Mark Gemini Thwaite, in full

0:03How [music] long does this be going on? [music] How long does this be going [music] on [music] persuasion? Don't admit that it's part of a scheme. But I can't have a suspicion cuz I ain't quite [music] as dumb as I see. And you said you was never to bring up a seed in this way. But there ain't [music] you pretending it could happen to us any day. Oh, [music] this is going. Hi friends, this is Unwritten Rules of the Road. I am Tash. Um, and join with me today. I am so excited and so grateful. um the incredible Mark Gemini Thuait um who is legendary in in in the

1:31work that he has created um incredible prolific work um working as a guitarist for people like Peter Murphy and Gary Newman and Tricky and there's a huge list um but um I I just wanted to say thank you Mark so much for for joining us uh today before we dive in.

1:51Yeah, it's good to be here. How's everybody doing?

1:56Well, I I for one am super excited. Uh this is an awesome way to kick off February. Um happy happy February 1st, everyone. We have made it to the other side of January. Um how are you today, Mark?

2:11I'm good. Yeah. Um um yeah, look was out last night uh with my wife Ashley. Uh she was DJing at the at the Bondage Ball in downtown LA at the at the Globe Theater, which was a nice Victorian theater, so uh yeah, you know, we had a bit of a late night, so just bear with

2:30Well, I I appreciate you you being here. Um I know you have a lot on deck this year. Um for for for starters, I I know that you were going to be going on the road pretty soon with the Wonder Stuff um in the UK. Yeah. Yeah. We we uh The Wonder Stuff is a band I joined um around um 2018. I was recording with them in 2018 cuz I'm I was longtime friends with the singer Miles and uh and yeah, we they're pretty prolific in the UK. They tour every year. So, we're going to be going back and doing some more shows I think

3:07in May, but we've actually got shows scattered throughout the year. We're doing like a festival with uh a bunch of bands in May called Gigantic, like a one-day festival. I know that um Peter Hook, you know, from New Order, uh his band is doing it and a bunch of other cool bands as well.

3:25That sounds really exciting. I I was wondering like how how are you how do you get ready for something like that?

3:32Well, with the Wonder Surf, you know, we we we just toured actually uh over there in uh December. So, um, yeah, usually we just get together for a few days and we bash the songs out. I usually prepare like with any tour. I'll just, um, you know, go over the the recordings with the guitar and refresh my memory. Um, but yeah, just the usual sort of thing, going through the songs in my spare time and then we get together and rehearse and off we go.

3:59Yeah. And especially since um, you're located in different locations, I imagine you have to be really prepared when you're together. Yeah, I'm coming the furthest. You know, I live in um I live near Santa Monica, Los Angeles. Uh I've been here about 20 years. I'm originally from Birmingham, UK. Um but prior to moving to America, I lived in London for like 16 years. So, I'm I'm flying from over here. Uh the rest of the band all live in the UK, but in various ends of the UK, except for Erica, the violin player. She moved to Paris a few years ago, so she comes in from Paris. We're we're definitely

4:42I imagine that it's a it's a very happy reunion to be able to to fly back home and see friends and family as well.

4:50Yeah. Yeah. I like I like the fact that with the Wonder Surf I get to come back to the UK, you know, several times a year. And uh yeah, I usually invariably get a night or two in at my mom's. I'll go, my mom lives in a place called Lichfield. So, I'll go and stay in Lichfield for a night or two and uh see my mom and my sister, my stepdad and all the, you know, my family that live in that area and then I'll go and meet with the band and uh we'll go off and make some noise. So, yeah, definitely like getting back to the UK.

5:20That's awesome. Are you uh going to be doing a series of dates while you're while you're there?

5:25Uh we're doing three shows in in May. Uh I think uh Rock Nottingham Rock City, a show in a town called Straoud, which I have don't think I've played there before with Glosters and um and then the Gigantic One Day Festival, which is in the Bristol area. And then we've got some other festivals this year. We got one in July. I should have written them down, but there's one in July. I think it's um might be Sunshine Festival in Devon, I think. I could be getting these places wrong. In the UK, then we got a show in uh Ireland. um Republic of Ireland in August with like Echo and the

6:00Bunnyman and James and a bunch of other cool bands like Madness and stuff. That's in um that's in August. And then I know there's like I think there's talk of like a bigger tour maybe in October into November I believe. So it's going to be quite a busy year with the Wonders stuff which is great.

6:20Yeah, absolutely. Um, I I was curious actually, is there uh a difference in the way that you tour uh between the UK and Ireland? Um, and and around Europe in general.

6:33Uh, well, usually if you're going into Europe, you know, you're going to be on a tour bus. Uh, in fact, when we tour the UK with the Wonder Surf, we're we're usually on a tour bus. Um, even though obviously the UK is a lot smaller than um than the US, uh, yeah, it's still nice to just be able to play a show and then go back on the bus and crawl into your bunk and then, yeah, wake up in the next city. And that's certainly the way you would do it when you're going into Europe. I imagine with Ireland though with it being like a one-off show and

7:02it's not part of a tour per se. I imagine we'll probably maybe we'll fly in or maybe we'll get a bus for a couple of days and then take the ferry to Ireland with the the gear and the the band on the bus, do the show and then drive back. You know, I haven't actually discussed or found out how we're doing that oneoff show yet. I mean, I might end up just flying into Ireland. We'll have to see, you know, because I'm coming to the US, you know.

7:32We haven't even talked about it. Feels feels far away. You know, that's in

7:37But still, it's like, you know, that's on the horizon. So, um

7:40Yeah, definitely. It's been a little while since I've been in Ireland. Uh you know, sometimes you'll tour the UK. Oh, I've gone blurred. Uh sometimes, um you tour the UK and um you don't even get to place of an island. it sometimes logistically just doesn't tie in. So, it's been a little while. I think the last time I was in Ireland was with Peter Murphy where we did some shows there in Dublin. So, uh yeah, it' be nice to um to be back there after so long.

8:10I I am excited for you. I'm I'm actually halfIrish, so it's a bucket list of mine to one day get to visit there. So,

8:17Oh, yeah. Check it out. It's a beautiful uh city. Uh sorry, beautiful country. Sorry. Dublin is a beautiful city and it's very green. It's very It's just a great time. People are really friendly there. I do I got a lot of time for

8:31Yeah, it's great.

8:33Yeah. I mean, I imagine with all the touring that you've done, you've gotten to see so many amazing places around the Yeah, I've definitely been to a lot of places with all the various bands from as far north as, you know, Russia and uh yeah, the northern northern parts of Sweden. I remember doing a festival with the Mission uh in like northern Sweden, the Mission UK to you guys. Um where um it like never got dark because we were so far north it would just stay like d it would just stay like dusk, you know, for most of the day, you know. So that was kind of weird. I think we ended up

9:10going on stage at something crazy like 4:00 a.m. and it was still light. So uh and then I've gone down to places like um played in South Africa like Cape Town, Johannesburg and sa southern South America down to Argentina, Chile with Peter and the mission and uh Brazil and been to Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan. So, I've gone to a lot of places that may and of course mainland Europe, a lot of places that maybe I wouldn't have gone to check out just as a tourist, you know.

9:44Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what a great way to do it too is like through your

9:51Yeah. Yeah. Of course, it sounds super glamorous, but the uh you know, life on the road, it's just really grueling traveling. Like, for example, like I went to Australia with Peter Murphy uh a few years ago. We were doing the um uh 40 years of Bow House celebration and we had David Jay on bass. So it was basically half of Bow House and then me on guitar and um uh uh Mark Slutzky, American drummer. [clears throat] This was before they just before they reformed again. And so we were celebrating 40 years of Bow House, I think the first album. And um we did some Australian dates. One of the first

10:30things I think we did when I rejoined Pete's band was to do these Australian dates and uh it sounds great but then you find out that Australia is so vast you don't really get a tour bus there it's not practical. So what you have to do is say start in Adelaide and play a show and then the following morning you got to get up at the crack of dawn, get on a plane and fly to the next town, might be Sydney or somewhere like that and then play that show and then the next morning get up at the crack of dawn off to the airport and fly to uh

11:00Melbourne and do that show and then the next morning get up at the crack of dawn and fly to Brisbane and so you can imagine what that's like day after day after day getting up you're playing a show exhausted late night you know It takes you a while to wind down after a show, you know, the adrenaline and uh and you're getting up at the crack door. So, after a few days of this, you're like, you're just like a zombie and you're still trying to play these shows and you sometimes don't have any energy or time to actually go and check out say the city that you're in, you know? So,

11:29I've been to some cities where I've barely I've looked out of a taxi window, you know, or a a tour bus window, but I've not actually really had a chance to check out that city. So, uh, I do on days off I do try to make a point of, you know, going and checking out where I am, you know, cuz we get this

11:47we get this opportunity to travel to these amazing places and you got to make the most of it. But, yeah, it could be really grueling on tour, especially with what we call fly dates like that.

11:58Yeah. I mean, it's amazing because from the footage I've seen of you, um, you still bring so much energy um, to your performances. So, I was curious like how do you how do you have the stamina? Like what do you how you is it a matter of pacing yourself from day to day?

12:16Um yeah, I don't know. I mean um I mean I'm not a heavy drinker, you know, so I don't suffer from hangovers too much. You have one or two beers at most and I'm good. And you know, I'm not a prolific drug taker or anything like So, I guess I don't know. Maybe I just uh I've still got some stamina to be able to sort of jump around a bit, you know, or it's youth youth for exuberance in my old age. I don't know. [laughter]

12:41I like to think it's the music.

12:43Yeah, I like to think it's the music.

12:45Get into the music and yeah, you just um you just get into it. I don't really think about it, you know. Yeah. Like some people will say, "Oh, wow, man. You were really jumping around a lot, you know, at that show last night or whatever." And I probably didn't even think about it. I was just playing, you know, I was just in in the moment.

13:05I imagine [clears throat] that's probably um how you you're able to be so prolific with all of the projects that you're involved with is just really being inside the music in in in in a very present way.

13:17Yeah, I just I just try and keep busy. A lot of it's very organic. um you know so um some years will be fairly quiet you know certainly it got really quiet during the pandemic where all the touring grounds to a halt you know I was about to go I was about to go on tour with Lords of Acid actually um I'd been asked to sort of tour with those guys um when was this so this was um you know early 2020 you know before the pandemic well the tour had been booked for a few months so I knew it was coming and it was going to kick off um in mid-March

13:51and the rehearsals were going to be in Los Angeles and um so we we actually got together and rehearsed and the guys flew over like uh Prager Khan and that flew over from and uh and Marie the singer flew over from Belgium because they're a Belgium band and we rehearsing the whole bit and then the day before the first show which was going to be Los Angeles um yeah we we knew the pand the the co virus was spreading and the day Before our first show, we were told, "Okay, venues have put a cap on a maximum of 250 people." Even that sounds exuberant now because if you remember, they ended

14:28up saying no gigs at all. Yeah. No public gatherings at all. But they'd put this cap on 250 people per venue and we were doing like theaters. So, it wasn't going to work out financially. So, immediately the day before the first show, that whole Lords of Asen tour was postponed while we wait. We rode out the whole pandemic. Um, and then then it was just crickets for probably a year or two where nobody was playing or no none of the bands I was involved with were playing. Peter was out doing Bow House who had reformed the year after I did those shows with him and David and their

15:03whole thing got rescheduled or paused as well. And so nobody was touring. And so I had a few months of real downtime where I just had to, you know, I kind of focused on uh raising my kittens [laughter] and I was I was with my new girlfriend actually at the time. You know, we had got married last year, but so we were together and sort of enjoying each other's company and raising our cats that we've got uh Toki and Chulip. And uh I I focused on doing a like a lot of musicians I focused on working in the studio like writing material and u doing

