The Erotics have always been my favourite rockers from the East Coast of the U.S. and over the years have put out some stunning slices of Sleazy Rock and Roll. Main man Mike Trash just has a knack of writing a song that makes you want to chant along and raise that first in the air, and maybe even sink a few beers with your mates whilst doing it. Their latest offering ‘Rot in the Shade’ hit late last year and it’s another winner! But so much more is going on in The Erotics camp – new songs, new beverages and an upcoming UK Tour to name but three. We caught up with Mike to find out more.
Mike: Hey how you doing?
Mark: We finally got there!
Mike: (laughs)
Mark: As you will be aware by the review one of my favourite albums of last year was ‘Rot in the Shade’ – you just keep them coming! It’s always been a mystery to me how you keep writing such great records and how they never get old and the quality never dips!
Mike: Thanks you.
Mark: I think that the first album I ever heard by The Erotics was ‘Rubbish’.
Mike: OK.
Mark: Rob Lane (Teenage Casket Company, Straight to Video) sent me a copy of that record many years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve asked many people over the years about songwriting but I’ve never asked you before – how do those songs come to you?
Mike: That’s even a mystery unto myself to be honest! I’ve been asked this before and if I try to write a song or if I force myself to write a song nothing will come out, or at best something mediocre will come out of it. If I force it nothing good happens. Then the next thing you know I go on a writing spree and I write like 15 really incredible songs out of nowhere. And some of those I don’t get to use as that’s too many for an album.
Mark: That’s incredible that they just come in a flood. Everyone is so different. I talked to Michael Sweet yesterday who said that when he needs to he just sits down and they come to him.
Mike: Maybe he works well with that deadline or pressure. I never have any deadline or pressure. (laughs) It just works differently.
Mark: As long as they just keep coming for you because I thin with ‘Rot in the Shade’ and ‘Ride it to Death’ the EP before it and ‘Let’s Kill Rock and Roll’, I think you’re in a hot streak where after twenty years of music you’re writing some of my favorite right now. Does it feel like that to you?
Mike: I think so. I told you I had eight songs written for the new album right?
Mark: You did just the other day!
Mike: Well right now it’s up to ten songs! (laughs) and because we’re probably not going to release it this year and not have it come out till 2024 we’re well ahead. But you have to take the songs as they come to you – and who know maybe something even better will come along but right now I feel that all of them are really strong. I just sent them to the guys in the band to listen.
Mark: Do you road test many of the songs before they get recorded?
Mike: Sometimes we might put one in there just to see how it goes over. And if it goes over well cold then we know we have a keeper.
Mark: Over the years many Rock and Roll bands have dabbled in beverages of the alcoholic variety – Whitesnake has wine, Kiss had a beer and wine and ow finally have their gin. All kind of bands have jumped on board – because what goes better than a drink with your mates when you’re out at a show? But you’re the first band I know to venture into that ancient honey- based beverage ‘Mead’.
Mike: Yeah I actually have a bottle right here (Mike lifts it up to the camera), it’s called ‘Bood of the Wasted’ which is one of our newer classic songs that goes over really well so it was only appropriate to name it after that. It’s made at the Helderberg Meadworks in the mountains in upstate New York. I fell in love with the place, started drinking there a lot and buying a lot of their products – I was such a good customer they wanted to get rid of me by making me my own mead! (laughs) It’s kind of spicy, has a little chipotle taste to it, very nice stuff.
Mark: It’s an impressive bottle. We have a few local Meaderies but they tend to stick to the traditional sweet stuff. Those guys have a huge range – and drinking horns!
Mike: They do! (laughs) It’s also 13% so no driving after you drink that! They do ship out orders to a few US States but it’s different rules for each state.
Mark: It’s been 26 years since ‘Born to Destroy’ the first Erotics album, do you ever look back on those early albums and throw a few into the set?
Mike: We haven’t for a while, but in three years it’s our thirtieth anniversary and so we’ll definitely revisit some of the older songs and have a big blow out for that. At the moment we sort of play everything from 2005 and ‘Rock and Roll Killing Machine’ so the first three albums get a little overlooked, but we can’t pay everything! We just feel that 2005 was when we hit our stride. I do play those songs acoustic though when I get out and play on my own.
Mark: So I have three years to save to get over and see you play!
Mike: That’s plenty of warning for you!
Mark: I know, all these years of listening and talking to you and I still have to see you play live. I hear that you might be heading to the U.K. soon?
Mike: We have 4 dates in there already for April 2024. We’ve not announced anything as yet. I’ll send you the dates.
Mark: And we’ll publish them as soon as they are confirmed. I’ll have to get over there for those.
Mark: I was having a look through the back catalogue to see if there were any anniversaries and all I came up with was ‘All That Glitters is Dead’, one of the albums you don’t play songs from at the moment, which is 20 years old this year!
Mike: Yeah coming up this Summer.
Mark: I shall hope to hear some of those at the anniversary show. Getting back to the new material of which you said that you had ten already – what phases do you go through in the writing?
Mike: One really strong one I wrote which came right after ‘Rot in the Shade’ got finished and which I think might even be one of the best I’ve ever written. I just showed it to the band last week. I started off with a rough version on the laptop of just me singing and playing guitar. Then I finished the lyrics, and at that stage I let the band hear it. With that one I think one of the lyrics will actually be the title of the album which I donlt want to divulge yet. (laughs)
Mark: Do the lyrics always come to you last?
