Man Man
Interview with Honus Honus
Words: Michael Spadoni
Photos: Courtesy of Solid PR

REAX:  How did the latest incarnation of Man Man come to be?
Honus Honus:  I knew some like-minded psychopaths and wanted to see if they felt like touring in a small band that smells – sleeping on floors, playing shows, writing weird music… although I don’t think our music is that weird. If we knew how to write songs that turned people in psychopaths, we’d be on to something wonderful.

REAX:  You had some exposure on the Nicktoons Network lately…
HH:  If anyone watched it, I know it was on late at night.  I was hoping that little kids would see it, but it was probably just big kids… which is cool too.

REAX:  It hasn’t brought a different crowd to your shows?
HH:  It has, we played a show in Vancouver the other day, which was pretty sweet.  I love our demographic, we had the hot arty girls and dudes that like cool music.  We had some dads; there were about 12 to 15 awesome dads.

REAX:  Has musical dinner theater inspired your stage show?
HH:  Our stage shows…you know, it’s just having one.  How many times can you see a band that looks just as disinterested with their instruments as they are with the crowd that paid to see them play?  It’s the wrong attitude; I don’t want to drag myself out of the house to see a show where the musicians act cooler than now.  We are cooler than now; we just don’t act like it.  It’s an experience; we want to put on a good show.  We want people to enjoy the music and the energy that we’ve giving. When we get good energy back from an audience it makes us step up our game.

REAX:  How many instruments do you go through in a concert?
HH:  The dudes are all multi-taskers.  Cougar in any given song may be playing marimba trumpet and baritone guitar, and screaming.  Chang plays sax, keyboards, pop, toy horns, and his throat.  Sergi plays xylophone, melodica keyboard, and drums.  All I do is just bang on a keyboard with my arms and my face and warble.

REAX:  What is the Man Man after party like?
HH: (laughs) If it doesn’t include driving through the night to our next show…some dudes are wasted and they stay up late and most dudes are totally housed from our show.  Our shows can totally suck all your energy out.  Some of us crash hard, I know I do.  Sometimes Cougar and Chang like to rage and Pow-Pow usually rages.

REAX:  Any plans for Halloween?
HH:  We’re going to be in Europe for Halloween.  We’ve been touring a lot for this record, but the tour is ending soon.  We go back into the studio in January to record our third record.  We have eight or nine songs written and the sketches of a couple more.  Hopefully by then we’ll have some time off to write some other stuff.

REAX:  You guys are getting pretty famous lately…
HH:  (laughs) Oh yeah?

REAX:  …who do you think would be the first one in the band to date Paris?
HH:  I don’t think any of us will.  I don’t know if you’ve seen photographs of us, but we look a little rough around the edges.  I think the closest any of us will come to Paris Hilton is mowing her lawn or washing her dishes.  She needs to have her mouth washed out.

REAX:  Thanks Honus!
HH:  We’re psyched to play Florida; we’re definitely looking forward to it, Peace!