15:38some longdistance collaborations like with I was working with um Paul Ferguson from Killing Joke, Chris Connelly uh who uh was in um you know Revolting Cox and you know Ministry and a bunch of bands and I was doing various long distance things and I was out there for hire to work on you know hey I'll record guitar on your song or bass on your songs. I was doing a lot of long-distance stuff like that in my home studio. And then it started picking, you know, live work started picking back up like with the wonder stuff started booking shows again and I started flying out to the UK in uh

16:13and onwards from there. Uh so like so I guess what I'm getting at some years can be quiet, you know, and then other years can get busy. I feel like this year is probably going to be a busy one, you know, bunch more Wonder Stuff shows. They've got new management. Uh, I I did some shows with um another new project I did was with um Martin Atkins, the the the the Public Image Limited drummer who was also in Killing Joke. Uh he put together this uh Extremities live performance where we were going to do the uh Killing Joke Extremities album in full. That was an album that Martin had

16:50played on and co-wrote and uh it was partly to honor Jordi the guitarist as well who had died. So I was invited to get involved in that and I'm a huge killing joke fan. So that's something that we did last November. We had like various guest stars like Randy Bllythe from Lamb of God who get up got up for a bunch of songs and Tara Bouch from Ice Speak Machine did a bunch of songs and uh Dirt Flanigan and uh you Justin uh Justin Pearson on bass and uh Orville Klein and Martin Natkins on drums and that was a real celebration of Killing Joke and that was in Chicago. We did it

17:28at Reges in Chicago. We did three nights there. Um, and we're talking about bringing that to sort of the UK this year. And I'm trying to encourage Martin to consider maybe doing a West Coast run, East Coast run. So, yeah, hopefully Extremities will will come to a town near you soon. And then, so that's going on this year. I've been recording a new album, a side project with a project called Absolute Power, which is kind of like um this one's a curveball for some people, but it makes sense for me. It's like a traditional like heavy metal. It's like um yeah, if you think like Judas Priest

18:07and Scorpions and bands like that from the 80s, it's kind of in that kind of ballpark. And uh it's friends of mine who were doing it. Uh Simon Effe, the singer also works uh with me in the wonder surf like he's a fantastic sound engineering. Uh he's working with Shane Embry from Napal Deaf and Johnny from Napal Deaf on guitar and I was asked if I'd want to do some league guitar on it because uh Simon and I go way back UK in the 80s and I used to play in some heavy metal bands in the 80s. So he knew that it would be uh something I would

18:42appreciate. So that I think that album I just heard the mixes the other day. It sounds fantastic. So that album's coming out. I forget the name of the label, but it's coming out in the summer. And I think we're talking about maybe doing some festival shows for that.

18:55So, I got Absolute Power going on, which is, like I said, it's like heavy metal, you know.

19:02You know, catchy anthemic choruses, the whole bit. So, that's that's been a lot of fun. I do like to keep things varied, as you can imagine, uh, over the years. you know, I've got from doing Tricky to Peter to um some heavy metal to um the Wonder stuff, which is basically kind of like indie rock, you know? Um

19:23they're all I mean, I guess it's all rock and roll, you know what I mean? But it's I try and keep it varied.

19:29Yeah. And there's your solo project as well, which I love that it highlights your different voices on guitar. like I feel like you you you're so um you're so prolific and and yet it's also like you have so many different sounds. So I think that's really really cool that you explore that in your solo work as well.

19:49Right. I think part of the way that happens is um I mean I ended up doing a solo record during like one of those quiet years where I didn't have much going on. Um and um I was sitting on a bunch of demos that I'd written over the years, you know, and some of those demos might have been written for one of the bands I was in and some of the demos might have been written for another band I was in or and then some of the demos were just written for myself and they were quite varied and I just was like, you know what? Um,

20:19I'm going to do a solo album just because uh it would be nice on my discoraphy to just have one album where that that's my own thing instead of being, you know, guest guitarist with this band and guest guitarist with that band. And um and so I I kind of I came up with the idea that I would approach uh I'd done this project called Primitive Race, which is like an industrial they called it an industrial super group. I don't know about that, but it was like a bunch of guys from various industrial bands, you know, guys from Pop Will Eat Itself, Raymond Watts from Pig, um,

20:55uh, one of the guys from Skinny Puppy, um, myself, and we were, you know, various musicians were like long distance collaborating on demos and it was like various different singers on it and I s thought, oh, because I don't like singing. I don't see myself as a singer. No, no, I've never any urge to be a singer. I want to give it a go. I said, "Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll I'll send out these demos that I'm sitting on that have built up over the years and to my various music uh my various singer friends that I've gotten to know. Some I've toured with and then

21:29some are just become friends and I'll see if they'll sing on this stuff and tell them, yeah, it's going to be for like a solo album with guest vocalists, you know. So, I'll do all the music. They play the guitars, drum programming, play the bass, blah blah blah. But then I get a guest singer in. And I'll just put it out, you know, I ended up putting it out as MGT because a lot of the Mission fans would just refer to me as And um so that kind of became like a band name really, but it's just an AKA. And um so that to get back to your

22:02point, the reason some of that MGT stuff seems quite musically varied is that it it wasn't as a body of work, it wasn't written for just like one project. It was actually just various different projects over the years. And and then the fact that I got different singers in as well would make it sound quite varied, too. So, uh, obviously I got broad tastes over the years, you know, so I like to kind of encompass some of that variety, you know, on my solo stuff and just keep myself fresh by kind of pushing the edge of of what I'm doing, you know, like like Bowie would. Not

22:40that I'm comparing myself to Bowie, but Bowie was always like, don't don't stay in your comfort zone, you know? you want to be working just out of your comfort zone. So, you feel a little bit, you know, like anxious and you're not sure if you're going to pull it off. And he's like, that's when that's the that's where you should be is pushing yourself, not just kind of treading water and doing what you always do like day in day out. And I was like, that's an interesting philosophy. So, I guess I tried to do that a little bit with my solo stuff is just push it to the edge

23:10of my comfort zone.

23:13Yeah. I mean, I think that's an amazing way to to evolve as an artist, for sure. I I was wondering actually um because um I I actually saw you do a really cool Led Zeppelin cover on your YouTube

23:27Um and and it was a really interesting guitar and I was wondering with your songwriting um uh do you change the guitar from project to project and does that kind of inform your songwriting in terms of the sound? yeah. Um I think well I mean sometimes things just happen randomly. So I think when I was if it's the video I'm think you're talking about I was doing the rain song by Zeppelin which involves um a special tuning like a dad gad style guitar tuning and it's pretty involved. It's you know it's uh it's kind of a challenge kind of play that whole song. And the guitar I used on that video,

24:10um, it's a battery powered, um, Fernandez Nomad. So, it looks like a weird guitar. It's got a built-in speaker and it's got built-in effects. And I'd got it, um, I remember I did a tour with, um, when I was playing guitar for Tricky, uh, we were invited to open for Tool, the band Tool, on um, a big US tour. This was in 2001. uh lateralis lateralis tour and um Adam and Justin and those guys they were just like wandering around backstage in these arenas with these like Fernandez Nomad guitars with the built-in speaker and are playing and you can hear what they're playing. I was like, "Oh, that

24:51is so cool." Yeah. I kind of borrowed one and tried it out and ever since then I'd fancied getting one and I' kind of forgotten about it. And then I I saw one on because they stopped making those things a while ago and uh or maybe they reissued them, I don't know. But I found a used one at a good price online and I brought it. So, you know what I find when I buy a guitar is it it's, you know, the novelty of that new guitar. You want to play it and so it's kind of encouraging you to play your guitar more. I've been playing guitar a long

25:17time. So, it's nice to have those uh, you know, something to inspire me, you know. So, this I get this little guitar with the built-in speaker and the effects and and at the same time I was wanting to figure out how to play the rain song. So, I kind of worked it out and I was I found a setting on that Nomad where it just sounded nice. You know, it not didn't necessarily wasn't Summit Jimmy Paige. It wasn't the sound Jimmy Paige used, you know, he was playing an acoustic guitar, but I liked the way the Nomad sounded. And so, I captured it on video, just running

25:49through it to see how it sound. And I was like, "Oh, that sounds pretty cool. I'll post it online, you know, because people are always saying, "Oh, you should share more videos of you, you know, playing your guitar and how to play something or whatever, you know, that kind of thing." So, that's the reason I use that guitar is that it was just a fun thing. I was enjoying the sound it was making and it was a fun thing to play on. But, um, as to which guitars I used for which bands or which project, it will kind of vary. For example, with the Wonder Stuff, I know

26:20that I hadn't toured with a Gretch before, but the Wonder Stuff sound very jangly indie rock kind of sound. I just found my Gretch uh just sounded perfect for that band. So, for several years, I just would told to with the Wonder, my Gretch hollow body cuz it just seemed to fit the sound of that band. Uh when I toured with uh Tricky, I would do different guitars bouncing between like a a lepool and um a hollow body Gibson ES135 that I own for different tones and um I owned a Telecaster for a while and I played that sometimes with the Mission. Most of the time I was on a

27:02um didn't vary much with those guys. Um, yeah. I guess I just kind of I kind of think about what guitar is going to suit the band, the artist that I'm going to play with. You know, sometimes I sometimes I just play a guitar because I think it's it's going to be fun and cool and I haven't played it. So, for example, with Lords of Acid,

27:22I was rehearsing with a flying V, which is a real, you know, metal looking guitar. I wouldn't play with Peter Murphy with a flying V, right? It just looks strange. [snorts] for the mission. I know Wayne Hussy would be like, "What the [ __ ] You're not playing that." So, I wouldn't play with the flying and I wouldn't I wouldn't it wouldn't occur to me to play with the flying, but Lords of I was like, "Lords of acid, that's a fun band. I think a it was a purple purple flying V. I was like, that would be great. I've never toured it live, so I'll I'll play

27:51that flying V." Uh, that tour never happened, but yeah. So, I would have been seen around town playing this cool heavy metal flying B guitar, which would have seemed odd, but it would have made sense with that band, you know, and maybe I'll pull it out for the the absolute power shows cuz it's the heavy metal thing, right? So, I'll associate, oh yeah, I'll play that guitar not because it sounds right, but because it looks right. So, that's another reason that I might pick a guitar, what it looks like. More often than not in recent years, I've been I've got a signature model. Actually, I got a

28:24signature model [clears throat] um Shector guitar. It's with Shector, the um Los Angeles based guitar company. They've been making a aweight signature model for a few years now. And it's basically like a LesPool custom with some refinements that I asked for. So, I got a special paint job. I got Seymour Duncan pickups in it. Um, all the specs are on the Shector site. It's got like a gold mirrored pick guard because I like to like catch the reflection of a spotlight on the on the guitar and then you can actually kind of reflect it back into the audience. Uh, I'm not the first person to do that. That's something Phil

29:03Leonard from Thin Lizzy used to do. So, I kind of wanted this mirrored guitar. David Jay does it as well in Bass on his bass. And uh, yeah. It's a fancy looking um Les Paul kind of inspired guitar and I play that a lot live because it's my signature model, you know, so I have to fly the flank, you know. I've been playing it with the Wonderuff over the last couple of years, you know, cuz you go through phases where you're like, oh, you know, I'm a bit bored of playing that model. I want to play a different model, you know. So, that's another thing that will change your choice of

29:34guitar is what mood you're in.

29:37Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

29:40And sometimes I'll be road testing new models. I remember Shector would give me, we had models that they were putting out and they were like, "Hey man, do you want to try this on the road?" And who's going to turn down a guitar, right? So I be like, "Yeah, yeah, give me one and I'll take it on this next tour and I'll see how it goes." So I've been seen on the road with various Shectors over the years before they made my signature model. And so yeah, you'll see me road testing a bunch of their different models and that's fun as well. Yeah. And you find some models work out better

30:08than others, you know.

30:09Yeah, that is so cool. And how amazing that you have your own signature model as well. That's really incredible. I think that's something that many instrumentalists could aspire to. So

30:22Uh yeah, I feel very uh honored that uh they did that for me. You know, they did it at the same time. Um I kind of hooked um Wayne Hussy, my old boss in the Mission UK. I hooked him up with Shector and um they ended up um doing like a signature model for Wayne, like uh this beautiful electric 12 string semiholo guitar and my signature model kind of happened at a similar time to that, you know, so it kind of got tied in.

