Scissor Sisters

I think it’s necessary for the movement of culture. It sounds a bit like propaganda magazine as a website.

If it’s anything like Propaganda magazine I sure would.

We are at the very end of our festival season. We have one more show then we are vacation back in the States. Then we do an American tour for a month.

It’s insane. Luckily we kind of popped our press cherry in the past year over in the UK. So it’s been easier to digest. We’re excited to play at home even if it is on the west coast.

We all met there. I am the only one that was born in Manhattan and everybody else moved here from somewhere else to prove to something to themselves and other people. We all met by divine intervention. I think once we all met our circle closed. It seems to close once you’ve met everyone you need to know. In the past year we haven’t been home much at all because it’s all been an overseas operation.

It was simply demand. They didn’t know what to do with us in the States. It was just confusing because we have the gay flag and people looking like they dressed up in an exploding closet. We’re a pop band that plays its own instruments and writes our own songs. There just didn’t seem to be anyone like us and that scared people. They didn’t know how to market us, we’re kind of dance, we’re kind of rock and a little flamboyant and gay.

Well I guess a lot. For whatever reason people in the UK picked up on us. I think it’s because there is still a really vibrant dance culture over there and comfortably numb was our calling card because it was a dance club hit. DJs started playing that song on our accord and people started wanting to book us. We came over and realized there was an audience for us then we slowly moved out of the dance halls and into rock venues.

[lead singer] Jake [Shears] is a big fan of Pink Floyd. He was always singing it to himself on his parent’s farm in that Bee Gees’ falsetto style. He thought it would be a really good interpretation of a song he really loved. It’s no fun to cover a song if you’re just going to rehash it. I don’t think it does anything for you, the song or any artist. The way we did it kind of twisted the meaning of the song around. It was originally a dirge about despair and heroin addiction then it became a 21st century dance anthem. As opposed to losing yourself in heroin it’s losing yourself in E. You’ve partied your life away then you look back and realize you haven’t done anything. There is kind of an element of hope in the chorus. It was never meant to be a big hit in fact it was on the B-side of the first single. But people picked up on it so we went with it.

Exactly.

We’re a bunch of stragglers that got together along the way like The Wizard of Oz. We formed totally ass backwards. Jake and Babydaddy were friends and had done music together. Because electroclash was the scene at the time, dance music was their MO. Jake was interested in writing gay disco anthems and looking for something to write with. After a couple of performances they met Anna and she invited them to perform at her club where she hosted. There was mutual freak admiration among them so they brought her on. They were a specific gay dance band and performing at bars. Then at a certain point they wanted to be a band and get up there with some kind of element of rock so they put out the word for a guitar player. Jake was dating my best friend who told him that he knew this gay guitar player that he should meet.

It went very quickly for me especially. After I came down and played over a couple of tracks I played my first live show with them about a week later. Then a week after that we got invited to the UK to play our first shows soon after that we got our drummer, Paddy Boom. He is a kindred spirit even though he is straight but sometimes I’m not even sure of that after I see him posing in photographs.

There is conflict all the time. That’s just the nature of a band. Some are intellectuals others are tech geeks and we’re all just ragamuffins with our own sense of identity. We agree on disagreeing a lot but the goal seems to be same and that is to have fun.

It was amazing. He was so generous. You never know what to expect but he was so nice. He came into our dressing room and talked with us for like an hour. It was really fun. Whether or not you are a huge fan of his he does make an impression and is quite stupefying. The audiences were slightly more sedate than we are used to. It was a sit down atmosphere but we still had a great time.

Oh yeah. All of our parents are very into the band. My parents give me flack because I don’t tell them enough all the time so I just tell them to go on the message boards. Now I don’t have to rehash what I’ve done but I specifically tell my parents not to post.

Because it’s crossing some weird parent/child line with me. I regress to a 12 year old boy telling his parents not to come into my room. We’re very open people with our parents but there is line even we don’t like to cross. We don’t want our parents answering questions from fans like when we changed from wearing diapers to pants.

I was 15 and I think Jake came out about the same time. Even though Jake and I are so different in our personalities we have a lot of parallels. We were both precocious teenagers and we were very aware of our sexuality from day one. It was just a matter of time. I think Babydaddy came out in his late 20’s. Now it’s not even an issue with our families.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck