M: The Coctails seemingly fall into the category of "tremendous musicians". What type of training have you had?

Mark Greenberg: None. In fact, I would disagree with what you said.. I think we're the complete opposite.

M: You certainly employ a wide variety of instruments. Are you serious [about being good musicians], or are you just kidding?

Mark: I'm serious. I think a lot of people see us with all the different instruments and just think that we're good, but we're really not. It's kind of a funny thing because people see a vibraphone and saxophone and things that they're not familiar with, so everybody thinks we're these virtuosos. We're really not that good. There's a couple things-John's a really good saxaphone player, and Archie's a really good drummer-but other than that we barely know our instruments. For instance, we couldn't really exist in another band with that instrument. We play only what we know...it's not like we can just take off.

M: So you almost take the Ramones approach to the more classical instruments?

Mark: Exactly. We know how to play our songs on our instruments. We know how to play what we want to play...but if you gave us time to solo, there would be nothing happening. What's important really is not the musicianship, it's much more the songs that are important. It's like the Shags - the Shags were an incredible band, but not because they could each solo circles around anybody else at the time. Or even the Velvet Underground...they weren't great becuase they were technically able, they were great because they wrote great songs. That's really our focus: when we pick up an instrument, it's not to learn it, it's not to be taught how it works and know the ins and outs of it; it's really to squeeze out songs.

M: Speaking of that, what type of process do you go through when you put a song together? Do you pick up an instrument and say "hey, let's try this out"?

Mark: Yeah, it's mostly that. We have so many instruments and so many different things hanging around the practice space that somebody will stumble across something. It's so funny...every time we get a new instrument there's two songs that we can instantly play. For instance, I play the organ, and I played it for years, but all of a sudden I got a pump organ and all these songs are popping out just because it's a new instrument. This new sound lends itself to a new thing. That has a lot to do with us kind of switching around...I'll pick up an alto saxophone and write a song that John would never have written. The three sounds I can squeek out of it I turn into a song.

M: The Coctails play a dated style of music. Why do you think so many young skaker-kids come to your shows?

Mark: I don't know. I think it's a real surface-y thing...I think they like us because we wear matching clothes. It's weird: when we moved to Chicago, all of a sudden we had this "mod" crowd following us because we wore suits. I don't think they ever stopped to listen to the music and figure out that it wasn't mod music. They just saw us in the suits and thought "Oh, wow...this is our band." It's how a lot of crappy bands get popular; it's because they have pretty videos, so it's probably the same thing. I don't want somebody to like the Coctails because we dress alike, I want somebody to like us because of the music we write.

M: There's been lots of talk about a lounge music revival. How do you see that as being good and bad?

Mark: Well, it's bad because of the way they're going about it: Bands that are credited for it right now I don't think are doing it in the right way. I would hope that any sort of revival would be people that respect and pay homage to the stuff. I think there's a lot of people that are just stealing and repackaging, so there's a lot of "Oh, well this was on a record from 1951. Let's do the same thing now." It's really sarcastic and it's a lot of tongue in cheek and it's a lot of fiction. It's kind of a drag being lumped into it because what we do is not sarcastic at all and we're not joking about playing music. We're not being ironic, we write music that we like. That's where our band lies and so it's kind of a drag to be lumped in with other bands that have a very different focus.

M: It's an old question, but what are your influences, anyway? It seems to go from jazz to Balkan music or something like that...

Mark: Yeah, we like everything. Each person's record collection overlaps just barely. There's a lot of things that we all like. There's things that all four of us like, there's some stuff that two of us like.... It's really good because as wide as our own tastes are, we're constantly being exposed to four other people's tastes, so everybody really likes a wide array of stuff. I think mostly the concentration is good music, so it really doesn't matter what it is. Whether it's ska, whether it's Billie Holliday, or whether it's Devo or electronic music or roller skate organ music...as long as it's really good music that kind of defies classification, whether it's Neil Young or Thelonius Monk.

M: Tell a little bit about your merchandising and how that came about.

Mark: Well, we were all art students, so it was natural for us to do things like that...to fill out the whole experience. It's just like in art school where you learn that it's not just one thing; there's all sorts of presentation. To express ourselves purely musically is tough: we're visual artists, so everything is kind of hand-in-hand and one big experience. It's all very related and at the same time everything's important among itself. Making the dolls and all the imagery that goes along with the Coctails just basically went along with the aesthetic that we set up: it's just something that we like, something that we like to do, and it felt really natural to do all that kind of stuff in the same kind of motion.

M: You seem to really capture the audience when you perform. What type of planning do you put into your live shows?

Mark: Well, I think the planning is just trying to mix songs...we play so many types of songs, like we play somber songs, we play some really hyper kinetic songs, we play songs that you want to hear the vocals, some songs that just are more rhythmic. It's really hard to make a set because everything is so different and changes gears every few minutes. So to make a set we're really trying just to keep the energy up, just to try to keep up the momentum, which is really difficult because every few songs we switch instruments, and every couple of songs we switch the tone. We think about it in different ways: recording is recording and playing live in front of people is playing live in front of people and they're really two different experiences. When we're recording, we're not really hung up on "Well, this has to catch us like we're playing in front of people" because it really isn't. If we're playing in a room, four of us in a circle in a room, there's something honest to that and there's something that can be captured that is legitimate in itself. You're not imaging the music or pretending you're hearing it on a stereo when you're watching a band live. They're just different experiences and they can be thought about differently.

M: So is writing a good song the most important thing?

