and others, and I read the Orwell book, Animal Farm, while I was up in Whistler on vacation. The trick for me now is finding books I haven't read that will interest me.

VOX: Are you addicted to anything?

MG: Hmmm�Twins.

VOX: Why has it taken so damn long for you to release a record in the US?

MG: Cuz I enjoy being able to walk around Disneyland without being recognized. I already have that problem in one country. It's cool to be famous here, but there are so many great vacation spots in the States that I can go and enjoy and not worry about getting spotted.
Really, I guess a lot of it has to with the fact that we live in a time when the record companies are the fucking celebrities. They control the trends and put out what they want to. I'm about 30 now, so I guess it's not as big of a deal to me. Maybe if I was 22 I would be going nuts trying to break in the US, but not now. If it happens, great.

VOX: What are the differences between American fans and Canadian fans?

MG: They live further south.

VOX: You don't see any difference between the crowds?

MG: There is a certain amount of devotedness that occurs with American fans when they really fucking get into a band that maybe doesn't happen here. We have this guy Andrew from Phoenix that we call the Superfan. This guy is really committed to us. He's seen us in New York, all over Canada and in Europe, too. He works for an airline, so I guess it might be easier for him, but we'll be playing a show somewhere and there's Andrew at sound check hanging out. He's the Superfan. The guy has seen us on 3 fucking continents! I don't know if Canadian fans would go that far. Americans are more fanatic.

VOX: Lets talk about the music now. Was there something you wanted to get across on Beautiful Midnight? Was there a central theme?

MG: The record is really all about my past. It's me exorcising my demons. There are the three songs off of Underdogs, so it's a bit watered down, and in retrospect I shouldn't have done it and I probably wouldn't do it again, but it's really just dealing with the past and getting some stuff out.
Every song I write and each record is about something, I think. I'm old enough now that I didn't want to come off sounding rash like some 23-year-old. Age makes a big difference in how you write.

VOX: "Hello Time Bomb" is really a great song - tell me about it.

MG: Like that will ever get played in fucking LA. You really live in a Catch-22 area there in LA - KROQ is way too fucking important, and you need KROQ to play you to get hot and they only play what's hot to them. How it works is that if KROQ fucking plays you and your not hot after three weeks then they drop you and you'll never get played anywhere else. Three weeks is all you get. That is one station with more power than the bands. It's fucking dangerous.
People think that payola doesn't exist in America any more but it does. Why do you think bands play radio shows for free and do in-stores for nothing? Why would Kid Rock play a fucking free radio show for 60,000 people when he could be getting paid a $100,000 to play his own concert? It's because he knows that the fucking radio station will spin him bigger for doing it. So, while there may not be payola in the old sense, they've just changed how it's done and found a way around it.
That's why I think the CanComm thing is fine. The stations are required to play 20% Canadian content. The independent bands get their due and the stations are forced to play them. It works. It's too bad that the states, I mean the individual states, don't offer something like that. With all the really good bands in California that never get played, it would force radio to give them a chance�

VOX: Yeah, California would do fine, but a state like Iowa might get fucked�

MG: [Laughs] Yeah, Iowa stations might be forced to play some bad shit, but that would then get kids motivated to make some better music because they know it would get played.

VOX: What's the last day job you had?

MG: What the fuck was the last day job I had? I think it was undercover store security. Yeah, I was working in shipping in receiving from 5 am 'til noon, then undercover security in the same store from noon 'til 9.

VOX: That's a long day.

MG: Six days a week at that. That's what you have to do when you're a kid and you think it's cool to move out with your girlfriend. They you come home six months later and she's leaving with all the good shit and you're stuck with a fucking thousand dollar Ikea bill. That's the kind of shit you do when you're young.

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