30:53Oh, that's amazing. Um I I actually wanted to take just a moment and thank our friends in the chat. Um, we have a question uh from Pete Russo. Um, with the immensely varied career that you've had, is there one genre that you prefer to play over another? Um, just from a sense of personal or creative

31:13Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, uh, I'm kind of over the years because of the various bands I've played with, you know, from The Mission did like I did five albums, four or five albums with The Mission, studio albums. And so quite a long career with those guys. And then obviously Peter Murphy did some albums with Peter. Uh before The Mission I was uh The Children, which was a offshoot of uh Sex Gang Children. And so I've kind of been seen as a you know Gothic rock guitarist. Um and like most my wife would laugh about this because like most goths, we all deny that we're goths. You

31:55know what I mean? Like so if you ask you ask Andrew Aldich should the Sisters Mercy a goth band he'll be like absolutely not you know and the same same with Peter you know they'll joke about it and so I always go I say no no I'm not a goth you know I I grew up on punk and metal which is true you know when I was when I got a guitar I was inspired by you know punk rock like Sex Pistols and Generation X and the Skids this is back in the late '7s before your time but uh I was into like punk the

32:25energy of punk punk rock and I was also at the same time being from the Midlands, the home of heavy metal, I was also listening to Sabbath and a lot of new wave of British heavy metal um and uh and a lot of Mohead and stuff like that. So, uh, I always in my mind I see myself as more of a kind of a metal punk rock inspired guitarist, but uh, I I must admit I definitely feel and then I later gravitated into listening to Killing Joke and Susan the Banshees and the Cure and all the greats, you know, and then I got the gigs in the goth

33:02bands and my style seemed to uh, really suit those bands like The Mission and Peter to Murphy. So, I obviously do, yeah, I do feel comfortable in a slightly sort of dark, more darker dark way, but I like to be able to sort of rock out a little bit, you know? So, I like powerful, heavy, but dark, you know, music if that answers your

33:31that's comfortable, you know, but I love playing other stuff as well. There was a night with on the Bowie uh sorry on the Peter Murphy we did some residencies about six seven years ago where we did Peter's Peter Murphy's albums in full and for fun uh we tacked on a Bowie night which was a inspired idea I don't know who came up with it where we did early Bowie so like Mick Ronson era Bowie you know 70s uh Ziggy Stardust kind of era and we did a night of Bowie songs and that was a lot of fun playing that stuff Like if I could I keep saying

34:06Peter would kill it if he just went out and toured, you know, Peter Murphy does Bowie sort of thing and we just did a tour of that. It went down so well. That was a lot of fun. So

34:16Oh, that'd be amazing to see. Yeah,

34:18I guess that's like it because that early that 70s stuff is more classic rock, of course. So yeah, that's that's something that I would feel comfortable doing as well.

34:28Yeah, for sure. [clears throat] And Bowie definitely um I think spans across a lot of different spectrums too. So yeah, for sure.

34:38Yeah, definitely. I mean um playing [snorts] with Tricky uh was probably the most I was going to say challenging. It was the most creatively challenging um artist to play with because a he never had a set list. So in other words, we wouldn't know what the next song was coming and that that would include the first song. He wouldn't decide what the first song was going to be until sometimes we're on stage and then he'd tell the drummer and the drummer would tell the keyboard player. The keyboard player tell me and then we'd start that song. Sometimes Tricky would say, you know, just just go out and play

35:13something. Like he just wanted us to jam and we'd start on a jam. And so the rest of the band wouldn't know what I was going to play. They'd just hear me play a riff, you know, or something doomy and atmospheric and then they'd all join in and then Tricky would make up, you know, a a rap on a spoken word rap on the spot and it's very creative almost like a jazz kind of there was kind of a jazz feel to playing with Tricky. Uh, so and I really enjoyed and I guess Bowie just makes me think of Tricky because I feel like, you know, they kind of there was

35:46there was a mutual respect between Bowie and Tricky. I know that. And playing with Tricky was probably like the closest I would get to doing like a David Bowie thing where you don't know what's coming next. And I would be encouraged to be as off the offthe-wall as possible. You know, come out with weird sound, you know,

36:04don't think like a regular guitarist. try and work think outside the box. That was David Bowie all the time.

36:14Yeah, actually you I I was thinking um as you were sharing about Tricky um it I I haven't experienced nostalgia live but from what I understand it's also a lot of improv. Is is that correct?

36:27Yeah. Yeah.

36:28Yeah. playing with uh so yeah I've been I forgot to mention yeah in the last year I started doing some shows in Los Angeles with Cassandra Nostalgia who is a very talented singer from um based in LA and uh she does these improv shows that I was invited to be part of and I immediately thought of uh you know my work with Tricky and it had been a while since I'd done something where we're making stuff up sometimes well with Cassandra are always making it up. That's the theme of her show is it's all jammed and it's not pre premeditated or pre-rehearsed. You know, we'll sometimes

37:06get together to rehearse just to, you know, warm up, so to speak. But the idea is that on the shows we just kind of she will say to [clears throat] the Charlie the piano player, you know, start something, you know, you're next kind of thing. and Charlie will start like a chord sequence in a certain vibe usually very atmospheric very cinematic and then we all join in you know we all sort of take turns to slowly join in and and uh Cassandra will start an adlib vocal really astounding talent and it's a [clears throat] lot of fun and yeah again I immediately put on my tricky hat

37:43and what that means is I'm like trying to think outside the box and what kind of weird atmospherics can I come up with on the next idea that we're doing, you know, I'll try and not do the obvious, you know, cowboy cords or whatever, I will try and add to the mood, you know, and again, a lot of it's very atmospheric, very sort of David Lynchesque. If you've ever listened to his work, a lot of it is echoes of that. And um there's Echos of Tricky, there's Echos of Bowie, there's Echo of many artists, you know, um PJ Harvey and who I had the fortune to play

38:22with um back in the ' 90s for a little while and um yeah, just very experimental. So yeah, if anybody's in the LA area and they want to really exper experience something unique, I would say come and check out uh Cassand Cassandra Nostalgia's shows. you know, we do them every few months. You have to come and check out.

38:45Do you have any um on actually um scheduled yet for uh the upcoming

38:50We're talking about doing one. We just did one in um December and the next one I think it's going to be in April. I haven't been given a date yet, but uh

38:59yeah, if people uh check out my website um martweight.com or martjiweight.com, both work. Um you know, you can check out my dates on there. Uh or it also links to my social media. Sometimes I don't update the website as frequently as I used to, but if you get on my social media, it'll also tell you about dates I've got coming up. Yeah, I would love to to to experience that show. I

39:26Yeah, you should come on.

39:28Yeah. Yeah.

39:28April April, I believe. Just waiting for a date.

39:30Yeah. Would love that.

39:32Yeah, it's a lot it's a lot of it's a lot of fun as as a musician. It's a lot of fun. And then for the audience, it's just a cerebral experience.

39:40Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's it's it's unusual um for an artist outside of the jazz realm to to really find that flow and the improv and to push the envelope in that way. So I'm I'm very excited to experience that.

39:55Yeah. Yeah. It's quite astounding. Uh you know, I'm always um just lost. We're all just like lost in the moment playing the songs and some of uh Cassandra's vocals are just uh astounding. You know, she really gets really into it. Yeah. She's a real artist.

40:13People might have seen her without realizing it. She was like um like a featured performer in John Wick 2, the second John Wick movie. She was the artist and her band with Tyler Bates. They were performing in this like arena type setting as part of the movie and uh Cassandra's music was on the soundtrack. So people have probably heard her music even without realizing it over the

40:38It's amazing. Uh we're so we're getting another question. Um it was uh if I'm a guitarist and would like to go on tour with bigger artists, how should I get

40:51Yeah, this is the age-old question. I get asked this a lot. You know, how do you get the gig with this band and how do you get the gig with that band? And um I'll be honest. I mean, some of it is just blind luck, you know. I think yes, of course, talent. I think you could be like friends with um you know, you could be friends with uh Rob Zombie, right? And Rob Zombie, John F's just left Rob Zombie and you're friends with Rob Zombie. So you got you're in, right? You've heard that the yeah the guitar the guitar gig in Rob Zombie is up for

41:22grabs and you know Rob Zombie or so you know the bass player or the drumming, you know, so you've got your connection, but you're still going to be you still got to be good enough for that gig. you know, you still got to actually have the talent to be able to honor that gig if you get it. And so that's [clears throat] one element uh is yes, it's who you know. So sometimes I've gotten gigs because of who I know, you know, like a word of mouth recommendation or I literally knew the person. Like when I toured with Gary Newman, I knew Gary Newman. like he he

41:52he'd become a friend of mine because he Gary and um Gary and uh his wife Gemma would come along to Mission shows, Mission UK shows back in the 90s and we became friends and so I started socializing with Gary in the UK and then when Gary moved to LA, you know, we were socializing in LA and I just happened to be hanging at the right time where he had a tour a Splinter book and um uh Robin Frink from 9in Nails was supposed to be doing it because Robin had played on Gary's album, the Splinter album, and Robin ended up getting called back to 9

42:27in Nails uh because it's a long story, but um I think um I think Adrian Belaloo was supposed to do it and he pulled out or something like that. And so all of a sudden Gary was like, "Who do I know who could step in?" And he knew me and so he said, "Mark, do you want to step in and do this tour?" So people like, "How'd you get the gig with Gary?" Well, I knew him and he needed a guitarist. So, I happened to be in the right place at the right time. However, if he'd never seen me play guitar before, right, or if I

42:56hadn't done much to note, then I probably wouldn't have been offered that gig. So, I guess it still was informed by the fact that at that point I had Tricky on my resume. I had The Mission UK on my resume and and various other bands. So, I was worthy of, you know, stepping in and doing that gig. Um, so sometimes, yes, you a lot of times you get the breaks because you know people in the scene or it's like a referral. Hey, do you want I was asked if I if I knew of a guitarist for a band that's touring last night. Uh, they're not

43:28touring last night. I was told about it last night when I was out and they they need a guitarist for a tour in in the autumn. And um, again, it's because it's I know people in the business. How you get to that spot in the first place, that's the difficult bit. That's the question that this person is asking is how do you step up to a bigger band? Now, I'll tell you how I got my break to get to get into a decent size band. This is the other way you can sometimes do it. And that is um when I got the the first like major band I got a gig with

44:01was The Mission, right? The Mission UK. And they were like a big British band, you know, like they'd been doing arenas in um in the UK in the late 80s and stuff and early 90s. And uh in 1992, The Mission Advertised in the New Musical Express, the NME, you know, mission seek new guitarist. And they're looking for a bass player as well. And um and I remember showing that to my my partner at the time saying, "Wow, you know, everybody in their sisters going to apply to this. It's like in the national press, the mission near the the guitarist or whatever. And she was like,

44:37"You should go for that. You'd be perfect." You know, and at the time I'd been playing for a band called um Spear of Destiny, who were alternative rock band in the UK. They had a few chart hits as well, not as big as The Mission, but you know, they're doing all right. And um she said, "No, you should apply. You know what you got to lose?" So I ended up sending you they said send in your photo and a demo. I think I was I think I'd just gotten a CDR burner at that point. So, I might have sent I can't remember if I sent a cassette

45:06because it's that long ago. This is 1992. I sent a cassette or a CDR. I can't remember which. Probably a cassette. And um I got shortlisted from the thousands of people that sent in and uh so they called me in for audition and I got the gig. So that's what another way you can get a gig with a band. Well, I guess that was that Wayne maybe didn't want a, you know, seasoned professional. He just wanted to see who was out there. I don't know. Um, but you could ask, how did I get the gig in Spirit of Destiny, the band before The Vision? So, I moved down to London

45:43from Birmingham and, uh, again, it was an ad in the, uh, Melody Maker or Enemy, you know, um, established band Seats Guitarist, and it kind of mentions some influences. Yeah. Dark Wave, you know, and I applied to that ad and that was uh Dave Roberts from Sex Gang Children and he was forming a new band called The Children. And so I went and auditioned for that gig and I got it. So I guess I got that gig. Again, both bands was applying to an ad. So that's cool. That's one way of doing it. And then secondly, you got to be able to still bring the talent, you know. So I guess I

46:22got the gig with the children because I was a good guitar player. So you've got to exhaust all of your avenues, you know, with me. I feel like some of it was luck. Like touring with Gary, that was luck that I happened to become friends with him because he was a fan of the mission and I happened to be in the same town at the same time and in the right place at the right time when I got offered that tour. And um you you've got to be you've got to go out and look for the gigs. You got to you've obviously got to work on your

46:51ability. You got to, you know, keep playing. Try and get out, play as much as possible. Record ideas because everybody can record at home now with their laptop, home own studio stuff. Use Garage Band or whatever. You can record at home. Develop your your writing skills and your playing. Keep playing. And uh uh I hope people aren't put up by all this glitching on my camera. I don't know what it is. It's like blade running. I like it. And uh

47:19Yeah. Um yeah. So there's no like one answer. You just like you got to have the talent. Uh so just work on that. Yeah. Work on the playing, refine your ability. And uh secondly, you know, try every avenue. You know, I feel like you going out and networking has a lot to do with it. The reason that I heard about an artist looking for a guitarist last night was I was out at that club, you know, globe. I ran into other musicians and musicians get talking. So that's another thing you should do is you should go out and network that don't be a bedroom guitarist and never go out.