Mark: Yes, definitely. When you boil it down it comes down to the quality of the music. That's number one. Everything else is stupid icing on top of it. It's just like building a house: you have to build it on a foundation, if you have nothing to build it on it doesn't matter how much shit you put on top of it, it's going to cave in. We just try to write the best songs that we can. A lot of people would think, by seeing all the merchandise, that we're spending time doing that when we should be writing, but I think just from bands that I know that we put just a shitload more energy into every aspect of the band than a lot of bands put into one aspect. It comes out of art school, where you sit up all night painting something that in the end is just something that you painted. The importance of it is what you've done, and so I think a lot of bands have their eyes and hearts set on something else, like "if we write this, we'll get more fans, and if we write this, we'll get signed." There are a lot of different things behind why people do things.

M: In most bands it's set up more or less with one guy that leads the band, and the other members just sort of backing him up; you guys have an interesting system, where each person has his own function. How'd you come up with that?

Mark: It's a work ethic kind of thing that comes out of art school. You learn a work ethic where at the end the prettiest painting is kind of almost beside the point. It's the working every day at it, it's the doing something, it's the creating something, and so we all put a lot of energy into it because it's something that's really really important to us, and I would hope that everbody would have something that is that important to them and would be willing to put that much time and effort into it. It's that kind of thing: it's something that's important enough to us to put that much time and effort into.

M: I guess I only have a few last ditch questions here...when you said you guys aren't that good at your instruments, that pretty much blew all my other questions out of the water.

Mark: It's true, it really is. It's so funny when you see us next to bands that are made up of music majors where these guys can play anything, so for their warm-ups they're doing these incredible scales and they just have so much ability...sometimes a lot of times in music school ability and the showing of ability gets in the way of writing music. When you listen to music, you're not listening to a guy's two hands spinning up and down a fret board. That kind of masturbation is really unimportant...that doesn't affect me to my heart. I want to hear a good sound in music. A lot of people write music so they can play guitar, rather than write music to make beautiful music. It's a drag when you're doing one thing, but your reason is really for something else. The reason you write music or are in a band is so that you can show off onstage...that's not really what we're about.

M: I understand you guys got into a Coca-Cola commercial. How'd that come about?

Mark: We're not exactly sure. Some people saw us in New York and contacted us about doing a little thing for a commercial...there was a whole bunch of bands that they asked to do something. We did it kind of jokingly, like "God, that'd be really funny, we're this tiny band that nobody knows, why would they want us?" And it ended up that they did want us. So we did it, and we got paid for our time pretty well, and if it would ever show, we would get paid just as any actor gets paid when their thing is actually shown. Right now they've been working on it a long time, and they've done a lot of different edits so possibly it will never show...which is great for us, because we had a real weird moral dilemma about sitting up there singing for Coca-Cola. So it was kind of strange, but on the other side of that, the reason we decided to do it was they were paying us so much money that we were able to do things that we wanted to do, like putting out other people's records. We had a label that we just put out our own records, but with that kind of money we were able to literally put out other people's records, people that we loved that wouldn't have records if somebody didn't put them out, because they're not the kind of people that draw a lot of people and make a lot of money. So we decided to go ahead and do it, and now if it never shows, we won't have to be embarrassed and we still got paid and we got insurance and we got all kinds of stuff.

M: Speaking of that, free plug time: tell us a little about your own label and how you can get stuff from it.

Mark: We're an all-vinyl label. Up until this point we've put out four full-length lp's of the Coctails and three seven inch ep's. And this summer we're putting out four singles by bands other than the Coctails. We're putting out a single by a band called Evergreen from Louisville, we're putting out a single by a band called Moto from Chicago, we just put out a single by an incredible jazz quartet from Chicago called the Vandermart Quartet, and then we're also putting out a comic book record by Dame Darcy. She did all the artwork for the comic book that illustrated her songs, and we acted as her back-up band. And all that should be out by the end of summer.

M: Are you guys just putting out records on your own label?

Mark: Yeah, it's called Highball. We put out all our own vinyl. There's a guy in town that puts out a cd version of our full length records, so all our cd's are on a thing called Carrot-top, which is not us, but everything is released initially on vinyl.

M: Have you been approached by any larger labels?

Mark: Since we have records, we get reviewed. It's like, since you have records, you get a lot of press, because it's actually something physical that people can review. Since we have been putting out records, a lot of different record companies have contacted us. Some were just nibbles, some were just checking out who we were, some were interested, but I think it's more important really for us right now to put out our own stuff. There's kind of the do-it-yourself thing where your band is a real satisfying thing, where at the end of the day you know you've done everything, it's really satisfying. So right now we're just doing everything ourselves, and we're working within our means and we're meeting our needs. We're not working in the red; it's a machine that works and we're pretty happy about that. As long as we can keep sustaining it, and as long as it can keep sustaining itself, we'll be pretty happy. We're not really looking for a deal.

M: Hey, you're becoming the jazz Fugazi.

Mark: Well, they're a really big inspiration. The do-it-yourself thing has gotten to be this catch-word, but really thinking about it: you're a band, you want to put out music, why wait? Why wait for somebody else to do it. It's kind of like this big lie; that you have to be somebody else, that you have to have this big bank account. No, it's really, really inexpensive to do...go ahead and do it. You grow as a band. As soon as we put out our first record, it was like a whole body of work that was recorded and behind us, and it kind of pushed us on. So it was a really good thing...it would be a real drag if we were just sitting and sitting and waiting and waiting, so it really has helped us to move along. It's just like anything in anybody's life: if you can fix your own car, why would you bring it in to get fixed. Just fix it yourself.