Mario Perotti --
August 5, 1999No better person to sit down and talk about music, the local scene and his band Stitch than self proclaimed student of Steve Harris, bassist Mark Aceves. On this overcast day, smack in the middle of downtown Campbell, CA, Mark sat down with powerslave.com in the early evening of August 5th.
How would you describe the Stitch sound?
Mark: Um, at this point it's progressively changing, it's very aggressive and very tribal at this point. We're going for a very aggressive tribal sound, almost with like a Latin flavor, with Latin rhythms and so on. It's really aggro and hectic.
So you and (Stitch Drummer) Rich were jamming together when you met (Guitarist / Lead Vocalist) Pete?
Mark: Well, Rich and I were sorta in a few projects together, and none of them worked out so we sorta decided to part ways musically even though we had an agreement that we would always work together somehow. Rich wanted to be in a really heavy band and he started advertising at like Starving musician and stuff like that. Pete wasn't really looking for a drummer but he found his flyer anyway. The fact that Rich and Pete lived in Santa Cruz was really good for them because there's no one really doing that kind of music in Santa Cruz and Pete had a really bad kind of drummer who couldn't really do the heavy stuff. So he called up Rich and said, 'You know, I'm not really looking for a drummer but I really like what you've done in the flyer so I want to check you out.' So they jammed and soon thereafter Pete let the original drummer go.
And you had been with Rich the whole time?
Mark: Actually no. This is even before I got into Stitch. At the time they had another bass player and they weren't looking for anybody new but they kept having internal conflicts with the bass player. He was putting, you know, his girlfriend and stuff before the band.
Ah. The old story.
Mark: Yeah, yeah. But we can function with both.
Santa Cruz must have been tough with the heavy sound. You don't hear many heavy bands coming out of Santa Cruz. How did they deal with that?
Mark: Yeah, its all like punk and hippie stuff. Well, they basically...they really didn't deal with it. (laughter) They couldn't get a steady line-up, until I got into the band. Soon after we recorded the demo, (former Stitch guitarist) Wayne left. And our immediate goal was to start gigging, and the only places that we could really get were in San Jose. We only played once in Santa Cruz so far and it was kind of mediocre. Everybody down there wants to hear three-chord punk or something other than what we're playing. (laughter)
So are they still in Santa Cruz?
Mark: No. Pete lives in San Francisco now. But he makes the commute. Rich lives in Santa Cruz, but he makes the commute. Rich and Pete work out here also, so it makes it easy. And I live in San Jose. It's great now because before we had a studio in Santa Cruz and I would trek down there all the time, but now we have it up here.
Who came up with the name Stitch?
Mark: Actually, I think Wayne did. He was the old guitarist. It was already Stitch when I got into the band. We kept it, we liked it, and we are trying to build our musical identity around that.
When did you start playing rthe bass?
Mark: I think it was fifteen or sixteen. I picked up other instruments too, like guitar. I mean, naturally you play guitar if you play bass. I do side projects of my own that I record because I have a little studio in my basement.
I think a lot of people do that. It allows you to express yourself in many different ways.
Mark: Yeah, I picked it up when I was fifteen because I wanted to be Steve Harris.
Yeah I was gonna say, growing up, what influences musically did you have?
Mark: Well, Steve Harris is pretty much the reason why I picked up the bass. But I was stuck in this wierd zone because back in the eighties you listened to one kind of music and you really didn't listen to anything else. I was sorta stuck in my own realm because I was into hardcore...I was into metal and punk. But then I'd listen to soft pop like The Cure, the sissy boy alternative stuff. I had to hide that from my friends sometimes. (laughter)
It was really a collaboration of different bands you listened to.
Mark: Oh yeah. I think it's really helped me as a musician to be so into different stuff.
Who do you listen to today?
Mark: I listen to a lot of the same stuff. I really, over the past couple of years, discovered a whole, really cool underground scene in other countries like Latin America and Brazil. They have some of the coolest bands I've ever heard. Of course Sepultura and Soulfly come from there. Other Latin American countries who have combined metal, rock and punk with their maiden traditional rhythms and to me it's really powerful.
Have a favorite local act?
Mark: I like the energy that Broken Vision has on stage. They have a lot of energy and I like that energy. A lot of the bands are my friends and I try not to sit there and listen to the music. Once you're in a band you try to gig with all these guys, you don't really look at them as music, we're all trying to help each other.
So Stitch is going into the studio in September? It sounds like you guys have some interesting things planned for this album. What can we expect?
