Steriogram - Schmacking It To Them

Direct signing to a major international label at the behest of its LA-based president, a US-recorded and released debut album, half a million bucks spent on a single video, their own music television tour diary, Grammy Award and MTV finalists, partying with Missy Elliott and global television exposure on the back of the decade's biggest personal entertainment technology phenomenon.

From where we sit the Steriogram story has been one of outrageous success building on unprecedented success, leading surely to big rewards and big heads. But Steriogram are too honest and well grounded to want to perpetuate any myths - especially about themselves.

"If we didn't have that iPod commercial we wouldn't be in England yet," admits Brad Carter (guitar and vocals) when we meet up with him and instantly recognisable frontman rapper Tyson Kennedy for a coffee at Ponsonby's Santos cafe. The boys are obviously well known here - they've barely had a chance to sit down and introduce themselves before coffees are automatically brought over to them.

"It opened up a lot of doors for us. Even when we were travelling in places like Singapore people would say 'Man, I saw your ad on TV'."

Brad and Tyson, along with guitarist Tim Youngson, Jake Adams on bass and Jared Wrennal behind the drums have done enough to know that success is hard won and invariably somewhere up the road ahead. They have spent the best part of the last two years in America, jumping on any tour that would have them, playing in excess of 300 shows and clocking up over 100,000 miles in their van.

It's your genuine rock'n'roll dream, supporting bands such as Yellowcard and Sum 41, but if you are thinking that the 'Gram must be laughing all the way to the bank you'd be wrong. Laughing sure, but their bank accounts are apparently little better off than they were two years ago before they left NZ. Three hundred gigs and no cash reward? At this stage it's about building a following, working this album hard so that the next album can be more successful.

"You don't get paid for those tours when you're supporting bands in America," explains Tyson. "We don't really choose where we're playing, basically wherever the tour is going we're following the bus in our little van. You get $100 a gig or something so that's why you [need to] try and sell merchandise to survive. It's just so expensive to tour. You're losing thousands and thousands of dollars a week.

"We give it everything so if the record label isn't going to pay for (a tour) and we still want to do it we fund it ourselves. We're always broke."
"We're always putting our own cash in...," adds Brad. "People think we're millionaires but we've probably spent like, I wouldn't like to say, but, hundreds of thousands of dollars of our own money has just gone straight back into doing this tour, or flying the band somewhere, or doing this show because the record company are tightening up.

"It's just the reality of life right now that a lot of the artists from labels just aren't selling as many records as they were and so the cash flow, of course, is down. If you're a band that's new you get so much and that's it, you know? But for us we're like, 'We're going to give it everything we've got just to keep going'. I don't regret that at all. We're fighters."

When they first started out Steriogram borrowed money from their parents, and were able to pay them off with the advances when they signed a multi-album deal with Capitol Records (think Radiohead, Beastie Boys, The Dandy Warhols) in November 2002. The indebtedness didn't go away, it was just transferred to their record company and multiplied. They are aware that in the worst case scenario they won't be saddled with that by now huge debt, but Brad says being in a band is like owning a small business.