Albums of Purgatory Interview Zia

Albums of Purgatory: Firstly, what are ZIA up to?

LIZ: ZIA is playing shows in NYC, Long Island, Philly, Jersey, Boston, and will be playing Houston again, in October.  The band is currently looking into getting signed with a record label.

MATT:  Rocking your world!

ELAINE:  Yes, all of the above!  We are playing lots of shows in our region and are ready for a good manufacuring/distribution deal.  We still own all the rights to our music and are looking for a new label to put
them in their catalog.  We're 1/2way ready with our new album as well.


AoP:: How would you describe the ZIA sound?

LIZ: Electronic Pro-Space Pop Music.  Danceable, energetic pop music.
MATT: Spacey Dance music.
ELAINE: Very well put, guys.


AoP: How did ZIA begin back in 93?

LIZ:  I was a sophomore in High School, that year. Elaine?

MATT: I was just hitting puberty then.  Take it, Elaine.

ELAINE:  ZIA actually began in 1992.  Our first show was at the Rathskellar in Boston that February.  I got ZIA together with the idea that we would only play futuristic instruments and futuristic music that portrayed a
positive outlook of the years to come, and at the same time would break down the walls of traditionalism in music performance. For a while I used performers from other popular electronic bands in the Boston area,
so for the first couple of years at least, ZIA was like an "all-star" band.


AoP: Have you had much response from people since your self-release of "Big Bang"?

LIZ: Plenty of positive comments.  I think people just needed to hear something happier and different than the typical pop song produced in the main stream, today.  The response has been quite nice.

MATT: Well, since I was a big ZIA fan before I was a member,  I can speak on the behalf of "the people", and say that the CD is amazing.  Truely a work of art.  Since i've been in the band, many people have told me how much they love the CD.

ELAINE: What makes me happy is the response we get from countries around the world, like Lithuania and Russia.  We just send mp3 links to 100 locations around the world for them to play for the Yuri's Night-World
Space Party that happened April 12 and we've heard from a lot of happy people who enjoyed the music.

AoP: What are your favourite ZIA tracks?

LIZ:  I like Plastic Man, Resolution, Nibiru, Pagan Goddess, Mother, Zero G and Supernova.

MATT: My personal faves are Plastic Man, Hand Held, Comatosity, and new track, SuperNova.

ELAINE:  Plastic Man and Breath from "Big Bang!", Hand Held and Future from "SHEM", The Building and Sol from "ZIAv1.5" and Supernova and Geek Boy from the new album.  Hey guys, what are we going to call the new album?

AoP: What are your favourite all time songs?

LIZ:  "Sympathy For The Devil" and "Paint It Black," by the Rolling Stones, "Hallo SpaceBoy," by David Bowie, "Sad But True," by Orbital, and "Delta MKII," by Orb.

MATT:  "I hope that I don't fall in love with you", "Rain Dogs", "I'll Be Gone", by Tom Waits, "L'Execucion" by Angelo Badalementi, "Miss America" DAvid Byrne.  I don't know, this is a hard question, I could go on for hours.

ELAINE:  "Flesh for Fantasy" by Billy Idol, "My Sharona" by the Knack, "Heart of Glass" and "Rapture" by Blondie, "Resist" by Front Line Assembly, "Fly Me To the Moon" by  Frank Sinatra, "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads, "Metro" by Berlin, and "Mental Hopscotch" by Missing Persons.

AoP: what was the first record you bought?

LIZ: "Mary Poppins" movie soundtrack

MATT: I think it was a Monkees record.  But, I pretty much grew up at the end of the record age and the very beginning of the CD age... so, first CD I got was Nirvana: Nevermind.

ELAINE: ABBA

AoP: What would be your dream band line-up?

LIZ:  You mean the Muppetsı Electric Mayhem Band, isnıt a dream line-up?

MATT: for a band I would like to listen to?  uh... hrmm.  Tom Waits on lead vocals,  Danny Elfman writing orchestral accompaniment (that I would assume would be conducted by Steve Bartek), The guy from The Three Suns playing vibes,  Marc Ribot playing guitar, the drummer of man or astroman on main drums, Nina Hagen as main female vocals/backup,  yann tiersen as co songwriter jeez, this could go on for hours too....

ELAINE: Terry Bozio on vocals, Steve Stephens on Guitar, me on keys and cEvin Key on Drums.  (how else am I going to get close to cEvin? :)

AoP:  What do you think of the position of music in general today?

