When we had started to have the first germs of ideas around what would differentiate Uber Rock from the pack in the rammed to the rafters world of Internet music websites.  We knew from the start we wanted to assemble the coolest writers we could find, and feature the coolest bands that people may not have necessarily have heard of.

"Fuck fashion this was going to be all about passion." 

With this in mind back in early July of this year I sat down with Jesse Malin and Todd Youth to find out about the St Marks Social and what their at the time ongoing touring schedule was doing to their livers and their sanity.

Jesse and Todd are honorary Uber Rock Soldiers and as we start our first birthday celebrations we couldn't think of a better way to kick things off than with this interview.   So sit back and enjoy some quality Rock 'n' Roll chat with the only guys to get two interviews on Uber Rock in the same year.

Guys thanks for taking the time to talk with Uber Rock, this is date thirteenth of the tour, how's things been going with the tour so far?

Jesse - It's been really fun; we've only had one day off.  We came into the UK all jet lagged did nine in a row that started in Bristol and just blasted it out.  The band is kinda new, I went out to the West Coast and put this all together in about two days with Todd, and me and Todd haven't played together in like thirteen years, so it's really different and kind of exciting.  The shows because the new record is like this high energy full tilt rock record for the most part, mixed with the faster tougher tunes form my last three records is kind of a different approach for me.  We still some of the slower stuff, still do the singalongs and still tell some stories and play acoustic guitar, but there's definitely like a basic raw primal approach to blast through the songs.  So there's some of that Punk Rock connection into this approach and into this tour for the St Marks Social.

And any particular highlights you'd like to share with us?

Todd - Well Glasgow has been one of the best shows on the tour, totally packed.  They kept us on stage for two hours and wouldn't let us off.  Sweaty, hot, gig. 

Jesse - It's been all good I mean probably our least favourite show so far was last night in Liverpool, and that's one of my favourite places to play, but it's Monday and we got the smallest turn out of the tour so far, but Dublin was great, Edinburgh was really cool and Newcastle, Nottingham Rescue Rooms which isn't normally one of the places I like playing, but something happened that night too.  We kinda get into a pocket, a good groove and then...you know some of those places like Edinburgh and Belfast we don't get to go on every time we come through, and the same tonight with Cardiff.  It's like a place that gets every couple of years and this one has possibly been longer than that, but I have some great memories of being here in Cardiff.

I just walked around town and tried to find the oldest record store in town and.... it's just closed. Hasn't it been there since 1894 or something?  Is it called Slippers or something?

Spillers Records, it is reopening though, just up the street. Mainly due to the corporate entity that is slowly taking over Cardiff

Todd - It's the same everywhere

Guys I would really have loved to have shown you what is left of the 'proper' Cardiff but there isn't a lot of what I used to love about the city left.

Jesse - Perhaps I could have found a proper pizza there then eh?  But no more,

Sorry I digress, at the end of the Bristol show, I caught up with Johnny (Martin bassist) after the show and told him flat out that this was the best line up I'd ever seen playing with Jesse Malin, but I had this feeling that things were going to get better.

Jesse - Well that was us without sleep, been landed there with a bunch of bogus equipment that we had to send back.  Thanks to Marshall they sent us some really good stuff and some loaners that Todd helped hook us with.  Really the audiences here are different to those in America and even those in different parts of Europe.  The UK audiences for the most part come early; they watch the support bands they tend to know the words and singalong, and if it's on the right night, which we've had a bunch of them this time, it creates this thing between the band and the audience.  You know they're giving something and we're giving something back and by the end we have to change our shoes and underwear because we're soaked.

The whole PMA thing is that just something you've embraced or....

