MARK SZABO CAPOZZI PARK
Discorder March 2002
by Christa Min
My favourite Mark Szabo song goes something like this: “‘Tell me what you remember,’ I’ll think of the smell first and then of the people… I remember when you came to see me you always seemed nervous and under-rehearsed. Through the drugs I could hear you talking. I heard nothing that I would acknowledge. That never stopped you. ‘Your sister’s fine, she’s at home now, helping out around the house. Your mother’s better, she sends her best. She’s not the same since the arrest.'”-“Since the Arrest”
I met Mark at a restaurant in Chinatown, and he managed to stuff fake meat into his mouth – despite the microphone I held in his face – while people outside stuffed needles into their arms like thermometres into turkeys. So I thought of his song about prescription drugs and institutions. I don’t relate to the lyrics. But it’s my favourite because of the melody. Ask Mark to sing it to you. He’s the intelligent and considerate one in Capozzi Park who looks like a street bum.
DiSCORDER: I hear you called me a hag.
Mark Szabo: No, I never called you a hag.
You called me a hag to someone who was referring to the review I wrote about your record.
No, I know what it was. Somebody else called me up and they said, “Did you see the Discorder? What a hag!”
You don’t think my review was positive?
I don’t think a positive review uses the word “shitty” more than once.
Fair enough. So why is Capozzi Park breaking up?
‘Cause we all want to do other things.
How long have you been together?
Since 1998, I guess. When I started doing the Mark record, Chocolate Covered Bad Things, it was just me and then Max, gradually Marcy, and when Steve was in, it was Capozzi Park.
So then why are you putting out a record now?
Bloody-minded stubbornness.
Yours or the band’s?
Oh, mine. Mine entirely.
Who put the record [The Record of Capozzi Part) out?
Me. I hate to let things go to waste. People are in bands either to be in a band and be known as being in a band, or else they’re in a band because they have a lot of fun playing. Sometimes they’re in a band for this dream, for the topper-most of the popper-most dream that has led so many astray in the past.
So are you going to start another band?
I will play for food.
I heard that Marcy Emery was going to put out a CD of all your songs with her singing them.
Yeah, she’s been talking about that. She’s been doing a lot of groundwork for it. What I did was I made a little booklet. I figured out how my songs went, if I weren’t me, and figured out what chords I was playing. I really like major ninths, I found out. I did that and gave it to her, and she’s been talking to people around town who might be interested in playing with her.
You won’t be playing with her?
I don’t think I should really be directly involved. I think it’s better the other way. I’m sure we’re all curious to see what I’d be like produced well. Which is exactly what she said at one point.
Would you rather have a record produced by Brian Eno or Colin Newman?
Brian Eno. Colin Newman — did you ever hear his second solo one, Not To? About half the songs turned up on Wire bootlegs or live records, and just in playing with the arrangements he demolished every one of them. You know; like, made everything go at half tempo because he didn’t want to do that thing anymore [Makes Wire-like guitar sounds].
But those were his own songs.
Yeah, and you have that choice with your own stuff. I’ve always been pretty fascinated with that process of whereby a song becomes something else. I always like to play things differently, but I don’t play things differently too well, I guess. I can’t really get a convincing samba…
Going back to the booklet of your songs you gave to Marcy, how did you figure out which chords you were playing for normal people? Don’t you play your guitar upside-down?
Yeah, but I play right-handed guitars. If you’re left-handed you have three options: you can buy left-handed guitars, of which there’s one in every forty guitars, or you can play right-handed and just go with the flow, and that makes sense because you can use everything, but I wanted to be able to play every guitar, but it just didn’t feel natural playing right-handed. The chords are the same, but the fingerings are different. I think every chord has a name. The hard part was finding some of the names for the chords. I was going down to the music shop and browsing through their 6300 chord dictionaries and just looking for the thing I did with my fingers.
People I play with have a hell of a time at first. Anytime I’ve ever played with somebody, we’d start playing something and maybe halfway through the song, they’ll realize that they can’t figure out what my hands are doing, and then they’ll realize that it’s upside-down.
I’m going to draw you a square with my finger: this corner is Frank Zappa, this corner is Eddie Van Halen, this corner is Tom Verlaine, and this corner is Kurt Cobain, and the middle is a really sucky guitar player. Where would you put yourself as a guitar player in that square?
