NICK OLIVERI Talks About OZZFEST, New QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE CD

KTVU.com recently conducted an interview with MONDO GENERATOR frontman Nick Oliveri (also ex-KYUSS, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

KTVU.com: I was reading that you ended up doing only a handful of dates on the Ozzfest tour before dropping out. What happened?

Nick Oliveri: Well, we dropped off because we couldn't afford to stay on, to be honest with you. This year it was free for the crowd, which was a great thing, but essentially the bands were playing for free too and we just couldn't afford to do that. It didn't make any sense for us to do that. We're not kids anymore; we've all got our rent and our bills to pay, you know? I needed to pay the guys in the band, so I cut my losses short. It was fun while we were on. We had a great time doing what we did. I don't know if we were the right kind of metal for the crowd…

KTVU.com: You definitely seemed to be far and away the furthest on the punk end of the spectrum…

Nick Oliveri: Absolutely.

KTVU.com: So it wasn't anything that happened with the band that forced you to leave?

Nick Oliveri: No no, not at all.

KTVU.com: A version of the latest album came out a while back in the UK, but it took a while for the domestic release of "Dead Planet" to come out in the states and it changed a little bit a few additional songs. What made for the delay between the two releases?

Nick Oliveri: I wasn't trying to shop a deal or anything. I paid for my record in its entirety, so a label in England offered to put it out and I said sure. I wasn't really looking for a label. That wasn't why I did the record. I was kind of down on record labels for a while after the QUEENS split. So I wasn't really looking for that. I was just looking to make a record for me and that's what I did. So that's what happened in the states; Suburban Noize came forward and said "Hey, we want to put this thing out." So I said sure. Their version has a few extra tracks. "Bloody Hammer", a Roky Erickson song, "There She Goes Again", and "Sleep the Lie Away".

KTVU.com: I know you're probably sick of this kind of question, so I'll apologize in advance, but to what extent to you keep up with what QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE are doing and if you had any opinions about their new record?

Nick Oliveri: Yeah, I picked up the new record. I bought the last two records from my old band. It's good. It's different. I don't know, it sounds weird in a way, to have to the brand name QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE on it. But its Josh's band, so he can take it in any old direction he wants to [laughs].

KTVU.com: To back up a little bit, I was kind of wondering if the changing support that you've had comes from the fluid band membership that QUEENS always used in terms of the people you work with? Have you pursued MONDO in the same way where you work with the people that fit with the direction you're currently going in?

Nick Oliveri: I'm just trying to keep a band together on no money [laughs]. I'm just starting from zero. QUEENS kind of had that brand name that we built on together. There's a lot of lawyer teams and management teams and all that stuff that goes with that band that's still there with the brand name. MONDO is back in the van and doing this real, working and humping our own gear and all that. So we're starting over as opposed to the fantasy of having people do it for you. That's the big difference. I don't really know if there's much comparison. You can't really compare two things that aren't coming from the same place. We're coming from a street level for sure. I think the songwriting comes from a different place and that people can relate to that.

Read the entire interview at www.ktvu.com.