| chaos treatment with THE BLED. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Monday, 29 October 2007 12:47 |
 "The Bled are my favourite band in the whole wide world." - Frank Carter (The Gallows)
So, the saying goes...October, is normally my favourite month of the year. October, usually means at least one concert and a music festival. Last year, October meant Fall Out Boy and Taste of Chaos. All following Octobers since, have been epic fails. So pulling one out from the vault, once upon an October, I spent some time with THE BLED, THE GALLOWS & THE USED, which went unpublished... until now.  So please excuse any sense that may have been lost in translation over the last two years since this interview actually took place.If he were a dinosaur, Michael Pedicone would be a Stegosaurus Rex. Pedicone, is a multi-talented guitarist, pianist and singer in addition to his day-job as the drummer for THE BLED... "Music today, is way more about image than it is about art. I don't agree that it should have ever come to that. It's disheartening when you know that people care about something completely opposite to what it's actually about."
COUP DE MAIN: It's your first time in New Zealand, here on the Taste of Chaos tour how does it feel? THE BLED - MICHAEL PEDICONE: I've only been here for a day but I love it. Coming in off the plane, riding through, it's the greenest place I've ever been to. We went out last night for a little bit and walked around and everybody was super friendly and excited to meet you. It's a cool place for sure. I actually had an exchange student from New Zealand when I was ten and she was pretty cool, so I've always wanted to see where she came from. Now I know. Now I'm here! CDM: Any Taste of Chaos anecdotes...? TB: It's funny that you should ask that because just last night... there's still bad blood going on right now. Basically, we went out and a bunch of us ended up at this bar and the bartender knew some of the bands so he started passing out drinks. We all got back to the hotel and started to proceed to call peoples rooms from the tour and prank call them. Just stupid stuff like, "hey... come meet us by the pool we're having a...". It was more the voice that was saying it that was funny. The actual what we were saying wasn't that funny. We were talking about meeting up and coming to the pool and kicking it and hanging loose, this and that. It was just the voice that was funny, that's it. People are so pissed off today. I can't believe people are so mad. It wasn't that bad. It was funny, we were saying funny stuff. But people had to get up early, so they're really hurt over it. I got here and people are all trying to put it on me. Man, I'm like no. I'm putting it all on The Used 'cuz they can't really get in trouble since they're the headliner. CDM: You've been on tour with The Used before, got any stories to share? TB: Gosh, what haven't we seen The Used do? We've seen them deep-throat bananas. I wore a banana costume. They're just really good dudes. We get along really well. Everyone in the bands, we're all around the same age, so we all have similar experiences to talk about and we just have a fun time together. Nobody's too crazy. Those dudes are always doing funny stuff. They're just funny guys in general. Super sarcastic and our band is sarcastic too, so it's the same sense of humour. CDM: The Bled's bio discusses how your songs reflect fear and pain when trying to change for the better. What's kept you going as a band? TB: There's times you get down about stuff because man if I had done this, I could be doing better in this area of my life. But what it comes down to, is that we're all in love with playing music and it's always been the number one to all of us. It's what we care about the most. To be fortunate enough to actually play music and then go on tour and be brought to places like New Zealand, or Japan, across the world to play music for people. Whether your making a bunch of money or not, its an amazing thing to be able to do. We're just really grateful to be in that situation. It definitely takes fans to keep that going and to be able to live a life alongside this playing of music. At this point, we've bottomed out our expenses and do everything ourselves with the least costs possible to be able to continue doing this stuff cuz it's what we love to do. Regardless of if we fight in the band or if the people who work for us do a bad job, we find a way to work it out and you carry on. We just know that this is the most important thing to all of us, is playing music. So we'll do it as long as we can.  