Matt & Ben have coffee part 1

Ben & I recently sat down for coffee to discuss the recent NEW YORK STALKER project and our future plans. It was sort of a way for us to make an assessment of the experience and hopefully shed some light on what inspired the whole thing and where we want to go next...

M: Let's start with the songs themselves... can you tell me about writing the song "Broken Girl"

B: Sure, "Broken Girl" was written about my ex, Christina. We had a long and very dysfunctional relationship which was fertile soil for songwriting. She wanted marriage and kids and I wanted to be a rockstar...it became living hell from which we barely recovered. Actually, she recovered well enough to get married and have kids with another man.

M: So you wrote this while you were still in the relationship with her?

B: Yes, she actually liked the song. When I showed her the video, she loved it; she said she knew it would take three girls to accurately portray her. She always hated you...

M: Yeah I think she suspected I was after you from the start. Maybe it was the skirt I was wearing when we first met.

B: Yes she knew something was up even then...she was like, "which skirt is it going to be - him or me?"

M: Well, I'd say you chose the right skirt.

B: My question to you is what made you think that song was ripe for video?

M: It immediately struck me as a very dramatic and intense song. There was a lot of self-loathing to the lyrics and the music itself was very dark - I liked how the song feels like it's building towards a certain doom, an inevitable bad ending of sorts. At least that’s the feeling the music and words kind of gave me. I liked it.

B: Well, yeah - the song becomes a self attack, I didn't want it to be a finger pointing song, so the chorus becomes more of a "you thought I'd save you from the wreckage of your life but guess again , I'm just as fucked up as you."

M: When I first described the plot of the video to you - that you would be walking around as a serial killer as we witness your prior victims being discovered - did you think "of course - that's perfect" or did it take some getting used to?

B: I thought, "Of course, that's perfect MATT," and I'm sure Christina thought the same thing... "that fucking pervert!"

M: There is an odd use of our girlfriends and ex-girlfriends with this song and the video project. You wrote the song about your ex Christina, then in the video you employed your current girlfriend Gina to play a corpse that gets dumped in a garbage heap. My ex Jen Rock played the first victim and I have to give her credit and say Jen was totally essential to us doing that video since she really liked the idea for it and agreed to take on the task of handling the make-up.

B: Oh sure Gina and Jen were huge. And Jen really rocked the makeup. When you first hit me with the idea, I remember her saying, "I want to be a dead girl!"

M: Well, she got her wish. Of the three videos we did - "Broken Girl" is the most pure horror. Were you concerned about being involved with something that could be viewed as misogynistic or hateful towards women?

B: Not at all, if you follow my career, through the What's Up Show and so on, you can see a pattern emerging: a distaste for all that is feminine and an interest revolving around seeing them made to suffer. Mom, goddamn you! Goddamn you! No, in all honesty, I think creation is creation. It has nothing to do with all that PC shit....Were you afraid that you would be considered anti woman?

M: I knew people could misconstrue my intent or otherwise think me a creep for making such a video, but what do I have to lose? People see what the want to see. I have my own values and beliefs and they're not always going to necessarily be reflected by what I create. It really helped to have the support of our girlfriends with the project in that regard - their "being OK" with the material was definitely a vote of confidence to me in moving forward. But really, at the end of the day, I don't think when you watch "Broken Girl" you get a feeling of "yeah, man, strangle that bitch!" The video's not an experience for the viewer to vicariously experience the thrill of stalking and/or killing. But this raises an interesting question in terms of the material, do you have any stalker in you when you walk the streets of NYC? Like have you ever found yourself following a woman that you're attracted to?

B: YES. I can literally walk the streets for hours behind a woman who looks particularly good from the back. I just watch though - I don't touch! It is the best free entertainment in the world - just follow a beautiful girl... WAIT that rhymes -

M: Well this segues nicely into the second song of the trilogy - "Seen a Girl." How long have you had that song kicking around your catalog of tunes?

B: Since you rejected it from God The Band!

M: Oh, is that true?

B: Don't you remember I was playing it to you and Danny Rockett in the kitchen of our house in Hatfield, PA. Everyone liked it but some were afraid it didn't "fit."

M: Hm... I don't remember that, but even so, I don't think the song would have fit with the GTB mold, if there was one. But Danny did write some similarly themed love-song tripe that managed to make the grade. I'd say it probably didn’t get picked because we didn’t want you taking over the band, Ben. We were God The Band - not Flies of the Marketplace.

B: Ouch. Well, regardless I always liked that song and was thrilled when you expressed interest in making a video for it.

M: Well, I liked the song, too, though it's not the kind of thing I would normally gravitate towards in adapting it for music video.

B: Right, it's a Beatlesy, happy thing...

M: Exactly - and it could make for a Beatlesy, cutesy sort of video if you wanted to play it safe. It’s obvious when you hear the song that you’re being sincere – it's a sweet and heartfelt little ditty. There isn’t that level of menace or twisted irony that comes off in the video.

B: Did you find some parallels between that song and "Broken Girl"?

M: No, not really. I wasn’t really seeking to make those types of connections at any point. I mean, there was a thematic connection between the ideas, but it wasn't originally worked up as a trilogy of stalker incidents. It wasn’t like “ok, we have Ben as a serial killer, now let’s see what he’s like with his mother and so on.” I think as it happened I had volunteered to work up some music video ideas for some of the songs off some of your albums and “Seen a Girl” one came out of one of those brainstorming sessions. I still have the little piece of paper where i wrote out the idea for it. Originally you were supposed to be accompanied by a trio of black female back-up singers as you were stalking your mom. Kind of a “Little Shop of Horrors” touch.

B: Damn! I miss that idea...oh is that mysogonistic?

M: No, actuallly, it was out of budget. But that’s fine - if we did have the resources to shoot the back-up singers for the video, it would have taken on a higher level of camp which would probably have been too cutesy for my taste. The way it ended up, it’s a somewhat unsettling video – especially with the revelation that this poor old woman you’re following around is your mother.

B: Who do you like in terms of horror directors?

M: Well, i think what Polanski did with the genre is somehwat unparalleled - he's easily one of my film gods, both in terms of horror and otherwise. I do like some of the Italian directors like Fulci and Argento, but they run the gamut from brilliant to just bad. You kind of need to check your brain at the door when watching that kind of stuff. It's funny - we acknowledged all these horror films that the trilogy was "paying homage" to when we sent out the press release and really, the only one with any real direct point of reference to me is John Carpenter's Halloween with all those shots of Michael Meyers stepping into frame... seeing "the shape" ominously juxtaposed against wide shots of unsuspecting victims going about their business. That stuff still gives me chills.

B: I love John Carpenter too, I just watched "The Thing" which I borrowed from you a few weeks ago and it's just amazing, gets better with age actually...someone just recently told me that the movie Halloween was shot in just a few weeks. I was like "you have got to be kidding..."

M: I notice you've written a lot of songs with the word "girl" in the title. Was "Seen a Girl" always a standalone piece or did you write it as a companion piece to something else?

B: It was written as its own song. I remember (surprisingly enough) seeing a girl on a bus and it was just love at first sight. It's weird isn't it how you can love the way a person looks and imagine what they are like and what personality they will have just by their features and expressions? You construe their intellect, their values...it's so cool, none of the bother of actually really going through a messy relationship.

M: So true - from that standpoint I'm the biggest slut of New York City.

B: Right. For me, who is generally a voyeur, that's how i exist. I go through a 5 year relationship in 30 seconds, come in my pants and then I transfer to the L train.