Interviews

Spitalfield

Interview with Mark on Feb 26, 2004 by Archive Bot

By Eva Lee.
There’s the tale of the tortoise and the hare and the lesson; slow and steady wins the race. Maybe this same concept can be applied to bands; slow and steady wins the race of trying to gain a solid fan base. Spitalfield has seemingly taken this lesson and modeled their band after it, gaining fans gradually since 1998.  Singer Mark Rose talks to punkbands.com before his January 23rd show. High five goes to Heather for setting this up.
 
Eva: so in your CD I noticed that all the photos are of places in Chicago, that’s obvious. What I felt was kind of odd was that there’s no people in any of them except for the centerfold which is of the band. Why is that? I understand you wanted this to be a Chicago-based them but why do people not exist? Do the people of Chicago not make up Chicago at all?!
 
Mark: no, not at all, that’s not it! Well the guy who took the photos, his name is Chris Strong and Chris Strong has done so many beautiful, beautiful like… I don’t know if you know the album Everynight Fire Works by Hey Mercedes but that album cover, it’s a real photo and a lot of people don’t even realize it. It’s the stars with the people sitting on the lawn chairs. There’s something about the way he takes photos that he takes real photos but he intensifies the colours so much that it almost looks like a portrait. He moved to Chicago recently and we really wanted Chris Strong to take the photos so we met with him and talked about the themes we wanted for the album. One of them was things that anyone from Chicago when they saw them would be like, I know where that is; or I’ve been there, you know what I mean? The fact that it’s really kind of dark and dreary it’s also beautiful and pretty, that’s kind of like how the album is because like the whole theme behind the album is, which I’m sure you’ll get into later is not so much about being excited to grow up and what you’re going to do with your life. More so like what are you doing right now and why you can appreciate that. So a lot of those photos are about appreciating areas that we’ve grown up with. I don’t know if you’ve been to Chicago before, but each one of those, like one of them is Lakeshore Dive heading eastbound, one is Lakeshore Drive heading southbound. They’re all different areas that are really familiar to us and that’s kind of why we did it. We let him kind of go off; there were a million pictures to pick from so those were the ones we chose.
 
Eva: did you say don’t include people specifically?
 
Mark: no, but he didn’t include people in any photo so we were into it though.
 
Eva: do you know why he did that? Just ‘cause it wasn’t the essence of Chicago?
 
Mark: well there are cars.
 
Eva: but there’s no people…
 
Mark: I know.
 
Eva: but then there’s your photo right, in the centerfold and it makes you think, maybe I don’t know, Chicago… the band… some underlying meaning behind it. Considering there are no people in the photos and then there’s you.
 
Mark: you’re right, I see where you’re going with that. I don’t think we put as much thought into it as you did. I think it’s more or less a landscape type of album; the photos especially. It’s all settings, times, places; it’s not people. Sorry, you were disappointed by that one.
 
Eva: also with the photos, they tend to go in a chronological order; even from the front cover, for the most part that is. Except for the last photo, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but it’s not in chronological order; it’s switched around. Is there a reason for this or am I looking too far into this? It just seemed weird considering the first three were in order but then the last one was switched.
 
Mark: well specifically the first and last photos on the inside if I’m not mistaken are the pictures of Lakeshore Drive heading in two different directions. He definitely took those on two totally different days and the exact same location just on different sides. One side of the lake on the right, one side of the lake on the left and there’s no particular reason why we did it. The way we visualized it when we laid it out, it just looked right. There’s nothing else to it really. The dates and times and places are all very random which is kind of the idea behind the title Remember Right Now the whole, it’s all about specific moments. So there was no reason for the order but there was a reason why each one was taken at a different time.
 
Eva: the insert itself is very vibrant, there’s all these different photos, different times of day but the main part is that it’s in colour. But then when you go to the actual case, it’s white, it’s blank. Why is there such a difference between the insert and the case? It seems like you can’t go from one extreme to another without a reasoning behind it and since I’ve been reading that you put a personal intention behind it or there’s a meaning behind all the art composition, was that just to contrast something? The nothingness to the busyness of Chicago?
 
