The last time I spoke with Psychoboy (for the purposes of this magazine, anyway), they were preparing for their showcasing debut at the Foundations Forum in L.A. They did not strike a deal out west, but that hasn't slowed down this unique, gutsy rock and roll machine. Over the last few months, Psychoboy have been featured in countless entertainment magazines across the world, including Metal Edge, Concrete Foundations, South America's leading rag and bazillions of unknown local papers. Their music has been aired on a major network in the Midwest. And they are presently seeking a speculation deal to record some tracks with Alex Perialas at Pyramid Studios in New York.
While the studio deal is still very tentative, the band is optimistic. According to spontaneous frontman, Jeff Henderson, Alex "evidently likes our stuff so much that he wants to do us on, like, a spec deal. He'll shop it and get us signed, and when we get signed, we'll do the album there at Pyramid."
Guitarist Jason "Jay" Mitchell is also excited about the project, "I think the thing we're all looking forward to is recording in a great studio with a great engineer and being able to have it sound the way we have it in our heads."
You may recognize Alex's name. He produced Wrathchild America's latest effort, 3-D. But why would a funk blues-based rock band want a thrash producer? Jeff explains, "With him coming from, like, a thrash background might help us a lot, because I want someone that's a little off base.
While the band's manager, Chip Seligman, is sweating the details with Perialas, the members are staying busy working on promotions and answering lots of fan mail. When I talked with them they were receiving an average of 50 letters a day. "Yeah, it's like an instant mailing list," chimes Jay. "This is what we needed to do, network across the country. This is definitely the best thing that's happened to us so far.
"It's satisfying that people care enough to write to us, but the main thing is that we hope these people will be there when we have something really good and ready to put out."
The responses have certainly been enthusiastic, ranging from beautiful young ladies sending in pictures of themselves in sultry lingerie to one fan who wrote, "Psychoboy will not be denied!!!" There were loads more exclamation points in the original letter.
The immensity of the public reaction makes Jeff wonder why it's so hard to get noticed around here. "As good as this all is," he offers, "the thing that's really scary is we got people clamoring from all over the country (actually the world. One letter was from Japan.) trying to get a hold of us and sending their allowance through the mail to try to get the tape, and we can't get spit going on in our own home town." It's time to shake this town awake.
If you have been asleep, Psychoboy is probably the single most original hard rock band in the area. Here's how Jay describes it, "We're doing pop arrangements of songs that are a lot more accessible, but we're just trying to keep a lot of style to it. It's real easy to churn out a generic hard rock formulaic song. You just plug in the parts and it's done everyday on the radio and we hate that."
Adds Jeff, "Anyone that's successful, people gravitate to it and figure, 'Wow. that's what's hip, so I'll be like that.' And I personally detest that and I think the whole band does. We've fought really long to try and avoid that."
The have avoided it. This band has mixed profound originality and spunk with appealing music more apt to slam right into the listener's head than go over it. According to Jeff, "There's essentially two types of bands. There's types of bands that appeal to musicians and then there's types of bands that appeal to people. And the few bands that have been able to manage those two have been tremendously successful and there's been damn few of `em." Psychoboy are on the right track for tremendous success.
December MitBits