I’d be probably more towards the Tom Verlaine side, of the four. I’ve never owned a distortion pedal. When Superconductor first started up, we’d play together — when it started up it was everybody who could make themselves heard — and I couldn’t hear myself because they all had the power.
You still, to this day, have never owned a distortion pedal?
I don’t think I’ve ever owned a distortion pedal.
What’s the effect on “She Wants Fun?”
Oh, it must be someone else’s distortion pedal.
It’s not that you haven’t used one, you just don’t have one of your own.
I have used them, and distortion is one of my truest friends. There’s something about it being really easy – “I’ll just press this button down.” People use it to show a change in dynamics, but they’re just playing the same thing.
Tell me about the last song on the album. Who is that?
That’s Robin [Fry]. He was in the band for several months. Now he lives in Halifax.
I wasn’t sure that anyone else wrote songs in Capozzi Park, besides you.
On, yeah. Josh writes. Josh wrote the music for “Production Booster” and “Statutory Holiday,” and Max wrote the lyrics for that. Marcy wrote a fair amount. Robin wrote. Steve wrote, although he didn’t write very fast. I don’t think we ever finished something of his.
How about the recording of the album? It sounds like you didn’t do it all at once.
Well, we played it all at once.
I meant, did you record all the songs at one time?
No, it was over the year 2000.
All at different places?
At home, at the Sugar Refinery.
So the live track [“Now”] is actually live. I thought it was fake.
Like “Farmer John” by The Premiers. No, it was actually live.
Do you get frisked a lot?
No.
Maybe I’m using the wrong word. Do people ever think that you steal things because of the way you look?
Yeah, once I was at the comic shop and the portly gentleman behind the counter decided that he saw me steal something, so he parked himself by the door, and I went to leave, and he went “Excuse me, what’s that in there?” and he reaches in my pocket and there’s nothing there. So he checks the other pocket and there’s nothing there, and then he goes, “Okay,” and goes away, and I go “An apology?” and he just shrugged.
I thought that you would say “Yes I get frisked all the time because I look like a street bum.”
I think there’s something in my carriage that implies that I might be a disgraced member of the upper-classes, or at least upper-middle, some kind of down-at-heels class traitor.
What’s the worst word you can think of that starts with an F, ends in a K, and is four letters.
Uh, fuck.
There’s another word that’s much worse. Change the C to something.
Fusk. Fusk. What? You want to make me say “funk?”
Yes.
I don’t agree. I think that there’s something great about funk. Why?
As a word especially, it’s horrible.
Originally, funk was that musty smell under your privates.
Would you describe Capozzi Park as being funky?
We’re funkay. That’s six letters.
So Mark, when are you going to get famous?
At my martyrdom, I think.
I think so too, unfortunately.
It’s a hard thing to face. I remember being 22 or something and really wanting to do music, knowing that there’s no way I’d ever make money doing music, and then somewhere I was reading an article about someone who was pretty big – I think it was the guy from The [Lyres]; he was pretty big at the time – and he started talking about how he did the album at night while he worked his day job, and I realized, “Oh! Everyone has a day job!” Everyone short of, I don’t know, Sonic Youth and Elvis Costello had a day job. And I went, “Okay, this is what I’ll do: I’ll play music and get a day job.” Max became a carpenter, which was really smart. He’s like “I want to play music. I’d better have a useful trade as well.” I did not do that.
I think this is the end of it. One last question and please don’t lie about it: Do you have any STDs?
Um, I used to have chlamydia. And this thing [points to his mouth], my doctor told me it was angular cheilitis – this should not be going on tape. It was a little split in the side of my mouth, and it kind of scabbed, so I yanked it off, and over the space of a week it came back with these little tendrils, and it’s really freaking me out.
Capozzi Park play their final show on March 7th with The Battles at the Anza Club. If you miss it, there’s always The Record of Cappozi Park and Chocolate Covered Bad Things. The former members of the band are still making music in various tight leather outfits (Clover Honey, Amy’s Rocks, Miniature Pancakes, Ackley Kid, America Jr., +outhern acific-, Baron Samedi and, of course, Mark).
Listen to “Chocolate Covered Bad Things” by Mark here .
