(hed)pe
An Interview with AMZ's Bushman.

After pulling one of the most successful no pass having maneuvers of my life, the "(hed)pe" manager (BIG Thanks) tracked down and hooked me up with bassplayer Mawk (Mark pronounced with an English accent). They had just finished their set on the main stage of the final OzzFest of 1999. Last minute set changes saw the band play to a very thin crowd in the seats, but I can attest that the grass crowd had it's share of "(hed)pe" supporters. Too bad they were a mile away. The band played a rippin' set, and was up a notch or two in angst with "(hed)pe's" dissastifaction with the environment and energy being readily felt. The introduction went something like this:

Manager: "Mark, this guy's from ACCESS to the MUSIC ZONE magazine. Do you want to do a quick interview right now?"

Mark: "Right now, all I want is to get high and . . ."

Me: "I got the chronic."

Mark: (with big smile) "Then let's do that interview."

We scrambled past a ton of post-set well wishers and into their tour bus. "DJ Product," the turntable arsonist was semi-present and "Wesstyle" (guitar) made an appearance at the end. Mawk (bass) was very personable and cool to hang out with and I'm very appreciative for his last minute cooperation to give such a lengthy interview (especially right after playing a set).

As we were getting things set up for this chat, Mawk happened to point out the cover to their album he happened to be holding (Ok, I'm a fan as well as a writer and wanted an autograph, hate me if you must) was done by their DJ with "a quarter of Chronic and a square piece of paper." It took a week and each member of the band is in there. "Everyone's in here. No one even knows." After a successful hunt for an adequate poker, we proceeded with the interview.

AMZ - So where is the room full of wall to wall (to ceiling) porn that appears for the band photo in the CD jacket?

Mawk - Oh that's in Wes's old girlfriends apartment. That's where Wes used to stay, a good friend of ours Suzy. It was just in one of the rooms and the guys who were taking the pictures just went to the liquor store and bought a bunch of porn and they just like covered the walls. They did it all for us. We just walked in like "Oh, Wow. It's everywhere; all right we'll do this." My stupid expression is due to a whippet hit.

AMZ - What's your favorite Black Sabbath/Ozzy song?

Mawk - My favorite would have to be "Symptom of the Universe," simply because back in the '82 when I first picked up a bass and first played in a band, it was the first cover song we ever did. And 15 or16 years later, here we are opening for Ozzy, and I hear them play that song.it's really sentimental to me. It's special for all of us because we're kinda older, compared to most bands around here. We grew up on Sabbath. When I was just getting in music is when Ozzy just started bringing out his own shit, "Diary of a Madman" and "Blizzard of Ozz," and that's legendary. You can't fuck with that.

AMZ: What's been the biggest surprise "coolness" of this OzzFest?

(Without hesitation) Mawk - "Slipknot." Those guys.we heard rumors about them, we heard stories here and there about this band "Slipknot" from the Midwest. Then we saw them at sound check when it was 9:00 in the morning on this little stage without their masks on and it was like "God, these guys rock." At the first show, we saw them with their suits on, and all their masks, and it was a half hour of pure insanity like we've never seen before. It just blew us away. I love those guys. And I hope "(hed)pe" tours with "Slipknot." That would be awesome. Did you see them today?

AMZ - No. They rearranged all the set times so I heard them from the parking lot as I was walking in.

Mawk - Oh that's right. Yeah. The powers that be here suck.

AMZ - Are you sorry to see the tour end?

Mawk - Very sorry. Outside of playing music, one of my biggest loves is traveling. And on this tour, in the summer, I get to see everywhere from Florida to Maine, from Texas to Seattle. It's covered the whole country. Yeah I'm going back to California, and I love living by the beach and everything, but I'm gonna miss the traveling. And people feed us three times a day, and we play for a half hour. The rest of the day you wander around, see cool bands (talk to young chicks) - it's the perfect life. Now I gotta go back to Taco Bell or McDonalds.

AMZ - Really? You still work a real job?