47:54You actually do need to go out there in the real world and like meet people, get to know people and you start to hear through the grapevine so and so is looking for a gig, you know, looking for a player. But yeah, respond to ads like check out the uh I see ad listings nowadays on like um Facebook. there's like, you know, forums for professional musicians looking for gigs or just any musicians looking for gigs, look in Craigslist, you know, because that will get you the first step of the ladder. You might get something and then um um and take it from there. But there's

48:30certainly an element of luck as well of being in the right place at the right time, but you still got to be a good, you know, a good player to pull it off. And sometimes you need the right resume, but you're only going to get that resume if you get out there and sort of connect with people and start applying, you know, and be prepared for some rejection, of course. That's the same with anything really, you know, uh you can't expect to get every job you applied for. I've I've applied I've auditioned for some bands and not got it. I'm not going to tell you who, but

49:01you know, uh I even was asked to audition for um I was talking about this the other day. uh if I had any regrets and I was like well once I was asked to audition for Robert Plantban and uh if I was asked if I'd be interested in audition for Robert Plantsband and this was back in the ' 90s and of course I was like wow you know what a legend that would be amazing but you know this guy played with Jimmy Paige you know Jimmy Paige knows all that all that [clears throat] blues stuff and Jimmy with his weird tunings and the whole bit I was just

49:35intimidated. I was like, I probably won't get that gig because I'm not one of these guys that sat down and learned Oh, it's funny cuz you saw me phasing that Led Zeppelin video, but back in the day, certainly back in the 90s, I hadn't spent a lot of time working out Led Zeppelin songs. And so, I was nervous that I just wouldn't be, you know, as uh sophisticated and as knowledgeable a player that maybe he would be expecting, you know, this is a guy that's played with Jimmy P. To cut a long story short, I didn't go and audition because I was nervous I would, you know, not get

50:10the gig, you know. And uh it later turned out he was looking for a guitarist that was like alternative cuz he ended up hiring um uh um the guitarist from The Cure, you who's an amazing player and um so now I'm like oh I guess maybe I would have been in with a chance you know you should so in other words if if I was going to talk if me now my old ancient Mark Gemini self was going to say to my 20some self you know you know you should go and apply for that gig because you're thinking you're not going to get it no

50:51you should just go and do it because it's better to have done it and failed than to have not done it and regret not doing which is what I do now. I'm like, "Oh, maybe I'd have ended up playing with Robert Plant for a bit." And how amazing would that have been, you know, but I the balls to go for it. See, you've always got to go for it, you [clears throat] And again, that was an offer, the offer to go and audition was that uh the uh I was in the mission at the time and the the booking agent for The Mission also was the booking agent

51:21for Robert Plan. And it was it was the girl at the booking agency. He said, "Oh, I've heard that Robert Plant's looking for a guitarist to audition, you know. Do you want me to put your name in?" You know, so again, it was like, "Who you know?" Really? It was like a who you know situation. So,

51:40There you have it.

51:41I love though that you're also bringing up the fact that it's also a devotion to your craft. like you actually have had to put your time in as a guitarist, as a writer, um to develop to be where you are as well.

51:56Yeah, I think um I think uh and I I certainly feel like when I was young, you know, I was just I just lived and breathed it, you know, all the time. Always playing, always wanting to be out there gigging, always wanted to be recording, you know. This was before I was in any like name bands. You just had that desire like insatiable desire to just keep going. That was my all all my spare money just went into funding recording sessions. This was before this is in the 80s before people had home recording setups like we have now. You just do it all on your laptop,

52:35you know. Uh or even you on your iPhone even. U so you'd have to spend a lot of money on recording sessions. So I would I'd go out and get a job. Yeah. just so that I could fund recording with my band and fund playing some gigs with my band because invariably you weren't making any money from gigging because you're a small time band playing original music. So half the time you'd end up having to pay to play, you know, it would cost you money and it was all part of getting live experience and getting studio experience and um I would say it's easier to a degree now because now you

53:07can just record at home on your laptop or your phone. Uh gigs is still difficult, but there's still, you know, new band nights where you can get gigs. Say the whiskey for example, you can get yourself on the new band night there. Maybe become the opening act on on, you know, a bigger bill or um there's various venues that will have new bands on like Gold Diggers. This is in Los Angeles I'm talking about. But every city is going to have its venues where, you know, new artists that can perform. You can also just hire a venue and put on your own show. There's also venues

53:39that will just let you hire them, but you got to be prepared to spend some money or, you know, take a financial risk. And uh so to in order to do that kind of thing, you have to be kind of obsessed with wanting to do it in the first place. I know I was and that was what kept me going. Definitely don't play my guitar as much as I used to. And that my I laugh with my wife about this. My main justification for buying that next new axe or that no that Fernandez nomad with the built-in speaker is that oh it inspires me to want to play again

54:11and it's absolutely true you know so that's why I buy a lot of guitars but um it's harder when you get older to kind of keep motivating yourself to like I guess it's like going to the gym you know to keep yourself going to the gym on a regular basis it's hard to motivate yourself but yeah as a new musician new to the scene just you got to be like really you kind of become you have to become a bit obsessed with it. Of course, it's supposed to be fun, you know, you're supposed to want to play guitar or play bass or whatever your instrument is. You got to want to do it.

54:41And uh that was the way I was. It's just hard to speak for other people, you

54:46Yeah. Yeah. I think that it kind of answers the question uh Marvelite was asking um which is what is the hardest part in your opinion of of starting a music career?

54:57Yeah. I guess I had that initial it was a different time when I started but the principles are the same is like the I'll tell you this right the only reason I got a guitar when I think back on it was uh I was 15 and my best friend Paddyy Paul Bryan he got a guitar he got one of those catalog like Les Paul copies and we were both listening to a lot of heavy metal and punk at the time and I was like wow I was like you know he's got a guitar you know and I was like really impressed and jealous that he'd gotten this guitar

55:30through a catalog. It was like a you know $200 equivalent guitar or something. And um so I took my mom into me getting a catalog guitar. And this was great because I got the guitar and of course I was rubbish at it. But Paul by the time I got it was three months later if I remember rightly. And he was three months in and he had quite a talent, you know, he was picking it up quickly. So I would go around with my guitar to my friend Patty's place and would be jamming with him and then learning from him because he was three months ahead of me. And so for that

56:03first year, you know, I was kind of chasing the carrot that was to get as good as him. Uh cuz he had a head start on me. And of course, we formed the bands and we got a drummer and we started doing gigs and the whole bit, you know, just local gigs. I think my first gig was in a a barn somewhere to like three people and um you know which glorified rehearsal, right? Band rehearsal and then the I remember we did a gig in the school hall at the school we went to and um and then and then I kind of caught him up and I just kept

56:37going then I kind of got better than him. So he was my carrot and I just often wonder you know would I have you know I needed somebody that was inspiring me and also he was better than me so I was trying to catch up to him you know I wonder if that would have been the same outcome would I have gotten a guitar anyway I don't know you know was that the catalyst but I guess what I learned from that in retrospect is jamming with friends you know j friends or just respond to ads in in the paper. Yeah. Or Facebook or Craigslist or whatever. If it's very important that

57:13you play I feel it's important to play with other people, you know, and sort of

57:18you'll learn from playing with other people and it will help your craft, you

57:25Yeah, absolutely. I feel that.

57:26Say that though. Say that. And I keep seeing videos on, you know, Instagram, right? We're being bombarded with um, you know, reals or whatever. And I just real after reel of these amazing like sevenyear-old kids like I watched a kid doing like uh some Rush song the other day. I forget which one it was. Limelight or something like that. He's like seven or eight and he's like totally nailing Neil Per's drums and I see other videos of seven eight year old kids and they're just way better shredders than than I ever was or could be. So, I guess I guess you don't necessarily have to jam with other

58:04people, but that that's how I did it. And I do feel like if you just stay some of these guys if they just kind of stay insular and they just work uh in isolation in their bedroom or their spare room or whatever with their camera and their interface and recording setup and that. But sometimes when you play with other musicians, you learn about the give and take of, you know, you learn something more about being a player and working with other instruments. So, I always encourage people to join a band and sort of get a feel for that. But it doesn't mean, you know, you're not going to because you I

58:44see some of these kids that are just amazing and they've just basically sat. Usually it's a parent that's kind of influenced them, but I don't know. You know, some kids are just amazing.

58:53Yeah, for sure. I mean, well, you've you've mentioned certain projects where it's like one project led to another

59:02which inspired another. Yeah.

59:05Organic. Yeah.

59:06Uh there's not too much that's premeditated about it. I guess the one premeditation was I'm going to do a solo album. So that was one premeditation. But usually what's happening in my musical career like the absolute power with Shane and Johnny from Napom Death. That was an out of the blue. Hey, do you want to do some league guitar in this heavy metal album? You know, just again somebody I knew but it's [clears throat] just organic, you know, it's a curveball. And I was like, "Yeah, I'd like to do that. That'll take me right back to my youth." And then with Cassandra Nostalgia, I was approached by

59:41a mutual friend at a record label. They said, "Oh, you know, this artist Nostalgia is looking for a guitarist for some live shows, you know, are you interested?" Again, kind of organic. It was just kind of, you know, being asked about it. So, there's no premeditation really, you know.

59:57Yeah. Yeah. You have to set the foundation first and then from there just trust in the fact that I think things will unfold.

1:00:06Yeah. And it kind of applies to um creating music as well. I definitely find that if I go like, okay, yeah, I want to write something that, you know, I want to write something that sounds like Rob Zombie and I'm going to Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to do something that's like Dragula by by Rob Zombie. And I kind of sit down and I do it. Yeah. I might do something that sounds great, but it will sound like I don't know. I feel like it sounds premeditated, but the stuff that I've just written naturally that isn't like trying to sound like something invariably that stuff just sounds a little bit more

1:00:41appealing. I feel like, you know, so I'm not the only artist to say this is that you just got to like just do what feels natural. Don't force yourself to try and adapt to genres too much, you know, to to sort of ride the coattails of what's trendy right now. You know what I mean?

1:00:58Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

1:01:00When K did that that trap album, whatever it was, you know, and they tried to sound like, you know, the what the music at the time, they shouldn't have done that, you know. That's an example of, you know, it wasn't a bad album, but I feel like artists has got to do something natural and not be too premeditated and too much of a a genre jumping exercise, you know.

