Formed in 1997 in New York City, The Mooney Suzuki has made its name, over the last several years, by channeling the coolest of old-style influences -- the Stones, the Who, the Zombies, Sly, Otis, VU and Jimi, to name a few -- in a frenetic, constantly touring live show that won them the designation of "hardest-working band in show business". So, 'round about 2001, when taste-makers discovered the Strokes and the White Stripes, it seemed only a matter of time before Mooney Suzuki joined the pantheon.

The release of the amazingly gritty, heart-stoppingly rocking Electric Sweat in April 2002, and the announcement of a tour with the white-hyped Hives, looked sure to seal the pact with success. Yet despite growing critical acclaim, two killer albums and a devoted fan base, The Mooney Suzuki remains on the fringes of the garage band frenzy, still waiting to capture the fancy of a fickle general public.

There can only be one explanation: not nearly enough people have heard Electric Sweat and its 1999 predecessor People Get Ready. So, to do our bit to remedy the situation, Splendid talked to Sammy James Junior -- singer, songwriter and one half of The Mooney Suzuki's two-guitar attack -- about the band's two albums, the experience of working with two legendary producers (Tim Kerr of the Big Boys, Poison 13 and the Lord High Fixers on People Get Ready, and Jim Diamond of Ghetto Recordings on Electric Sweat). We also talked about life in the piranha-attack feeding frenzy that has surrounded garage bands lately, and the prickling feeling of waiting for a big break that can only be described as "Electric Sweat"...

Splendid: I wanted to talk about Electric Sweat. I bought People Get Ready when it came out, and I really, really loved it --

Sammy: Thanks.

Splendid: But Electric Sweat seems like a big step up from that. I was wondering what you see as the differences, and what happened between records that changed the sound?

Sammy: Oh, well, I think the biggest thing was that we had been a band for a long time, for two years, before anyone put any of our music out. So the songs that are on People Get Ready had been toured behind. The songs there really evolved on stage, whereas the songs on Electric Sweat were written and recorded in a two-month period. We came off the road. We started working on new material, and then Jim [Diamond] invited us to his studio. We didn't even intend to record the full album when we went there, but when we got there, we just got into it and we just started recording all the songs. A lot of those songs were ideas that weren't even fully completed before we went into the studio, and then kind of came together in the studio.

A song like "Susannah" was not really working in the rehearsal space -- but then Jim would say, why don't we try some slap-back delay, and this, that and the other thing, and the recording process kind of helped to define the song and help the songs evolve, as opposed to just touring them and letting them evolve on stage. So one or two of those songs had been live staples.

Splendid: Which ones were the songs that you had done on stage?

Sammy: "Young Man's Mind" and "Natural Fact".

Splendid: Those are both songs that would have sounded completely at home on People Get Ready, I think.

Sammy: That would have?

Splendid: Yeah.

Sammy: Well, yeah, obviously, a song like "Susannah" or "It's Showtime, Part II" is -- actually, we had an intro that was part of our live show for a while, that we recorded, but "It's Showtime, Part II" is actually a slower version of that. We were like, hey, we're in the studio. We have all these cool instruments of Jim's to play with. Let's slow it down and fuck around.

Splendid: I want to talk about some of the individual songs, but first let's talk about what it was like to work with Jim Diamond.

Sammy: He's awesome.

Splendid: What's his studio like?

Sammy: It's nice and big and... Well, compared to New York studios. That's why we wanted to record there. Obviously, we loved all the records he was doing. You know -- the Go, the White Stripes, the Dirtbombs, all that stuff. But when we met him and he took us to his studio, it was just such a cool environment that we wanted to record there.

Splendid: Does he have a lot of vintage equipment?

Sammy: Yeah.

Splendid: Does that make a big difference in how the record sounds?

Sammy: It doesn't make a difference in whether you make a good record or not. But if it gets the sound that you like... I personally like a warmer, less perfect sound. I like the accidents that can come out of analog recording. But Jim also had a computer that we used to speed the mixing process and make a couple of edits. We got to hear the songs that wouldn't have gotten to hear if we had had to pay for another day to re-edit it. So it's good.

We're not anti-technology Luddites, otherwise we would never press it to CD in the first place or have a web site or send an email list. We like the sound of analog recording and that's primarily how we recorded it, but if a computer can make it easier to sequence the album, why not?

Splendid: What was it was like working with Jim Diamond compared to, for your earlier record, working with Tim Kerr?