Mawk - No, I mean go back there to eat. No, right now we're lucky we don't work day jobs. And I never worked at Taco Bell.

AMZ - Lyrically, "(hed)pe" seems to focus on overcoming obstacles.

Mawk - Yeah. Even the name (hed) stems from that. Originally we were called "hed" and it related to some songs were we writing at the time with Jared (M.C.U.D.), who obviously does all the lyrics, and we were doing a lot of heavy political stuff, anti-racist songs and the term "hed" came from "heavy hed," with a guy like Jared carrying all this weight on his shoulders. And then we just shortened it to plain "hed." The way it started with the parenthesis came from.

(DJ Product reentered looking to get his utensil back, which for you that indulge, is one of those hippie hand blown glass kinds but has a bulge in the bottom so it works as a water powered unit. Sweet.)

Thoroughly and pleasantly distracted, we continued on with the interview.

AMZ - Given the power, what laws would "(hed)pe" enact?

DJ Product - I'd legalize weed.

Mawk - I'd personally bring in a world citizenship because I'm sick and tired of dealing with borders around the world.

AMZ - Which brings me to another one of my question. . .what is your opinion on the Canadian policies.

Mawk - I don't even need to touch that right now. I'm still banned from Canada until the year 2002. The American government has graciously let me in for the next three years, so I don't want to jeopardize my position by saying what I really feel about Canada.

AMZ - Would you care to elaborate on the story? It's been alluded to but not a lot of people know what actually happened.

Mawk - All right. We were recording our CD in Massachusetts and we took a week off. I just got into the car and went sightseeing and I tooled on into Canada through this tiny little country road. When I tried to get back into the states and I got stopped and they wouldn't let me in.

AMZ: Why?

Mawk - Well, I pretended that I was from California because I didn't have a passport or anything so they busted me and arrested me for "Impersonating an American" and they kicked me back into Canada, put me on a plane and sent me back to England. So now they won't let me in until 2002. Even though England used to own Canada.

AMZ - What is the "(hed)pe" opinion of the state of popular radio?

Mawk - We'll keep that opinion pretty much to ourselves because radio seems to be owned by whoever wants to pay for it. Whichever record company has the most money right now will get their songs on the radio. Obviously we're not on it, as any of our fans will testify. So radio is good, it's something to switch on and listen to, but it sure isn't the people's choice. It's big business' choice who you're going to listen to.

AMZ - What's been the most memorable OzzFest moment so far?

Mawk - I couldn't think of anything at the moment. Everything's been too cool. It's been a blast.

AMZ - What do you think of these big package tours? Is it a bunch of similar genre'd bands just playing together or is it more of a way to market to a particular target audience?

Mawk - No. No on both counts. What OzzFest isn't, is it's not a big profit making tour for the bands and the second stage like us. All the bands on the second stage leave without making any money, but it's the best opportunity in the world right now to play to people who don't know you. If you're a new band coming out, you can't beat the OzzFest. Just for that reason it's invaluable.

AMZ - Who gets the most chicks in the band?

Mawk - Definitely not me.

AMZ - Is "(hed)pe" about the party or the message?

Mawk - It's about partying to get the message across.

AMZ - "System of a Down" has had some ties with "(hed)pe." Any other "System/(hed)pe" collaborations planned?

DJ Product - Yeah, in about an hour.

Mawk - Me and Serge talked about doing a cover of "War," by Bob Marley, which will be just an over the top cover. Everybody in both bands will be playing on that record. It's all in the head right now, it's for the future. But we'll do a version of that song that no one else in the world will imagine.

AMZ - Did that come out of having their bass player fill in for you?

Mawk - No. It came out from just having played together and us having a similar mindset and being really good friends.

AMZ - Christian Olde Wobers (Fear Factory - bass) filled in for some bass with you guys. Has he worked with you any more from that?

