Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Tuesday 5th July 2022

Talking Tape Trading and Travolta with Tony Foresta

MUNICIPAL WASTE frontman Tony Foresta is having an interesting morning. Sitting in his car in St. Petersburg, Florida, doing press, he spilt coffee all over himself during the previous interview. Now, speaking to SENSE, police have just approached a nearby parked car with guns drawn, and he’s constantly checking the rear-view mirror to see if he needs to duck. It brings a whole new meaning to “sun’s out, guns out.” But it’s going to take more than a wet shirt and potential gunfight to wipe the smile off his face. MUNICIPAL WASTE’s new album is out, and it’s an absolute screamer, so he told SENSE about tour boredom, tape trading, and dancing with John Travolta…

I remember reading somewhere that, while Florida might be fairly crazy, the reason that people keep reading crazy shit about it is because you guys have got different reporting standards.

That is absolutely right, and that’s really cool that you said that, because I got sick of trying to defend Florida to people. I just go, “Yeah, whatever.” But that’s true. There’s a weird law – it’s like a Freedom of Information Act or something – where anything that happens gets automatic news access. For some reason it’s not like that in other states, which I don’t understand because there’s a constitutional right called Freedom of the Press, but for some reason, anything crazy that happens gets blasted, meanwhile something in Minnesota doesn’t go to the news. “Man shits himself while wrestling alligator” – if that happens in Minnesota, that might not get put in the news. But it’ll happen here! And it will to. There is going to be someone wrestling an alligator and shitting themselves! [Laughs] It could be me, after this interview!

“Why is the MUNICIPAL WASTE tour cancelled?” “Oh, Tony wrestled an alligator while he was drunk.” [Laughs]

I almost got bit by a snake like a week before the tour we just went on. I was just talking about that. [Laughs] But you guys have snakes all over the place, so it’s not a big deal … Let me just tell you about America real quick. I’m sitting in a parking lot, and a fucking truck just pulled up behind me, and there are two cop cars … This is right behind me. Look. [Points his phone out the back window] They’ve all got their guns out and shit. Literally, ten feet away from me. God damn. [Laughs] That’s how we live, man!

I’m about to hit you with the hardest, most vicious question you’ve ever been asked. What do you say to the rumours coming out of Cleveland that you like Mike’s Hard Lemonade? The people must know! [Laughs]

Oh, back to Cleveland, huh? I found out recently who wrote that tag. It was Nancy [Hornburg], my friend Nancy from Baltimore who used to play in a band called WAR ON WOMEN. [Laughs] For some reason, that tag … it will not die! So … [throws his head back and shouts] NANCY!!! So it fucked me up. That tag has been there for, like, eight years or something. It’s in the Grog Shop.

I was stalking your Instagram. How did you end up hanging out with John Travolta? What’s he like?

He’s very sweet, very cool. One of my very good friends is his personal assistant, so I guess he showed him videos of our band. Ryan, our guitar player, went over there too and hung out with him … I guess he thought our band was funny and liked our music videos and our music or whatever. I live near him, so I’ve been over there a couple times. I actually got to watch the Superbowl on his boat. We went out on his yacht in Tampa Bay while the Superbowl was going on in Tampa. It was fucking awesome. There was only, like, eight of us on the boat, and we watched the Superbowl, and then when Tampa won, we danced! That was one of the best nights of my life! [Laughs] You never know who the fuck you’re going to meet playing music!

Now that touring is ramping back up … People have a very over-inflated sense of the cool stuff that musicians get to do. 90% of your job is waiting around. How do you cope with boredom, or keep yourself amused on tour?

