Having grown up loving equally the pop and hard rock that came out of the 80's, there have been many times that I have wondered what some of the classic 80's pop songs would sound like done as more rocked up versions. Never once however did I envisage hearing a project as ambitious and defying as what Rock Sugar have released with ‘Reimaginator’.  For a band that has spent the last 20 years on a deserted island (www.rocksugarband.com for the full story) these guys have lost none of the potential they showed back in 1989 when they threatened to take the world by storm!

We will let lead singer Jess Harnell fill you in on exactly what Rock Sugar is about in our interview below, but for those of you who dare let Rock Sugar violate your musical senses, beliefs and prejudices you will be rewarded with one of the most unexpectedly awesome albums you will hear and a sure fire winner to unveil to all your rock and pop loving friends!! 

Don't stop believin'....because pop rocks!!

Jess, congratulations on a killer album....after spending 20 years on a deserted island, you guys sure must be proud to have overcome your deficiencies with music technology and your total ignorance of modern music to produce something so totally original, cutting edge and face melting as you have?

Thankyou very much and congratulations on your killer website. The fact that something like this hasn't been done before amazes me. We are lucky enough to be using some of the greatest songs ever written and it would certainly be nice to say that we wrote them....but this is a big tip of the hat to those that did write those songs on both sides of the fence. The rock side and the pop side, because one thing they have in common is that they are amazing songs.  When I talk about the originality of the project and what makes it interesting, whilst mash ups have existed for a very long time such as Led Zeppelin done in bluegrass and The Black Sweden who did Abba songs mixed with metal songs which was really cool too, but to take genres and say we are going to cherry pick our favourite songs from rock and our favourite songs from pop and do them live as a band, with a story and a concept which is 80's music, I haven't seen that before!  I am proud we had that concept and that it turned out as well as it did.  If it melts your face too...that's so much the better!

For those who might be living on their own desert island and haven't yet given themselves a shot of Rock Sugar, can you give a brief introduction into what your CD "Reimaginator" is all about exactly?

Well the CD is based on the premise of what would happen to a bunch of hardcore heavy metal guys in a band if in the late 80's they were stranded on a desert island and the only music they could listen to for the 20 years were the pop records of a 13yo girl. Basically what made it funny to me was that these guys had been brainwashed by pop and into believing that Sheena Easton is the high princess of Heavy Metal and ended up loving this music. So what the CD is about is taking all the songs that you like from the 80's on the rock side and the pop side and then smashing them together and making them into one song. In other words, we’ll set things up with a riff from something heavy such as an AC/DC song and then I'll end up singing Madonna over it  It sounds like it shouldn't work, but the amazing gift we have on this, is that it DID work. The CD is kinda like a surprise party and so are the live shows in that you don’t know what's coming next and after a while you really don’t want to know as it's more fun that way to anticipate what's coming next. It's basically music for people with ADD, every 45 seconds it becomes another song!

"Reimaginator" is a killer CD and has some totally mind blowing arrangements (look no further than "Here Comes The Fool You Wanted").  Can you give us some insight into how on earth you managed to combine the songs in the manner that you did?  Did songs have to share some similar elements such as a chord progression or similar lyric, or was there a total disregard for any rules whatsoever? 

We really tried to just make it all about the 80's, but I think maybe some things from the 70s seeped in and even 1991 apparently.  I had the idea and thought wouldn't it be cool to do a rock that's nostalgic and familiar, but at the same time new, original and creative. As much respect as I have for cover bands and tribute bands, I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to do something a little more different and fun. So I came up with this particular idea and went to my partner in crime for all these years, Chuck Duran, who is an amazingly gifted guy and described it to him and he came back a few days later with “Don't Stop The Sandman” and we started working with that and debuted it over at Firefest in the UK in 2008 and it went over great.  From then on, it was really akin to putting a jigsaw puzzle together.  Some of the songs came from myself and some from Chuck and we would meet and work through them. “Crazy Girl” is one that I had come up with and my favourite one from Chuck was “Voices In The Jungle”. The funniest thing about this song was that Chuck in the very early stages would send across sound files of the original songs merged together and that song was the one that sounded the funniest, but we worked on the pieces of the puzzle and it came out sounding great! Chuck really had the weight of the world on his shoulders as all I had to do was show up and sing.