Jesse - Stolen from Bad Brains (laughs)...who stole it from a book called 'Think and Grow Rich', its just the thing of staying positive.  Positive Mental Attitude, I just started writing that on people's CD's, always writing peace signs or different little things when you sign and this I just popped onto my guitar and popped it on a couple of T Shirts.  I just think we're living in a world of so much bullshit, whether it's internal stuff from your family inheriting pain or depression, or whether it's from the Government, or media.  I think you've just got to find a way to say that we as entertainers or Punk Rockers or Rock 'n' Rollers do something to escape that normal mainstream thing.  You got to have something on your side, like a force, like in 'Star Wars'.  Use the PMA (laughs)

This is actually something I personally believe in very strongly

Jesse - You know a lot of things in my life haven't come when I wanted them, but a whole lot of stuff has happened because I've said "I'm going to make shit happen", and if you don't try, you got everyone else to shut you down you know? So fuck that, we sing about a lot of darker heavier things and you have to acknowledge we are not just a total escape party band, but by dealing with all of this stuff there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Moving on to 'Love It To Life' then, and how do you feel this album fits within your progression as a musician?

Jesse - I think it's kind of a progression and an accumulation of the whole path, our producer Ted Hutt (Flogging Molly, The Gaslight Anthem) did a really great job in keeping the record short sweet and raw, and have one thread or message that ran through the record that would give it a cohesive style.  So if you dropped the needle anywhere per say you could tell it was a Jesse Malin record just like you could have done with a Ramones record.  You know you could tell immediately it was 'Love It To Life', and a lot of it came from the guitars and the drums and the whole production which was done really fast.  But I think when you listen to this record you can hear my whole journey since I was a twelve year old kid, from playing in Heart Attack and hardcore punk, up through D Generation into the quote un quote singer songwriter thing.  I think its al in there, yet it doesn't sound like its jumping all over the place.  You can certainly hear more elements of D Generation in this record than you could in say 'Fine Art', 'Heat' or 'Glitter', but not in the way where I feel it is a step backwards, and that's just you know...me.

Todd - You know I feel this records is a giant step forward.  Jesse had given me the records a few months before it had come out and I'd done some blog that said, "hands down this is the best record Jesse's ever made".  And that's one of the reasons why when this all came up I decided to get on board, because it is a great record, and great records are few and far between these days.

I actually found 'Love It To Life' initially quite difficult to get into, but then great albums always are.

Todd - Yup.

Jesse - Yeah but a lot of that praise has to go to the producer, because we had about 23 songs and to have someone come in and edit, it's like 'Apocalypse Now' unedited Redux, its like four hours long and your like wow editing is such a big part of art.  And to have a proofing system like with 'Fine Art of Self Destruction' with Ryan (Adams producer) we had a song called 'Stranger Than Fools' and one other song.  And he was like "No! these are the songs" and I'm like "Stranger Than Fools" which became a B Side, and now looking back clearly that song wasn't on the same level, but at the time I was emotionally involved because it used a saxophone.

So what are your favourite songs or moments from the album?

Jesse - Umm I would say for me 'Burning The Bowery' because of the rhythm, a lot of the grooves we went to with 'Disco Ghetto' and 'Low Life In A High Rise' remind me of like a train...umm it's like just straight and on one level and there's 'Burn The Bridge' I like that a lot, and some of the lyrics in 'Lonely at Heart'.

For me it's the Johnny Thunders bit in 'Disco Ghetto', which is just so subtle.

Jesse - Oh yeah we stole 'Chinese Rocks', you know you're the first one to say that.

You've both been in this business a hell of a long time now, having both started bands in your early teens.  If those young Punk Rock versions of you both could see what you are doing today what do you think they would make of it all?

Todd - Woah.......

Jesse - I think they would dig it, the kid I was would have totally have liked this band, as this closer now than what I wanted to do when I was thirteen or fourteen. This line up this set of songs, this kind of show, I think would be "right up my street" as they say. You know I liked all the stuff back then that I like now, I grew up with Elton John, Sam Cooke and Chuck Berry, and then Ramones and Kiss, I mean it's all songs, even AC/DC it's all awesome, and fits right in there. I don't know what Todd would say though. (laughs)

Todd - I always researched whatever band I got into and dug a little deeper, and as a thirteen year old kid looking at all the bands and artists I've worked with you know I'd back it.  And if it was me at thirteen seeing this band I'd be blown away.