Mark: Oh, well yeah. We are really excited. We've got a bunch of new songs that we've written. Since Wayne has left the band, our musical direction has taken on a new road. Before, we were kinda like groove, aggro, sludgy at times...like Melvinsy, kinda Kiosk, Clutchy. But now, since Wayne is gone, that influence is kinda gone from the band. (laughter) We're stepping up the aggression. We're trying to do a lot of complex time, but still keep a really fat groove. We want to add a bunch of non-traditional instrumentation, like a lot of Latin percussion. I have this Latin Percussionist guy (Dale Chung) who is really good and he's gonna be coming down and doin timbales, congas and anything we can think of. I play Didjeridu also, which we're gonna use in a couple of songs. Just whatever that we feel appropriate. We might do some samples too, but that's still up in the air.
How did the contact with Dale Chung come about?
Mark: Actually, when Rich and I were in a very hard edge funk band a few years back we wanted to find a Latin Percussionist to complement the sound. I put an ad on the Internet, he responded and we played. It clicked really well, but then a week later the band disintegrated. (laughter) So I kept him as a contact. I was wondering if he'd been into doing something really heavy like this because he is typically doing jazz and punk, so I sent him a CD. He was like 'Dude, yeah I dig it. Where do I sign?'
Are you guys going to re-record any of the songs of the 5 song demo?
Mark: Yeah. We're gonna redo "Cholo" and "Cuidado". We might do "Stir" because that still has the very ethereal, tribal feel to it. But that's pretty much it.
You're not gonna do "Oldman"?
Mark: That sorta doesn't fit with our line-up now. (laughter) It's a great song though, yeah. Maybe we should just record it for the hell of it and release it as a B-side or something. (laughter)
Are you going to interject any of the newer ideas into the older songs?
Mark: Actually, yeah. Like "Cholo" we already sorta re-written that in way and we are definitely going to add some extra percussion on "Cholo". "Cuidado" is pretty much a straight forward song and there is not much more we can do to make it any more aggressive. It's pretty hectic the way we play it as it is.
Stitch seems to record some longer songs. I think one song eclipses 10 minutes. How does that translate live?
Mark: It can get boring I can assume. We really only have played the ten-minute one live once and people seemed to like it which is cool. But, when you are going to see a band you have never heard of, and you don't know what to expect, a long song can kinda wear on people. We cut back on the longer ones, but there's still a good vibe to six minutes at least with the new stuff we're doing.
How is new material created with Stitch?
Mark: Generally, me and Pete write the music. We'll come up with a riff or a couple different riffs, and bring them into the studio and hammer them out. We'll play em, and say 'What do you think? What do you think should we do with this?' At times we contribute different parts from each other to make one song. And Rich has a lot of say too even though he doesn't actually play a note (on the guitar) we still trust his judgement on what sounds good. So at times we ask, 'What do you think?'. He'll respond with, 'Hey I like it' or 'It sucks', or whatever.
Have a favorite venue to perform at?
Mark: Well, I like the Chemical Free Zone a lot because a million kids go to that. They just dig it. The people who own the place are real nice. They are run by a church group which is surpising, but they are cool about letting heavy bands come in and they even pay you even if you're a nobody band which is cool. You can't complain about that. I like the Cactus Club because it's, you know, the Cactus Club.
You pack a bunch of people in there and it's pretty cool.
Mark: We've yet to pack a ton of people, but we're looking forward to it hopefully pretty soon. I'm looking forward to playing The Bottom of The Hill sometime. That's a really cool looking club.
But not the Tip Top Inn anymore, huh? (laughter)
Mark: I guess not. They don't do that heavy stuff anymore. (laughter)
Where do you see the heavy sounds / metal going in the future?
Mark: I see it's probably gonna have to go underground again in the next five years because we are having this sudden explosion of heavy-oriented hip-hop bands. It's sort of a cyclical thing in the record industry. When a new sound comes out, it's underground, then it explodes and the record industry leeches onto it and sucks it dry. Then they make all these clone bands and after a while like in the late eighties and early nineties everybody was sick of "Hair" bands, it's gonna be the same thing with these rap-core bands. I've already gotten to the point with rap-core. There's not a whole lot you can do with it, I don't think, left. I think there there's still two, actually three distinct styles. Because a lot of that groove, sludge-core like Black Sabbath type stuff is coming back and I think that's gonna hit really big in the next couple of years. There's that, then there's the rap, hip-hop core and the more hardcore aggressive stuff which is where I think we're at. It would be nice if that stuff got super popular just for the musicians, but I don't see that happening. (laughter)
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