CRUSHER Magazine: Feature: Endo

		ENDO intro by Trystam Spiro-Costello/ interview byChristine Natanael/photos 1 & 2 from Vic Firth site, all others by Dana Frank LINKS: endomusic.com
		Welcome Endo fans. The Miami boys have been comparatively dormant since the summer, but the quiescent rock stars of the South are piling it on in the creative sense. Gil, Zelick, Joe, and Eli look forward to making the scene again in a big way after they complete a third album.
Our own Christine Natanael caught up with Joe Eshkenazi on the Endo bus at Ozzfest over the summer. Get inside Joe’s head. Fresh off the release of their second album, Songs For the Restless, Joe betrays the origins of his musical talent, his first concert, and other potentially embarrassing information. Also, check out the update interview Christine did in February. Closer to releasing the new album, and happy with their output, Endo proves they can endure in the cutthroat music industry. If the growth from Evolve to Songs For the Restless is any indication of things to come, this band has a deep and dark future ahead of them. It’s a time for experimentation and exploration for Endo, as they continue to find the next sound and test their bounds. At the moment they’re busy recording in Miami and performing in the Florida area, but keep an eye out for their next record.
Christine Natanael: I just ran a review of your record. Joe Eshkenazi: Was it good? CN: It was a good review. Yeah, it wasn’t bad. I didn’t get to listen to it yet cuz… JE: ‘Cuz why? CN: I get so many CDs I can’t possibly… JE: Yeah, but our CD is the only one that matters… CN: I fell in that one with both feet, didn’t I? JE: Yeah. You did. CN: So, uh…
JE: Before we start this, what kind of music is your favorite CD out there now? What kind of music do you listen to when you’re home? CN: When I’m home? Uh, lately, the last couple days I’ve listened to D.O.A, Minor Threat’s first demo, D.O.A.’s first CD… JE: So, you’re gonna hate us then. That’s cool. CN: Mad Caddies, um Fu Manchu, Jane’s Addiction….So what do you listen to? JE: Uh, right now? CN: Mmm-hmmm. JE: I have Hours, a band called Hours. I have Stevie Wonder Inner Visions. I have Deftones. I’m a big Deftones fan. I listen to Sevendust. I listen to Curtis Mayfield, James Brown…. CN: I love Curtis Mayfield. Al Green? JE: I don’t have it with me, but I have it…Bill Withers…. CN: That’s not the guy that was in the Uncle Kracker video…damn, I can’t remember his name… JE: Wasn’t he a white guy? CN: No, this is a black guy in the video and is the same one from the record, but then again I might have Ziploc fatigue. JE: Ziploc fatigue…(laughs) CN: You know, brain’s in Ziploc mode. JE: That’s funny. CN: I had a massive brain fart and everything went out… JE: So, let’s do this… CN: We are doing it already. You just don’t realize it. JE: I like that. It’s good. CN: I’m insidious like that. JE: Tricky, tricky. CN: Yeah, but you get the good shit that way, though. JE: Yeah. I like it like this better than, “So, what do you think about George Bush?” CN: I want to know, what is your first memory of ever hearing or recognizing that music existed. How old were you and what was it? JE: It’s not going to be very glamorous. You’ll laugh at me. My sister had the record, a 12-inch or whatever the fuck, 45s-- CN: Yeah, 45s… JE: …of that fucking goddamn song “Shuddup A You Face.” Remember that one? That’s a fucking bad one. I hate to say that. CN: But you remember it, at least, right. JE: “Shuddup A You Face” and I think, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” CN: How old were you then? JE: I was young, like 7 or 8. My first metal CD was KISS Alive. CN: A good place to start. JE: I’ll be honest with you. I’m not a huge KISS fan at all. CN: But you probably were then. JE: Oh, I was. I was. My first concert was Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation. CN: Really? JE: And my second concert was Anthrax Persistence Of Time. Then my third concert was Clash Of The Titans: Megadeth, Slayer, Alice In Chains. CN: What location? JE: I saw it in Miami. CN: I saw it in Madison Square Garden when they ripped out the seat cushions and started slinging them around. JE: Oh yeah? Clash Of The Titans? Right On. CN: Yeah, it was fun. They had a really good aftershow party, too. JE: We went to see Alice In Chains. That’s why we went. I loved Alice In Chains, fucking loved them.t. CN: So after that, did you take up music in school? JE: No, the way I personally came into it was I had a cousin, who was a girl, actually, who played drums. My uncle had a huge house and there’s five or six brothers and sisters that they have. I was 12 at the time, and she bought a drum kit. Piece of shit drums—I don’t even think it had cymbals on it. And she was taking lessons and whatever. One day she decided she didn’t want to play anymore. So I was like, ‘You know what? I live down the street. Hey, let me have this drum kit.’ And I had to convince my mom. I learned how to play drums in about six months without any cymbals—just drums. My parents figured that it would be a phase like skateboarding and BMX biking and all that shit. So that’s how I got into it.
