Do you think the name could lend itself to possible typecasting or false assumptions on what the band is about?
M: Assumptions on what the band is about? Yes, definitely, but I think that once people actually hear us and see us, they get the joke, and if they don't? Then that's fine too.

J: Maybe. We might fit the metrosexual facade. But look around at the newest wave of hot rock. Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, even Green Day is wearing suits and ties. I guess we're calling them out a little bit. We're not afraid to rock some style, but it's not like we live for fashion.

Prior to The Metrosexuals, what other projects were you involved with? Were you friends/bandmates prior to this?
J: Martin's been doing music since ... I don't even know when. But Charles and I met back in 1996 and started working together, recording tracks in an industrial band. I did some trip hop type stuff on the side, but nothing big.

C: Yeah Jeremy is right! An industrial band called "Revelation". We fucked around, I screamed on a few tracks and made a shitload of songs; not worth noting ... until we make it big. It's so easy to make electronic music; you don't have to wait and learn shit. You just think of ideas, program them, loop them, arrange them and viola ... a song. It was a mini orgasm every time, I didn't think it would be so easy. The role is more of a producer/song arranger when you make electronic music because creating the hooks are simple but once you have 3 or 4 loops what do you do with them. You have to figure out a way to keep it interesting, its easy to get caught in the loop (hah)!

I think the reality of all this is that it takes money and more importantly than that it takes a plan. We burn CD's to give away at shows and our songs are available on the website and on Myspace.com (greatest website ever); I think the new digital medium has made it easy to postpone the final release. Other than having to pay for the duplication, I think that delaying the final press gives us more time to make it better. We hope the material stays the same but it slowly keeps changing and we keep coming up with new tunes. It's getting to the point where we will have to cut some older songs to make room for the new ones, eventually we have to draw the line on what is Kitsch and what is the new shit.

M: We're in the process of re-recording a few vocal tracks, but otherwise the only remaining work is mixing everything down. The plan is to tie up the loose ends in the next couple of months and have it mastered and reproduced in time to push the release before the end of this year.

J: A smaller Chicago area label, Failure to Communicate Records, contacted us about recording a track for a David Bowie tribute album they are putting together. They've released similar collections including Strange As Angels – Tribute to The Cure. The upcoming Bowie album sounds like it's going to be their biggest yet. It will be a 2-disc release including tracks by The Dresden Dolls, Meg Lee Chin, and Chris Connelly, so we're happy we get to be included.

When constructing and arranging, and with so many sound and instrument options, what elements usually provide the groundwork? Is there a primary songwriter in the band?
M: I think I probably do a majority of the writing, but we all dabble in each others roles. Usually, I'll have my guitar in hand, Chuck's got his bass, and Jeremy will lay down a basic rhythm with Chuck and I experimenting with sounds and emotion ... and alcohol.

C: I think we may have just figured this out tonight! Our approach to making music would be considered unorthodox to most musicians, maybe even cheating to some. It's hard to speak on anyone's behalf on this particular topic, but I'll try.

Martin would be the musician in a traditional sense, playing guitar in his pre-teen years, mastering drums soon after, and now the vocal mastermind of our group, to say the least. He has definitely put in time to music and rightfully so; music is his first love.

Jeremy and myself are equivalent in our abilities to play guitar, keyboard and sequence drums and loops (if that's even considered musical ability), etc. I think being able to copy and paste perfect riffs has crippled our willingness to practice. I guess I'll end up being the jack of all, master of none. Marty has the ability to play what he hears, but I have to fiddle to find the right notes; Marty can play anything on the fly, I have to practice.

Although we are separated by our technical ability, we all equally contribute to the song writing process, especially since we have all released songs and even complete CD's on our own. We all approach the music from different sides, which are all key ingredients to the Metrosexual sound. There are 3 things that I believe make our music work.

DANCE. One of the most common complements I receive after shows is " I don't even know the words to your songs but I could dance to every one of them."

GROOVE. It's hard to explain this one. It's kind of like the heartbeat of the song; when it stops you know it! Without groove, the song is dead. Sure it's pretty, but the guts are gone.

MELODY. This gives the song meaning. Without melody the song is just another catchy riff. Melody is what captivates people, makes you feel good. Keeps you coming back for more.

C: I'm going to get technical on this one cause I have to ... dammit! I say my prayers every night because I have a phat pair of Mackie HR824 monitors, Cubase, and all the harddrive space I can handle. I'm not really going to get into all that analog vs. digital business, but I think, putting all that audiophile talk aside, that with all the equipment we have, we should be putting out better sounding albums (recording quality) than the Beatles. There is no excuse, other than lack of training, why we cannot mix and release our own album straight from home. None. Every band should be running a studio out of their house; no band should be counting on a label to record their CD. DIY Biatches. These days all you really need from a label is promotion and distribution. Making records from home has never been easier. I'm sure there is a studio out there that has 1,000,000,000 dollars worth of fancy analog equipment. Let's get practical. DIY.