Sammy: Well, Tim was a huge influence on the band. We were also younger and had never made a record before. He took us on and was kind of like, not just giving us direction in the studio but in music and life in general. He was a very guru-like figure and very inspirational, always providing advice and direction and guidance and anecdotes and stories and mythology. Jim was a lot more laid-back.

Splendid: What kind of advice was he giving you?

Sammy: It's hard to encapsulate it in a little sound bite, but particularly in recording, he kind of loosened us up and gave us a good attitude about recording, because we had been really uptight about the recording process -- as far as, you know, we're recording a record and it's got to be as good as the records we love, and if it's not, we're going to be disappointed. He kind of gave us the attitude of "don't worry about it". You're documenting a period in time. It's like a class photo. You might not like the way it looks, but when you look back on it, that's the way you looked.

Splendid: It must be a lot of pressure, because, as you say, it is expensive and you want to get it right and make the best impression you can.

Sammy: Yeah. I'm much less pressured about the money than the fact that you're setting something in permanence that you will look back on. If there's a mistake or something you don't like, you're going to be like, "Aagh!" for the rest of your life. Then you're reminded that all the records that you love, if the person who made them could go back and change their quote-unquote mistakes, you probably wouldn't love them as much. If Lou Reed could go back and re-record White Light/White Heat with a Steinberger guitar, I probably wouldn't be as into it. If Brian Wilson went back and changed Pet Sounds, to quote-unquote fix it or make it better, I wouldn't necessarily like it better. You've got to keep telling yourself that.

Splendid: Is it hard to listen to your old stuff?

Sammy: No.

Splendid: Because I really love People Get Ready. I haven't heard anything previous to it. I think it's a great album.

Sammy: Thanks. Well, for me, that's the other great thing about recording Electric Sweat. It taught that all you have to do to start thinking your album is perfect is to start working on your next one.

Splendid: That's great. Well, let's talk about "Electric Sweat", the opening song. It's got this great guitar riff.

Sammy: Sure. I was at a photographer's house. She had shot us. She was giving me the prints, and she was talking about all the other bands and everything -- you've got the Strokes and the White Stripes and the Hives -- and everybody is, all these bands are, so great, and we were off the radar at that point. I was just, I had this jolt of energy. Like, we've got to... We were going to record our next record but it still seemed so far away to record the record, release the record and then get out on tour. And I had all that energy pent up. That's when I wrote the riff, the music part. I had the idea of electric sweat, and somewhere that was already written that that was an idea I wanted to do something with. The concept of electric sweat as being a part of The Mooney Suzuki experience. That was the name of the song.

That was actually one of the last songs that we wrote. We were going into the studio. I was thinking about naming the record Electric Sweat, but we didn't have a song entitled "Electric Sweat". So it just came out of a burst of -- it was like that feeling when I was a kid and my parents were taking me to the street fair or whatever. You get out into the parking lot. You get out of the car, and you can see all the kids in the fair on the rides. They're doing stuff. You're only like ten feet away, but it's like, oh my god, I've got to get in there. You couldn't contain that. You wanted to be in and on the rides so bad. And the strip of parking lot was like an eternity to cross.

Splendid: What the hell happened, though, because they're out there, they're manufacturing bands like the Vines to do this garage stuff and you guys have been doing it for I don't know how many years and you're really good at it. Why do you think you didn't get swept up in that whole thing?

Sammy: I don't know. I mean, all those bands are on major labels and we are not. We've been on the radio. We've been on MTV. You can't do more than what we've done at our level. To get on the radio as much as one of those bands, you need hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's not me being cynical or anything. That's just the nature of the business. We haven't had that.

Splendid: Because when you play a record of yours for somebody that's not aware of music, they always really like it. It's not like some stuff that you like but you understand why it's not really popular. Let's talk about "Oh, Sweet Susannah", because the first time I heard it, I was like, wow, that seems really out of character. It seems like a really different kind of sound for you guys. How did that happen?

Sammy: That was a song I actually wrote really quick. The lick was... I was playing around with a bridge for another song. And I was like, oh, it doesn't really fit this song. It's pretty good. Let me just write a really quick, simple song around it to put it, so that I could put it on the shelf while I was working on the other song. I played it for the guys, and they dug it, and as I said, it wasn't really working out until we recorded it with Jim, and we liked it. And I was thinking that this isn't really us, so far. Should we put it as the last song on the record or bury it on the second side or something? Then, we were like, you know what, it is who we are. We love how Jim produced it and how it sounds, so I guess this is who we are now, and a lot of people seem to respond to that song.