Mark: it’s not so much about Chicago, but the reason that we had the tray completely blank it’s actually a mistake made and here’s what happened: the CD itself, you know CD face you know how it’s silver? It has the poem on it… well what was suppose to happen was the CD itself was suppose to be white and text on top of that. Now the only way you’d see that then is if you turned it in the light or if you looked at it really closely, ‘cause it was suppose to be white on white and then the whole entire thing was going to be white. Then when you lift it up it says Remember Right Now in black where right now Remember Right Now is in pink. It’s not supposed to be pink, it’s supposed to be clear. So it was suppose to be this whole, cool visual. Open it up it’s purely white except for Remember Right Now and it says Remember Right Now and that’s it; but it was a mistake. So the first 20,000 copies are all silver and after that they’re white. So… yeah! It was suppose to be beautiful but it’s not. It’s kind of like, there.
 
Eva: it’s still beautiful.
 
Mark: it’s still pretty but not as vibrant and as ‘wow’ as it was going to be. Because the whole idea was that, you know how like in the booklet those little words are highlighted?
 
Eva: I’m getting to that. Ok, so the little secret words and there’s a personal intent behind all this I read. Is the personal intent that when you string along all the words in the individual songs it makes a poem which is essentially on the CD right?
 
Mark: right, and the poem itself.
 
Eva: see I thought I was a genius when I figured that out but then I looked at your CD and I felt kind of stupid.
 
Mark: it gave it away.
 
Eva: yeah.
 
Mark: but that’s the thing, it wasn’t supposed to give it away because it was supposed to be white. It’s supposed to be like it wasn’t there and then you look for it. So we didn’t screw up, the printing plant did but we paid for it so whatever. But anyway the thing about the poem is, the poem itself a lot of people are very-not actually a lot but some people ask me, especially the ones that are really into reading lyrics and really looking into band’s messages and they ask did you just line up your songs and just look for a poem. No, we actually had a poem and we made it fit. Like we purposely arranged the songs like that. So I was all excited about it but then they messed up and I was like heh. Some people will get it, some people won’t.
 
Eva: did you have to, kind of cater around writing of the songs in order to fit the poem in because the poem came first?
 
Mark: no, no it was very convenient because we demoed 13 songs for the album and then we cut it down to 11 and we tracked them and we even eliminated one of those to make it a ten song album and we really structured it right around. It wasn’t even like the poem goes this way, the songs go this way but we really got it to fit. There were the right words and the right songs to really put it together the way we wanted to. A few minor adjustments had to be made to make it flow beautifully but it was, you know.
 
Eva: it would have been so good, with the white, on the CD.
 
Mark: wouldn’t it have been?!
 
Eva: it would have.
 
Mark: all right we see eye to eye on this.
 
Eva: I agree because I really thought I was a genius. I found out because obviously you kind of have to read to notice the gray writing [in the lyrics] and I thought about it then I noticed it and I looked at your CD.
 
Mark: but still, a lot of people haven’t gotten it yet so you’re doing good.
 
Eva: really?
 
Mark: yeah but a lot of people don’t look into it that much, they don’t care.
 
Eva: weird. We all know the name Spitalfield comes from the town in England and Jack the Ripper, blah blah blah.
 
Mark: blah, blah right.
 
Eva: I don’t really need to ask you that, but did you actually look into it, and then figured out ok, I want to be named Spitalfield because of this or did you name yourselves Spitalfield and then develop a story whenever anyone started asking you?
 
Mark: well our first guitar player Blake who’s not in the band anymore and hasn’t been in the band for a very long time, came up with the name when we first started in 1998 and his reasoning, when he presented it to us, he’s like we’re trying to come up with a band name and when he said Spitalfield, we paused for a minute and we were like, what does it mean? We didn’t dislike it, we didn’t like it, we didn’t hate it, we didn’t really have any real opinion on it. When he said Spitalfield is a town in London where Jack the Ripper is from and has this very, dark connotation to it, almost like Transylvania; it’s a real place, a real location but there’s all these stories and myths that go behind it. Furthermore, here in the states, we’re not exposed to it very much, in the UK there’re a lot of really cool stuff in that town, a lot of weird things that happen and then the reason our story gets a little better though year by year is because Spitalfield little by little incorporates itself into America like the movie From Hell with Johnny Depp, some references to Spitalfield and there’s some comic books and nerdy Dungeons and Dragons type stuff that also incorporates Spitalfield. Then the movie the Crying Game was filmed and set in Spitalfield. I don’t think it was filmed there but it was set in Spitalfield. The more we learn about it, the more we can talk about it but at the time, we were just kind of like, cool! Our guitar player Blake was all about it because at that point, the whole having a dark name and being a pop band hadn’t happened that much yet. As the years would go by, you get Death Cab for Cutie and the Dismemberment Plan and these cool pop bands that have these dark, sinister names. Then we were like all right, we’re not the first to do it but we still like it and that’s why we liked it.
 