CDM: On your Myspace profile you posted a poll asking fans if, "Is giving someone the silent treatment an effective way of getting your point across?". What would be your personal response to that poll? TB: That's what they say the expression comes from, the silent treatment. This record to us, there was a lot of different parts to it that silent treatment played into. We did definitely shut the door on some people who were trying to get involved with the record and trying to influence us, this way or that way. The room that we wrote the record in is a little cube, like a tiny little box. It was probably ten by ten. Just enough room to fit all of our gear into it and practice. When your in there, your shutting everyone else out. There was just a lot of weird stuff going on, from when we started doing this record to the end with people trying to get involved and people losing involvement and not wanting to be involved cuz they didn't think it was going to be anything good. Cuz they didn't like our last record or whatever. There's these weird takes on it and we just shut everything else. Whatever, we're not doing it for other people. We're doing it for us. Hopefully, other people will like it and appreciate what we're doing. But we're not grabbing on to any of the trends or fads that a lot of bands that are coming out now are. Music today, is way more about image than it is about art. I don't agree that it should have ever come to that. It's disheartening when you know that people care about something completely opposite to what it's actually about. To play music. To create music. To record it. CDM: The band Cartel, did a reality TV show for MTV basically the opposite of the above... TB: Maybe they did it because they wanted to get big and it wasn't working out for them so they did a reality TV show about making the record, thinking that it would really help their band explode. I don't know how you can make a record that you really care about when you have this, "we have one month!" and it's going to be on TV. You're just writing songs to get through them. You don't have that time that you need, to be sitting in your room alone thinking about it. Being pulled out of your sleep, to write a riff. You can write a record like that sure. Maybe it's good. I've never heard it, I've never seen the show. I don't know the guys, so I can't really say anything. But it certainly seems the opposite... it more appeals to a pop-thing. It just doesn't seem real to me. CDM: I noticed that you set up a 'Bled webcam during the recording of 'Silent Treatment'. How do you think the Internet has revolutionised your bands relationship with your fans? TB: It was just such a cool thing. When your in the studio with stickam.com, all you do is plug in the camera and set it up and you just go about your life. If people actually want to see that, then they can. We would take a moment everyday, now and again, to sit down and type to the kids who were watching and let them know what's going on. Hear peoples feelings about the record and what we're doing. It's just a good way to keep in touch with people. It is really important to us to be in touch with the people who like our band because it's on a different plane. You can do certain things to guarantee success in this business. We just play music. We just record it and write it. We really appreciate people who are into it because they're not grabbing onto the fakeness of music. So being able to do something like that, I think other people will pick up on it and start doing it. CDM: Kerrang magazine, labelled The Bled as the "Kings of Screamo". What is screamo? TB: I don't know, you tell me. It's a name that has been put on this kind of music, so that people who are into the fashion or the trend side of it can say, okay if it's screamo then I should check it out. If you called it anything else, kids won't check it out. Which is crazy to me. It's so crazy. That's just how they do stuff in magazines though. With a lot of press, you have to give it this certain genre specific name. I guess, that's just how it is now.  CDM: What's your take on the 'emo' debate? TB: I don't understand it. I really don't. Who's to say, that somebody who is into a hardcore metal song isn't into a rap song? Or isn't going to be into a jazz piece? How do you, just because the music is called something different, you don't give it a choice? Is that's what's happening? It boggles my mind because I'm like, man! Music is just music. If it gives you a feeling? If it makes you feel a certain way and it's a good thing, or a bad thing? Whatever it is. That's what it's about. It's not about putting a name on it to me. I don't quite understand it to be honest with you. There's a lot of trends happening in music today that I certainly don't understand at all. CDM: The Bled toured on the Projekt Revolution tour in 2007, are you personally environmentally conscious? TB: There's certainly some stuff that we will do. I bought a scooter, so I'm saving on gas and not using as much fuel. Everybody tries to, a little bit more and more. But I wouldn't say that we're on top of it. We do as much as we can but we're still learning how to be. My girlfriend back in the States is all about it, so I probably hear more about things more often because of it. When your on tour all the time, it's really hard. You feel so disconnected from the real world. You're in a van, or a bus, completely separate from everything. Your