The Parlor Mob

Location:
Asbury Park, New Jersey, US
Type:
Artist / Band / Musician
Genre:
Rock
Type:
Indie
We are the Parlor Mob. There are basic things you should know about us first and foremost. We're from New Jersey, and we're based out of Asbury Park. There are 5 of us. Mark Melicia sings, David Rosen and Paul Ritchie both play guitar, Sam Bey plays the drums, and Anthony Chick plays the bass. We grew up together. 2011 is our 7th year as a band. On October 11th we will release our second album, entitled Dogs, on Roadrunner Records. We have clawed and fought to get to where we are at, and we still have a very long way to go before we're even moderately satisfied.
Everything you hear about the music industry is true. It has tried to destroy us, literally, since our inception, or so it has felt to us. We know that many of you have experienced how corporations can suck the life out of people for the sake of their bottom line. Turning idealistic young adults into catatonic drones, and systematically draining the human spirit from wherever it may be found. The music industry is no different. We have somehow managed to stay united, continue making music on our own terms, and become stronger and more confident in ourselves. We have made a record now that we feel more strongly and more passionately about than we have about anything we've ever done in our lives, both individually and collectively. We have struggled to find a way to exist within a corporate structure and maintain our individuality, both as a band and as human beings who make art professionally. These struggles have bred a fierce isolationism around us and a camaraderie within us that amplifies our united goals beyond what they have ever been. We were not always quite so militant in our aspirations.
"A leash is only a rope with a noose on both ends."
- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead



This band, like many, started with absolutely no intentions of any sort. We had a different bass player at that time, a lifelong friend of ours named Nick Villapiano. We played shows continuously, we wrote all the time together and isolated ourselves from everything. We did not fit in to any scene, or any genre. We followed nothing. We made an album by ourselves, and released it ourselves. We got a manager and a lawyer we thought we could trust. Through them, we signed to Capitol Records. We were promised the world.
In retrospect it seems so obvious that it would all come crashing down. We recorded an EP in 4 days, on their dime, flew home, and never heard from any of them again. Eventually we were told that in the wake of a major corporate merger, we had been dropped. We were lied to and deceived by parties unmentioned from almost every front, so we cleaned house, firing everyone who worked for us. We found ourselves back at square one, with nothing except this 4 song EP, which we decided to give away for free to anyone who would listen. Our goal was simply to share what we had done, but what ended up happening was Roadrunner Records taking notice and signing us in 2007. We hesitantly agreed, for although we genuinely liked everyone with whom we were entering into business, we were still in the wake of an extremely messy music industry experience.
We made our first album, titled And You Were A Crow, with producer Jacquire King (responsible for albums by Tom Waits, Modest Mouse, and Kings of Leon) and released it in May of 2008. We toured for the next 2 years straight. This was the time period where we undoubtedly found ourselves as a band. Whether it was people having a complete misconception of who we were and what we cared about, or people trying to help us on the business side of things whose ideals and tastes were at complete odds with our own; it was in the face of what we disliked that our ideals of who and what we were came into perfect focus.
Our live show was quickly enhanced as we grew more and more furious in our defense of the art we loved. The more we felt misunderstood, the more we pushed ourselves to make our point as a live band; that we are not whatever you say we are; we are beyond what you think of us. We found new and different ways to express what we wanted to through performing. We grew to give everything we possibly could at every single show. As individuals, the 5 of us grew tighter and more unified than we had ever been. Our personal connections translated in the shows, and vice-versa. We were a self propelling machine.
"It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is."
- Leo Strauss



We returned home after traveling the world and began to write again, for our next album. This process proved to be more draining than anything we had done before. Going from the 100 mph life of touring to the dead stop of a desolate winter at home was shocking for all of us. After the first few months, we parted ways with our bassist Nick Villapiano. It was amicable and mutually beneficial, but hard on us nonetheless. After the physically exhausting demands of two years of touring in a van with 6 people, this was a new stress and pressure on all of us that we were growing more and more familiar with. Emotional and mental pressure. Generated internally. We knew that we all wanted the same thing. This was a theme we would constantly return to and develop while making Dogs, that we all wanted the same thing, we just had to find the ways to get to it that made us all fulfilled as individuals.
However, this took us a few more months to master. As a result we all ran out of money. We were broke again, living off scraps and fighting to exist. Our life was being sucked out of us by the machine we had once again fed ourselves to, and the pressure for a product it demanded. We each had our moments where we weren't sure we wanted to continue. But we remained loyal to one another. After writing with no bassist for a while, we asked our longtime friend Anthony Chick to help us, just temporarily. We ended up asking him to join the band permanently.
In the winter of 2010, we finished writing Dogs. From February through mid-March 2011, we were at Wire Recordings in Austin, TX recording with our friend, producer Matt Radosevich. Matt engineered And You Were A Crow, and we remained close with him through the 3 years between albums. We chose to work with him because we trust him, and he knows us. We have grown fed up of dealing professionally with people who either don't get us or who we don't trust, and that makes this industry very difficult but also that much more rewarding. It leads to a lot of "us against the world" fights. We're in a place now where we work with people we like. We had to fight to get Matt to produce the record, and he had to fight to get the job. We both did, and together we made this album we feel so strongly about.
"The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning."
- Michel Foucault



For us, this album is the culmination of everything that has led us to this point, all the internal and external struggles that have made us who we are. For us it serves the downtrodden of our times, who can feel their struggle reflected in ours. We called the album Dogs because it is a personification of everything we all have become, and a wide reaching, never-ending analogy for what we currently feel; a unified stamp of our lives in this moment. We have been beaten to the ground, spit on and kicked, and we have bitten back and clawed at those who are against us. We have felt caged. We have been hungry and fought for scraps. We have been pet and praised in one instant, and neglected and abused in the next. We have formed a pack, and we are violently loyal to one another.
There are themes within the album ranging from self-doubt, longing and discontent to rejuvenation, hope and love. Musically it is the equivalent of the turmoil of our lives, shifting as it goes from the desperately immense and cinematic, to the aggressive and powerful, to the quiet and calm. We cannot define Dogs for you as anything other than reflecting ourselves on record, as best as we can. "Into The Sun" is the first single, and it carries with it a message we leave open to interpretation. For us, it is about us. For you, it may be about you. This is how we would like you to perceive the record as a whole; open to your interpretation. We would not like to be defined for you. We would like you to define us for yourselves.
"This is the start of something. This is the end of who we were, and the beginning of what we will be. This is a call to something, this is our chance at something pure; the only chance left we can see."
- The Parlor Mob
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