LIZ: Aw, geez.  Itıs totally in the process of evolving from one way of doing things to another way.  In the mean time, if you donıt sell X-amount of records, you can be dropped from a label.  I guess my whole problem with
it all, is that quality gets sacrificed for quantity and popularity, without giving any of the not so "main stream" stuff a listen.  What you hear on the radio is determined by a group of people that decide what is going to be hip, rather than letting you decide for yourself.  It has always been this way and with the indie labels getting more and more popular, the majors may or may not  fall, eventually, but they are already losing popularity.  I am hoping that the evolution will be a positive one.

MATT:  Well, for a while I thought main stream music was completely doomed, but I don't think it is entirely, I think it's in a bit of a dry spell though... aside from that band, Gorillaz.  They're quite good.  But,  a lot of music nowadays is just watered down versions of already watered down versions of old songs...  overproduced to make them more accessible.  But the underground scene is constantly spewing out more and more great
musicians/bands, so there is still hope.

ELAINE:  So far ZIA has been on two record labels, and unofficially on three or four (if you count Gig Records who we worked with for 2 years but we never signed with them, and Sonic Images who was on the cusp of
signing us before their electronic portion went out of business).  The first two labels went out of business, which seems to be the story of our lives.  I have other friends who made it on to major labels and were kicked off for not selling enough records.  It's a rough industry and is a bit scary.  Why do you think I spend my time hanging out with the aerospace community?  :)

AoP: Do you have any funny stories about the band you can share with us?

LIZ: Got a comfy chair?  This could take awhile. Well, we have many funny police stories, involving a paddy wagon helping us get our keys out of our locked car, using the wire hanger trick, getting pulled over for having an umbrella open in the car, and posing outside a lesbian club with a beat cop.

Other stories include our keyboard getting run over by a truck, wine being poured into our power strip, causing system errors, and eventually, the DrumKats went into Chinese mode, and I lost my keys, all in one
evening. Payment: $25.

The usual gag, is when we play with punk bands and they come to the gigs with trailers and vans and whatnot and we pile out of the little ZIA Mobile (1988 Ford Festiva), kinda like clowns in the circus, and we pull all of our
carefully packed ZIA equipment out of this thing.  The punk bands invariably make fun of us at the beginning of the night, but later, kindly ask how we packed the car.

Then there was the night that we played out in the boonies, and there was some big guy (apparently a local), writhing on the floor, screaming how much he loved us and called himself, Satan.

Then there was the 10 year anniversary show, where Matt and I were playing and Elaine was in the middle of some song and suddenly, there was no more Elaine, in my peripheral vision.  I look at Matt and he looked as perplexed as I did.  Apparently, she had taken a stage dive into the audience, and this guy was supposed to catch her and he missed, so there was this crowd, bending over the area in front of the stage and then, suddenly, out of
nowhere, she was thrust back on stage.  She didnıt miss any of her vocals.

Usually, stuff either explodes on stage, or Elaine and I knock into each other, or she backs into the mic stand, causing the mic to smack into my teeth, or I accidentally whack her with a drumstick.

Thatıs all for now.

MATT: ZIA is not a joking matter.

ELAINE:  Oh and Liz, don't forget the time we were stuck on highway 90 on the way to Boston in my Ford Festiva with a flat tire and I couldn't find my lug nut wrench, and AAA wouldn't rescue us since we were on a
state highway, and the towtrucks and police didn't have the right sized lug nut wrench and they were all yelling at eachother, and my mechanic was yelling at me on the phone.  Then we ended up trudging through knee
deep snow in that junkyard looking for a Ford Festiva lug nut wrench.

There was also the time, before Matt and Liz came along, when ZIA was on tour in the midwest and our drummer ended up riding in the other band's van.  Their van suddenly caught on fire in the middle of an Omish community, and the Omish were waving their fists at them.  For a long time we didn't know what had become of them.

The very first ZIA show was funny, because I had Noel playing these two giant street lamp orbs filled with X-Mas lights as triggers.  One was a kick and one was a snare.  Lots of people made fun of him after the show for playing those "big balls" and he never played in ZIA again.


AoP: and finally, what do you see in the future for ZIA?

LIZ: getting a lighting rig, more sparkles, and a record deal.

MATT: Rocking your world!

ELAINE:  A manufacturing/distribution deal so that we can finally have a complete catalog and nice artwork and sell everything in one big gift pack!  Oh, and we will be flying in space soon of course!  And we would like to be sponsored by Radio Shack.