The Bobby Bones Show - John Easdale: Lead Singer and Songwriter for the American Band Dramarama- Music History

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

John Easdale: Lead Singer and Songwriter for the American Band Dramarama. Dramarama is an American, New Jersey-based Alternative rock/power pop band, who later moved to LA. The band was formed in New Jersey in 1982 and disbanded in 1994. They formally reunited in 2003 following an appearance on VH1's "Bands Reunited".Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Buzz Night is your hosts, and on this episode, grit and resilience are the operative words regarding our guest. John Isdale is the leader of the band Dramarama, blending a of hard rock wallop, alternative rock, power pop, and punk. This Pasadena Records band is out with a brand new project called Color TV.

Join Buzz Next with John Eisdale. Well, hi, John. Thanks for being on taking a walk, albeit virtually. I wish we were together, but we can pretend. We're thousands of miles away, but we are together through the magic of technology. Well, congratulations on the next. Now, 2020 release, Color TV after a 15-year hiatus. We're going to talk about that.

But do take me back to the record store basement of Looney Tunes Records in Wayne, New Jersey. What were you listening to then? And what did you imagine that your future was going to hold? Well, you know, I grew up listening to the Beatles and then, you know, actually, the monkeys came before the Beatles when I was really little. I was like four years old, their show came on the air, and I was hooked to rock and roll. So I was a little too young for the first wave of the British invasion.

And so the monkeys turned me on a rock, and then I caught up and got the Beatles, and then the stones, and then the Who and the Kinks, and then in the early 70s, David Bowie and Mata Hoopoul and T-Rex and stuff like that. And then punk rock, you know, sex pistols and clash. And then by 1982 when we started the band, actually the store opened, Looney Tunes,

our original bass player, Chris Carter, he owned the store. And it was like trying to be like a Manhattan record store, like a bleaker bobs or something. And it only sold, you know, imports and good, you know, just rock. It was a rock and roll record store. and sold imports and don't tell anybody but bootlegs and all kinds of you know we were just trying to be the coolest thing in the world in a town that really didn't have any use for that kind of a record store but um but yeah we were listening to all the new music that was coming over from england and and all the cool new music that was coming out of the united states and out of manhattan which was about half an hour away maybe 15 months miles or something from where we grew up. What was your favorite pizza place in New Jersey just out of curiosity? You know, Tony's was great, and then there was another place called Vinny's Pizzerama.

There was a lot of them, just, you know, there were like four or five of them just in Wayne. But, yeah, there was a whole bunch of them. The pizza out there is so much better than I'm in California now. And they call it pizza, but it really doesn't live up to the name. doesn't deserve the name. They should just call it piz. I don't think you could get bad slices of pizza or full pizzas anywhere in New Jersey. No, not that I'm aware of unless they have a Papa John's out there. So what were these places like Stone Pony, the Green Parrot, the Fast Lane,

what were they like? What did they smell like, maybe? You know, when we were first starting out, there was very, very few places for original music in New Jersey. It was way more about cover bands and, you know, bands playing Led Zeppelin and stuff. So we went to, we were playing at a bunch of dives. Not that those places you mentioned were dives, those were actually a little bit more reputable and actual

had actual people who came to see what they came to see. But we played a place is called the Dirt Club and other places that weren't even as good as that. And by the way, a shout out to Chris Carter, who you mentioned, who does a pretty badass Beatles show here on Sirius X-O. He does. He's been doing breakfast with the Beatles here in Los Angeles

for, gosh, 25 years at least. He's on a Sunday morning show on KLS FM. 95.5. And he took that show over. It's been on for a long, long time. A brilliant lady named Dirdre O'Donnie who started it. And then sadly, she passed away. And Chris took it over. And he's been doing it ever since. And then he got picked up on Sirius and he does it on there. And he also does another show on Little Stevens channel called The British Invasion. And yeah, he was, he and I and my friend Mark, who I've known since I was two years old, started the band in the basement, and Peter Wood played guitar. And I was actually the first drummer in the band,

because we were just doing recordings before we played live. We were just fooling around with four tracks and stuff. And then we went in the studio, same thing. I played drums, and those guys played the instruments. The local music scene in Jersey was so fertile. You had bands like Red House, the smithereens, the whirling dervishes. Was it camaraderie with all these other bands? Or was it raw Get Out of the Way competition?

I think at that age, everybody's kind of like, we're the best, get out of the way kind of a thing. I mean, I've always been trying to be cordial and friendly, and I certainly don't have, you know, a massive ego or whatever. But I think every band kind of just is like thinking about themselves and we're the best, you know.