1:01:20Yeah, absolutely. Because then it's like you really really start learning about your own voice, which I feel like is a a process, right?

1:01:29Finding your own voice. And sometimes you don't find it straight away, you

1:01:34Yeah. It takes a while as a musician. did for me to really find my voice, you know. Um, it's still hard for me to explain what what my voice is, you know, what my sound is, but I guess people will say to me, "Oh, I can recognize your guitar playing when when I hear a record that you're on, you know."

1:01:57Um, I was I did a festival with Peter Murphy. Um uh it was the Inc and Iron Festival. So it was um maybe 2015. Bunch of bands were on the bill. I think Cong. But anyway, so we were like a headliner and we went there to sound check like you know it's like with festivals sometimes the headliner can go and sound check early in the day. I went and [clears throat] sound check with Peter and uh so it's an outdoor gig, right? So, my guitar, the sound of the band, I'm like line checking my guitar and the sound of my guitar is probably spreading, you know, throughout the area

1:02:33in Long Beach. Um, yeah, we were right, we were set up right outside the Queen Mary, if you ever been to the Queen Mary

1:02:42So, you could hear me probably from a mile away. Anyway, unbeknownst to me, uh a guy that I knew from uh the town I grew up in, Lichfield, was there like he was like nearby. He didn't know that I played with Peter Murphy. He didn't even know I lived in America. The whole bit. We hadn't seen each other since the 70s or early 80s. Early 80s. He said that he heard my my me soundchecking my guitar and he was like, "That sounds like Mark Wait." How weird is that, right? cuz he hadn't he had no idea I play in these bands and he just remembered me. He

1:03:17recognized my playing from probably when he heard me as a teenager, you know.

1:03:22And I was like, well, and he and he came over and he was like, man, he goes, I knew that was you as soon as I heard you playing through the PA, you know, and I was like, well, that's crazy. So, I guess I guess you you do have kind of like a sound, a style. I don't know what it is, you know. So, there you go. You

1:03:39I think that's amazing. Um, and definitely a testament to like um, again like, you know, not being afraid to just continue to hone in on your own voice rather than trying to follow others. Like I think that continues to develop over time, but um, definitely a testament to you like really sticking to that over the years, you know.

1:04:03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Doged determination, you know.

1:04:07you know. Yeah. But sometimes, you know, I talked earlier about stretching the envelope, right, of

1:04:13and not staying in your comfort zone. So that's the other problem is um okay so if you've got this sand and this style surely if that's what you're supposed to hold on to then doing the Bowie thing of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone which of course would be move away from what normally feels comfortable to you but play with a style or a sound that isn't normal to you. There's that issue as well where you know you have this kind of fire of knowing what your your inner core sound is but also knowing okay so I'm going to put that in a box for the moment and now I'm going

1:04:49to try and go in a different direction you know

1:04:53I'll the way I internalize it is I'll be like I'll do something like Robert Frit would do you know so I'll think of a guitarist who has a different style to me and I'll kind of put that hat on for a bit and try and create something or I'll go what would David Lynch's do on this track, you know, and I'll kind of try and recreate what my idea of a David Lynch approach to a guitar part on this track with say Cassandra, you know, That's the way I compartment compartmentalize it.

1:05:28Pete's actually asking an interesting question that that ties into this. Um, he was asking like when you join an established band and you're playing the hits, are you expected to play just the way the fans remember hearing it on the record or are you encouraged to put your own signature on them?

1:05:46Yeah, it's a good question. Um I mean in my experience uh my first experience of playing hits you know well-known songs um where this was a decision I would have to make or be influenced by would probably have been with the mission. So they have some famous songs like Wasteland and uh Tower of Strength and Deliverance that kind of thing you know these were like top 30 top 20 hits in the UK as singles as well. Um, my feeling was definitely I would want to recreate, you know, the parts as faithfully uh to the original recorded parts that everybody knows and loves as possible because I'd be like, I

1:06:32want to hear it. I'd want to hear that song how it was originally done, you know? I wouldn't want to hear a guitarist that's going off on a tangent and doing something different. So with the mission, I always tried to uh sound as as close to the record as possible. Um I never experienced like Wayne the singer for, you know, saying, "Oh, you know, um you know, you're not you're not playing it close enough." I I never really experienced any of that. Um with other artists like Peter Murphy, for example, I have stretched the envelope a bit more. I feel like when I think about

1:07:08it, you know, like when we do say cuts you up or stuff like that, I will bring some extra MGT flavor to the mix and kind of like add a little bit more flourish here and there. Uh even with Gary Newman, when I talk with Gary, I kind of added some guitar parts that were on the record. I may have regretted that in retrospect, but I was inspired at the time. And Gary never said anything. He never said, "Don't do that." But um yeah, sometimes I will try and add to it, but generally speaking, certainly if it's guitar based music, I'm going to try and recreate what's on

1:07:46the record and um because I feel like that's what people are going to want to hear. So that's just my personal take on

1:07:54Yeah. No, I think it's and it's I'm sure it also varies depending on also with several of the projects, you've actually written the parts yourself, so uh

1:08:04Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:06Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Sometimes I will um play a song I didn't co-write better than a song I did write co-write.

1:08:18I'll make more effort to like nail, you know, the original lead solos on Deliverance or the solo on Tower of Strength or the Ebo on Way, I'm going to try hard to play it spot on. Whereas if it's a song I co-wrote, you have this kind of blas. Oh, that's my part. So, I don't really need to work on that. You know, like so we record, say you record a song live, uh, sorry, record a song on the album and then a year later that song reser. Oh yeah, we're going to do that song. I'll find that I don't put as much work in like reminding myself how I

1:08:53played that song, you know? So, I shouldn't admit this out loud really, should I? One thing I've learned about myself is I've got to like treat stuff I've co-wrote just as importantly as learning a track I didn't even play on at all. You know, because I seem to make more effort trying to nail the track I didn't play on. And the song I did play on, I've got this kind of blas, oh yeah, that'll all come back to me. I'll remember how to play that. And sometimes I'll regret not putting in the homework, you know. [laughter] Well, um I was wondering actually besides uh the wonder stuff uh nostalgia

1:09:29uh what what can we look forward to from you this this upcoming season?

1:09:33Well, the the the definite is like the wonder stuff is happening. Obviously, nostalgia is looking at April. The uh like I said, the absolute power, the the metal album that's going to be dropping in the summer. Let's talk about maybe a festival or two. So, that will that will be forthcoming. Uh we're looking at we're still looking at bringing the Killing Joke Extremities uh show to the UK. I think there was talk of maybe trying to do a run of five shows where we play the Extremities album in full. Um again pending promoters on that. So it's a watched this space thing and I'm also

1:10:09encouraging Martin Atkins to consider, you know, some West Coast dates and some East Coast dates. It's all down to whether we can make it financially viable because you you got people based all over the country, you know, um and uh or flying everybody to the UK, for example. So, it ends up just becoming a a very expensive exercise, you know. Um Peter, I've also been writing some uh working on some new material with Peter Murphy as we speak. Um, Peter reached out wanting to hear some some new ideas uh that he could maybe play with. So,

1:10:49so we've actually been um exchanging ideas uh over the last month or so. So, he's got some demos I've been working on for Peter and uh I'm hoping that maybe because we had some shows booked last year for Peter that uh ended up we had to cancel them because Peter had some health issues. Um, I know he had to have an operation. So, um, so yeah, there was talk of maybe doing some shows this year with Peter and again I'm waiting to to see on that. Yeah, wait to see what comes.

1:11:22You know, when you're talking about your writing, I I was curious like um is it something that you hear in your head um before you start to write um or is it something that just kind of comes to you as you're playing with your guitar? Yeah, usually um ideas I come up with invariably a guitar base and I it, you know, invariably it' be like I'm doodling on, you know, um on a guitar, you know, like this, you know, and I'll just be, you know, I'll just be like and I'll be like, "Oh, that's nice." Nice. you know. So, I'll I'll get the old iPhone out and I'll record what I'm

1:12:08doing. And so, I've got, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of iPhone demos of me with an unplugged electric or acoustic guitar. And, uh, a lot of my stuff will come from that. But that's if it's like um brand new stuff, compositions of my own, starting from scratch. Yeah. I'll I'll I'll figure out the BPM of this idea and I'll go in my home studio and I'll they work out like a click track or a bit some beats and then um invariably I'll grab my bass and I'll add a baseline. So I'll flesh out a demo like that. Uh so I'm not really hearing it in my head before I write it.

1:12:53you know, I'm kind of being a guitarist and trying a few chord shows or maybe I'll be messing about and like play something and go, "Ooh, that's that's interesting." It might just be one chord that's interesting. Like that's this chord here is a weird chord. And um it was a chord that Bowie did in in like I don't know, Space Odyssey or something like that. And so I ended up writing like a I wrote a chord sequence that would include that chord kind of. So I was like, you know, so I threw this funky chord in there. So again, that's an interesting way to come up with a song is to, oh,

1:13:40let's write some music around that interesting chord. That ended up being a Wonder Stuff song that's on the last album we did together. Um, and uh, what some things that will come up in my head is, you know, I'll be playing this chord sequence that I've got and then in my head I'll start to hear like a counter melody, like a guitar line, you know, like a hook or something

1:14:06that kind of stuff. Yeah. I will actually be like, and I'll sit there and work out what that note, those notes are, and I'll go and record it sometimes. Yeah, like melody lines because I don't think like a singer. I'm just kind of thinking about guitar melody lines. I I guess they could be vocal lines as well, you know. So, it's a little mixture of just strumming away watching TV, I'll come up with stuff. Uh or once I've got a cool sequence, I'll hit I could be lying in bed and I'll suddenly be like, "Oh, yeah, that melody." Sometimes I'll just record myself singing the melody and

1:14:40then hope that it works out the next day when I go in the studio, you know? So, it's various different things. Yeah.

1:14:48That's really cool. I I I notice in in the different projects sometimes it's like I feel like it's it feels more [clears throat] chord based and then sometimes I feel like there's very very specific riffs like you're talking about like um melodies that I really hear.

1:15:03Um so yeah.

1:15:05Yeah. Um Peter would always um warn me because I'll demo stuff. So, I'll come up with a chord sequence like that and I'll demo it and then I'll put a beat to it and I'll put a baseline to it and then I'll come up with a oh yeah, a counter melody that could be like an intro or a chorus melody and all that and before I know it, I've fleshed out this demo and then I send it to him and he'll be like, I'm trying to make room for a vocal. So, sometimes, you know, singers are going to want it really stripped down, you know, Wayne, same

1:15:37thing. you'd be like, "Wow, man, you know, your demos are so dense." Dense in that there's so much going on, you know, where's, you know, he's trying to make room for the vocal, you know? So, uh, so yeah, sometimes you got to, as a guitarist, I'm like, yeah, I've got to remember to keep room keep room for that singer. It's cuz I'm not a singer. You I'm not I'm trying to fill out the music and keep it interesting because there's no vocal. I bet if there was a vocal there, then all of a sudden be like, "Oh, I don't need that guitar line anymore because there's already a vocal

1:16:06going on."

1:16:08Learn all this stuff. And, you know, this is why it's good to,

1:16:11you know, keep writing, you know, certainly as a new musician, you know, keep writing and learning, you know,

1:16:17remember to keep space for other instruments, you know.

1:16:22Yeah. You're You play keyboards, right?

1:16:24I do. I do.

1:16:26Yeah. I got to keep room for those keyboards as well.

1:16:28Yes. [laughter]

1:16:31Yeah. Especially since uh actually guitar and keyboards well I think a lot of times can inhabit similar space like sonic space.

1:16:40So yeah.

1:16:42Yeah. So um you know uh it's all part of the creative process you know.

1:16:49But it's I think part of the fun uh like you were saying is the collaboration and um like getting to create with other people. I think that really is a big part of the joy, you know.