I did however get to do something cool and that was adapt the vocal characteristics of the various singers. But Chucky really had the difficult thing of working out, now how do we get from say “Kickstart My Heart” into “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Firstly what kind of mind comes up with something like that in the first place?  Well that's Chuck!  But then have it make sense and be in the same key and in the same time signature which was a problem in a few tunes. But he always managed to do it, a couple of times it didn't work because the songs were too different and we couldn't make it work, but there was always a good reason. There was no regard for rules, except for the musical ones of this would sound ridiculous if we tried to do it, be creative and pick really great songs! All the songs on here are cool, we just tried to re-imagine them in a way you have never heard before!

There were so many awesome POP songs created during the 80's that could quite easily have gotten the Rock Sugar treatment!  Do you think you have a Rock Sugar Re-Reimaginator in you..eg a second CD?  Did it surprise you that something like this hadn't been attempted before? 

It absolutely surprised me that something like this had never been attempted before. I googled like crazy to see if something had. It's kinda like the guy that came up with putting tips on the end of shoelaces, you mean nobody thought of this yet? It seems such an obvious idea. To this day my proudest thing about this band is not that I am in it, it's that we are the first one’s to come up with this idea and make it public on a big way.

As for the second record, we absolutely do have another in us given we have created this concept with the island and stuff. It's like the reins have been lifted because now the guys are off the island, they listen to everything from the 60’s and 70’s to the 90’s or the 2000’s and now let's just mess with that!  The liner notes will be even funnier as it can now be about them trying to use a cell phone or the Internet or whatever. We have a bunch of ideas we have been kicking around, one that we will probably debut in the live show. An idea that came to me shopping for clothes one day and it really is good. What's really exciting is that on rocksugarband.com, people can get on and submit there own ideas for songs. If we do happen to use one of your ideas, I am here to inform you that you will get a big thankyou and credits in the liner notes etc, so please do log on and check it out!

Given the bands obvious musical abilities, were there any creative fires sparked during your time on the island that got you considering recording new material of your own? 

You know, I love writing songs and I love writing lyrics. I've been lucky to work with Chuck Duran who is a great songwriter. If any of you out there have any of the Loud N Clear records hopefully you like those songs, we were very proud of them. The thing that's interesting is that the music industry had changed so drastically over the last few years that honestly, making it in a rock band is most closely akin to being the single winner of super lotto! If you think about how many contemporary bands these days become "rockstars" or internationally renowned bands, what are we looking at, maybe 2? The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day we all have businesses we are running. I am a Voice Over actor and a singer, Chuck owns his own studio and is also now doing some work as a studio singer for Disney and some things. So we all have jobs...and one of the criteria was that we have to do something that we could actually have a chance making a living doing and getting radio to play it and people to come and see it. So we asked ourselves what can we do that is conducive to possibly getting some exposure and this came back as the answer. So whilst we love recording new material and for all our Loud N Clear fans out there, we love you guys and if we meet you out on the road we will be happy to sing a few things to you. But if things keep going the way they have been going, we will be focussing on this and we are very happy with it as we are getting to add our creative stamp on some of the greatest songs ever written and have the honour to sing and play them for everybody.

As a "hardcore degenerate heavy metaller" who has been brainwashed by 80's pre-teen girl pop, can you put into words what makes "pop, rock"?  Is it the key changes, the melody, the hook lines.....?

Listen, you know what, the definition of a great song has always been can you play this on a guitar and sing it and have it sound good, without any protools, or any autotune? If you can, then you have a great song. A great song will always be a great song whether you do a flamenco version, a jazz, or a pop, or heavy metal version or whatever, it will still be a great song because the seed is there. As for what makes pop rock, well it's more of the feel, the way you interpret it and the glasses you put on to view it with.  I have in my collection versions of Beatles songs done in country style, they are the same little Beatles songs. The main thing I hope this thing will do is make people happy as I don't think there has been enough of that in recent years in music and hopefully we can be a part of bringing some of that back.

With all that practice playing on the bamboo stage in front of stick figures, you guys must be pretty eager to play some shows on real stages to real people and see if any of those groupies still exist from days gone by.  Do you have any plans yet for any shows?

Absolutely yes for planning for shows. We want to come and play for you reading this....yes YOU, I am talking to YOU!! We are starting with Andrew McNiece’s MelodicRockFest which is in the first week of May. We will also be playing all over the world based on all the action and response we are getting online with different requests from different parts of the world! So yes we are going to be playing all over the place and hopefully not too far from you.