But, you know, a lot of them, like a lot of the bands you mentioned, I didn't meet at the time. We never did share a stage with any of those bands until later. We played with the Smithereens and the Whirling Dervishes. In fact, when we play in New Jersey, the keyboard player from the Whirling Derbishes is name is Billy Siegel. He actually sits in with us and plays with us. You shared a part of your history with a similar outcome of Mink DeVille and Jerry Lewis. This was the cult praise you received in France. How did you embrace that? And didn't the DJ from K. Rock, Rodney Bingenheimer, think that the band was French?

Yes, what happened was we were going in the studio and making our own recordings. And so first we put out a 45 all by ourselves on our own label, question mark records. Then we put out a 12-inch EP also on question mark. And there was a French DJ. It got reviewed in a magazine called The Trouser Press. and a DJ in France read the review and picked up the record and he loved it and was playing it on his show and he introduced us to a French label called New Rose Records, which was primarily releasing records by American artists who weren't necessarily signed to a major label or whatever. So we got a deal with Neuro's Records and they put out our first album. him and it was only available in America as an import and Rodney Bingenheimer in Los Angeles

bought it. He just went to the store and bought it in Pasadena records, in Pasadena at a at a store called Poubas and had a picture of Edie Sedgwick on the cover and it said New Rose Records, Paris, France on the bottom. So he thought we were French and then we found out he was playing it and we called him up and said, hey Rodney, we're from New Jersey. He came out to visit the East Coast when the monkeys were doing their first reunion in 1986. And he slept on our couch and he said, you guys should come out to Los Angeles. Now, little known to us. It wasn't just getting played on his Sunday night show.

The radio station actually added it to their playlist and it started getting a lot of phone calls and requests. and, you know, it was on the radio every, every, it was in heavy rotation, as they say. You've had movie success with your music in a nightmare on Elm Street 4. You've also had music in the Sega video games. So you were really ahead of your time in that area of kind of branding, if you will. Wouldn't you agree? You know, and it had all the wonderful things that have happened to us over the years, you know, aside from me writing songs and the band playing them and going and laying it down to tape,

all the wonderful things that have happened to us have been a result of the music and not necessarily of branding or any kind of efforts behind the scenes. It's way more like people hear the music and then they want to use it. That's how it got in Nightmare on Elm Street. That's how a lot of our other songs have gotten in movies. It's like they find the music and then they contact us as opposed to have, somebody, you know, pitching and saying, hey, you got this great new song by this band, you know, you got to put it in your movie. It goes the other way. It's like a director or a musical

supervisor will say, I got to have that song in my, in my TV show or in my movie or something. And so it's kind of backwards, but it's really nice because it's all about the music and not about the fashion or the style or the trendiness or the fad. And we've been very fortunate. You had a great one called high-fi, sci-fi, including some backing vocal contributors like Dwight Twilly and Sylvand, and then the band broke up after that release. What did you learn from that breakup?

Well, you know, we had done everything ourselves up until about our third album, and then, and even that we recorded ourselves, but then we signed to a small label in Torrance called Chameleon Records. And that label ended up being distributed by Warner Brothers or Warner Music. And we had to start dealing with the major label thing. And we weren't used to input from executives. So we weren't very open to suggestion. We thought we knew better than the record company. So we kind of probably were a pain in the neck to these guys. And we complained.

And not only did we complain privately, but we also did it publicly. Memorably, one of our members did an interview and pretty much thought the interview was over and started talking to the journalist and telling him how terrible our label was and how terrible of a job our label was doing. And that's what got published was all of us,

all of the gripes. And as you can imagine, the label didn't really appreciate that. So we had a bad experience, but I think it was mostly our own fault. And that had more to do with the band breakup. Also just the fact of being together. By that point, we were together more than 10 years, and I think we were ready to take a break. We have a podcast project that is called Music Save Me, and I know you've had trials and tribulations relating to addiction.

Can you talk about the power of music, how important it is, especially when you're going, through a struggle? Well, you know, it's weird because when you're growing up, when you're little, when I heard the monkeys or when I was listening to the Beatles or whoever, I wasn't doing drugs, I wasn't drinking.

I was just, you know, getting high on the music, if you will. And as I grew up and, you know, started being in bands, you know, the old the dangerous phrase, sex and drugs and rock and roll was was in the back of your head and so they kind of went hand in hand and at some point the drugs anyway really took over and and when it was time to give that up and and you know

rock and roll did save me because i still had that and i and i remember you know you know what you don't need drugs or you don't need to be drunk, you don't need to alter your conscious consciousness because, you know what, the music alters your consciousness. The music lifts you up and the music, you know, it's the music that is the strength. And in a lot of ways, music is my higher power when it comes to that. And yeah, music is miraculous. It's the only thing I think we still have as humans touch with that's magical you know it really can lift your spirits you know what what's that old old phrase that has charms that that soothes the savage breast it does it can make you happy if you're in a good mood it can lift even higher and if you're in a bad mood it can lift you out

