For the past five years, ROCKWIRED.COM has boasted a one-of-a-kind, online musical reportage. Not only has the independently published venture gained international notoriety, but it has also given LUSH some of the best conversation of his life. “I guess that is why anyone would really want to do something like this. No one really thinks about how hard a good conversation is to come by and with ROCKWIRED I feel blessed.”
FEBRUARY 25, 2010
BEHiND THE MASK
MiCK DAGGER OF ROOM FULL OF STRANGERSTALKS TO ROCKWiRED
ABOUT THEiR EP WE'RE ALL LiViNG THE AMERiCAN DREAM
SPORTiNG BLACK MASKS ON STAGE
AND LiBERATiNG AUDiENCES
iNTERViEWED BY BRiAN LUSH
In listening to ‘WE’RE ALL LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM’ – the debut EP from the Orlando-based five-piece band ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS – I get the sense that I’m only getting half of the story. This propulsive little EP boasts a brand of darker edged punk rock that has become synonymous with acts such as THE MISFITS. The rhythm section provided by bassist ZED and drummer B.E. STRANGER is indeed thunderous and the power chord duel between STRANGER # 2 and THE REVEREND K. MANG certainly gets heads banging and singer MICK DAGGER’s authoritative delivery (an oil and water mixture of GLEN DANZIG and JOEY RAMONE) certainly makes an impression. The missing piece of the puzzle for me is the band’s primal, raucous live shows that are marked by the band sporting menacing black masks. In an age where rock music is about prescribed angst and pretty posturing, it is great to see a band willing to get a good laugh out of shocking folks. "We get mixed reactions." says DAGGER with regard to those little black masks "It just depends on the person. At the end of the day we really play on cognitive dissonance. The mask is obviously a very threatening, iconic image and is associated with a lot of very bad things but all of our body language and things that we say in between songs are kind of sardonic and comical in nature." (READ MORE)