Eva: ok so I’ve been reading up on all this stuff about you and I always noticed this one term that’s always used in almost every single reading I did; this one term. Any guesses as to what this term was?
 
Mark: in reference to me or the band?
 
Eva: the band. Sooo common.
 
Mark: like a description of the band? I hope it’s not catchy. Is it sensible? Pop sensible?
 
Eva: no.
 
Mark: post hardcore? Haha
 
Eva: no, I think you’ll be disappointed when you hear.
 
Mark: oh ok, go ahead.
 
Eva: emo.
 
Mark: emo, emo rock.
 
Eva: yeah, emo was this word that was used over, and over again to describe your band. Agreeable, yeah?
 
Mark: yeah…
 
Eva: no, really.
 
Mark: it’s everywhere, I agree.
 
Eva: ok, something like the term emo, do you think it hinders or helps the success of a band?
 
Mark: well unfortunately it helps. I’m going to say that because to me, the term emo is obviously over played. It’s kind of like the way to describe a band to give someone a general sense of the type of music they are without talking about the band at all. It’s like saying they’re a rock band ‘cause now, emo can be everything from what I originally considered emo like 5 or 6 years ago to right now would consider mainstream pop. We’re somewhere in the middle of this all so I’m not upset being tagged it but I think there needs to be more words surrounding it to help people understand. Like when people ask me what type of band I’m in or what type of music I play, I feel stupid saying emo, but at the same time if I don’t say emo, they may not get the drift of what genre we are. It’s almost like a necessity but it’s a bitter necessity. To me, the very first emo bands when we were growing up especially when we first started the band and what we were into and what was influencing us was the really really early Get Up Kids recordings, Braid, the Promise Ring and all these bands that meant to much to us at the time. What I think emo was, what emo really, truly is, is it’s rock and roll but it’s pop sensible, it’s obviously got emotion and feeling behind it. It was only what separated tech hardcore bands from tech pop bands; that was the difference. There was that middle ground and now there’s screamo, which is obviously a complete combination of the two. And that’s fine, I’m not saying that’s bad, but the word itself is so played out because what’s emo? Is Dashboard Confessional emo? Or is some band that no one’s ever heard of playing in an indie rock, 21 and over club emo? They’re not the same at all but they’re both emo.
 
Eva: couldn’t you take that, use it in the reverse sense and take it to your advantage that you can’t be described; your band isn’t emo because there’s so many words out there to describe anything.
 
Mark: well in answer to your original question, I think it’s a good and bad thing because in one way, we can ride the trend, we can ride the term and we can say to all fans out there of emo, who don’t even maybe understand where it came from, we can use that to our advantage; yeah we’re an emo band, check us out. If you like that style of music, you’ll like us so that works. But at the same time saying you lump yourselves into absolutely everything that could be considered that and then once again, where do you define the line. But it depends what kind of fan base you’re talking about too because the older kids and the kids who’ve been around in the scene longer or into music are more jaded and when they hear the term emo, they roll their eyes. Where as younger kids in the scene who are just getting into it hear the term emo and they get excited and clap. So it’s like, whatever!
 
Eva: have you become jaded almost then because you’ve given up on the fact of trying to please both groups?
 
Mark: slightly. I’m slightly but at the same time, I’m more excited just to play music and I could care less if people label us because I’ve heard so many different things from so many different people that to me, we’re a band and we play what we love. Whatever influences that we have individually that creates the sound we have, call it whatever you want. I call it us. I call it Spitalfield, I call it rock and roll, I call it indie rock, I call it pop rock, whatever you want to call it. We’ve been tagged as everything from post hardcore to pop punk and in my opinion, those are two extreme opposites.
 
Eva: do you personally use emo to describe your band?
 
Mar: only when talking to people who wouldn’t otherwise understand. My most common response to what type of music do you play and I have it perfectly lined up because I’m so use to saying it now would just be driving pop indie rock from Chicago and that’s it! In my opinion that describes everything because the fact that we’re from Chicago, and if you’re a music fan beyond just listening to music you’d pick up that fact that there’s so many influences from Braid and the Promise Ring and Hey Mercedes and the Get Up Kids and every other band from the greater mid-west area, Rainer Maria, you name and it’s driving because it’s not exactly really, really slow, chill music. It’s definitely pop because we can’t hide that fact that we’re into vocal harmonies and occasional cheesy heartfelt lyrics. That’s it, that’s what we are, we’re somewhere in there. I’m sorry, was that ok?
 