whole purpose is to play a show, drive on, play another show. That's a bad way to be. We should be more conscious of what's happening on our planet. But we do what we can. At least I know I do. That's a big part of why I bought a scooter even though I'll probably die from being killed on it. Hope that's not true, knock on wood. CDM: Your Myspace profile openly invites fans to party with The Bled. What's a 'Bled party like? TB: It depends actually. There seems to be different parties between the group. Like if you hang with James and Ross, your probably out for a night of Jack Daniels and whacky stories and screaming and singing and shouting. That's a fun time sometimes. If you hang with Jeremy, me and Hey Guy, that's Darren our bass player we call him 'Hey Guy'... CDM: Why the nickname of "Hey Guy"? TB: Before Darren was even in the band actually, we had this funny voice like "hey man! hey guy!" and it turned into like in the South Park movie where Satan or Saddam says "hey guy" or "hey God". I don't know what he was saying. But that voice sounded like it should be coming out of Darren's mouth. So we just started calling him "hey guy" all the time and it stuck and then everybody started calling him that. That's his name now. It's not that funny of a story, but I guess when you look at Darren and you think about the name, your like, okay I see what's going on. CDM: Are there any charities you are involved with, or would like to be? TB: My family is really involved with the Susan Komen, raise awareness for breast cancer (foundation). When I'm around town, I'll go out and support. I can't do a whole lot financially because we're not in an awesome financial situation being in a band, but definitely go out and support it. My folks are super involved... Me and my girlfriend give to Save Darfur whenever we can. She's big into it. CDM: Is it harder to meet fans on Taste of Chaos with the additional security? TB: Not for us. On this tour, we actually set out to do a signing on every show after we play. So even if we're signing stuff, that's not even the point. It's just to hang out with the kids and see what they thought about stuff and let them meet us and see what we're all about. Sometimes people aren't sure because we play heavy music, I don't know if they're intimidated or what it is? But we're just a bunch of hang-out, jokey dudes. It's nice to be around the fans. Even after the singings, we'll just come out and chill and talk to people. So, it's not really hard. CDM: Reflecting that less stereotypical side to you, what have you been reading lately? TB: One of my favourite books most recently is a book called 'The Iceman'. It's about a contract killer, this dude, Richard Kuklinski, who's probably one of the most infamous contract killers ever. It's just an insane book. At the moment, I'm reading 'Haunted' and it's pretty interesting. I still have to dive into it because I've been reading bits and pieces on the plane but it's cool so far. (Chuck) Palahniuk. I know Jeremy definitely read a lot of his stuff. I'm a big supporter of 'Iceman' at this moment in time. I want everybody to read it because it'll blow your mind. Really. The way this guy did his thing? It's insane to me. To anybody it would be, I guess.  CDM: According to Wikipedia, a 'Bled poster featured on a bedroom wall in The OC TV show, a guilty pleasure of mine... Name your guilty pleasures... TB: I don't really feel guilty about it but I'm a big R&B fan. As far as TV goes, I'm a big forensics fan. Like Forensics Files and FBI Files. Cold Case Files. I could go on and on. I like blink-182? I liked them. And New Found Glory. Maybe that's a guilty pleasure nowadays. People have hated on me for liking blink-182 on this tour. CDM: There's such a stereotyping of musicians as only able to listen to music from the same genre that they play in. TB: It's crazy. I'm not saying that I don't listen to heavy music. Because I do. I like a lot, Refused, Converge... I certainly on the regular, listen to stuff that isn't heavy at all. CDM: Maybe that's better for your musical creativity in the long-run? TB: I definitely think that. That's how most of the guys in our band are. Jeremy is probably the most heavy-music inclined member of the band. He listens to it all the time. Everyone else is in their own world. James is like singer/songwriter guy. Ross listens to European Dance music often. Hey Guy is an old seventies jam band kinda guy. I think it does. It brings in different influences. It's always good to have a bigger vision of music instead of labelling it, "I listen to emocore only and I have to have a name for it, so I know if I like it or not". CDM: Finish this sentence. I... TB: ...am really not sure what the hell is going to happen tonight because I see dudes coming out here looking at me, out that door right now and I know that they're bummed out about the prank calls last night and I'm really wondering what kind of hijinks are going to happen on stage tonight. That's what's on my mind at the moment right now. |