I think the ability to get quality recordings every time is ideal. There have been a few times we have recorded something and attempted to rerecord it better but were unable to, especially with vocals. Sometimes it's hard to capture a moment after the fact. It's awesome that we have it all stored at high quality on harddisk (I'm backing up my drives as we speak, God forbid). The only thing that really gets crazy is when Marty and I come up with these obscene ideas to get better sounding tracks. We waste lots of time running 50 feet x 4 of XLR cable to mic an amp in the basement because we read that it works somewhere on the Internet. Of course, Jeremy wants nothing to do with 2 ADD kids running circles around the house blowing there ears out to get a great snare sound; he'd rather message people on MySpace. "TTYL" JB.

J: Fuck you. Ha ha. Somebody needs to do it. I'm turning into the promotion/public relations department.

Up until recently the band was a functioning 3-piece. Why did you add the element of live drums and how did Chris get the job?
M: From the beginning, I've wanted a live drummer. It just sounds better. I'm the drummer on the recordings, and we were playing along with that before we added Chris. But of course it's going to sound better to have someone playing it live. It makes the beats huge. I want to blow their hair back, knock people over, you know?

J: When we write music, we sequence synthetic beats with processed sounds but we always blend in live drums, thanks to Martin's overabundance of skills. Obviously he can't do all of that on stage, but we were ready to start playing shows and didn't want to wait to find someone who could sync to a click track. And it's always disruptive to start working with someone new; we didn't want to throw off our chemistry. There's a big electronic element to our music, so it wasn't impractical to play without a live drummer, but it was a goal to find someone who could do the job.

C: Do you know how hard it is to find a drummer to play 3 nights a week and good enough to play to a sync track for free! Well yeah, Martin could do it, but he has to sing and play guitar. So what is a band to do ... we cheat! That's right, we cheat! I said it! And I think we do a damn good job of it. I personally don't feel it's cheating since at one time Martin was actually playing the drums that are played back through Cubase during our live shows. I think using technology to your advantage is a surefire way to stay ahead of the power curve in this lucrative industry. So, instead of canceling shows or just not playing shows at all we can move forward. Most people are awed at our ability to have such a full sound with no drummer ... ha ha, you will never see behind this curtain ... well unless give me $100 bucks then maybe I'll consider it.

Then one glorious night, the great Vikki Walls introduced us to Chris Lausch at one of her many festivals at Dewey Beach. By the way, if you're a local band in the tristate area and you don't know who Vikki Walls is, you better google (shes #1 ranked) her name like yesterday. (PLUG. PLUG.) Chris has been doing a fabulous job ever since. Unfortunately, Chris has a real life so he can't move in with us, but were working on it. In the meantime, Chris attends as many shows possible and we love him for it.

J: Yeah, we played at the Dewey Beach Popfest last April and ended up meeting Chris. We found out he had played drums for several bands in the past and decided to try him out. When some of our friends and people who knew our music heard we were trying out a drummer, they were skeptical, thinking it might change our live sound too much. We've been careful to explain the balance we're after to whoever is running the sound, but you don't always get what you want. It's still pretty obvious Chris is helping the live show rock harder, and it matches the intention of the songs better. Plus, people who are used to seeing a drum kit on stage aren't as confused.

With performing as much as you do, does the band call any specific room home?
M: For me, it would be the East End Cafe in Newark, Delaware, not because it's a great venue or anything, but I pretty much grew up performing on that stage.

J: The East End is the room we've played the most. It's a dirty bar and it's close to home. The sound kind of sucks, but it feels good to play there because people come for the music.

C: We usually get the best crowds there. We have more control over the shows too. I've never been a fan of playing venues with shitty bands. This venue gives us the opportunity to invite bands down from NYC and Philly to give Metrosex fans their money's worth.

Tell me about the production of your performances. While most bands will just use what's available, you guys travel with extra lights, a smoke machine and a projector. Combined with your individual emotion and presence, how have these additions translated to the audience?
J: When we started to plan our live setup, one of our goals was to make the show memorable, something people would want to see again. Rock shows are just so much more impressive with lights and fog. We work with sequencers and software already, so programming a couple of lights to go along with our songs wasn't that difficult. We're so obsessed with the lights now, we even set them up when we opened for Mindless Self Indulgence at Nation in DC. They have a million lights there, but most of those are saved for the headliner, so our little light show helped a bit. Our friend Jessica Bratton is a professional photographer and she's taken a lot of amazing live shots for us; she always complains about the fog, but it gives the shows more mood so we're not giving it up. Most people don't expect what they get when we play, and it seems to make a big impression.

