An Interview With Galactic

An Interview With Galactic Rebecca Britton: This band is changing the face of New Orleans punk. Hi. I'm Rebecca Britton and welcome to Watchmojo.com. And, today we’re speaking with Galactic. How did each of you individually get into music? Robert Mecurio: I wanted to play horn but my orthodontist wouldn’t let me so he had all these like charts of like what the each instrument does to your mouth. They were like ? well, piano won't mess up your teeth. Well, with piano and then I ended up really finding my love when I started playing bass. Rich Vogel: I started playing piano as a kid and I stuck with it actually so I'm the piano player. Rebecca Britton: Who did you grew up listening to and how has that kind of influenced the Galactic? Robert Mecurio: The one band that we all collectively really dug. It was this Meters from the New Orleans. We all respectively really like the person that played our instrument in the band and the way that they played as a band together. Rich Vogel: The rhythm section was the four of us, bass guitar, keyboards and drums. That's the part of the band that stayed consistent even from the earliest days and so the Meters being a rhythm section same instruments in New Orleans and we’re in New Orleans and we actually can go see the Meters play during college. Robert Mecurio: We learned a lot of their music when we started. It’s kind of our beginning point although now that we’ve been a band for 15 years. It’s ? we really don’t set anything right now. Rebecca Britton: If you had to describe your music for someone who has never heard it, how would you go by doing that? Rich Vogel: It’s rooted in funky New Orleans music. If you're talking about the brass bands or you're talking funk bands like the Meters, music that the Neville Brothers made. We’re young dudes who grew up playing punk rock. I grew up in the mid west listening to rock and roll and playing all different kinds of music so maybe we have -- maybe like certain aggressive edge to it without playing traditional, our old school R&B and your old school punk but we love all that music and learn so much from it. That is all in there. Robert Mecurio: The modern New Orleans punk band, I've read that one. I mean I didn’t ? that bad. Rebecca Britton: Thank you very much guys. Robert Mecurio: Sure. Rich Vogel: Thanks for having us.