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Sammy Serious: My name is Sammy Serious I am the founder, lead singer, and songwriter for the musical groups THE ZEROS, SAMMY SERIOUS, and guitar player
for SERIOUS SUICIDE and wrote and recorded a number of cd albums, theme songs for radio personalities like Howard Stern, Love Line, and numerous songs for
major motion pictures over the course of my career. The Zeros, Sammy Serious, Serious Suicide toured the United States and the world and The Zeros Just
Released A New record titled Zero In
Punk Globe: In what year did you form The Zeros?
Sammy Serious: I would say I formed The Zeros when Columbus discovered America and still doing The Zeros, And by the way A Zero is round not flat
Punk Globe: Who did you have playing with you in that incarnation?
Sammy Serious: This is a hard question to answer because just like anything else members came in and out like a revoling door I Sammy Serious started the
band We were all from New Jersey at the time, I started the band Then we went off to Europe, then had some more member changes, Then came back to the
East Coast to re establish ourselves on the east coast and played in the Tri state area then some more member changes, then came out to Hollywood Ca, Had
some more member changes then got signed Enigma records which turned into Restless Records then went on tour and had some more member changes, And right
now I would say that I am the only original member of the band until we get some more zeros
Sammy Serious: Right now Yes . I am a original member ha ha
I would not know what to say about original members anymore
if you take The Zeros when I started the band the members were completely different then we ended up putting out our first record and then member changes
again all the way up to when we got signed and up to Blammy Bros Records
Punk Globe: Have The Zeros if been signed to a major label?
Sammy Serious: I would say YES , I would call Enigma Records a major label, They were major enough for us because there was bands that we liked on that
label and made it very successful, and were doing quit well, Enigma was a label that was under a very major label Capitol Records.
Punk Globe: You were doing Serious Suicide for quite a few years . What made you decide to do a resurge of The Zeros
Sammy Serious: Well Serious Suicide was a dark kind of gothic horror band that I formed with Psyche Suicide who is the front person lead singer of Serious
Suicide I kind of laid back and wanted to focus on playing guitar more and thought it would be cool to take a different approach to my songwriting with
Serious Suicide and channel it through psyche suicide who would be able to take it to the next level of demented, But Sammy Serious is the lead singer
of The Zeros and I am more about being in your face rock and roller with a cutting edge of insanity so The Zeros is a good venue for Sammy Serious I never
left The Zeros to resurge The Zeros I was just doing some other projects at the time.
Sammy Serious: The Answer is NO, We never added the word purple to our name, Our band was in a phase where we were coloring our hair purple and had a
purple theme to our band. But we never added the word Purple to our name, But coloring our hair purple did help to distinguish our band from any other
band.
The Confusion with the Chula Vista Zeros is simple,
The Chula Vista Zeros were a band that was a local band playing in California in 1977 that broke up and left the name abandon for over 13 years.
We had our name which was The Double O Zeros and decided to drop the Double O from our name cause everybody was calling us The Zeros.
So now we do a worldwide name search and find out there is no band in the world calling themselves The Zeros, Now fast forward to 1992 when the Chula vista
zeros reform and start playing shows when we released our cd 4321 The Zeros, This started confusion with our name, So to avoid the confusion with our debut
cd 4321 the Chula vista zeros decided to change there name and call themselves The Zeros 77 so there would be no confusion between the two bands.
NOW fast forward to July 2009 The Chula Vista Zeros reform again after they stopped playing for another 17 years, Now they reform again and start calling themselves The Zeros, We asked them to stop USING OUR NAME and ask them to continue to call themselves THE ZEROS 77 because that's the name they were using back in 1992. MAYBE THEY THINK THEY HAVE A CLAIM TO THE NAME THE ZEROS more than we do, But if they wanted to call themselves the Zeros then they should have protected their name back in 1977.
Punk Globe: Have you ever played a show with the other band called The Zeros?
Sammy Serious: No, But I think it would be fun, Talk about confusion, Those guys should just join my band The Zeros if they want to call themselves
the Zeros and play, Then we would have to call ourselves THE ONES because we would be ONE ZEROS , That would be cool and freak everyone out Hey Chula
Vista Zeros if your reading this, lets do it.
Punk Globe: During the 80's and 90's what were some of your favorite clubs to play?
