Metal Sludge The Power and the Glory
20 Questions w/ Silent Rage bassist Ej Curse.
Ej Curse of Silent Rage.
What do Gene Simmons from KISS, the band No Doubt, and Hercules from Universal Studios all have in common? Well, find out for yourself in this weeks 20 Questions with Ej Curse. Read on and enjoy.
1. This is your chance to plug your CDs, bands, tours, websites & swag?
OK, here ya go, Silent Rage has three CDs available on Z Records. Z reissued our first two CDs "Shattered Hearts" & "Don’t touch Me There," which were originally released on Chameleon Records & RCA/BMG respectively. They released a "new" CD in 2001 called "Still Alive." You can go to www.Zrecords.net or www.NEHrecords.com to purchase them. It matters not to me ’cause we’ll never see a dime of it. Z Records are thieves (allegedly). Hell, email me, I’d rather burn you a copy than have anyone give Z more money. Buy them from NEH, they already paid for them & they are in the US of A. I’m proud of all the music (well, almost), but I don’t like being owed money for years! No, I’m not bitter, I swear…Retraction to come after payment.
You can get some SR info at www.SilentRageOnline.com.
I also have two other bands, No Duh, an excellent tribute to No Doubt (yeah, I know they’re not metal) www.NoDuh.net & Band-X, our jam band.
2. The band Silent Rage reunited in 2001 after a long silence (no pun intended). How did that come about?
Well, that happened as kind of a fluke. The Band had pretty much been broken up since about 1992. In 2000 a friend of ours, Bo Blackey decided to put up a Silent Rage website for the Hell of it. Before I knew it, I was getting emails from record labels saying, "Where the Hell have you been?" "We’ve been looking for you," "What is SR up to?" etc. All these smaller labels wanted to re-release our stuff. One label offered to actually pay us up front & promised to release at least one new SR CD, distribute it worldwide & pay recording costs. I called the band members & asked if they would like to brush off the Rage cobwebs & they said, what the F, let’s do it.
We already had a few songs in the can that were produced by Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd "The Wall," KISS, Alice Cooper) & one of the songs was titled "Still Alive," perfect!
Silent Rage 2002 pic courtesy of www.JuliansHotSpot.com
3. You have also worked for years at Universal Studios as Conan the Barbarian. How long have you been doing that, how did it come to be and how do you train for this?
Uh, actually it was Hercules…I’ve been doing various shows & characters there for almost 10 frickin years. It starting after Silent Rage broke up & the whole grunge suicide shit killed us 80’s fucks, I had to , um, diversify. I started doing some modeling (yeah, I know, whatever) cuz some chick said she’d pay for the pics & stuff. Then an agent got me a few commercials & VOILA, I guess I’m a frickin actor! It paid pretty well & it’s not exactly brain surgery.
As far as training for the Hercules gig, it was pretty tough. I had to have long hair, wear leather & wield an ax…what a stretch, huh? I auditioned like any other acting gig (except I got this one). It was just supposed to be for the summer, but it was so easy & flexible, I just kept doing it. Hell, I could take off any time & be gone for up to six months & still come back to a paying gig, with benefits!
Ej Curse as Hercules w/ Jennifer Love Hewitt & friend.
Ej is the one in the middle!
(Editors Note: Conan, Hercules, Hulk Hogan, what’s the difference?)
4. Now onto your most recent project. No Duh is a No Doubt tribute band that has really garned some attention on the West Coast. The likes of Pam Anderson, Courtney Love and actual members of the No Doubt band have come to see you and even jam with No Duh. Tell us about it.
Another fluke. It a started as a joke. After dating my girl for almost two years I found out she could sing. I asked her what band she liked the best, she said No Doubt. I told her she was going to sing at the next Band-X jam. Well, she cried & whined & puked & said she couldn’t do it….stage fright. So, I had my friends get her nice & drunk & I pulled her up onto the stage. She did an awesome job. She sounded just like Gwen Stefani & blew everyones minds. This was her first time ever singing live!