1:17:01Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm definitely been stretched in a few different directions this year, like doing wonderes like jangly indie rock and uh Extremities Killing Joke, which is like a real specific intense sort of, you know, postpunk kind of guitar approach, Jordy Walker. And then uh absolute power which is like basically trying to put on like okay pretend you're in Judas Priest you know what kind of solos would you do in a British heavy metal band and then Cassandra nostalgia where I'm like oh what would Robert Frip do and what would Andy Summers do and what would all these kind of avenguard guitarists would do you

1:17:43know so definitely being pulled in different directions as far as being a guitarist goes.

1:17:49Yeah for sure. And then I'm sure like um even like when you're actively touring I I was wondering do you um find any ideas come to you on tours or is it just so grueling that it's something that's more hopping at [clears throat] home when you're creating?

1:18:04Sometimes ideas come on tour. Uh sometimes in sound checks like I'll just start randomly playing a riff and then like the band Yeah. the drummer will join and I've got like recordings of me and David Jay and Mark Slitzky like jamming ideas on the Peter Murphy tour and I like quickly got my phone out and hit record, you know. Um

1:18:24Oh, that's amazing.

1:18:25And uh yeah, so they sound very d I came across them the other day. They sound very dubby, you know, um and atmospheric, but uh but great, you know. So, yeah, sometimes, yeah, I come up with ideas on tour. Not so much, um offstage cuz yeah, you're right. It's grueling. I'm not in that head space. But some artists are for forced to write on tour if they're a successful artist and their label's like, "We need the new album like, you know, in six months." Some artists force themselves to write on tour and they they go on the road with their their laptops with their MIDI

1:19:01interfaces and recording interfaces and you know record stuff like that. I haven't done that myself. I prefer to do it when I'm off the road.

1:19:11Yeah. I think it's definitely a different headsp space to when you're touring versus, you know, in the studio.

1:19:18Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Um but uh yeah, you know, you never know when the new idea is going to come up, you know.

1:19:28Yeah, it's a matter of well, I think attending to it. I mean, do you ever find yourself in in days or periods of time when um you might not have as many ideas and if so, like um how do you fill the well, so to speak?

1:19:44Yeah, I'll go through periods where I have like lots of creativity. I usually find that I the the hardest step for me uh and I'll say this to Ashley, my wife as well because she's um you know been making steps into being you know an artist. She's released a few records herself actually bad and she finds it difficult to sort of get an idea off the ground and I'm like yeah actually I do as well. The hardest thing is to start from that first couple of chords and you kind of like it's hard to motivate yourself. But you just got to I find no matter how

1:20:22unimpressive I might think an idea is, if I think there's something in there, I will force myself to go into my studio and kind of flesh it out a bit, you know? So, it might not sound so impressive when it's just a guitar idea, but maybe in my head I'm hearing it with this great drum beat, you know, with a certain drum sound and I'm just hearing it a certain way. And so, I've just got to go in there and kind of put it down. And then sometimes I might end up actually changing what I put down. I'll change the chord sequence or change the

1:20:53sound or come up with another bit and then the other bit is the bit that's good and the first bit was just the catalyst to get that second bit. say a chorus chord sequence. So, you've just got to force yourself to go in there. Even if you don't feel inspired, go in there. And I find that the more I demo stuff, like Peter kind of in a way forced me into coming up with some new ideas by saying, "Hey, can you send me some new demos?" And I didn't feel like I had anything. He wanted demos in a specific vibe. And I didn't feel like I

1:21:25had anything already done sat in my unused pile of demos that I could send him. I was like, I'm going to have to start some new ideas from scratch, but at least he gave me like a few band name suggestions of yeah, stuff in this ilk, you know, I'm not going to say what. And um so I did some I've already done three demos in the last week, probably two weeks. And it's I feel like that's been a catalyst like now I feel a little bit more buzzed about like keeping going and keep demoing ideas, you know, and even if Peter ends up not liking any of them,

1:22:01right? If doesn't use any of them, I've then got them. I can use them for another MGT solo album or maybe another project or something, you know? So, it's always good to just keep keep yourself writing and demoing and coming up with stuff, you know. You you often hear of bands back in the day saying, "Yeah, you know, we had like a pool of like like Metallica. We had a pool of like 50 songs and we had to whittle it down or ideas, you know, we had to whittle it down to like 12 songs for the album." And that's [clears throat] actually a good way to be. Trent Resnner as well,

1:22:33the same thing. Um because if you've got a pool of 15 songs, you're going to pick the best 12, right, from 15 songs. But if you got a pool of 50 songs or 40 songs, it probably means you you have more chances of having really good quality stuff because if you picking 12 songs from only 15, it's not giving you an awful lot of choice really. There's three spares basically. So the three week songs around if you got a pool of 40 songs or 50 songs, chances are if you have to pick the best 12 out of 50, it's probably going to be a pretty strong set of stuff. So that

1:23:09there's that to be said as well for keeping writing and keeping adding to your pool of ideas, you know.

1:23:16That's just what that's what I think.

1:23:19Everybody's different, you know.

1:23:22I think it actually it reminds me of something you said earlier when you were just talking about like, you know, even if if you don't think you'll get the gig, like go for it. And I I think it's the same idea, right?

1:23:34Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. Just put them down. You know, you might think an idea is like really, you know, h that idea is rubbish. You know, I hear Ashley say that when she's coming up with ideas, she I don't like it, you know, and I'll be like, just play it to me and I'll let you know what I think. You know, uh sometimes it's good to get a second opinion, but you have to accept the fact that you're going to I've come across I've listened to my you know, when Peter said like, "Oh, I want some some new ideas." is I went back to my little

1:24:03cache of iPhone demos to see if there was something in there over the last year or two. Maybe I'd forgotten about, you know, and that maybe it suits the vibe that he's got in mind. And I think one of them I ended up using it. Um, but then I listened to some other ideas I recorded and I like, why did I record that? That just sounds like a really mediocre chord sequence. You know, maybe maybe what I'm not hearing on the recording is what in my head I was imagining the beats with that guitar part or I'm just playing a clean guitar, but in my head I was imagining it to be

1:24:36a big heavy sound or something, you know? So, yeah, sometimes I have ideas I'm like, I don't I don't know why I recorded that. It sounds pretty mediocre, but but then other ideas I'll be like, "Oh, I forgot about that. That's actually pretty cool, you know. I should I should do that, you know." So,

1:24:53Yeah. just um it's weird with creativity. You just got to uh you'll have good days and bad days and I'll have periods where I don't feel inspired to write anything new. Sometimes if you're in a like during the pandemic initially it was very depressing and I didn't feel didn't feel like being creative for a while. I just kind of put that to the side, you know. Yeah. I was still work like I was still getting people asking me, "Hey, would you record some league guitar on this?" you know, like I registered with a a um I registered with a a session agency uh air gigs and you you could book me, you

1:25:30know, Mark, get book Mark W to play on your song for money, you know, cuz I was still pay the rent, you know, and pay bills. I wasn't able to go on tour. So, I did a whole bunch of playing on other people's stuff. Some of it was great. Some of it I didn't like so much, but I was playing on it anyway uh because I needed to pay the rents. But um uh I didn't have the creat I didn't feel like doing my own surf. I just went through a dark a period of not feeling inspired. And of course you hear a lot of yeah big

1:26:01time artists even John Lennon will have said he had periods where he didn't feel like writing. It's just the way it is sometimes. It's where your head's at, you know, and you can't predict it. But if you do get inspired, you know, just have your iPhone or your Android on hand because you can just record that idea and then forget about it and then you come back to it a year later and you're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I should put that down."

1:26:29Yeah. I I think I think that's something where it's like um um gosh you must have like a huge collection of like notes and you know I mean when when you actually put down an idea it does take an amount of discipline actually to do that to actually like flush out an idea I think

1:26:49fleshing out. Yeah, definitely. Especially as I tend to write, you know, rock format. So, I'll have a guitar riff if like I was playing before and I'm going to hear the drums a certain way, more less like an electronic, you know, EBM type thing and more like a real drummer. So I have to put all that effort into the drum programming, you know, come up with a basic beat and then like move stuff and add kick drums and add feel and add this that and the other and um so that's all effort, you know, um which you have to kind of encourage yourself to do.

1:27:26Well, um friends in the chat, um thank you so much for for your thoughtful questions, for hanging out with us. Um, if you guys have any more questions, uh, drop it in the chat. Um, but, uh, Mark, uh, thank you again for for taking your time. [gasps and sighs]

1:27:45Oh, hello, friend. Hello. [laughter] Who is this?

1:27:50She lit the tonkanese. And she doesn't seem like she wants to hang out right now, but I thought she baby girl.

1:27:57Hello, sweetie. [laughter] Oh, is this one of the uh pandemic kittens that you

1:28:04Yeah. Yeah. We got uh we got uh Chulip when she was like 8 weeks old. She's a Yeah. Tonkanese. Um so that's a mix of a Siamese and a Burmese. Uh and she's uh and [clears throat] then we got a couple of months after that we got Toki who is a tuxedo.

1:28:23Very cool. Oh, sweet.

1:28:25They're great. They're great. So yeah, they they totally they took care of the whole pandemic lockdown thing because when you get a couple of cats, it's just hilarious, you know.

1:28:35Yeah. Watch grow up together, you know.

1:28:39And they're they're five now, like five and a half years old. So yeah.

1:28:45Gosh, I can't believe time is so fluid. It's crazy. It feels like it was yesterday that we were in the pandemic.

1:28:51Yeah, I know. Yeah.

1:28:54It's funny. I've actually got fond memories of the pandemic cuz I'd just gotten together with my wife and we were like getting to know each other. We were forced to like be in this lockdown situation, but we found Yeah. new relationship. It was great. You know, we were getting to know each other and then we get the cats and we'd go for walks and, you know, we had all this time on our hands and we watch a lot of great movies. Like I'd show her movies that she hadn't seen and vice versa. And so I have kind of happy memories of the pandemic strangely enough. you know, it

1:29:23wasn't a negative time for me.

1:29:25Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I I I love that you were able to um like have, you know, the love in your life. Um Yeah.

1:29:35Know. Yeah.

1:29:37Yeah. I enjoy helping Ashley out with her music as well, you know, and her music is definitely more electronic inspired, you know, than than the stuff I write. So I try and you know I I sort of get to explore working with synthesizers more you know which I do less with my music. Um so that's that's and she'll be like oh I want it to sound like you know this artist or that artist. And so I've got to figure out you know how to sort of create that kind of sound. And so I'm still learning even when I'm working on somebody else's music you know.

1:30:10Yeah absolutely. I I loved her vocals on uh your solo album. Uh Obsession, I think is the one [clears throat] that she sang on. I I thought it sounded

1:30:19actually. Yeah, that was uh that was Seven Dials that I totally spaced and forgot to mention. Seven Dials is another project of the many projects that I did. Seven Dials was an album, a band that I put an album out with last year, and that was myself, Paul Ferguson from Killing Joke, and Chris Connelly from Revolting Cox. And uh we had a couple of covers on there. Uh, one was um Spark's uh number one song in Heaven and then the second cover uh was Obsession, which uh Ashley had been spinning a remix of it on her DJ sets and I'd um taken it upon well I

1:31:03I suggested to her that she spin a remix of it and I helped create a remix of it using like stem spplitter software. Hey, Tulip. Hang on. My cat's wandering around. I just didn't knock anything over. Anyway, um so I kind of created some stems from the original version and I added like brand new beats and guitars and blah blah blah. And that kind of then when we were looking for tracks to flesh out the Seven Dolls album with, um I was like, "Oh, well, I've already got this kind of remix that I kind of put together of the original Obsession." And um so uh I just took out all of any of

1:31:42the original components, left in the beats that I'd added and the guitars I'd added and the baseline I'd added and then fleshed it out, you know, adding keyboards and uh more beats and and then Chris's vocals and then you know on that song it's like the guy singing and then the girl singing. I forget their names on the original. Um and I [clears throat] was like oh well I get I'll ask Ashley to do it. It was again it was kind of organic. She lives here. She kind of was part of the reason that I'd done a remix of it in the first place and and so it felt very natural to

1:32:12me. I said to Chris, "Oh, I'll get Ashley to sing the female parts and we'll see how it comes out." And and it came out great. And we did a video for that. So you can find that on YouTube. Seven Dials. Yeah.