Sammy Serious: We always loved playing the Whisky and The Roxy those 2 clubs always made us feel like Rock Stars along with Gazzaries we did clubs like
Scream, White Trash, So many cool places to play back then, also the coconut teaser was a great place we played and don't forget the Whisky a go go and the
Coconut Teaser were painted purple in honor of The Zeros those were great times
Sammy Serious: We were on the bill with great bands like Guns and Roses,
We did our first show with LA Guns when we got into town Tracie came up to us and wanted us to open for them we were like this is great, also Warrant,
Motorcycle boy, Dramarama, we played with a lot of great bands Love Hate, Faster Pussycat, PBF, so many cool bands we got to play with
Punk Globe: Can you tell us about some of your favorite shows that you played back then?
Sammy Serious: One of the highlights was when we had our record release party for the 4321 cd we did it at the Whisky a go go standing room only, and the
Whisky A GO GO was freshly painted the color purple in our honor we drove up in the Zero mobile and it was packed, This was a historical day for the band.
I remember getting on stage that night and saying how do like the paint job and the crowd went nuts
Another great day was when we released our video for loves not fair we did a show at the Coconut Teaser another show where the Coconut teaser painted their
club purple also in honor of The Zeros
We did some really great shows with some great bands like Dee Snider Twisted Sister, Blue Oyster Cult, The Sweet, Working with Stiv Bators and the lords
of the new church for the movie Tape heads, Doing the marquee in London. To many gigs to name
Punk Globe: For your latest CD what label released it?
Sammy Serious: It is called Blammy Bros records you can find The Zeros, Sammy Serious, and Serious Suicide, along with some other recording acts that are
on the label
I started this label because I wanted to get focused on the business side of the music industry and give bands with singer songwriters a chance to be heard
like me
Punk Globe: There is a Parental Warning on the CD... Tell us about the lyric content of your songs?
Sammy Serious: We'll for some reason I like to use the word Fuck in some of my lyrics therefore I have to put a parental warning on the cd, but the
word Fuck just nails the lyric sometimes better than any other word for example on the new record ZERO IN there is a song called NOW SAMMY and in the
chorus it says AM I YOUR FUCKIN DOG now I knew I would have to put the sticker on the CD but I just could not clean it up I had to use the word FUCKIN
in the song cause no other word could replace how I felt about it
Also I don't think fuck is a bad word, a lot of people use the word in a negative sense But does anybody know what the word FUCK means anyway? I do,
FORNICATION UNDER CONSENT OF THE KING that is what the word Fuck means and if somebody knows different then I want to hear it but from what I understand
the word FUCK is a very old English word where the king would have you fuck someone under his consent
Punk Globe: Do you write all the material?
Sammy Serious: YES on the new CD ZERO IN I wrote all the songs on that record, And wrote all the songs on most of the CDs with the exception of a couple
of tunes that I co wrote with some good friends of mine
and don't forget the cover of to sir with love that on the serious suicide off with your head cd that LULU also sang in the movie
Sammy Serious: Right now it is just me SAMMY SERIOUS I played all the instruments and sang all the vocals on the cd ZERO IN except for The Drums they
were played by Tom Parham and I also had Dr Smooth from Serious Suicide fly in to play bass on a couple of tracks on the new record.
But this record is called ZERO IN for a reason, I wanted to reform and record a new record with the band members from the old lineup of The 4321 The
Zeros So I asked them to play and record a new record, but they just did not see any future in recording a new cd, They wanted to re release old songs
we did together from years ago and did not want to participate in the Zeros to support the cd or to be in The Zeros so it fell into this record Zero In
because I was the only Zero who was In The Zeros But what matters now is the new line that I will be playing with this year.
Punk Globe: You are back on the club circuit.. Other than the amount of venues any other changes that you notice?
Sammy Serious: Yeah that all the clubs seem to be Internet clubs like Facebook instead on going out and mingling like the good days now its mingling
with all the people we hung out with in the clubs
Punk Globe: Do you have any tours or more recordings planned for 2010?
Sammy Serious: YES I do, I am trying to make plans doing a tour for the cd ZERO IN this year along with putting together a new lineup for The Zeros
Punk Globe: Any Internet addresses you would like to pass on to the readers?
Sammy Serious: Go To www.myspace.com/thezeros or
www.facebooksammyserious or www.myspace.com/sammyserious or www.myspace.com/serioussuicide
Punk Globe: Any last words for Punk Globe readers?
Sammy Serious: Make sure you come see The Zeros and ZERO IN WITH THE ZEROS
Punk Globe: Thanks so much Sammy!
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