After a few delays yesterday I had the opportunity to catch up with Etty.
Here is part one of our interview.
Look for more to appear on a daily basis until I complete the transcription.
Mike: What is Satellite Party up to nowadays?
Etty: Well we are um, I’m not sure if you know but we have revamped our whole team. We let go of our manager and we have hired two new managers. We’ve separated the Lollapalooza entity into one and the Perry Farrell entity into another. So we have two separate managers managing two separate creative outlets for Perry. So that’s what we’ve been doing the past couple of months. It’s been a long process. Of course we want to find the right person. If that means taking in two to three meetings with one manager so be it. So it took us about two months to finally come to this decision. We’re very happy with whom we got and we’re very excited.
Mike: Was it anyone that Perry had worked with previously or is it somebody new?
Etty: Well for the Lollapalooza entity it’s this kid. He started as a marketing person. He had a company called Streetwise. Back in the day this must be ten years ago. I want to say when Deftones and System were just coming up. He does a lot of street marketing and in time he now has a marketing team as well as a managing team. We’ve known him for a very long time. We’ve known him since he was a little kid. His Dad is a Dentist in Beverly Hills and he ran his entire operation out of the guest house of his Dad’s house. Now he’s come into his own. He’s got System of a Down, Cypress, the new Alice In Chains, Deftones. On top of Streetwise marketing he is hired to outsource for a lot of companies like Coke, Coke-Cola and all that stuff to do marketing as well. So that’s going to be the brand manager for Lollapalooza. For Perry’s own entity we decided to go with The Firm. Peter and Geoff are friends of ours. A few years ago when we were looking for managers we decided not to go with them. They were a very, very big company at the time and we went with somebody else. Now another opportunity came up and we really want to work with them. That was an easy choice for us as well.
Mike: Right now Satellite Party is obviously you, Perry, and Carl right?
Etty: As of right now we have not yet auditioned or replaced the other players being that we are right now recording. Believe it or not Carl can play all the instruments. He’s been doing the drums. He’s been doing the bass. He’s been doing the guitar and Perry now is doing more electronic beats with live players over it. So we don’t necessarily need a live drummer at this point because we do have a drum machine and computers that help us with that. We’ve just been working on different things. Now with the Marc Jacobs party behind us I think Perry’s now looking for more gigs that he could DJ and play live over it. Sort of like what um… you know the new trends what all the… you know the music is going… bands are dying. If you even look at the line-up for Coachella you could see that. There aren’t that many great bands out there. What is happening right now is the Daft Punks, the Chestas, and all that stuff and I think Perry wants to go more towards them. If you think about it if he wants to go back to a bare bones rock band there’s always Jane’s Addiction. You know what I mean?
Mike: True. True.
"The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven."
Will Perry and or Satellite Party play this year's Coachella?
Read on.
Mike: I listened to the Coachella line-up announcement back on January 21st and I didn’t hear anything about Perry or Satellite Party. He’s got his streak of being there I think it’s seven or eight years in a row now.
Etty: Yeah I think Perry’s played there every year. We’re always, always a last minute add-on and as of right now we haven’t quite decided whether or not we want to do it yet or if we’re able to do it yet. But we most likely will do it. In fact Perry and I were just discussing it today… this morning whether or not we want to do it. As you know most of the time in the last couple of years Satellite Party or Perry’s involvement was always a last minute March announcement.
Mike: Yeah I know because I remember last year it was on then it was off and then on again.
Etty: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is what it is.
Mike: Well I don’t think I’ll be making it out there but hopefully the fans will get to see him.
Etty: No? Well it’s a truck out there.
"The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven."
Mike: I noticed also with these Nightwatchman gigs (with Tom Morello) that have happened recently there were a couple songs that you guys played there. One of them Nasty Little Perv and the other was Love Feedback. Now are those original Satellite Party songs?
Etty: Yes and I think we’ve added a couple more to that since that time but we um… at that time we were writing and Tom is somebody that Perry’s known since they were… in the ’80 running wild in the streets. He does those benefits every year and we’re always very happy to participate. We thought we’d try the new songs out and it seems like those two songs resonated with people. So we’re pretty pleased.
Mike: I liked the clips I got to see. Somebody recorded the show and of course everything always pops up on youtube anymore.
Etty: Of course. I know.
Mike: At least they were decent quality. It was nice to get to see them since I’m not out there. It’s a great thing to promote a band or whatever you’re into really. I think. It’s a good tool but of course you get some crap that ends up on it.
Etty: On youtube?
Mike: Yes.
Etty: Yeah youtube it’s kind of… the problem with youtube is you cannot control the quality. I’ve seen clips of ourselves where there’s people like singing away loudly next to the recording device. So you really can’t hear anything except for that person. You get it?
Mike: Yeah, I hear you. That’s unfortunate.
Etty: Or it’s a lot of static you know. (Laughing)
"The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven."
Alright this will be the last part for today.
More to come at some point tomorrow.
Mike: Other than those two songs Nasty Little Perv and Love Feedback. Can you tell me any other song titles?
Etty: We did another one called The Underground. O gosh… we don’t really go by song titles I just know them by sound. There’s The Underground and there’s the other one um… There’s actually one that we… it’s one that our manager has a hold of and it’s now being considered for a commercial. So it’s a pretty good song. Somebody liked it right away. Somebody picked it up right away and it wasn’t even finished. At this particular moment I cannot remember the damn name of that song.
Mike: That’s OK.
Etty: All The Way. The name of the song is All The Way.
Mike: That’s four new songs then. I figure an album is eight to ten tracks. How far along are you guys to having a complete albums worth of material?
Etty: Right now we have five songs but honestly… I don’t think nowadays the music industry… I don’t think the formats of albums are going to sell nor is it going to work. So I think that when these songs are ready um… we’re writing them. We’re probably going digitally finish it up and whatnot. I think when everything is up and ready and we’re running we’ll probably release a single at a time.
Mike: OK.
Ettty: You know when was the last time you went and downloaded an entire album? Never. It’s better to have good songs. You know one good song maybe once a month a new song comes out.
Mike: I hate to download stuff because the majority of it is all mp3. Which is a lossy format so you’re not … you’re getting cheated out of the quality of the recording when you download it that way.
Etty: That is true which is why by the end… by the time we reach like five, or six, or seven songs we’ll release all of them onto a hard copy.
Mike: OK.
Etty: But I don’t think it’s something that we’re going to come out with a CD again. I think it will be more of a digital thing.
Mike: I follow you.
"The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven."