Eva: no that was great, you don’t have to apologize.
 
Mark: all right. I’m excited to read this. Go ahead, continue.
 
Eva: to clarify, is it the six thirty scene, is it the six three zero scene…
 
Mark: six three oh.
 
Eva: six three oh, ok.
 
Mark: and… haha… go ahead, ask the question.
 
Eva: what?
 
Mark: haha no it was really good, I like it. I’ve never been asked that, just saying.
 
Eva: so the overall theme of Remember Right Now is letting go of the past and looking forward to the future; you’ve said that in previous interviews.
 
Mark: kind of like letting go of the past, thinking about the future but more importantly, living for what you’re doing. Since a lot of the songs are about what we’re going to be doing or what we would like to be doing or what we hope we’ll be doing but obviously none of them are about what we will be doing because we don’t know. But yeah go ahead, you can finish your question.
 
Eva: ok, thanks. So given that it is along the lines of letting go of the past and looking forward to the future, is this kind of a metaphor for what you had to do when Spitalfield was just starting out up and you had to go beyond the six three oh scene because you were having difficulties establishing yourselves in that hardcore based scene?
 
Mark: mhm.
 
Eva: is that a metaphor?
 
Mark: yeah in some ways it really is because we’ve been a band now for six years and we were initially a side project from all the bands we were playing in, and a lot of people who interview us are all like so you were in hardcore bands, how did this happen?? And it’s like, don’t look too deep into us being in hardcore bands because the unnoted stuff is that we were also in punk bands, ska bands, metal bands like you name it, we’ve done it because when you’re young, you try everything. This is a band that was started based on the fact that there’s something about melodic rock that we weren’t getting out of the hardcore bands we were in and the problem was, no one in the scene, from the six three oh scene, the Chicago scene, the Dupage County, Illinois, whatever, that problem was, they weren’t taking us seriously. And it wasn’t that there weren’t bands like us but it was that since we were the guy’s from those other bands they wouldn’t take us seriously. That’s fine, but we had to look outside of that to start really playing shows. We got offered shows in the scene and it was more or less like oh, them. You know what I mean? They called out song titles from our other bands, it like disheartening.
 
Eva: like they were mocking you.
 
Mark: it was almost like mocking, but it was a little bit of love, a little bit of a love hate thing because like I said, these are our friends, this is the scene we’ve grown up in but to take ourselves seriously, we had to start ignoring them and doing what we love doing and looking outside of that, meeting up with other bands in other cities, other towns whatever. Eventually we were in a situation where we had interest from an independent label at the time who was going to give us enough to record an album and really, the other bands started to deteriorate around us and this became our fulltime deal. This is what we love doing, this is what we wanted to do and regardless of how much time and effort it would take, we were going to do it. In a year or two if we were frustrated and wanted to do something else, fine. But lucky for us the ball started rolling a little bit, we started to gain some momentum and started playing shows regularly and not just locally, but regionally, and then all at once, which was really exciting for us, we come back to playing shows in our hometown and all of a sudden, there would be a good crowd of kids there and we wouldn’t be hearing the annoying stuff anymore. There’d be kids who are actually supporting us for what we were doing and our friends rather than be bitter about it turned supportive. They were more like, all right, if this is what you want to do, that’s cool. And it’s funny because you know how the way musical trends go, by the time we were back doing that, all of a sudden these bands are starting to surface and it became a cool thing to do. This is the new thing, this is the post hardcore and it was convenient that we were already doing it.
 
Eva: but isn’t it almost a sign of disrespect that they weren’t taking you seriously because there is a mutual respect within a scene, in bands, whoever’s in a band that you know, people are out there, doing their own thing, making their own music. Doesn’t that bother you that they were your friends especially? It wasn’t like strangers.
 
Mark: right, it hurt. There’s no doubt about it, but like I said, we had to swallow any pride that we had and keep doing it, wherever we had to do it. Because we knew to be in a band, fulltime and to drop your life and do it, means you also have to deal with music critics, friends turn fans, fans turn friends, you have to deal with everything. You have to deal with the music business, the industry, like there are so many things going on. To us, that was the very bottom step, the very first step to just get out of our shells and just do it for whoever, whenever, which meant booking a DIY tour with no help, which meant driving eight hours to play to zero people, which meant getting in a crappy, crappy, beat up van with a halfway broken trailer and spending 3-4 weeks with your bestfriends with no money. It’s not that it was like wow, we were really go getters but it was like, looking back on it, if we had to shift down from where we are now back there, we would freak out because everything we have now we feel almost as if it’s that much sweeter since we didn’t get offered anything off the bat. We weren’t a band that got a record deal off of a demo, we weren’t a band that within one year existence became popular and we’re not even popular yet. So it’s constantly growing, it’s snowballing and we love it. I don’t know, I kind of rambled.
 