Let us go back to the very beginning. 1989 was a time when hard rock and metal ruled the airwaves.  Your band that started it all for you, Loud N Clear were regarded by many as one of the hottest bands in Hollywood at the time.  What prevented things from happening for the band back then and see it failing to capitalise on it's "platinum potential"? 

I think that the reason that all of the bands that almost made it in the 80's but didn't, was because there was a saturation of metal and in some ways it became manufactured.  It was like the labels were just saying find us a bunch of guys with big hair who look cute in spandex and can sing in harmony and let's give them a record deal. They were less concerned about artistic integrity than they were manufacturing a product. But, a lot of those guys were fantastic and I know most of those songs by heart. But then Nirvana came out and that changed the climate immediately. That's why I feel that Loud N Clear never got to where I thought we should, but that's ok because everything works out in the end.  

Remember, anything that was huge once, can be huge again and that's been proven many times.  What's great now about Rock Sugar is that we are using are songs that people love and were huge in their time, but what we are trying to do is bring them back in a new set of clothes. So maybe it's time for the musical climate to change again and reintroduce the masses to rock with big hair and big stage shows and big moves and importantly, big fun and we want to be a part of that!

With L.A being dominated in the late 80's with glam bands, where did Loud N Clear sit exactly in the whole L.A scene?  Who were some of the more infamous or famous bands that Rock Sugar shared a stage with? Did you ever play infamous venues such as FM Station, Gazarri's, Roxy etc or did the band come in on the tail end of the L.A movement? 

In the 80's, Chuck and I had Loud N Clear and we were honoured to be one of the biggest drawing bands on the famous Sunset Strip, so we were lucky to play all those great clubs like the Roxy, Whiskey, The Palace and Gazarri's.  The best part of that for me was always getting on stages and wondering if that's where Dave Lee Roth stood, I wonder if Nikki Sixx set his pants on fire in that corner right there, I wonder if that's where Jimi Hendrix played or is that where Zeppelin sat when they came to the Whiskey? That's the really, really cool thing.  When we first came out we were a day late and a dollar short basically.  But we released some great, great music that I am still proud of and I think if we had of come out a few years sooner, a lot more people would probably know that music.  By the way, if you know Loud N Clear, then god bless you, and if you are interested in chasing down our DVD from our performance at Firefest in 2008 or our CD releases then head on over to our Myspace page by clicking this link http://www.myspace.com/rockwithloud.

Did it annoy you when bands possessing far less musical ability than Loud N Clear seemed to be able to get a record deal off the back of a poptarts pack back in the day?

No it never annoyed us that any bands made it, we were always happy for them and the fact that they got that golden ticket.  Over time there have been less and less golden tickets to go around, as I said earlier about being successful in the music business which is one reason why I am grateful we have managed to be successful in our other projects.  One of my proudest achievements i have in my life just individually is that i have always made a living with my voice.  Whether it be singing or doing voiceover work, or even both most often.  So there's no bitterness, put it this way if we were a poptart we would be a sweet, creamy one, not a bitter, crusty stale one!  So we are happy for anyone whoever managed to achieve that and more power to them.

Jess, talking about your skills as a voice announcer and celebrity impressionist and considering your extensive resume, is there a character/movie/TV show that you would now love to get the opportunity to do voices for?

Listen, I do voices for anybody!  I'll do voices for the guy at 7 Eleven, I'll do voices for you when we come to Australia and do a show, all you have to do is ask!  I have been so lucky to get to do so much stuff and get paid for it which amazes me, because there are so many talented people in the world.  I am very proud  I get to do a lot of work for Pixar because I think they make amazing movies and I think I have been in most of them which is really an honour.  I have done a lot of stuff for the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and I love the fact I got to do all those great 90's Warner Bros shows like Animaniacs and Pinky And The Brain.  Basically I just love doing voices and they can come from the most random of places and people.  I am the only person that goes to see a movie and sit there while the movie is going trying to figure out if I should imitate one of the actors in the movie because it may one day be advantageous later in my career!

What do you consider to be some of the major differences between using your vocal abilities in a musical sense compared to doing character voices/impersonating others? 