1:32:24Yes. It's so good.

1:32:26Yeah. Hopefully we'll do some more stuff together this year. Yeah.

1:32:30Yeah. Our friend uh Dan Santon did the video for Wolves, I believe, for Seven Miles. Yeah. Fantastic.

1:32:37Really cool video. Yeah. Yeah.

1:32:40He offered to do that and uh I was very curious to see, you know, what he'd come up with and it's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And we had a great remix of that as well uh by Travis Bacon, you know, Kevin Bacon's son. Travis is a upand cominging artist himself. front saban called Contra and he did this great sort of high energy like almost new metalesque version of Wolves and uh we dubbed uh Dan's video to that as well and it's great

1:33:12that's awesome.

1:33:13Well, uh what is what is the best way for people is it through your website? Is that your preferred method for people to follow what you're doing?

1:33:21Yeah. Yeah. Well, I say that, but I've been I've been kind of getting lazy on like adding tour dates to the site, but um then there's a general, you know, there's links to all of the artists I play with and uh I'll periodically post like news updates with various tour news and stuff like that. But the best thing is that it contains all the links to my social media. So, you can obviously then follow me on Instagram and Facebook and uh Blue Sky and threads or what have you. And then uh you know, you probably get a more up-to-date idea what I'm doing following my social media, but all

1:33:54of those links are on my website, which is martweight.com or marteminiweight.com if you want to spend the time typing the whole thing in.

1:34:04And yes, that's my that's my real mother

1:34:09People always think it's like a stage name, but it's actually what I was christening. [laughter]

1:34:14So cool. It was like you were destined for the life.

1:34:17Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can blame my mom on this, you know, [laughter] to have I was a Gemini, you know, I was born in June, but also at the time there was the Gemini rocket series, uh, space rockets going to to the moon and uh, so yeah, they came up with the idea of calling me Gemini as a middle name.

1:34:36That's amazing. EP, the epicness was meant to be.

1:34:40I kept it I kept it pretty quiet at school. I was kind of, you know, yeah, like as a kid, you're embarrassed about being laughed at and stuff, but yeah, once I joined the band, it sort of was like, oh yeah, I guess I should I got this like interesting middle name. Yeah, I should use it, you know.

1:34:56But then I learned that people assumed it was a stage name, you know. I even toyed with the idea of just being Mark Gemini, you know, but it sounded so like a fake stage name that I decided to keep the thu, you know.

1:35:10Yeah. But I that's really really cool. I feel like um yeah like there's certain names that you know uh I don't know I feel like it's it's like u it brings about a certain vibe and a certain like thought and a feeling and you know absolutely feel like it's an artist name. The Gemini name.

1:35:30Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think my mom pushed for it. So yeah I got my mom to thank for that. Definitely. She must absolutely just be so proud of you with your music and your career.

1:35:42The funny thing with my mom is that um my mom and dad divorced when I was uh seven, you know, so and then my dad my dad went to live in North America when I was 12. And so I was, you know, pretty much raised by my mom, you know, like that was who I spent most of my time with. I'd spend like when before my dad moved to the States, I'd spend weekends at my dad's place, but then when he moved to America, I'd see him like, you know, once a year, maybe go for the summer holiday. So, I was raised by my mom. And

1:36:11I would say my mom is a lot to do with my love of music. She'd always be blasting music at home. In fact, she had a job where, you know, we had the juke boxes in the pubs of England, you know, in the 70s and 80s, and her job was to go and change the 45s, the 45 vinyl in those juke boxes, putting in new selection, you know, the new current hits and so on. She would then come home with a bunch of the old discs that she'd taken out of the machines. I don't know if she was supposed to, but I think they were just like, "Yeah, you know, you can

1:36:44keep whatever you want." They didn't really at that point they weren't really as far as I'm aware they weren't expecting her to you know hand those in because they had the the hole knocked out of the middle so that they could load jukebox machines. So I'd come home and I'd like it'd be like I'd be like kid a kid in a candy shop like getting all this vinyl and playing you know Sister Sledge and oh Abba and oh Electric Light Orchestra or oh here's like a Beatles song you know and um so I really developed this love of music and she'd always be playing loud music in

1:37:17the house and when I started playing guitar you know she was very encouraging and her taste like she still loves bands like uh Queen you know like She loves Brian May's guitar playing and I remember she went to go and see Muse a while ago like maybe 10 15 years ago. She thought muse were fantastic and uh you know she's always encouraging me to do more league guitar you know so she's a rock chick at heart you know

1:37:45that's awesome. Does she get to come to your shows when you're out in the UK?

1:37:49Yeah she does. Yeah, she's she's getting on now, you know, and she's got arthritis, so, you know, it's physically a bit more awkward for her to come to the shows and be comfortable. I try and discourage it now cuz she feels like she wants to come and she feels guilty if she doesn't come, but I don't want her to be in discomfort. But yeah, she was coming to shows up until a couple of years ago, you know, every time she'd usually come and see like a local Midlands area show, you know, and she always likes all the bands that I play with, you know.

1:38:21Uh, we have a comment in the chat um from our Armar. Um, same here, Mark. My auntie and uncle owned a pub and derby and loves the Whan shirt. Yeah, actually that is quite fitting with the glitching going on with the camera because the whole alien, you know, I'm calling in from like a spaceship Nostromo, you know.

1:38:43Yes, [laughter]

1:38:45I should pretend that I did it on purpose. It's like a special filter that makes it

1:38:51calling in from Nostromo. So, there you go. But yeah, cheers. Yeah, I do. I do love me the the alien films. I mean, the first Alien film is like, you know, definitely a top five, you know. Brilliant. Brilliant film. All of Ridley Scott stuff like Blade Runner and all that. I'm a big fan of all of his work.

1:39:10So good. So, so good. I I like the the modern stuff like the Prometheus series, too. I know it didn't hit with everyone, but I loved it.

1:39:18I know. I really like Prometheus as well. Um, yeah, just really just great quality stuff, you I love all sci-fi, but I'm definitely a sucker for um all of that stuff. And um uh yeah. Uh like my desert island films are stuff like um Alien, Bladeunner. Um I love uh The Thing, you know. I introduced Ashley to The Thing, which is the one the John Carpenter thing, you know, uh one of my favorite films. Um, and uh, American Werewolf in London. Love that poem, you know. Um, I like a lot of old stuff like Hitchcock, you know. Uh, in North by Northwest and and Psycho and

1:40:10uh, The Birds and all of those films are just fantastic.

1:40:16Yeah, those are some great ones.

1:40:18Yeah, I'm a big sci-fi. Both me and Ashley are both really into like good sci-fi films, you know. Oh, yeah. There's been some great ones. The The New Predator. Did you Did you guys get to catch that? The New Predator

1:40:30Uh, yes. Yeah, pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Um, I like that one last year. The one though where it was like set in like, you know, I don't know, 1700s or something with the Red Indians, you know, the sort of it was like a old time. I thought that was a really cool take on it. I think it was called Prey. That was good. Yeah. I just I watch all of those films. They're great. Yeah. Some are sillier than others, you know, like Alien versus Predator and all that, but I I still enjoy them. I think they're great.

1:40:57I do like Yeah, I like the Predator series. Um, you know, it's a it's fun, you know.

1:41:05Uh, some uh Oh, Shusher Cat says, "No one liked Covenant, though. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep slightly different to the Bladeunner move?"

1:41:15Right. Right. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I still enjoy them. Yeah. Obviously, some are better than others. I I didn't I didn't dislike Covenant. I thought it was all right, you know. Um it was a continuation of Prometheus in style. Um I guess it's just the the story line. It's kind of moving away from the alien in space thing. You know, it's kind of with Ripley and all that. It's kind of expanding on, oh, you know, why why why do humans exist? And you know, the backstory of all that. And it's an interesting take, you know, um because yeah, it's it is kind of it is

1:41:53weird that we are here and nobody can really explain it, you know, and uh who knows if aliens had something to do with it. When we say alien, because they wouldn't be aliens, if we actually are descendants of another civilization from planet, then they're technically not aliens. They're technically distant So, who knows? Yeah, I I love sci-fi myself. I always love the the imagination and um I think it's also very future forward. There's so many things that have been invented like in the Star Trek world that exist now. So

1:42:28yeah, like you think about, you know, the the the flip thing in in Star Trek, it's basically became, you know, the flip phone of the 90s and 2000s, you

1:42:39Um totally

1:42:40what is that they call it? um life imitating arts, you know?

1:42:45Yes, absolutely.

1:42:47Like they're building robots that are like humanoid robots. And I'm pretty sure it's because that's what we kind of were presented with in movies because technically a robot can have any form. Doesn't have to have two arms and two legs. But we're obviously choosing to do that more often than not. And I think it's partly inspired by just movies and what we expect a robot to look. You know, we already got the robot cars. You obviously you've seen them, right? Have you been in one? They've got the robot cars in LA where it's self-driving cars, the Whimos, and we went in one just to try it out. And uh yeah, it was kind of

1:43:22cool. You know, you you know this driverless cars driving around. It feel felt very safe cuz they drive very defensively and um and you could even like pick music to listen to, you know, in the interface in the car and they had the new Cure album on. So, we put the new Cure album on and we were like, "Hey, we can blast this. There's no driver to bother." So, we had turned up the Cure and you know, we're singing along to the Cure driving around in a car with no driver. Uh most bizarre, you know, I get and now it's normalized. It already doesn't faze me at all. I'll see

1:43:56a Whimo pull up next to me at a traffic light. No, no driver in it. It's like doesn't even phase me now. And I imagine we'll robots will become just as normalized once they start hitting the mainstream. Going to be interesting.

1:44:10Oh yeah, absolutely. I [clears throat] do. I do see us in the future for sure.

1:44:15Yeah. You know, as long as they don't kill us like in Terminator.

1:44:21Yes. I'm like as long as we play nicely with each other. Yeah.

1:44:26Yes. Yes.

1:44:27But it's not the robots that are going to want to kill us. Although I guess like they say that, you know, with AGI, you know, artificial intelligence will re will determine that will determine that you humans aren't um we're not needed anymore, you know, like we're self-destructive and so on and so forth. But uh the other problem of course with robots is you you know you get the baddies programming the robots you know with a directive like they were in Terminator. That's when it gets scary. You know it'll be great to think that all robots are going to be programmed to be there for the benefit of all human

1:45:07life and so on and so forth. But unfortunately, yeah, there'll probably be some some robots that get hijacked and um you know, turn bad, you know, but uh we'll just have to see how it goes.

1:45:21Yeah, that's true. Or, you know, if they become their own species, so to speak. Um that'll be interesting if they develop their own consciousness. We'll see. I guess

1:45:31they probably they probably will. Like,

1:45:34like you know how we project personalities onto animals? So, like I I'll say to Ashley, we'll project Yeah. We'll say, "Oh, yeah. Check. She's kind of like a prissy, you know, moody, you know, like a teenage Californian LA girl." You know, we kind of project a personality onto partly based on the way she acts sometimes. Well, I feel like we will also project a personality onto a robot. You know, once we get robots that are in our lives, maybe it'll be a robot that you you get that assists you with washing up or making you a co a coffee, you know, like basic stuff like that. Or

1:46:13we already have vacuums that are robots, you know. Um but imagine if it has a humanoid um appearance, we're probably going to project a personality on it. Plus, we can they're probably going to be, you know, they they will be programmed to uh have a certain personality. You'll be able to assign it a certain personality like with Siri where or chat GPT where you can say, "Oh, I want my I want my AI to have a Scottish accent or I want it to be a blah blah blah." Yeah, we'll be able to assign a personality to a robot. And I think when you do that, we're probably

1:46:48going to develop an affection for that robot, especially if it kind of acts intelligently with its responses, you know, I think we are going to end up becoming attached to you already hearing stories of men and women falling in love with AI girlfriends and boyfriends, you know, which sounds ludicrous, right? But if that if that voice is always saying what you want to hear, it's probably going to be very attractive, you know. That's true.