At our next gig, our drummer, Dave Sprock said he had just played a great gig with a Heart tribute band. He said it was fun & paid really well. On a whim, I said, we should have Heather sing & have a No Doubt tribute band. We’ll call it "No Duh!" We laughed. The next gig I came in with a No Doubt CD & said, learn these songs. The guys said, "uh, I thought you were kidding." No…
The band has be doing very well. It’s really a fun frickin band. Completely different from what us metalheads are use to performing. It was refreshing! I booked our first gig before the band even knew 4 songs, yikes! I got a call from someone at Interscope that had seen the website & wanted to hire us for the Gwen Stefani CD listening party. It went over great. Three gigs later, No Doubt showed up (I thought they were there to sue us or something) & asked to sit in with us. It was the bomb! Since then, it seems as though we’ve attracting more & more celebs…as well as tons of No Doubt fans. Well, they can’t see No Doubt anymore, so they’re stuck with the next best thing, No Duh!
Members of No Duh & No Doubt – Spen & Gwen hangin’ out!
5. Rate a Bass Player 1-10. 1 being a joke and 10 being a bass God!
Rachel Bolan =7
Gene Simmons =10 (we still owe him $)
Bobby Dall =6
Tony Kanal =9 (I owe him my latest gig)
Tony Kanal =9 (I owe him my latest gig)
Johnny Rod =who? (Does King Kobra, W.A.S.P. or massive bleach ring a bell?)
Billy Sheenan =10
Geezer Butler =8
Duff McKagan =7
Rik Fox =9, if he’s still alive . 6 if he’s, uh, gone
Geezer Butler =8
Duff McKagan =7
Rik Fox =9, if he’s still alive . 6 if he’s, uh, gone
6. What rock star deserves a big smack in the mouth and why?
Kurt Cobain, oh, he already took care of that, huh?… Oh, I’m so sad, I put all those 80s stiffs out of biz & now I’m so successful, oh boo hoo, help me. I don’t know what to do with all this fame & money, I think I’ll knock up another addict & ….BOOM! (Sorry Courtney, we still love ya!)
7. What time do you wake up and describe the first 2 hours of your day?
I have two different ways: #1) If I don’t have an early call time for some project, I wake up around 10:30 or 11am, make a strong cup of coffee, watch an hour of Judge Mathis (court room show), warm up the coffee, respond to some of my e-mails, read about how crappy the Oakland Raiders are, put the people’s Court on in the background & get inspired for the rest of the day. If it’s nice, I go to the church of Harley Davidson.
Way #2) I have an early call, ugh! The alarm goes off 5 minutes before I have to leave, I have a luke warm cup of coffee sitting on the nightstand, I guzzle it, throw on the wardrobe, chug down the highway at 20 or 30 MPH over the limit, & listen to Howard Stern, arrive 10 minutes late, drink more coffee, eat some fruit, and…?
Gilby Clarke, Spen (No Duh) & Ej "Bony" Curse.
8. Of all the bands you’ve ever played with who treated you the best and who were the biggest dicks to deal with?
Most bands treat us pretty well. We’ve always been a little too easy going. Probably the reason we didn’t sell a million more records. Usually, if dealing with some asshole we ignore him. If that doesn’t work, threaten his life.
Biggest dickhead, let’s go with Frank Moreno of Mahogany Rush.
1976 =Starting to wear out the grooves on KISS "Alive"
9. Speaking of other bands. Silent Rage played with Black Sabbath during the Headless Cross tour. Any good stories to tell the Sludge faithful about?
You’re testing my brain cells, but I do have a few. Cozy Powel was playing drums for Sabbath at that time. It was great to hang with him & watch him perform before he passed. Ozzy was following the tour taking away a good deal of our ticket sales (I guess he was pissed at Tony Iomi) Most of my stories involve groupies, those have all been heard before. We did have at least one "Spinal Tap" moment on that tour. We got lost backstage looking for the stage entrance. We had our wireless units on & we heard them announce the band so we just hit a power chord until we finally found the stage, heavy metal!!
10. What rock band should really just hang it up for good?
10. What rock band should really just hang it up for good?
Reo Speedwagon, Pretty Boy Floyd…
11. Memory Lane with Ej Curse:
1976 =Starting to wear out the grooves on KISS "Alive"
1980 =Rage is the house band at Gazzari’s Sunset Strip
1984 = Tour Alaska in the dead of winter. Film "Hard Rock Zombies"
1987 = SR releases "Shattered Hearts." I hear us on the radio (KNAC) for the first time. Get a phone call from Gene Simmons.
