John 'Woz' Wozniak (Marcy Playground) Interview - Part 1

Marcy Playground was everywhere in 1997 with their hit single "Sex and Candy." It was number one on the Modern Rock chart and a top ten single on the Billboard Singles Chart. You probably haven't heard about them since. That's about to change. Their second album, 1999's Shapeshifter was not promoted by the record label and sank into oblivion. The band has been touring and recording in the years since then and have found a new home on Reality Entertainment. Their latest album, MP3, is their strongest to date. It's diverse, interesting, and has a hit single or two. The first single, "Deadly Handsome Man" is getting airplay on many rock stations across the country. I recently spoke with Marcy Playground's founder, lead singer and guitarist, John "Woz" Wozniak.

Chad Bowar: What caused the 5 year delay between your albums?

John Wozniak: There is so much to it. One of the big delays was the fact that I had a flood in my house. I lost some material. I needed to go back and revisit a whole ton of new songs. One of the other delays is that we left Capitol Records. It's not quick and easy to find another record company. That took a little bit of time. We left Capitol because they completely bungled our second record. It was bad. It was particularly bad because they had fired all the people who had worked at the record company prior to that. It just became this really foreign company to us. Getting off the label took some time then finding another label took some time.

In between that I bought a recording studio in Vancouver Canada. That's taken up a lot of my time, personally. But I don't think it's that unusual for bands to take a little while to come out with a record. It was a long period of time, but I think it felt longer because the first record did so well and then the second record was completely botched by our crumbling record company. It didn't really get a chance to be promoted and see the light of day.

You also have a new drummer on this album.

Yeah, Gonz. (Gonzalo Martinez De La Cotera). He's been playing with us for the last few years. He's phenomenal. We met him when he was with a band called Lincoln. I personally became close friends with the guys in that band and when they stopped playing together we decided to hire Gonz. We're still really tight with Dan, our old drummer. He's been pretty successful. He played on Norah Jones' first record.

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