C: I'll try not to go off on a tangent but ... the light show is a tremendous success! It was this very idea that inspired me to become a rock star! (hmm)

<TANGENT> It was 1993 and this girl invited me to a Marilyn Manson show; it seemed a bit wacky but I took the plunge. The first band, Jack Off Jill, performed and nothing exciting really happened. At midnight, the lights dimmed and white bedsheets held back smoke and shadows. What the hell was going on, I wondered. The placed began to fill up with people pushing their way to the front; every kind of person you could imagine from 15 to 55, seriously. Then before I even knew it, the curtain opened, smoke dropped down and filled the room, lights were flashing and the crowd was going nuts. Marilyn Manson put his left foot on the monitor looked at the crowd with his white contacts, spit, and screamed with authority, "white trash get down on your knees, it's time for cake and sodomy." Holy fucking shit! I could not believe it; the show had me too. I was glued the entire time. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I think the stage antics like lights, fog, even manikin body parts hanging from the ceiling added a fourth dimension to the show indeed. </TANGENT>

I hate when people are looking around and talking when bands play; by turning off the house lights and beaming our sequenced lights at the stage audiences are almost forced to pay attention. Imagine a movie theater with all of the lights on. Yuck. People would easily be distracted. That's just the ADD world we live in. It's a very flashy way of saying "May we have your attention please." The projector was a technique I thought we should use to compensate for lack of a drummer; motion projecting on the wall helps keep newcomers attention focused at the stage. I want people to feel they got a show, an irresistible senses overload. Sights and sound at 110%.

Bottomline: What can I do to help fans remember the show. I want people to forget about everything and get lost in one of the many experiences the show has to offer. Music is so healthy it makes me sick.

As the band nears its 2nd anniversary, what accomplishments are you most proud of, and where do you see the band headed as we approach 2006?
M: The most rewarding accomplishment for me personally is finally being able to successful live out my fantasies through this band. That means everything to me. It was also really fun playing for about a thousand people at Nation in DC.

J: Our first year was spent writing and learning how to work together. Our second year has been performing, growing a fan base and making connections. We had the opportunity to open for Mindless Self Indulgence, performed at the Dewey Beach Popfest and major label showcases. We have a track on a David Bowie tribute album and hopefully we'll release Kitsch in the Fall. I think we've come a long way in a short time. Next year, we'll be heading down to Austin for SXSW. We're looking forward to pushing Kitsch really hard and get the music out as far as we can.

C: I think we are definitely on the right track. We have played numerous shows in several major cities, steadily building fans, and we're just around the corner from finishing Kitsch. We have established a solid pattern that if followed should yield results. The results I'm talking about include finishing the album on our own, distribution within our local territory and beyond, have 2 or 3 songs played on radio stations everywhere, get the album distributed to local music stores and follow all this up with performances. It seems like a simple recipe, but the fact is it's not cheap to run your own business and we all know businesses normally take 5 years to mature and start seeing positive revenue. I think as long as we can support it financially, and the music supports itself, we can do this forever or until we get too old or addicted to drugs or die in freak accidents. Ideally, having a major label invest in the band would help catapult any product into the mass media, but the reality is there are just too many bands and not enough time or money. DIY.

Final words:
M: I think music and art in general right now is pretty stagnant and uninspiring, to me personally. My intention is to push music forward as much as I can without making a fool of myself. And I know I won't ever be making music with money, sex, or attention as motivation, so I feel it'll always be an honest endeavor for me. I want to make something beautiful to get back at the world for all the fucked up experiences I had growing up. Thank you.

C: There are thousands of bands in the world and they are changing names and faces every day. The one thing that keeps me going is Martin and Jeremy's unselfish commitment to making this band work. We are different people: Jeremy is the smart slacker, Martin is the quiet misunderstood type, of course you can probably tell I'm the obnoxious loud guy. We bring our own worlds to the studio and watch them gel and sometimes even corrode. We watch each other and learn both musically and socially. We feed on the same dream ... of cramming into a van with no AC to sweat our asses off, and hoping we can raise enough gas money to make it to the next show. Sometimes we contemplate selling our bodies for sex to raise money for the CD. We do it all for the love of music and entertainment, probably for the same reason everyone reads this. I appreciate any work that has been thought out and is genuine; like this very magazine. Somebody cares enough about local music to independently release this, and if it's anything like music, I'm sure they are in debt. Next time you come out to a Metrosex show, feel Jeremy's excitement, absorb my intensity, and get lost in Martin's emotions. I do it every time. Some people ask me how I live with the guys in the band, "don't they get on your nerves." How can I live with these guys you ask. How could I not ... I love these guys and everything that has become of us.