1990 = SR gets in a huge fight in Hawaii while opening for Scream (chicks…gotta hate ‘em). I play on Doro Pesch’s CD & video.
1994 =My first menage’ de 6, however you say it…thanks girls!
1997 =Find out Hercules has groupies too!.
1999 =Next year’s gotta be better.
1999 =Next year’s gotta be better.
2002 =Actually fall in love, ah. Silent Rage performs shows in England & Germany. Gene Simmons mentions SR in his book with photos.
2005 =No Duh is hot. Meet Gwen Stefani & No Doubt. They are the coolest!.
12. Gene Simmons signed the band to Simmons Records. He also was the Executive Producer on "Don’t Touch Me There," Do you have any good Gene stories that you can tell? Please do so.
13. Make up your own question and answer it here. Something you feel the
fans will want to know that we did not ask you?
Ej & Eric Singer.
Last gig Silent Rage played was =Z-Rock Festival Mannheim, Germany late 2002
12. Gene Simmons signed the band to Simmons Records. He also was the Executive Producer on "Don’t Touch Me There," Do you have any good Gene stories that you can tell? Please do so.
First let me say I still admire, respect & like Gene a great deal. Anything stated in this answer is for entertainment purposes only & therefore is immune to litigation….While we were recording DTMT, Gene took us out for ice cream, He asked the counter girl if we could get a discount, a group rate.
While negotiating our publishing, Gene offered us his Rolls Royce in trade for 1/2 of the SR publishing. I guess he expected each of us to drive it every other day. In retrospect, uh, I wonder what that thing would be worth today? You could really get laid in that hunk of heavy metal!
When we first met The God of Thunder he invited the band over for Christmas dinner. It was just us, Gene & Shannon Tweed. It was pretty cool. Speaking of Christmas…this is regarding Gene’s other half…I ran into Paul in downtown LA’s "Alley" buying a knock-off watch for his then girlfriend, now wife and a former um…"friend" of mine.
3/4 of Silent Rage and some stalker fan named Gene.
13. Make up your own question and answer it here. Something you feel the
fans will want to know that we did not ask you?
Is there anything in the future for Silent Rage?
Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Our guitarist/vocalist Jesse Damon just informed me that Down To Hear Records wants to release a "Best of " Silent Rage CD with three new songs that will be produced by Paul Sabu, the producer of our first two CDs. I’ve always felt that we had some great songs that should have gotten more airplay (or any airplay) & this will give everyone another chance to hear some good music. If I must say so myself (& I must)! It should be released & ready for downloads Spring or Summer of 2006.
OK, if I had never met my fiance’, right? I thought so. Kill, no. Marry, no way. The other, well… Jenna: naw, too harsh. Janine: maybe I did maybe I didn’t. Jesse: OK, if you insist.
1984 Alaska set of Hard Rock Zombies.
14. Name the 3 high points and the 3 low points of your Silent Rage career
to date?
to date?
High points: Hearing our songs on the radio. Getting a phone call from Gene Simmons saying, "Let’s make a record!" Watching our cheesy video on MTV’s Headbangers Ball.
Low points: Being told by RCA one day before we were to shoot our second video, that it was canceled & they wanted us to go into the studio & write a new CD after spending 1 1/2 years writing & recording DTMT & the CD had just come out 6 months prior, dicks!
Getting a $250,000 budget with Bob Ezrin producing, then getting dropped from RCA midway through recording.
Having Gene tell us we couldn’t get another deal because of the Grunge scene.
Gene Simmons & Ej Curse!
15. Finish the following sentance…
The biggest misconception about the Rainbow is…There are good looking chicks there.
CC DeVille is really….Gilbert Gottfied, except more annoying.
CC DeVille is really….Gilbert Gottfied, except more annoying.
Porn star chicks are always…saying, "I can’t figure out why my ass hurts," & "It’s just work, I’m not really like that."
Having sex with 3 girls in a night is…fun if it’s all at the same time..
The band Warrant use to be…hanging with Bobby Brown…the model.
Doing blow, drinking booze and…doing blow & drinking booze…
The Internet is probably…the worst thing that ever happened to my modesty.
The band Warrant use to be…hanging with Bobby Brown…the model.