Splendid: I really like it, too. It just seemed different. I also wanted to talk about "Little Bit of Love", which is the song on Electric Sweat that sounds the most Zombie-esque to me. My favorite song on the last album, "My Dear Persephone", was also like that. Are they a big influence on you guys, the Zombies?

Sammy: Oh, yeah, I love the Zombies. We've all been fans of the Zombies for a long time. We actually did a show with Rod Argent and Colin [Blunstone], and they were performing as the Zombies, even though it was just the two of them. We opened for them and got to meet them, and they signed my Odessey and Oracle, and it was great.

Splendid: So what do they think of your music? Did they say?

Sammy: They were nice. Whether they actually watched the set or not, they were like, "Hey, it was fabulous."

Splendid: You also seem to have a big '70s soul influence on your work -- Sly and the Family Stone?

Sammy: Huge Sly and the Family Stone fan for sure.

Splendid: I was hearing some of that in "Showtime, Part II".

Sammy: Definitely. Some day I would like to do an entire record of that. Just instrumental experimentation like that. I'd love to do an all-instrumental record at one point.

Splendid: You did a couple of instrumentals this time. The other one is "Electrocuted Blues".

Sammy: We had a single come out on Estrus in July that was both instrumentals.

Splendid: Was it all you or was it split with someone else?

Sammy: Both sides Mooney Suzuki. But you know, when we first went out, half of our set used to be instrumental. We would joke that our entire set was five introductions and five finales, because we had so many instrumental bits.

Splendid: Is that something that people respond to better live than they do on record?

Sammy: Sure, because our guitars are so loud, you can't hear the vocals anyway.

Splendid: I read somewhere that one of the reasons your live shows are so active and kinetic is because starting out in New York, you knew you had about five seconds to get people's attention.

Sammy: Exactly.

Splendid: Are there any other ways that being a New York City band has affected the way you play and perform?

Sammy: Sure. I think the reason we have such a strict adherence to such a limited palette is because I was sick of so many New York bands trying... because you're in New York, you're exposed to everything at once. So every band was eclectic and confused and trying to do a little bit of everything and had everything and the kitchen sink involved, and it just seemed like this mishmash. It wasn't like an artful collage. It was like a brown mess. So we wanted to distinguish ourselves by having a very distinct, definitive aesthetic both musically and visually. To not be one of these generic New York, East Village bands.

Splendid: Okay. It's interesting, though, because if you ever go to a retrospective of some artist's work, usually the first room is their early work, and they try on all these different styles. It looks like five other painters. And then you finally get to the next room and they sort of settle into their own style. It sounds like you knew more or less from the beginning what you wanted to do.

Sammy: You haven't heard the demo tapes, the earliest stuff. You might find that if we did that retrospective that we have a similar thing. And it's true, there was a time when, we went through a period when we were consciously trying to wring as much indie out of our rock and roll. And that took a while, especially with my singing. I had sung so many, you know, I don't even want to talk about it. It took a long time before I started singing naturally in a blues tonality and out of an indie rock tonality, but it was well worth it.

Splendid: That's interesting. I know you guys toured with the Hives this year and all your shows sold out in about an hour or less than an hour. What was it like to be in this storm of hype?

Sammy: It's fun and frustrating at the same time. It was awesome because we were in the middle of it and catching a lot of it. It was also frustrating because it was for the Hives. The shows sold out because of the Hives. All those people were there because of the Hives. On the other hand, everybody responded to us so positively. It was a great opportunity for us.

Splendid: You guys are all really young, in your twenties, and your fans -- don't they tend to be a little bit older? I know the Cavestomp people tend to be older. Does that bother you?

Sammy: No. At first it would be like, most bands have teenaged girls in their dressing rooms. We have 50 year-old men in our dressing room.

Splendid: That sounds like kind of a bummer.

Sammy: Well, but it's different now. Things are changing. You've got the Strokes, the White Stripes and the Hives on MTV. A lot of younger kids are coming to our shows. And now we've reached the point where we're like, we can play all ages shows, and that seems to be they seem to get down even more than the 50 year-old record collecting trekkies, you know. Who I love. I love those guys.

Splendid: Did you sell a song to Nike?