1:47:16That's true.

1:47:17So, I think we will actually assign personalities to robots and become attached to robots as well, you know, once they develop more um, you know, of a of a kind of a personality, you know,

1:47:32yeah, it be interesting.

1:47:34Yeah, for sure.

1:47:36You know, it's been a very interesting decade, I think. Yeah. The next 10

1:47:41I think so. Oh, I think it's an exciting time because we there's just so many things that um I feel like are are on the horizon that like you mentioned seeing the Whimo um seeing what's possible that and that's just I think the the beginning of it all. So we we'll see where it takes us.

1:47:59Yeah. You know, um it's uh it's exciting and it's um I was going to say nerve-wracking. That might not be the right word, but in the sense that they will displace like jobs for people, you know. So, the Whimo cars are technically, you know, slowly but surely replacing the need for an Uber, you know, or a taxi driver. And then those self-driving vehicles, they they'll start becoming trucks that will be self-driving. So, then the the truck drivers, what are they going to do? They're going to have to find a different job. And so, obviously with the onset of robots, yeah, there's going to be more and more people unemployed.

1:48:37So, that's the nerve-wracking thing is I bet there'll be a transition phase where they haven't introduced um universal basic income. The idea that everybody gets x amount of money a week to cover their life, you know, while the robots have taken all the jobs. Uh there'll be a period where that won't be in place. So, uh yeah, it's going to be a scary time where yeah, hey, it's cool. We got robots doing stuff we don't want to do. I don't want to do washing up. Let's have a robot do it. You know, I don't want to vacuum the apartment. Let's have a robot do it. Um, make me a cup of tea

1:49:11in the morning. That's great. You know, bring it to me. That's fantastic. But, uh, yeah, you know, once it creates a lot of unemployment, that's going to be scary. And I just don't know how society and governments are going to figure out how they just all of a sudden implement a basic universal basic income so that we don't all end up broke and homeless, you know, while these robots are walking around. It's going to be pretty weird. I don't know how how societyy's going to handle it, you know. It could be quite a shock, you know, society and it's scary at the same time.

1:49:45Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

1:49:48We do have like

1:49:49we can't really we can't really second guess how it's going to play out. You know, they're trying to second guess how it's going to play out, but we can't really second guess it. We just don't

1:49:58Yeah, absolutely. [clears throat] There's definitely a lot of factors for

1:50:02And then of course, um, is there going to be robot musicians? I mean, technically there's already robot musicians, right? It doesn't have to be a physical robot, but there's already AI writing a bunch of music that sounds as good as, you know, it can sound as passible and as catchy as a human writing a song, you know. So, is AI going to do us musicians out of a job as well? I'd like to think that um at least on the life front, you know, it's going to be difficult. people ain't necessarily going to want to go and pay a bunch of money to watch a bunch of

1:50:32robots playing music whether it's their own robot music or you know um covering a band you know we still I think we're still people will still want to pay to watch a real human like playing their own music or even a covers band I think there'll always be an attraction for that but I guess there will be the novelty element of robots say if you're into electronic music right I guess it would be kind Think about Da Punk with the helmets on and the way they'd be behind the keyboards.

1:51:03They could have been a couple of robots and you just go along and enjoy it anyway. So, think about it. There's going to be some elements where it actually might look cool certainly in cyber influenced bands and electronic music where having robots in in the in the lineup even partially will probably seem pretty cool and quite a novelty

1:51:24Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think that the novelty is there and like you were mentioning, you know, but that it's just there's something about the live show. Um I love live shows obviously that's [clears throat] you know it's something I'm very passionate about and I feel like you just cannot replace like everything about the human connection that you experience in a live show, you

1:51:47Yeah. Yeah. I think we're gonna want to, you know, eventually all of the bands are going to die off, right? Including myself. But for the moment, for the first for the next 20 years, you're still people are still going to want to go and see the actual bands that they were listening to. You know, they're going to want to really see um you know, they're going to want to see uh Peter Murphy and David Jay and all those guys. They want to see them playing, you know, Bow House or solo stuff, not robot AI doing it. You know, now I can see maybe robot AI replacing, you know, dead

1:52:20musicians. So maybe they'll come up with a robot could be Elvis, you know, once they've figured out the movement thing. And you know, well, because when you're watching an artist on stage, right, invariably you're at a distance, so you're not seeing the whites of the eyes. So if that robot is moving like Elvis and singing like Elvis because they'll have an AI copy of Elvis's singing and they get the robots to the point where the facial expression is passible from a distance. It will kind of feel like it'd have that novelty of, hey, I might go and see this robot Elvis because when you're watching it, it's

1:52:54kind of like you're seeing the real thing, you know? I can imagine that happening. You know, they already have ABA, you know, an ABA show in London where it's like projected avatars, you know, computerenerated of ABBA at their their prime in youth, you know, back when they're in their 20s or whatever.

1:53:13From a distance, it's an arena. It's probably like you're watching the real Abba. I haven't seen the show, but I am mildly curious to see it because I'm not going to get to see the real Abba, but I I like Aba. I covered them on one of my solo albums.

1:53:28Um, I'd go and see that show just out of curiosity. Oh, wow. You It's going to be like watching Abber in their heyday. That'd be kind of cool. I never saw Amber back in the day, you know.

1:53:39Might be interesting.

1:53:39Oh, absolutely. I think about, you know, some artists that have only gotten [clears throat] to experience on YouTube and I'm like, how I I would love that experience of what it would be like to see certain certain artists, you know, for sure.

1:53:53Yeah. You know, Michael Jackson, I could see them doing it for Michael Jackson, you know, of course, he's his physicality is such a large part of his show, and I can't imagine a robot at this stage. I can't imagine a robot being able to nail that, but you know, I've already seen videos of robots doing incredible things like physically, you know, like doing back flips and, you know, [ __ ] like that. So, I imagine maybe in 5 10 years time they may have a robot that could just literally analyze all of the movement of Michael from all of his video footage and just basically program the robot to do it, you know?

1:54:30It'd be pretty interesting, you know. That would be next level if they accomplished that for sure.

1:54:37Yeah. And they can just they can d the Michael's vocals from the album recordings onto a live show or they can have an AI generated, you know, because we've already heard AI generated, you know, famous people voices and you can hardly tell the difference sometimes, you know. So yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's just the physicality that is going to be the hard thing for them to create recreate at this stage.

1:55:03Oh yeah.

1:55:05Yeah. I think I think that would be an interesting take. Definitely. You know, there'd be some curiosity to see Elvis recreated or Michael Jackson recreated because people want to hear that music, you know, they still want to celebrate that music, you know. So, I think it's a possibility. And you know, Michael's to stay and Elvis is to stay. You know, they make the money from the shows and so it's a win-win. You know, his family still get their money.

1:55:33That's true. I mean, definitely examples of music that is absolutely timeless, you know. I think that just there's certain music that's created that just goes across time and just stays. Yeah.

1:55:44Yeah. Yeah. So, uh yeah, it's exciting times. We'll see. We'll see what happens. You know, it's going to be freaky one day to be talking to a real robot. You know, when I grew up watching movies like, you know, Alien and uh and Prometheus and stuff like that, which had robots in it, and Star Trek, and then to finally actually engage with a real robot that really does just answer your questions and respond, you know, intelligently. That's going to be the most bizarre thing.

1:56:16And then before we know it, it'll it'll be normal. Yeah. That'd be strange.

1:56:21Yeah, it'll be it'll be interesting when we reach that time. And I feel like that's it's more around the corner than we even realize. So, yeah,

1:56:29we don't even know if the government have, you know, sophisticated advanced robotics that they just haven't, you know, revealed to the world yet. You know, this UFO sightings are just

1:56:42you know, unidentified flying objects. You know, they're not from another world. They're actually our own. But the government doesn't want to admit that they're us, so they kind of pretend that they're UFOs as well. There's that whole theory, too. That behind the scenes. There's much more advanced stuff going on. We just don't know it.

1:56:58Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll be a matter of when we when we're well when I maybe we're prepared for that, when we're able to handle it. Yeah.

1:57:08Totally. Totally.

1:57:10Yeah. Um well, uh we had uh one more question, Mark, if you have the time. I know you've been you've been so gracious with your time.

1:57:18Yeah, sure thing.

1:57:19Um, so Shasher Cat was asking about your collaboration with Ministry if if you wouldn't mind to chat about

1:57:27Yeah. Um, well, I collaborated it was uh Ministry adjacent in that I collaborated with Al Jurgensson back in the uh 2000s. Um, I uh got to know uh Al Jurgensson and his wife at the time, Angie Jurgensson. Uh, I remember we were touring with Peter Murphy in the States and Al was living in El Paso at the time and we were invited over on a day off. We were playing El Paso. We had a day off. So, we went over to Al's uh home and they called it a compound cuz it was like a bunch of ho houses and buildings on an estate and uh he was working on

1:58:06actually he was working on Revolting Cox at the time, a new Revolting Cox album. This was 2009. And so, yeah, we're like hanging out and drinking and you know, enjoying their company. And then it was like a guitar was in the studio listening to the revolving [ __ ] stuff and then a guitar was like thrust in my lap by Al and he was like, "Hey man, yeah, why don't you come up with something on this track?" You know, so I found myself recording on a revolting cop track. Uh I think it was filthy sentas. I think that's what it was called. Yeah. So on the spot, I just

1:58:40had to come up with a guitar part. That was interesting. And uh that was fun. Of course, you know, Al's a legend, such a character. And so, uh, then we went on our way, you know, carried on the tour. That track ended up coming out on that album. And then, um, and then I was approached that Al, Angie said that Al wanted to do like a solo album, like an offshoot album, Alien Jurgensson, it was going to be, and he wanted it to be like more postpunk and like um um 80s, you know, inspired. Of course, with the bands that I was from, Peter Murphy and

1:59:15the Mission and that, they obviously thought I'd be a good person to work with to come up with stuff like that. So, uh, I flew back to El Paso that following December and, uh, 2009 and recorded a whole bunch of stuff. And when I say ministry adjacent, I was recording with Mike Sakia who was the longtime ministry guitarist and Tony Campass on bass who from Static X who was the current ministry basist at the time. This was a a period where ministry was on hiatus, hence our wanting to do this side project. And um so I'm rock recording with like you know four members of the current

1:59:56ministry lineup you know including Al. And uh we do this postpunk stuff and uh also uh you know all asked to hear some of my demos. One of them was uh the song that became uh it's Always Christmas Time. uh they decided to put it out as a Christmas single and they felt it had like a Christmy feel to it and so that came out uh builders Al Jurgensson and Mway so that was nice that came out in December 2009 and then um yeah some of the some more of those recordings surfaced over the years so yeah that was like um you know my um my moment of like collaborating

2:00:39with Al Shergson and yeah he's just a real a real character, you know. I love him, you know. I feel like he's like a legend like like Lemiey's a legend, you know. I feel like you're just hanging out with a true original. Uh very intelligent guy, very talented and uh I'm really pleased that I got to work with him and I'd like to work with him again someday. That would be great. I'm a big ministry fan.

2:01:04That's awesome. Well, Mark, again, thank you so much for your incredible wisdom and inspiration. You're such an inspiring artist. So, I really appreciate your time.

2:01:14Thank you.

2:01:16Yes. Thank you. And thank you friends in the chat for hanging out with us today. It's such a joy um to get to share this together. So, many loves and um I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.

2:01:28Yeah, you too. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, you have to come along to the next Nostalgia show. So,

2:01:34yes, please. I would love it.

2:01:35Yeah, definitely. And let me know when you're playing again. Yes, absolutely. [laughter]

2:01:43All right.