Now this is a really great question!  You know, they are all similar flavours used in different ways.  I look at myself as like a vocal manipulator.  I look at it like I have settings in my throat to create things like pitch and texture and sound quality, do I want vibrato or no vibrato, dark or raspy, piercing or pure?  The same thing applies to doing voice over work, a lot of it however really comes from attitude.  But there's a big difference in singing various things in various styles.  One of the biggest challenges with this record is that it gave me the opportunity to take so many singers that I love and try to put enough flavour of that guy into the song before it switched to the next guy, that you capture a bit of their essence without being a parody.  Chuck was really good for me in that way because he would pull me back and go dude, you're starting to sound like the Axl Rose tribute impressionist guy. So I would pull back a bit from that kind of stuff.  But still, I think if I look at Vince Neil's adlibs on "Kickstart My Heart" and if you didn't try and capture some of that essence that people know so well, then people would think something was lacking.  Certainly with the Steve Perry stuff, that's so iconic that if you don’t try and sound a little bit like that, people are almost going to be disappointed.  So it was a fine line, but a really fun one to walk.  One of the greatest compliments to come from the Rock Sugar album is people think we are using samples which by the way we are not.  They're thinking, “but there is no way that one guy sang all that stuff”!  I am real proud that I did, with the exception of one song on there "Prayin For A Sweet Weekend" which was sung so very well by Chuck Duran.

Having spent the last 20 years stuck on that island what are your thoughts on where music and entertainment is at in 2010 compared to 1989? 

Well the 80's were such a great decade for music and particularly rock.  David Lee Roth once had a great line about Van Halen that I thought was so great. He was once asked “what do you think is the biggest difference between classic Van Halen with you and 2nd era Van Halen with Sammy Hagar?”  His response was "well, the first era of Van Halen made you want to drive your car fast, get laid and break the speed limit. Sammy Hagar era Van Halen makes you wanna get a mortgage, settle down and put your kids through college".  I thought that was really, really funny and now it's sorta like that.  The 80's personified fun.  There's a reason for that, go out to your local club or bar and in between the Lady Gaga and 50 Cent records, when they put on an AC/DC song, or Don't Stop Believin',  I don't care how old the people are, they react the same way and that's because those songs are so great and so much fun!  So the biggest difference between now and then is back then it was all about having fun and a really good time.  I've always said that shows should be more like a party that everybody goes too together and I just happen to be the guy that ended up with the microphone, but I am still there to party with everyone else!  This is one of the things I want Rock Sugar to be part of bringing back, I want people to go to our shows and have such a good time that they can't wait to go back.  So the big difference is FUN, but you know what, now is starting to look a lot like then.

Any last words for the growing legion of Rock Sugar fans around the world?

Lastly, I just wanted to say that we have received a huge outpouring of support from people all over the world thanks to the power of the Internet and I would love to see that continue.  So please, if you haven't yet done so, go to rocksugarband.com and register to be one of our friends so we can keep you updated with all the latest news, shows, exclusive offers and all kinds of stuff like that.  Please also join us on Facebook and leave us your comments and check out all the latest contests and cool happenings. We also have several videos added to our Youtube, with plenty more in store, but the primary one is for Don't Stop The Sandman.  That video was directed by a girl called Kelsey David who did a great job. In a month of active play we have had over 260,000 plays and we are shooting for a million, so please check it out!  

As I also said earlier, one of the aims of Rock Sugar was to get played in the radio and this has already happened on some stations here in the USA.  So if you have only seen the video and that's all you have heard, please go to our website and check out samples of the whole album, buy the album, tell your friends and request it in your radio if you can!  I guarantee if you buy the record it's gong to be the best party album you have ever heard.  Watching peoples faces when they listen to the album for the first time never ceases to amaze because they are always so surprised l!  If you really want to be part of the grass roots campaign, please reach out to radio no matter where you are in the world....and make sure you tell them this is like nothing they have heard before, a band that combines 80' s pop with 80's metal!  Maybe then what is happening here in the USA will happen in your country too and then we will be coming to see you and then you will never get rid of us!!  

We appreciate all your support and whether it's with our band or another, please keep rocking because rock deserves to be heard and don't ever let that fire go out!!

God bless everybody and god bless you Scott and May The Rock Be With You for taking the time!

READ OUR ROCK SUGAR CD REVIEW RIGHT HERE!!!!