Okay building on this wealth of history you guys both possess, a part of the show I always love is where Jesse becomes the raconteur.  Have you guys ever thought of writing your memoirs?  Because I'm sure a lot of people would love to read them.

Jesse - Yeah, I've been talking about it for a long time and the working title was 'Almost Grown' and I have all these stories and I kept thinking I still living and creating stories but recently I came to peace with I'm going to do it sometime soon, but that's just one book.  As long as it comes off that there is some kind of message and some kind of humour and not like some bragging name drop like "and then I opened for Kiss", and "then I got a blow job", there has to be some kind of thread and I think that keeping humour in stuff like that is important.  You know my favourite types of books are these slice of life type bi-op type things like Jim Carroll's  'Basketball Diaries' or a friend of ours Dito Montiel did a book they made into a movie called 'The Guide To Recognising Your Saints' and it's just about growing up in New York just like me and Todd, you know but this guy got up and wrote a book, and Lenny Bruce.  Any people that write their memoirs.  Iggy Pop has a great book called 'I Need More' I think, and it came out in the Eighties and you can tell it's just him talking with some writer and a tape recorder but he's got so many great stories, its just full of life you know.  You just have to be able to relate to people not only in the pit of a rock show but also on a human level.

Todd - You know I wanted to do a book and just focus on the earlier part of discovering Punk Rock, and we were talking the other day, the first show I ever went to was Bad Brains in CB's as a twelve year old kid, who came from a really fucked up home and had a lot of fucked up feelings deep inside, but when I walked in that room the feeling was "wow these people look as fucked up as I feel".  You know I knew I'd found my people, and I'd like to do something that just focuses on those years, as opposed to me the touring guy, the party woo, and all that shit.

I said I would only mention them once, so its D Generation question time.  At the time, did you realise just how important and influential the band was worldwide?

Jesse - Not at all.  We wanted to, but not for me.  Maybe Todd had a different perspective?

Todd - Well it was different for me because I was a fan first before I joined them, and when the band had come out New York had been dead for so many years and then all of a sudden here was like a hometown band we could believe in.  Of all the bands I've worked with through the years more people ask me about D Generation than anything else I've ever done.

Jesse - You know my father has a theory that your always either too late or too early, you know when I came out and wanted to do the Punk thing it was all Rockabilly and New Wave and New Romantic, and people were dressed up as pirates and dressed up in tights, and Hardcore I got to be part of the early scene with that, but D Generation people would be dressed up like Grunge wearing flannels and dressed like they were farmers or lumberjacks.  So we'd go out in brothel creepers and tight black pants and it wasn't so received outside of major cities like New York, L.A, Cleveland and Chicago and maybe London or something, and it was tough doing it.  We had a lot of things thrown at us like chains and bottles and just didn't fit into the times, and soon as we stopped not long after maybe two or three years you got The Strokes and Jet and Rock 'n' Roll bands taking it back, in a different way of course. 

Some bands got us though, you know like Green Day and Offspring, L7 and Social Distortion, and a lot of bands appreciated us and we got some high profile tours and got to go to different places.  But I think the record companies didn't know how to market it and we always felt like it was us against the world, and with the five if us there were times when we'd turn on each other.  We did three records in seven years and it's something like Todd said people have a lot of respect for it.  I think live was where the band really showed and maybe some songs on 'No Lunch' and some of the early singles, but it was more of an experience with the five of us on stage together.  You know we had an energy, and it was a real band.

Todd - It's funny how many kids come up to me, you know like Kevin (Preston) from Prima Donna who I know you guys like, he saw us at like The Palace.  It was one of those life-changing experiences for him and he went out and bought creepers.  And he got into Rock 'N' Roll at about thirteen from seeing us.  So if you look at D Generation from that angle of how many people turned onto great music, then it was a hugely successful band.