of that and uh yeah no it it is uh it is a bomb on the soul We share a mutual friend named Rich Rousseau, who uses your son Anything Anything as part of his show, his theme. Rich is such a great guy and such a great musicologist, really. How did you first encounter Rich? He decided to name his show Anything Anything, and that's how I first became aware of Mr. Rich. I'm happy to say that he and I are now friends more than, you know, it has nothing, you know, it started as a professional relationship, but it's blossomed into a true friendship. And, you know, I'm, I will say that I have a lot of friends that I've made over the years in show business,

in the music business, which is uncommon because there's a lot of, you know, guys that you wouldn't, you know, ever want to speak to, except for that, the business relationship. But Rich and I are really, really close. He's a wonderful DJ. He plays, you know, the greatest music. He's all over the place. Ecclectic is, if you look in the dictionary, is picture of Rich under Ecclectic because he plays everything.

If you've ever seen his collection, you would be flabbergasted because it's just incredible. he's the kind of guy who pick me up and take me to the airport when I'm back east he's given us so many opportunities over the years when the band got back together and when we played back east he would be our host and sponsor the shows

and he's just been a great friend to the band but he's also just a great friend and I love that guy He's got a great head of hair, too. I got to say, I envy that. And that's why I wear a cowboy hat because I prefer it to a toupee or a weave. But no, yeah, he looks good. He's a good-looking fella. I want to thank you for, on Color TV, turning me on to the song, Abandon Love,

which I did not know as a Bob Dylan fan. you do a tremendous cover of that. How did you find that tune? You know, there's a tape recording of him doing it at a club in New York, back in between blood on the tracks and desire when Bob went back to Manhattan and was like going to the folk clubs again. He got up and played that song one night, and I heard a recording of that.

Now, after that, it was like a bootleg thing. somebody had a tape recorder in the club and they recorded him when he sang it. Now, after that, apparently he went in and tried to do a version of it, a recording of it, which has a lot of different lyrics than the version I first heard, the bootleg version. Well, not a lot, but a few. There is a, it's on one of his bootleg series, the studio version that he did record, but it's slightly different lyrics. And then I think George Harrison even did a version that's like an outtake.

I don't know if it's ever been commercially released, but you can find that as well. Yeah, it's an amazing song. And, you know, through the years, we've always tried to do songs, covers versions of songs that weren't the most well-known by, you know, well-known artists, perhaps, but not their most well-known song. Try to find something a little bit more obscure. So what's your creative process in terms of? of writing new stuff?

It's 99% inspiration, 1% perspiration. It just, it comes to me. Like, I turn off the radio and I listen to the radio in my head, and it just, it really is. It's all comes from outer space. I don't know. It comes from heaven. I really, I couldn't tell you how it happens.

It just does. And I'm very fortunate that that's the way it goes. Because when I do try to write a song, I'm not usually happy with the result. Well, I know you're playing out live, and I know you're playing out live really tremendously. My friend Elliot Kendall just saw you a week or two ago and told me how great it was. What's the joy of playing live, especially after COVID, kind of shut that down? I have to say that as the years have gone by, I'm even get more pleasure out of performing. At some point, 20 some odd years ago, someone said, well, you're an entertainer.

And I was like, I was blown away. Knocked me down because I never thought of myself in those terms. And I never thought of people coming and buying tickets and coming to see me. I just, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I didn't care about anything but me. It was all about me, and about how I felt, and if I felt like getting up there half, half cocked and half assed and half in the bag or whatever you want to call it, um, that's what you got, you know, and now, when I get up there, I, I get up there, I, I know that people have come to see me and they bought tickets and I owe them the very best that I can do. And I have 10 times more fun than I ever did before. After COVID, we've been really busy. We had to take a few years off.

We put out color TV like a month in May. The shutdown was March. The album came out May 1st. So we weren't able to go out and promote. and play the album live for a while. And it wasn't until almost, well, we started doing some stuff late in 21. And then 2022, I think, was our busiest year ever, at least since we got back together in 2003. We did all kinds of things.

We traveled all over. And it's just wonderful. It is wonderful that we're still doing this 41 years after starting the band and that we still get up and have a great time and try to, you know, rock hard and people are having fun, people show up, and it's, we're the luck. I'm the luckiest man in the world. Well, I'm pretty lucky because the Take In a Walk podcast reconnects me with folks, and it connects me with new folks, allows me to have music discovery. And I so love discovering drama-rama and John Eastdale.

and I thank you for sharing on Taking a Walk. Pleasure is entirely mine. Thank you so much for having me on Buzz. Thank you. Taking a walk with Buzz Night is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.

You doctored this particular person. test twice in so much. I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.

I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone?

I'm Ago Wode. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot in luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast, Eating While Broke, is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer, Zoe Spencer, and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre, as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed.

Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.