Doing blow, drinking booze and…doing blow & drinking booze…
The Internet is probably…the worst thing that ever happened to my modesty.
The worst band of musicians I’ve ever seen live was…Everyone who is more successful than me.
I’m betting that Vince Neil is likely to…never sing on key.
Metal Skool is….THE best thing to happen to the 80′ since the 80’s…OK better.
I’m betting that Vince Neil is likely to…never sing on key.
Metal Skool is….THE best thing to happen to the 80′ since the 80’s…OK better.
16. Kill, Fuck, Marry! w/ pornstars (Jenna Jameson, Janine Lindemulder,
Jesse Jane)
OK, if I had never met my fiance’, right? I thought so. Kill, no. Marry, no way. The other, well… Jenna: naw, too harsh. Janine: maybe I did maybe I didn’t. Jesse: OK, if you insist.
17. What bands do you recall from the Sunset Strip days that should’ve got
a record deal and which bands do you feel! just flat out got lucky for getting signed and didn’t really earn it?
a record deal and which bands do you feel! just flat out got lucky for getting signed and didn’t really earn it?
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any old Strip bands that should have gotten a deal (though I’m sure there were quite a few) but, I can think of one from a few years ago, Carbon 9. They rock.
As far as ones that didn’t earn it, there were quite a few also, but I’m going to go against the Sludge tradition and NOT bag on any more of my fellow 80s rockers.
1984 Alaska set of Hard Rock Zombies.
18. What was your biggest ever musical related pay check for and what did
you buy with it?
you buy with it?
Probably our advance from RCA. I bought a house & paid cash for a car. It’s kept me above water ever since. Oh, boring huh? Really I spent it on
strippers, hookers, booze & repayment of the hotel I burnt down…
Jesse Damon = Song writing machine.
Heather E. L. (Spen) =Gwen Stafani
Bob Ezrin =Legendary recording!
Doro Pesch =Sweet rock goddess
Julian Douglas =1988 keeping it alive, thank you.
Paul Sabu =Sounds great,… what did I just sign?
Mark Hawkins =Brother & nemesis
Pat Reagan =Thanks for patching together my vocals
Gene Simmons =God, business partner, who?
strippers, hookers, booze & repayment of the hotel I burnt down…
19. Word Association:
Jesse Damon = Song writing machine.
Heather E. L. (Spen) =Gwen Stafani
Bob Ezrin =Legendary recording!
Doro Pesch =Sweet rock goddess
Julian Douglas =1988 keeping it alive, thank you.
Paul Sabu =Sounds great,… what did I just sign?
Mark Hawkins =Brother & nemesis
Pat Reagan =Thanks for patching together my vocals
Gene Simmons =God, business partner, who?
Kevin Beamish =Wall of background vocals.
Ej & Eric Singer.
20. The Last of Ej Curse.
Last gig Silent Rage played was =Z-Rock Festival Mannheim, Germany late 2002
Last time you performed at Universal Studios =Last week, I was Dracula, sucker!
The last time you talked to Gene Simmons =I think it was 2001 to make sure we were all good for releasing new SR CD.
Last 80s CD you cranked up in your car = Tangier "Four Winds"
Last No Doubt song you learned for No Duh =Oi To The World
The last time you talked to Gene Simmons =I think it was 2001 to make sure we were all good for releasing new SR CD.
Last 80s CD you cranked up in your car = Tangier "Four Winds"
Last No Doubt song you learned for No Duh =Oi To The World
Last time you puked from a workout =Never, I don’t work that hard.
Last time you signed an autograph =Last Wednesday
Last rock star you shook hands with = Bobby Blotzer, last night we were drunk, shocker!
Last time you ate MacDonadls = Not since I saw "Super Size Me"…Ok, maybe twice since then. I was drunk.
Last time you visited Metal Sludge =Yesterday, I wanted to see if this was for real.
Last time you ate MacDonadls = Not since I saw "Super Size Me"…Ok, maybe twice since then. I was drunk.
Last time you visited Metal Sludge =Yesterday, I wanted to see if this was for real.
Thanks Sludge!!
EJ Curse
We’d like to thank Ej for taking time from his morning fruit & coffee to answer our silly questions.
Don’t Sludge Me There
Metal Sludge
Don’t Sludge Me There
