Ray Manuud Interview with Steve Perry of CPD

My former Moon colleague, Ray Manuud, has quite an interesting interview in ReadJunk with Steve Perry, singer/songwriter for the swing/ska band the Cherry Poppin Daddies, which has two ska CDs coming down the pipeline. Love or hate them, this interview is a good read.

Money quote:

RM: With 21 years of performing and making music, The CPD musical range is quite broad. From its beginnings with funk and punk rock to the band’s embracement of swing music which elevated the band to mainstream popularity and often resulted in listeners commonly referring to you as a swing band, how exactly does the band itself describe its music?

SP: We play most of our songs with horns I guess. As a rock band with horns. You know, Willy Deville of Mink DeVille died the other day and I just felt like his vision was similar to ours. He expressed himself in numerous different genres but his point of view was fiercely eclectic and punk. I believe the early days of punk and the New York downtown scene were like that: from Mink DeVille, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Richard Hell, Klaus Nomi, the Dolls, Television, Patti Smith Group. I like all scenes before they ossify into some form of exclusionary history written by some middle brow writer at Rolling Stone. Like "poof" the Ramones just appear out of nowhere…as if the Ramones weren’t deeply related to Slade and the Glitter bands with a touch of Sha Na Na’s schtick. The truth about bands is more interesting than the sanctioned history. There needs to be a “People's History of Rock.”