Jesse after D Generation and before 'Fine Art' you got involved in Bellvue, what was it like for you artistically around that time.

Jesse - I knew what I wanted to do, I was scared to do it, the Jesse Malin acoustic song driven thing and then I got a little freaked out and needed to scream again and I wrote some songs a lot louder and I called it Bellvue.  And then Ryan Adams bless his soul kept saying "You pay for rehearsals, you write the songs, why don't you just be Jesse Malin?"  He'd just split from Whiskeytown and made his own sol thing and obviously it worked for him at a different level.  For me it was like fear and Bellvue was like growing pains, a sort of bridge band that took me to the next place.  Ryan then had me open up for him in New York at Irving plaza and I decided to take.... A friend of mine had said to me "you're just scared".  And once she said that I guess I realised I could be solo without having to be adult, and suddenly turn into James Taylor or Jackson Browne, who are people I like, but I was still young and if I wanted to roll around on the floor a bit or still have some swagger I could.  I mean look at Johnny Thunders and Iggy Pop I guess I was scared of having all that focus but once I was told I was scared, I had to do it (laughs)

And somewhere around the time of 'Fine Art' you also recorded The Finger album, what was the story behind that album?

Jesse - The Finger, that was just a joke you know, me and Ryan my friend Colin and our friend Johnny T were just getting drunk at Niagara Bar in New York and just decided we wanted to go and make a Black Flag type of record the next day. And all hungover we all showed up with no songs, went to the studio where they did all the old Hardcore records, Don Fury's old studio on Spring Street, and we just wrote like "here's a riff" and there was a song and the whole thing went down in like about five hours and its sounds almost like authentic, it is kind of a joke band, but its also kind of like our tribute to the early eighties L.A. kind of scene.

Back to the here and now then guys, what's next for the St Marks Social following the completion of this tour?

Jesse - Another tour (laughs), well a tour of the States proper, about a month of to do some writing and start thinking about the next record, you always need to be ahead working on music and sometimes its good to be doing that well in advance of your next record. Then we hope to come back to these parts in the Winter. Definitely over Europe and some UK.  Plus shoot some videos and stuff like that.

And is that going to feature this line up you have right now?

Jesse - Well this line up seems to be working and we haven't had any fistfights so

Todd - I'll be there.

Okay just to finish off I want to pin you down on a question Dom asked you last time we interviewed you, which is if you could put together a supergroup to play with you Jesse who would you have on board?

Jesse - Well certain musicians work well in certain circumstances...I don't know...Alright Topper Headon on drums, Neil Young on guitar and Bootsy Collins on bass, Elton John on keyboards, hold on this sounds all a bit jammy now.  See I don't know if this would work? 

I don't really think supergroups work though.

Jesse - Well the first Lords Of The New Church album is a great album.  The mix of Sham, Damned and Dead Boys and The Barracudas was just right.  That first record had concept they were like a gang and some really good songs, and it felt really fresh that Lords thing. You've got me thinking now of any others oh yeah Crosby Still Nash and YOUNG.  (laughs)

And with that the interview degenerated (excuse the pun) into three music fans trying to out do each other naming supergroups we liked or loathed, and that for me was what was so special about the time I spent with the guys that afternoon in Cardiff.  Jesse may have just picked up a pair of nice checked trousers from H&M but that can wait for another day.  With Jesse and Todd there is no rock star bullshit, you just get two guys doing what they do and loving every minute of it.

Since this interview Jesse, Todd, Johnny and Ty have been busy recording a video to accompany 'All The Way From Moscow' and have just announced the US Tour Jesse mentioned above, now all we need is the UK and European dates to make URHQ a very happy place.

Uber Rock would like to thank Todd Youth and Jesse Malin for this interview.   You guys are true innovators in your profession, and long may it continue.

Live photo kudos Russ P and Johnny H