Eva: it’s been mentioned that one of your most memorable shows was your CD release show in Chicago and you said the crowd was wonderful, it was awesome, etc. etc. but doesn’t it bother you knowing that it’s the same crowd that a couple years ago, ignored you and didn’t take you seriously and now they’re giving you this great response.
 
Mark: well, to be completely honest, no because it wasn’t the same crowd. The majority of kids that were at our album release show wouldn’t have known who we were two years ago. In fact, many of them had probably just picked up who we were in the past six months to a year and maybe it’s a hard concept to grasp but the crowd that initially turned us off and was rude to us and was whatever was a very small crowd. It’s a very small, area type scene. We’ve played shows where 30 people felt like a packed house. Looking back at it, those were some great times we had and a lot of fun, but there’s a difference between the 25 kids who were all good friends, who’d always go to see the same bands every weekend and then the music scene in general. There’s so much untapped resources, so many kids who wouldn’t’ have known who we were anyway so how could they reject us if they didn’t know who we were? The Metro show for the record release, there was 1100 kids there and it was our first time headlining the Metro which is one of our favorite clubs in the world, one of our favorite clubs of all time. We’ve seen so many bands there, growing up and we played there a few times but we never headlined ‘cause we were never in a situation where we could headline that type of venue. A lot of support, we got out a lot of bands that we liked, that we thought would do great and we had a huge bunch of CD samplers going and the radio station’s plugging us. It was really exciting, and we were nervous. We would have been happy with half the amount of kids that were there and then it sold out. We were absolutely floored by it. Like it was awesome. That was kind of the kick off for our up-coming tour, which was our first backed with a booking agent tour, backed with the label tour. It was a great way to start it off.
 
Eva: you’ve also said that Remember Right Now is an album that is a whole, it’s not just a bunch of songs that are put together and it seems like your CD does flow well with how the songs go. Now was there consideration put into the order the songs went in? Like justaposition basically, was that taken into consideration?
 
Mark: yeah, it was taken into consideration. Obviously toward the end of the recording sessions and after we were starting to mix and really finalize the album, there was debate with what should go where. Like what would make a better album opener what’s going to be the first single, if there’s going to be a single, where should it be on the album, where should you place the sow song, should it be the last track, should it not be? And of course there were some heated debates about it, but in the end, the way it flows is ultimately the way as a whole we wanted it to go. Part of the reason why the really slow, slow song wasn’t at the end is because we didn’t want it to be the token this is the last song, it’s dreamy, it’s pretty. We wanted it to be right in the middle of the album because we don’t do a lot of tracks like that and it’s not that we can’t do them but it’s a risk; it’s weird to shoot to that different crowd. And that might be the song a lot of people skip over, but I know for a fact that some kids are like, why don’t you ever play that song? That’s my favorite song on there and to me, that’s makes me feel so happy they actually dig into the record; they don’t just play their favorite tracks or whatever and then we definitely wanted to start the album out with Those Days You Felt Alive because that song to me represents kind of, a combination of everything we’re about. It’s catchy, it’s poppy, it’s a good way to start the album, it’s high energy. At the same time there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of layers, a lot of ideas from different band members really go in there. Apparently it’s going to end up being our first actual single which is pretty good.
 
Eva: Those Days You Felt Alive? What about The Way She Said L.A, you have a video for it.
 
Mark: right, it was the first song that got pushed onto all the samplers, it was on the Warped Tour samplers, it was on all sorts of stuff. We shot a video for it, we really pushed comp market with it and it did a great job. But luckily for us, the first song which is Those Days You Felt Alive is going to get hopefully, the real deal push. Beyond just college, beyond just whatever. We’re kind of happy that it’s not The Way She Said L.A. because to us, even though we love that song and it’s fun, it’s great, it was kind of the song that was picked because it’s June, the album just came out, roll down your windows. It’s a head bopping song, it brings out the summer spirit in everybody and that’s cool, it’s a good way to introduce yourselves, but now that we’ve been introduced to the college market, we’ve been introduced to the radio market a little bit and with videos on Fuse TV and MTV2, we kind of made a slight dent, now we’d really like to take the jack hammer to it. This is us, this is what we’re about.