The Obelisk Questionnaire: Mark Sunshine of Unida (ex-Riotgod)
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Mark Sunshine of Unida (ex-Riotgod)
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I have this creativity source inside me, like a nuclear pellet. It has always been there. As a youth it just ran wild – not hard to imagine – for a child. It still does.
However I also had these parents by-adoption who were unused to such a volatile, challenging presence that came with their first-arrived. I’ve ridiculously imagined other scenarios – parents who are artists or musicians seeing right away that their child might be able to be trained, guided, with raw talents refined slowly during youth via whatever discipline is chosen. Consider those children as if they are orchids and the parents know just the treatments, care and attention needed.
For my particular upbringing ( which absolutely matters good or bad ) consider me a being who might have needed such attentions, yet received “house plant”.
This matters, this back-story because having gotten no introduction to anything – forget about a road to advanced tutelage – I had to make my way on my own – to “figure it out” — the messy route of the autodidact. I engaged the default option of art until my college years. Shortly after the cessation of my university experience, I underwent an undeniable animal direction change, with my spirit absolutely rebelling against almost all that I had known prior. I bought a drum set frst, but it became apparent that that instrument would not be an option for me long term. Again – without any prior experience – I threw myself into the world of metal and hard rock when I was 19 – choosing become a vocalist. Since those chaotic early days I have become the hybrid that I am. Artist who is heavy duty cartoon/comic art/fine art leaning and hard rock vocalist with passions that include many other forms of music.
Describe your first musical memory.
I was three. I was in the bedroom of our Brooklyn apartment on Ave H. My father had these Maxell cassette boxes he’d brought home from work. The box had a clear lid attached by hinges. You could see through the transparent lid the divisions of space, the slots for the cassettes.
I’d pretend I was playing a piano or keyboard, jamming along to say Bachman Turner Overdrive. That is a pure and rich memory for it does not relate to the life I actually had. When we eventually scored a Story and Clark piano after a ‘70s-era relocation to Jersey, my sister received the piano lessons.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
This is tough, because: Does it involve MY music experience through performing? Or is it one of music by a particular personal concert experience? I have a series of what might be called super-experiences in music, from both situations.
I will make it thus a two-part answer.
My best musical memory in the category of personal experience was the moment the curtains parted for the Riotgod set at Wacken. I was handed a wireless microphone, with the tech taking mine, putting it aside. BOOM. It was on. The rest as they say in showbiz – is on YouTube.
Best overall musical memory as far as concert experience was my being on the lawn during the Enit Festival. 1996? I was shall we say feeling quite good, a lush experience on the rolling hills of Holmdel. Porno for Pyros was set to play and I had never seen them live. I also had never seen Janes Addiction live. So when P4P eased into “Summertime Rolls” it was unexpected big time, magnificently epic.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Involving music…. I didn’t think it then but can cite it now.
It was a time of musical nothing after the band I had been in for almost a decade (Riotgod) had completely imploded. I had no band, nothing solid going on at all. However I was somehow in contact with a guitarist who said his drummer had a home studio, and you know phone talk, realities painted, speculation. These dudes were not part of ANY scene I knew, not even the cover circuit. Nonetheless, all roads led to some kind of get-together.
Eventually I took a drive down to Neptune and it had been a long time since I’d felt the “try out” vibe. I parked my car, arriving early. The song I had on my mind was “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. The guitarist told me that they’d be trying out a bassist — told him to learn that tune. I saw another dude sitting in his car – the bassist?
When I’d first learned of this song choice, I asked, “So what are you guys doing for the horn break?” Simple question right? I have seen Government Mule handle it with guitar for example. I asked because the band for the day would be the guitarist, the drummer, the auditioning bassist and me. No keyboard player, no horn section.
Guitarist had no ready answer. Incredibly he did not immediately know what I was talking about. How could that be? It is essential to the tune, that horn part.
After the yikes “rehearsal” I reflected on what had gone down in that cramped feedback rich room inside some home in a neighborhood. Right! It was one lightly equipped room rented for the day’s activities. The home was being renovated and I briefly chatted with a resident in the kitchen. The music room was used for personal and church projects. As for the band – I didn’t even ask why we weren’t at the drummer’s studio.
During the session, I had to ask who was keeping time. It was all over the place and they looked at me sideways and eventually it became that my questioning was the problem, such radical repeated interjections! How dare me.
With my long ass hair and “rock casual” attire they looked at me like I’d walked in radiating the outlandish style of Janis Joplin, you know, full Pearl, boa wrapped. As if I was some demanding “rock star.” The guitarist and drummer were dressed like they might be spotted at Costco, Dadcasual. The bassist, kinda student ragamuffin. Oh yeah – I did the horn parts vocally, which the band wasn’t ready for, even though the notes and meter were spot-on! What was Mr. Pearl doing!
Later, in my car, I played back the scenes, with the uptight short-guy drummer drinking banquet beer, the intermediate level guitar player that I had only had the pleasure of talking to up until then and the quiet bass player who’d stayed in his car sipping Heinekens up until the time we had to go into the space.
For the first time in my life I questioned my devotion, my belief that I should go on doing what I’d been doing for decades, expressly my entire musical experience. It was a fleeting moment on Rt. 18 North as I headed home. It was dreadful, the day less so than that enormous unexpected thought.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
It leads to expertise and satisfaction if one is fortunate.
How do you define success?
One’s being able to exist outside the slave to wheel common experience. Now – for those who are family men and women, they might have a different manner of qualifying the success factor but for me, escaping the tricky paradigm I got myself wrapped up in, lord that would be success, not having to work so hard, for so little, for so long.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Oh lord. Too many options. I will semi-abstain from this question. I might somewhat satisfy the question with the broad generality of “Any grease-trap.”
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Again this invokes my life-duality. Art-wise, to have the time to create my own art book, I mean a proper expression employing Phaidon style printing.
Music-wise a marriage of heavy material, powerful, involving my vocal stylings, tracks laid down over an electronically assembled creation that doesn’t sound altogether too electronic.
Specifically? Eventually getting to lay down tracks over the new Unida material sent my way – that’d be pretty good too.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To make it all better.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Every new day I spend on this earth with my LB, woman I love, my best friend. 3:1
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