	CN: Were you a good drummer then or just a crash and basher? JE: People tell me I was. CN: When did you start your first band? JE: Fourteen. I played my first club when I was 14. CN: Wow. JE: With him (points to Gil…) CN: With him? JE: Yeah. And then we separated for many years… CN: And you had such a great homecoming when you saw each other again… JE: Yes. It was amazing.
CN: How many years in the interim? JE: Well, I mean, we knew—we always saw each other in the bands, you know, my band and his bands played together. We were always friends, we just never played together until, uh a couple years ago when they fired their drummer and he called me. And five days later we were in New York. CN: Here’s one of my favorite questions to ask…at what point did you realize that this music thing that was your hobby, you wanted it to be your career? JE: Um, I realized that, probably the first day I ever played a club, when I was 14. I had to go back to junior high—no, I was a ninth grader—I had to go back to high school the next morning, you know, and I was the youngest kid in my band. I was playing with 20 and 21 year olds. And I realized it because, at the time, everyone was telling me how amazing I was. Obviously, you tell a 14 year old kid how amazing he is, you know, you’re developing a monster. You know? Which, I am right now—an egomaniac. CN: You keep it well-hidden. JE: Yeah? It comes out every once in a while. I take pills for that kind of shit. Um…the day that I realized that I wanted to make it my career was when I really started playing when I was 17, 18 and playing every week with local bands that became big. CN: You realized you could make money? JE: No, the money thing actually hasn’t come in yet. So, I’m still wondering exactly how we’re gonna make some money. CN: ‘Cuz everyone around you’s making money but you, aren’t they? JE: No, nobody on this stage. CN: No, but the managers and everyone around you is. JE: Oh, they live good. And they say, ‘No, don’t worry. You can live off $5 a day.’ We can’t, but you can. CN: A $5 per diem and a backstage deli tray, huh? JE: Oh yeah. Exactly. CN: Been there. Done that. JE: I went back—I went without playing for about six months to eight months when I was about 20. I was actually a marketing director for a company, and I was making fat loot. For a 24 year old kid, I was making fucking good money. CN: Also learning about marketing, which helps to market your band. JE: Exactly. I’d go to work every day and my fucking girlfriend, she was a stripper. My life was fuckin’a mess, dude. And I wasn’t playing. CN: But usually strippers take care of musician boyfriends pretty well—which leads to adult children who can’t function. JE: They do. They do. But the problem is, is when you have to wake up at 8 o’clock in the morning to go to work and she got home from work at 6:30 in the morning lit off her ass. Then after a year—she was all jealous when I’d play. I was going through total problems, you know? What the fuck’s going on? And then I realized that, you know what? I need to play music. No matter how much money I’m making, I’m making myself happy. CN: Yeah, that misery creeps up on you. JE: That’s something I hope I never have to experience again. CN: There’s that ball of angst in your gut that’s just like---‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t ride the desk anymore.’ And it keeps building in your gut, right? JE: Yeah. And you’re paying your bills and you have a nice car, fucking yet, I’m not playing so that aggression, all that shit that comes in from inside of you is gone, and it fucking sucks. CN: Alright. So what brought you together with these cats? JE: I went to high school with Gil, as I told you earlier. And our parents know each other from years back. Me and him started a band when I was 13. And then we kicked him out of the band, and we ended up meeting up with Zeldick a couple years later, doing the cover thing, like you said. I was a DJ at the time in Miami. I mean, I was young, but I was still DJ’ing when I was like, 17. They would play a club that I was DJ’ing at, and they were doing covers only. Eventually they developed, got new different guitar players, wrote, evolved, recorded, evolved