You know, this fucking sucks. I’ll give you the honest answer … This last tour I just got home from, like three days ago, I got my “weekly report” on my iPhone, which I don’t even ask for, they just send me it and it’s annoying … But it’s like, “You spent six hours a day on your phone,” and that sucked. I was embarrassed. I came home yesterday and I just put my fucking phone away – put it in a drawer – and I think I’m going to be doing that a lot more often, because that sucks. You’re just sitting on your ass or you’re sitting in a car or you’re sitting on your bus, or you’re in your bunk, or you’re in the backstage and you’re just looking at your phone because there’s nothing to do. I just think that’s unacceptable. I think, with the pandemic and everything, being home so much, you’re locked in more, and you’re just stuck on your phone. It’s almost like a mental disorder or something, where you just rely on your phone for entertainment or knowledge or anything. Granted, I do get a lot of work done on my phone, like most of the work I do. I write lyrics on it, I’m working on new music on it and shit, but it’s still unacceptable, especially when you’re on the road. I’m going to Europe. We’re doing a tour with ANTHRAX in a couple of months, and I made a point to at least try … to go to a historical thing, or go somewhere nearby, where I can learn something about where I’m playing or where I’m at, because I’ve been to Europe way too many times to know as little history as I do. I feel like I need to fucking learn a little more, and it’s a waste, you know? I’m a lucky person to be able to have people like my band enough to be able to travel the fucking world all over the place. I need to utilise that time, and stop looking up Chihuahua videos on my phone all day. [Laughs]

Maybe you could get yourself a digital SLR camera? Something where you’re not going to be distracted by notifications and shit popping up, and you just take it around and start doing photo diaries of wherever you go.

Yeah, that’s a good idea … That’s cool. I actually think that’s a good idea. You remember BlogSpot? … I did that. I’d like to find that. I had a weird BlogSpot where I wrote in it every day for like half the tour and then I just lost interest in it. [Laughs] … Do you remember Makeoutclub? Makeoutclub was basically what they got the idea for Myspace and Friendster. It was Makeoutclub first, and then it was Friendster … Makeoutclub started all that shit. It was emo kids before emo was, like, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE or whatever. It was hardcore kids, and they were trying to meet each other through social networking. That was like the first social networking thing – it was almost like a dating site. I was never on Makeoutclub, but I remember it, and I was on Friendster for a short time. That’s how old I am. [Laughs]

I heard of your band a long time before I actually checked it out. I used to have a subscription to Metal Hammer, so I remember the ads for The Art of Partying when that came out. The kind of stuff that they used to sell in the back of Metal Hammer in the mid-2000s. People used to buy porn videos by description alone, and download the videos onto their phones.

I used to tape trade VHS tapes through the backs of those things. But I would be trading [a] MISFITS live VHS tape – you know, grainy-ass, shitty video – and I would trade it for a JESUS LIZARD Live in Chicago or some weird shit like that. My roommate back in the day was big on that. I did it a little bit, but he was huge in that scene, so I just kind of used his spoils of victory. He would also get some weird shit that he wouldn’t ask for. You’d get a 90-minute tape, and they’d just throw some other shit on there too! [Laughs] But yeah, I remember the backs of those magazines … There’s also this thing here in America called Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life … That was a book … It’s so fucking sketchy now, now that I think about it. [Laughs] It was a magazine that came out every year, and what you would do was, if you were in a punk band … you would be like, “Hey, I’m in THE SHITHEADS from Roanoke, Virginia,” and then you put what you sound like. “We’re a rock ‘n’ roll/metal band, and here’s our contact, and we’ll set you up a show in Roanoke, Virginia.” And then you put your phone number down and you put your address down to mail your music to. I swear to fucking god, that’s how I met Jim Konya, who was in 9 SHOCKS TERROR and NUNSLAUGHTER … I met a bunch of people I’m still in touch with through this fucking weird magazine from the 90s that we used to tape trade and shit with. That magazine also had my mother’s address, because I was sixteen years old, and it had her phone number, so if you called the number of my old band, which was JAMES RIVER SCRATCH, my mum would answer, and say, “Oh, I’ll get Tony, hold on. TONY!!!” [Laughs]

Electrified Brain is out now.

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