Interview: The Pity Party

Scott: When did you first meet and decide how to do the band?

Julie: We first met in High School but decided to do it when he was living in New York and I was still in L.A.

Maurice: There was a trial month in 2004.

Scott: Did you share music over the Internet?

Julie: No Mark came to L.A. for a month and I had this digital 8-track recorder in my apartment. It was good and it worked out so he came back.

I remember he came back and none of us had been in bands before so we thought, "What is the first thing a band does?" So we got a practice space, which was the first big order of the day. Then it was like...what instruments should we play?

Maurice: She had never played drums before.

Julie: I played keyboards but hadn’t played drums before, but I knew I wanted to. Mark plays guitar and we wanted to have more than just guitar and drums. I didn’t want to just add beats because I really love melodies so that’s when the keyboard came in.

Scott: So what was the deciding factor for Mark to move here?

Maurice: I didn’t want to stay in New York. That was sort of like time to find myself.

Julie: I think we developed a real comfort zone with each other too. I couldn’t have been in a band with anyone other than Mark and because we know everything about each other there are no illusions. We can be as geeky, lame or petty in the practice space as we want.

Maurice: We weren’t’ friends in High School and really we’re not friends now (laughter). But when something doesn’t work and it sucks Julie says, “That sucks.” And it’s not like our feelings will get hurt because we’ve known each other since we were twelve.

Julie: And even if we hurt each other’s feelings we don’t care. Right now The Pity Party is more important than our personal pity parties. So we’re able to inflict a lot of pain on each other.

Maurice: Which is also our goal in making music, to inflict pain on the audience.

Scott: So now that you’ve been practicing at what time does the first live show come about for you guys?

Julie: I wanted to put that off indefinitely. The idea of playing a show was the most terrifying thing I can thing of. Mark and Mike (manager) were like, "You got to do this show." I was thinking I’m just not ready. We eventually played around a year ago this month at the Silverlake Lounge. I really felt sick for days leading up to that show.

Maurice: There was actually a good turnout there.

Julie: And then once the set was over it was like a blackout moment. I'm more comforatable now after gigs, I can breathe.

Maurice: At that point I played completely sober for the first two shows and was completely self-conscious. We didn’t get better until we realized we needed to have one and a half drinks before we played.

Julie: A black tea in the first of the two hours before we play, then a Jack in the second half, and during the set a Jack…and maybe water.

Scott: Is that the routine? What happens if none of those options are available?

Julie: I’m over the water part now. At home we can mentally relax. But on tour everything gets fucked up, that’s when the alcoholism begins. On tour you have nothing. All you have is whatever can fuel you right away, no time to mentally prepare.

Scott: So I want to talk about the homemade aspect to your CDs, how you use recycled materials. Where does that idea come from?

Julie: Anyone can have a CD or record wrapped in plastic, and digipaks are expensive. In my mind I had this recycling idea for cutting and folding used boxes and other things. We just did it with a simple template and it looked really cool. We made like 800 CD covers

Maurice: In general Julie is very crafty.

Julie: It’s good to be really involved in everything all the time; you become a real part of it. So there’s no point where you’re handing over something to someone else and they take care of it.

Maurice: We practice, come home and fold/make CD cases for like three hours. It takes a long time.

Julie: It’s interesting because it makes you look at everything as raw materials…like those boxes in the corner over there.

Scott: There used to be more of that going on with fanzines and personally colored mixtapes...I had some hand-made coloring variations or wax drippings on records…weird, personally crafted stuff like that was more prevalent from upcoming bands.

Marurice: It’s the personal touch, it shows that the people involved actually cared about the product.

Scott: It wasn’t that bands were interested in making something “limited” that’s just how they did everything. I miss that.

Maurice: I don’t know if that’s sutainable, to do everything yourself. What if 10,000 people want your CD? 1,000 might work...maybe?Julie: We’d have to hire some reliable people. The reality is for us to get out there and get noticed and the packaging definitely helped. But I don’t know if all stores would carry

Scott: Independent Project Records created the “discfolio” and they would just have a sticker placed over the plastic sleeve. It can still be done in mass quantities. I know people who have seen your EP in stores and decided just based on the packaging they were totally interested in seeing The Pity Party live. They haven’t even listened to it.

Julie: We also did these posters for our tour with The Raveonettes and 5 out of 6 places we played used these posters outside as their main poster. They loved it.

Maurice: It took 45 minutes for me to make just one of those.

Scott: So how did you get on that tour?

Julie: A friend of a friend, Hollywood. We’ll we don’t suck so….

Scott: Did they play as a duo like you guys?

Julie: Yes, just the two of them.

Maurice: Well they still sound big but they wanted to show people that just the two of them could do it. Even the songs that you might know sounded really full.

Julie: Sharin is so beautiful it’s ridiculous. She’s Danish. A lot of people think that the Raveonettes are Swedish, I want to set the record straight that they’re Danish.

Scott: Are you guys to going to work on a full-length record soon? What's happening next?

Julie: We have a new vinyl picture disc, the same tracks as the EP. The cover art is from Ronald Zerigian. We’d like to use his stuff for our next album. His work is amazing.

We’re also playing the Fold’s 10-year anniversary show, then the Syd Barrett tribute and the Scene show on the same day. But we’re working on a record with Manny Nieto and it’s coming along. He’s worked with The Bronx and Monsters are Waiting.

Maurice: He also uses this eco-friendly analog tape that’s all recycled 2” tape. Everything is completely analog. Manny is awesome.

Julie: It’s great and that kind of environment feels right for us. We’re also going to record everything live. I think when you play the songs separately it loses its physicality. We don’t want to work on songs or play something we can’t do live.

Scott: Sounds like things are coming along nicely?

Julie: The whole evolution of the band is weird. Like two years ago I couldn’t even play in front of my friends in a room. Music was a private thing. But once you’ve gone out on a limb you can’t go back. So musically we try to do the same and make interesting changes and always stay away from the boring verse-chorus thing.

Scott: Kind of like Deerhoof maybe? They're another good band who excel at interesting changes.

Julie: They got to open for Radiohead, who we feel some kind of special connection to because we have no label, distribution or anything. We’d really like to open for Radiohead too. Why not?

Maurice: And do it without a label.

-Scott McDonald

- Photo by Alan Munoz