The last two projects have been Marvel based. Do you have plans on doing DC and/or other Independent publishers?
Well, we are an equal opportunity super-hero band (laughs) so you can be assured that we will be making our way over to the DC universe, but I can’t speak for the timing. Some of that might be driven by movie schedules. The most important thing for me as the writer of these songs, regardless of origin, is that I have a real understanding and feeling for the title and characters. If I don’t have that on the table first, or be willing to put in genuine reflective study like I did for X-Men, it would be a disservice to do them.As far as DC vs. Marvel, personally my roots go deeper in Marvel, but my original childhood inspirations were DC so there will be a mix of songs. Since I am not strong in the Independents, I currently don’t see covering those possibilities unless I got drafted or something (laughs).
Where do you see the future of this type of music going?
Firstly, from a philosophical perspective, I would like people to understand that the implications of this music go far beyond DC vs. Marvel or even comic books per se. What we are talking about more fundamentally is people’s imagination. That’s the common denominator between comics, science fiction, super-heroes, fantasy or even horror and mystery for that matter. While we can talk about what I am calling, “The New Super-Hero Music” or “Comic Book Rock” it must be recognized that this is just one point of departure. More concretely we should be calling the totality of this kind of music, “Imagination Rock.” It’s driven by content and not necessarily subject to the usual rules of rock, pop, or soul. Our X-Men Opera is an example of that I think. In our lifetimes we have basically seen everything that can be done with comic books, but no one can even imagine what is possible when you add music to the equation.Is there a commercial future in it?
Yes, I believe so. But like anything new it will have to gather steam first. I really disagree with the line of argument I hear all the time about this music being a niche. I don’t think it is niche at all if you consider that most of the highest grossing movies of all time are super-hero movies, or are imagination based. A $100 million dollar comic book movie that becomes a multi-billion dollar global franchise is not niche, it’s as mainstream as it can get and it attracts all the demographics.As far as non-orchestral soundtrack music, however, it’s my opinion that it has not caught up yet to the sophistication of the movies. I don’t mean in terms of studio technology but rather what we do with the music on the creative side. It seems a disgrace that you can spend over $300 million for the new Superman movie and yet the so called creative people connected with the film can’t put aside even 5 or 6 thousand dollars to write and produce a new millennium Superman Song that would be cool, content true, and rock your face off. I think that if someone would do this, and have the guts to put it on a major comic book movie soundtrack, the fans would just die and go to heaven and the general public would catch up fast. The economics of this would drive the development of more music. If you want a business model, just look at Japan. Anime music is serious over there and enjoyed by large numbers. It would be fascinating to see this happen with super-hero and fictional characters even on a limited basis in our country.