Sammy: No, we did not sell a song to Nike. Nike commissioned us to do our interpretation of an amazing Cole Porter song. And we were very excited to do that because I love the song and when we read the treatment of the commercial, it was this great celebration of New York City, and the spirit of New York, and we were really psyched and inspired to be involved in that.

Splendid: What was the song?

Sammy: "Don't Fence Me In".

Splendid: I haven't seen it. I read about it on some bulletin board. Were you worried about losing credibility?

Sammy: No, I was not worried about losing credibility because if you're going to be at any stage in your career where more than 500 people know who you are, you're not, there's nothing you can do that's going to meet with everybody's approval, so you can't worry about it. It's not like the dark specter of sacrificing your artistic integrity visited us one night with a sickle in its hand and a bag of money in the other. There was this really cool group of creative people coming up with this great idea for a commercial, and they were inspired about it. They got in touch with us. We got inspired about it. We wrote the song and played it for them. They got re-inspired by it. It was a creative project and everybody involved was really into it.

Splendid: Nike always does great ads.

Sammy: Yeah, exactly. Like a Nike ad isn't a commercial. It's in the genre of pop art. Like that one with the athletes warming up to the sound of the orchestra tuning. That was amazing.

Splendid: I think it depends a lot on execution. The only commercial that I really mind is the Jaguar ad with "London Calling" in the soundtrack.

Sammy: I don't think I've seen that.

Splendid: Do you have time to talk about how you guys got together? You were an art student?

Sammy: I was at the School of Visual Arts. Graham Tyler was at Parsons. Augie Wilson was at Cooper Union. And I actually knew Augie from other bands and friends, but Graham actually answered an ad that I'd put up in a music store. We hit it off and, you know. The rest is history.

Splendid: Do you still do any visual arts?

Sammy: Yeah, we do all the visual arts for The Mooney Suzuki -- all our graphic design and tee-shirts and album covers, and that's why we enjoy being in a rock band as opposed to being in an orchestra or something. We enjoy being involved in all the mediums involved with rock and roll, from the music to the lyrics to the album design to the clothing design to the performance to the interview. For me, doing an interview is another way we get to express ourselves. Some people complain -- oh, no, we've got to do interview; oh, no the press! But to us, we were the kids at shows of other bands, pissed because nobody was caring about what we were doing. So now that people are interested, we're appreciative of it.

It's not that we doubt his sincerity, but we should mention that there are gales of laughter from the touring van the whole time Sammy is talking about how much he likes doing interviews.

Splendid: Well, that's good. We appreciative your making time for us. (A pause) I understand that the band's name comes from two singers in Can?

Sammy: That is correct.

Splendid: That seems like kind of a weird reference. I don't hear much of Can in your current work, at least?

Sammy: Well, you don't hear any Pink Anderson or Floyd Council in Pink Floyd's work either, do you?

These were two fairly obscure blues guitarists whose names were combined by Syd Barrett to make Pink Floyd. But you already knew that, right?

Splendid: No. (Floundering a little. The reference clears about a week later, and I feel like an idiot.) So was Can an early influence?

Sammy: We love Can. We love Kraftwerk, too. We love Eminem, too, but we don't sound like him.

Splendid: (laughing) Yeah, okay, what are you listening to?

Sammy: Well, actually on most heavy rotation has been Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but a lot of Eminem and Outkast.

Splendid: No kidding. What a great mix. You think it's time for a Pink Floyd revival?

Sammy: I didn't know that Pink Floyd ever went away. They're still on tour.

Splendid: I think people stopped talking about them for about ten years and now they're starting again.

Sammy: I haven't.

Splendid: You recorded the new record on Gammon instead of Estrus. How come?

Sammy: Estrus is great, great guys. Even after we put out the record on Gammon, we still put out a single on Estrus. We're still hanging out with the Estrus gang. They're friends of ours. And the Gammon folks are friends, too. But at the time, we had Electric Sweat completed and it was like, we could put it out on Estrus and run the exact same rap as with People Get Ready, but in this climate now, you have the Strokes, White Stripes and the Hives. Here was Gammon Records, a new label that had some money they want to throw toward the band and try and capitalize on the current climate, which we were like, okay, if you want to prioritize us and spend a lot of money on us, that's a positive thing. So we went with it. I will always consider us an Estrus band, wherever we move onto. That was the goal of The Mooney Suzuki in the first place, to be on Estrus records.

Splendid: What are you guys going to do next?

Sammy: Touring and then start working on the new record.

Splendid: And do you see that being different from the first two?

Sammy: Well, we'll find out when we get there.