independently. Columbia bought it and re-released it and they went on the road and ended up kicking out their drummer. And like I said— CN: You got the call. JE: And I got the call and five days later we’re in New York. CN: Who do you think is the most influential drummer? JE: Bonham. CN: Really? Heavy hitter. So you’re not like a Neal Peart kind of dude. JE: No. Not at all. CN: Not a Mike Portnoy fan… JE: Not at all. Dave Wechols…I mean, I admire them for who they are and their drumming. I would rather sit down and watch Mike Bordin play for two weeks straight rather than seeing Mike Portnoy and those guys. CN: I haven’t talked to Mike Bordin since he was in Faith No More. JE: He is such a cool guy, such a nice guy. He is such a fuckin’ monster drummer. And it’s a feel thing. Watching him in Faith No More, obviously when I was younger, just watching his feel. You know, I’m a feel drummer. I’m not a technical player. Mike Portnoy, I mean, I admire them for who they are, but I wouldn’t spend $1.50 to see them. CN: Did you get to hang with him at all on this tour? JE: Who? Bordin? I’ve hung out with him a couple times, yeah. I mean, not like best friends hanging out, but we’ve talked. I’ve talked to his tech a lot, actually. I get a lot of advice from his tech. CN: If you had your wish and you could play with anyone, in any genre from any point in time, who would it be? JE: It has to be one answer? CN: No, answer to your heart’s content. JE: The Cult. CN: Good band.

JE: I would like to see Stevie Wonder, honestly. That would be amazing for me. Uh, I haven’t played with him, but I’ve been onstage with Earth, Wind & Fire with other bands that I’ve been in. That’s not really a dream of mine, but The Cult for one strange reason I just…I was, growing up, Ian Astbury is one of the reasons why I started playing music. And when I met him in L.A. at a Slayer show, he was probably the only person that I’ve met …I’m never starstruck, never whatever, I respect--obviously starstruck and respect are two different things, but Ian Astbury, for whatever reason, I was just like…I spoke to him for a while. CN: Is there anybody that makes you go “duh” (starstruck)? JE: Maybe Buddy Rich. But that’s not gonna happen either, so there you go. CN: Actually, the only person who ever made me do that was John Entwhistle. JE: I’d like to play with The Who. CN: That would be fun. You’d need to find a bass player, though. JE: Oh, I’m sure they’d have one there hangin’ out. Pay him $10 million dollars a week. (End of Ozzfest interview) (2/24/03---pre-production update via phone) CN: So where are you recording right now? JE: In Miami. There’s actually a couple studios over here. We have The Factory here, and there’s a studio that a friend of ours owns in his house, where they do a lot of band stuff. He’s a friend of mine, and we did the demo in there. CN: Oh, so how much have you got done already? JE: We got about like five or six songs. We’ve got a bunch of other stuff that’s not really anything to write home about. CN: Oh, OK, still working on it, huh? JE: You gotta write twenty-five songs to make ten-twelve good ones, you know? CN: Yeah, the law of averages. JE: Yeah, exactly. CN: So, any new influences on this record, anything different from what you did on the last one? JE: You wanna know, the only difference in us writing this record that will hold up is in the profits of writing Songs for the Restless. So much going on between SONY and our managers, and we didn’t know if we were gonna make the record,and when we made the record if they were, you know... I mean it was just like there were so many things, so we took that. That actually came out in the music, and this time around we just don’t give a shit. We’ll be writing the fucking music that we know we can write and you know, see what happens with it, and it’s actually working a lot better. Took us almost a year to write Songs for the Restless and, like I said, the five or six songs that we know are fucking pimp were done in the past month, so we’re in the zone and we’re gonna roll with it, sure. CN: Excellent, that’s good to hear, so I liked your last record, I finally did listen to it. JE: (laughs) I love that record. CN: Well I should hope so, you played on it. Although I guess some people do have animosity to things they’ve written in the past, right? JE: …It was a good record…and I think this next one is gonna be, lightspeeds ahead, and that’s when you know you’re on a good track, when you’re writing better stuff that works, you know? And we are the worst critics of our own music, so if we feel that it’s just as good as…you know, "CleanSsheets," or any of those songs on my record, then we know we’re good, we’re in a good place, and we’re really happy with it. CN: Excellent. So do you hope to have it done before summer so you can skip out on some tours or not? JE: We’re not even sure. We’re not going to rush it. I mean we don’t wanna have to do any of those festival tours. CN: Right. JE: But you know there’s a lot of bands going out so you never know, you never know. Every day is a different story, so the only thing we can do is go in and write. And that’s what we’re doing. CN: Yeah, so you’re not doing festival tours. I’ll have to come up with a way to get to Miami to see you I guess. JE: No, we’ll be out, we’ll be doing some regional touring. CN: Anyhow, who’s producing this record? JE: Well we don’t have a producer yet. CN: So you doing everything right now yourself? Pre production? JE: Yeah, just the four of us are doing it. We called Steve to see if he wants to come down and check it out a little bit, but we’re not there yet, we wanna write at least ten or twelve songs before we sign anybody down. You know, we’ve thrown about a bunch of names, but we don’t want to approach anybody half-assed. We wanna know that we have, you know, the balls behind and the product so that when they first listen to it they’ll go, “yeah this is something we definitely want to work on.” CN: I can dig that. I can dig that. You don’t wanna come with a half empty plate. JE: Exactly. CN: ‘cuz they think, “Oh my god, how much work I’m gonna have to do to get this up to speed.” JE: Well yeah, but knowing what we know about the industry now, and how records are selling, that you know, we gotta be the best to get the best, so that’s what we were trying to do…we’re just writing new music, you know, playing local shows here. We’re playing next month, couple bands gonna open for us. The Winter Music Conference, also we’re doing some stuff with Jager. I mean, honestly, we’re happy. CN: Well at least you’re working. You know, it kinda sucks when you go off tour and then there’s a big bunch of nothing. JE: Well it was up to us. It was either we got off tour and we ditched it, or we actually did something. We’re the only people that control our destinies at this point. CN: That’s the truth. JE: So, we know that, and we’re very happy, and we were hoping that we’d come in and write It took us a long time to write Songs for the Restless. Sometimes we got writers’ block, or whatever it was you call it. But now it’s flowing so we’re definitely gonna run with it. CN: Most excellent. Is there any kind of new dimension that you’re putting on the record that you haven’t done before? JE: Well we’re gonna try. We’re gonna try and throw in a little bit more background. Not just harmonies and that kind of stuff, but like kinda where the vocals overlay each other. Not necessarily harmonies and stuff, but just like additions. You know, kind of what Blink does where they have two different singers at the same time. At certain parts obviously, not overshadowing Gil or anything. You know, for effect or dramatic effect, or whatever comes up. We’re experimenting a lot; we’ve learned some lessons. I was singing live, keeping that in mind, we’re gonna do that as well. We’re a little heavy, sometimes. We’re writing a couple ballads also that are just coming out, they’re Endo and they don’t sound like they’re not Endo. But that’s where we’re at right now… CN: OK JE: I really like that Revis record. I would listen to a lot of that Revis record, a lot of people don’t; I like the video. I listen to Korn. The new record, I think, is fucking awesome! Love it. Love Korn’s new record. CN: You love Korn anyway, so. Anyway, I’m glad to speak with you. Definitely stay in touch. JE: Right on.