Mike: Yeah, I normally have a melody and a chorus and I just scat around it and then when it comes to the lyrics I have this weird system where I don’t write my lyrics till a week before I go into the studio (laughs). The pressure just lets them come out right on time. Although saying that I do have the lyrics for one of the new songs already ‘Let the Dead Times Roll’ (laughs).
Mike did tell me the lyric from that song that may well be the new album title, but I’ll save that announcement for him at a later date.
Mark: I’ve always loved the lyrics and the humour in there and also the titles if the albums and the puns in there too. I love things like ‘United we Can’t Stand’ and ‘Rot in the Shade’ which I assume is a tribute there to Kiss?
Mike: That’s exactly what it is! (Laughs)
Mark: One of the things I’ve never asked you and I have to today because I’m reading Ron Young’s book (The singer from Little Caesar) at the minute and one of the things he talks about are the bands he used to see or listen to as a kid. What was teh first concert you ever went to?
Mike: Mine was Kiss during the Creatures of the Night Tour. Last month that was 40 years ago. January 16th 1983.
Mark: Now that’s impressive recall. I think that tour only played in the US and Brazil and I had to wait for the ‘Lick It Up’ tour the next year to see them again. That Creatures Tour was fantastic but I don’t think sold well. Were you playing at that time?
Mike: I’d just started playing, I’d just before that got a guitar for Christmas in ’82. I’d just bought the ‘Speak of the Devil’ Ozzy album and I read that Brad Gillis who played on that was with Night Ranger who supported Kiss so I was really excited about seeing them too.
Mark: I think we got to see Night Ranger just one time in England in the 80’s a support slot for Foreigner in ’85 and it took them over 25 years to come back. Never came Downunder sadly as they’re a great live band.
Mark: We’ve talked about your first show and that fact that your got that first Guitar the month before. What was it that made you pick up the guitar? Was there a defining moment for you or had it been a long time coming?
Mike: I remember the summer of ’82 I just started buying more and more Hard Rock albums than I usually did, really getting into it. Then MTV exploded and there was ‘High ‘n’ Dry’ by Def Leppard – all those videos were on and I thought “I should get a guitar and try and do something like this.” (laughs) And that was it!
Mark: High ‘n’ Dry and Pyromania are the best two Leppard albums for me.
Mike: Yeah, those two back to back are incredible.
Mark: Can you still remember, and some people can and some people can’t, can you still remember the first song you ever wrote?
Mike: Oh yeah, it was a song back in High School…. Oh yeah, I remember. I started writing maybe like 9th or 10th grade – I was heading in a Sleaze Rock direction even at that age. As you know I was in a band called ‘Lethal Lipstick’ before ‘The Erotics’ back in High School. So I wrote a lot of those songs that got played in Lethal Lipstick, but before that I was in another High School band with some friends and I gave a demo to the Lethal Lipstick guys and they ended up doing most of those songs.
Mark: Was writing something that always came naturally for you?
Mike: Yeah. In 1986 I started getting into the more raunchy Rock stuff, less of the really polished stuff, more of the 70’s bands. Then I stared getting into more obscure bands like The Rods – I always wanted to cover ‘Too Hot to Stop’ back then and all these years later me finally did it! (Laughs) It’s a song that fits us perfectly – some people don’t even know it’s a cover.
Mark: I love that, I love going back in time and revisiting old stuff. I remember when Punk hit in the UK before I was a teenager and wondering what the fuss was about – I’d been listening to my Dad’s MC5 and Stooges for years and already discover New York Dolls, Punk was nothing new.
Mark: If you could have guested on any great record from the past what would you love to have been on?
Mike: (laughs) Well it would be by one of the people I most respect – The Eyes of Alice Cooper the 2003 album.
Mark: That is a very underrated album. I loved that and Dirty Diamonds, but I loved a lot of the 80’s stuff like ‘Zipper’ and ‘Special Forces’ I remember asking Alce about them and him saying he honestly couldn’t remember much at all about making them.
Mike: Oh wow. My very first Alice show was for Constrictor – The Nightmare Returns shows back in 1986. With Kane and Kip Winger. And Ken Mary on drums was great.
Mark: That would have been a great tour, I remember having a ticket and being to ill to go. People always forget that Kip was in the band for a while.
Mike: Two albums yeah. And Vinnie Vincent opened that show.
Mark: Now that would have been interesting.
Mike: He was booed of the stage even back in 1986. I thought he was god but he just seemed to rub people in the crowd up the wrong way, just his presence. He was flipping them off, it was really bizarre, that was ’86.
Mark: You had a few songs from ‘Ride it to Death’ on ‘Rot in the Shade’ I’m guessing that’s because it was a limited release?
Mike: Yeah that’s right it was a limited edition and sold out on CD. So we took the three that we liked best and put them on there. And that’s when I took the Rods song to the guys and told then I thought we could do it our own way and I think it came out great.
Mark: As a band well known for covers I think that’s one of my favourites. I always love when a band does a cover especially if it’s a more obscure one because that’s all part of the fun of music and it can get you revisiting things or even discovering new bands. Thanks you so much for taking the time Mike, we’ll catch up again before the tour. And in between keep making great music.
Mike: Thanks Mark, great talking to you, talk soon.
