After the latest studio album “When All Else Fails”, which did not get a lot of attention, the Californian quartet is back with the second issue of “Live In A Dive” series from Fat Wreck Chords. The record features a lot of old stuff, and it was a pity not having more time to pick their brains about it. Well at least they took time to tell us about their situation as a band and their plans for the future, is addition to saying they love me.

Interview with the whole band Bracket by Carlo | carlo@staff.truepunk.com

Hello , how are you doing?
We’re doing okay. Angelo has a bad cold.

Your new live album is coming out, it has a lot of songs and it is a very well done live recording, how do you feel about it ?
We are really happy with the live album. It sounds good, it has all the extra enhanced stuff. Not as exciting as a real new record, but we’ll start working on that sometime soon too.

Can you sum up a short story of how Bracket members met, got together, started playing and ended up on Fat?
Marty, Ray, Zack, and Larry (the old guitar player) met when they were kids. They went to high school together and played old cover songs. Then in 1992, they started writing their own songs and got a name…Bracket. Angelo is Marty’s younger cousin and was a Bracket fan and knew all the guys. So when Laryy left the band in 1998, Angelo filled in. It’s been that way ever since.

Your record is the second in the Fat Wreck “Live In A Dive” series; when did you know you had to take part in this series of albums ?
Probably in about early 1999, Fat Mike approached us about doing a live record. It sounded fun, so we practiced A LOT for a few months in advance, and recorded it in August of that year at a show in San Francisco. I don’t think the series/comic book thing was planned at that point.

I asked that because I read in the booklet that you recorded the songs in something like 1999 … were you already preparing the “Live In A Dive” record, or the idea of the live series started with Bracket ? ‘Cause, you know, we’ve been hearing since a long time that Bracket had to release a live record…
Yeah, so we thought Fat was just putting out a live Bracket cd. Then we heard it was a series. Then the whole comic book/enhanced cd thing came about. Then they recorded No Use’s live thing, and wanted to put their’s out first to have a bigger name be the first one. Then ours came out in February of 2002. Almost three years later. That’s why it took so long.

You have seventeen songs on the album, most of them are older, from out of print stuff, before you were on Fat; how did you decide the songs to play ?
Fat Mike callled us with a list of songs he thought would be good. We played most of those and a few others. It turned out good because now we get to release a lot of songs that are now unavailable.

Have you ever thought of re-issue your old albums on your new record label ? I think you could make happy a lot of fans …
We would love to do that, but our old still owns those two first albums.They are out of print, but they want alot of money for the rights to them.Fat wanted to re-issue them, but were asked to pay a ridiculous amount of money for them. It sucks.
Talking of your music career on Fat Wreck Chords, how do you fell about being on this label? Are you satisfied ?
We’re happy where we are. We feel pretty lucky because we have a label that basically puts out our records because they like our music. We’re not big moneymakers, we don’t tour to support our releases. We have jobs. And they pay for us to record and put out records. It’s a good deal we think.

I once read in an interview with Fat Mike that he was kind of complaining about how Bracket was a good band but unluckily they ( you ) did not sell as many records as the other bands on the label : do you know anything about this ?
Yeah, it’s a pretty widely understood thing. Mike likes our band and is a fan, which is probably why we still get to make records. If we toured, we would sell more. But we can’t. So that’s it.

Your most recent studio album is “When All Else Fails”, of the year 2000. Do you think you will release a studio album soon ?
We have just pretty much finished building our own recording studio, which we’ve been working on for over a year and a half. So we’ll start working on new songs very soon. But it might be a while before a new album comes out.

I think that among your older albums, “Novelty Forever” is the most under rated pop punk album ever…do you agree with this or do you think there are other under rated bands and records?
Talking of other bands and records, may I ask you what you are listening to right now ? Have you got some albums playing on your stereo ?
We feel like it was a little underappreciated, just because the songs were slower and it didn’t sound like typical pop punk. But we’re used to it. And a lot of other bands are underrated. There was a band called Thin Lizard Dawn that put out two records in the late ninties that no one really heard, and they’re really good. And they were on a major. Dont get why people didn’t get their music. It’s weird. Zack is listening to Ozzy, Judas Priest, and Weezer. Ray always listens to Tom Petty. Angelo is listening to ELO, Bad Astronaut, and Phantom Planet. Marty is listening to The Beach Boys, Jellyfish, and Johnny Winter. We’re too punk for you.

You are labelled and considered a “pop punk” band ; do you agree with this ? What do you think of the pop punk bands in general ? Have you got some favourite ones ? What do you think of Blink182 and Sum41 ?
We got that label a long time ago and would like to shake it because it is too confining. Blink 182 and mxpx are called pop punk and I don’t think we have that much in common with their music. We’ll really push the boundaries on the next record, don’t worry. We don’t really listen to much pop punk. Nofx, Lagwagon, No Use, Weezer kind of are. None of us are fans of Sum 41 or Blink. Nothing against them, but not really what we’re into.

In an interview with Serge from Limp, he told me about how lucky they were to mett Marty and Bracket that made them sign to Honest Don’s: what’s your side of that story ?
We’ll stick with Serge’s story. He’s a good guy.

Coming back to your new live record, like the previous No Use For A Name live CD, it has a nice comic book, that is about a funny story ? Would you tell to the readers how the story starts and goes on ?
In the comic book, Bracket is not only a band, but also a team of superheros. We try to save the world from Punk Rock and all the sound alike bands.

Talking of live shows, do you have a story about a tour or a show that you gladly remember ?
That one show where a lot of people came but didn’t flip us off. That was fun.

Final Comments ?
Thanks for taking the time to ask us these questions.Our website is www.surf.to/bracket, come visit us.

Thank you so much for the interview, hope to see you soon live . Take care!