Mawk - No. He's just a really, really, really good bass player and a really cool head that loves our music and we love his. When he found out that I couldn't get into Canada, within a minute he was like "let me do it" and everyone in my band was like "What? Let's do it. It's on." And he stepped up and learned the songs in a day or whatever. He got out and played, and the second show, Jared didn't even announce "Oh, this is Christian from Fear Factory and Mark's not here." He just played the show, and went off, and no one even knew that it was a different guy.

AMZ - What did you do the nights of the shows that you weren't playing?

Mawk - The second one I stayed somewhere in Washington and went mountain biking up in the hills above Seattle.

AMZ - It's got to be a weird mental thing going on in the back of your head knowing your band is playing without you.

Mawk - It bummed me out a lot, because it just didn't feel good. I just put it out of my mind. It's almost like cheating on a chick in a way. . .I felt kinda cheated on. There were my closest friends in the world, playing with someone else, but at the same time it was still my fault. So I had to deal with it.

AMZ - Is "Motley Crue" cool?

DJ Product - Yeah.

Mawk - Coolest heads ever.

DJ Product - Nice people, bad music. No, I love them man. They're good people. We're good friends with Tommy still to this day.

Mawk - Every single guy in that band is as cool as you could hope for. Like the first night we got there, and I remember we we're setting up for sound check and we were all kinds of nervous. We had done a couple of little tours, but nothing big. I'm setting up my bass stuff and this big ol' pair of boots comes walking up. I looked up and this guy goes "Hey man. What's up? I'm Nikki." That was how they introduced themselves. They were just down. They were cool.

DJ Product - They were the coolest. We hardly even talked to them before and then we were smoking weed with Tommy every night before the show.

Mawk - Yeah. We feel kinda bad in a way because Tommy had been dry for like a year or two. Then we toured with them, and suddenly he's smoking weed and drinking Jack Daniels again. Something happened.

AMZ - What were "(hed)pe" like as kids?

DJ Product - What I am now. Surfer. Skateboarder. Spray Painter. Crazy Motherfucker.

AMZ - What does (hed)pe fear?

Mawk - We fear that we're going to continue doing our side of the deal, which is making good records and playing good shows, and not getting any recognition, because that's what happened so far. We've got no recognition. We've had no recognition other than our shows. For some reason we don't get much publicity. People have either seen us live, or they've never heard of us. We don't get any publicity. We're not on the radio, we're not in any American magazine you'll ever see.

(Except AMZ!)

Mawk - So the only way you'll ever hear about us is if you go to a show to see Fear Factory, System of a Down or Soulfly. Then you'll hear about us.

(For the record, I was turned onto "(hed)pe" by seeing them steal the show when they played with "System of a Down" and "Dial7" in San Diego, so he's right).

(Wesstyle, guitarist, stuck his head in for the last few questions.)

AMZ - Who is a Sinner?

Wesstyle - Everybody.

AMZ - Who is a Saint?

Wesstyle - Everybody. Depends on our frame of mind.

AMZ - What's the coolest?

Mawk - Wes is the coolest.

Wesstyle - Tasty babes, some good waves and some killer buds.

AMZ - What's the lamest?

Wesstyle - Lame people with negative energy that hate or are racist. People that don't like our band (No, I'm just kidding).

AMZ - Any messages to the masses?

Wesstyle - We're the underground, support us and we appreciate it very much.

The "(hed)pe" camp was very accommodating in doing this last minute interview (note to publicists, when you ask a magazine repeatedly to interview your bands, make sure you let the bands know that they are going to be interviewed - makes the process go much smoother). Contrary to Mawk's apparent dismay with the state of "(hed)pe" publicity, they did just finish the OzzFest tour, and AMZ is featuring them, so they can't be doing all that bad. For the unfamiliar, "(hed)pe" produce a socially-conscious "G-punk" (read rap-core with occasional punk/metal rants), boast the industry's most rippin' DJ, and a live show that rages with energy (especially when there is more to feed off of than empty arena seats). They compose some tricky ass beats, know how to get the big guitar crunch happening and have a lyrical presence Zack de la Rocha from "Rage Against the Machine" would be down with. Do yourself a proper and track it down.