Singer JASON MCMASTER Discusses DANGEROUS TOYS

Blasting-Zone.com recently conducted an in-depth interview with BROKEN TEETH/DANGEROUS TOYS frontman Jason McMaster. Several excerpts follow:

Blasting-Zone.com: How was DANGEROUS TOYS formed?

Jason McMaster: "I was in this technical progressive thrash band called WATCHTOWER for about eight years, right outta high school, so there's a whole other decade of rock within my museum of Jason. I kinda cut my teeth as a singer doin' that. I had some friends that had a glam rock thing goin' on in the mid to late '80s in Austin called ONYX. They had a female singer that called herself Onyx. They were done with her and needed someone to fill in for some gigs they already had booked. It was a completely unserious thing for me to go in and learn a bunch of cover tunes and do some shows for fun with a glam band. So I went in and had a really good time with it… all tongue-in-cheek. It was kinda like Halloween for me because it wasn't exactly what I was weaned on, but it was a lot of fun. Six months later, wouldn't ya know it, the songs that I had written with them were actually pretty fuckin' good and caught the attention of some of the labels that were lookin' for the next big thing…the coattails of GUNS N' ROSES, L.A. GUNS and FASTER PUSSYCAT. That's how that just kinda exploded. A year after I started messin' around with those guys in Austin, I was on MTV and in arenas touring Europe. The rest is kinda history. That first TOYS record gets a shitload of things like Sirius and XM Satellite Radio. I get a royalty check every quarter…some lunch money, which is how I look at it. Yeah, I've got a couple of gold albums, which are kinda like bowling trophies. It doesn't matter. My house is old, my care is old…I'm old. I still doin' the same shit. I've been doin' the same rock 'n' roll goin' on twenty seven years."

Blasting-Zone.com: In hindsight, who was the most responsible for the blatantly commercial sound on "Hellacious Acres"?

Jason: "I'm going to write off what you're trying to say as awful production with a big name producer, Roy Thomas Baker, who had done records with THE CARS, QUEEN and JOURNEY…stuff like that. The label had pulled us off a big spring 1990 tour opening for THE CULT. We were selling lots of records with that first record and they basically pulled us off the road and said, 'Go home and write…we don't wanna miss this window of opportunity…' even though we were making them money, making ourselves money and doing a great job of not really doing anything except rockin' the house. We didn't wanna go home and write, but ya know we were outvoted, so we went home and wrote. About half of 'Hellacious Acres' is worthy of being called DANGEROUS TOYS and the other half is just kinda blasé. They have a kinda, 'These songs will work' kinda vibe. I kinda felt that we were pushed into a corner that we didn't wanna be in. We weren't sitting next to them when they were mixing and producing that record. The budget insisted that we go back home and get ready for a tour while they finished mixing that record. We didn't have a whole lot of say about the sound of that record and they weren't willing to take the chance of spending another half a million dollars on us going back in and fixing up what we felt had been lost in the tone, sound and vibe of 'Hellacious Acres'."

Blasting-Zone.com: As a group, that must have been tremendously difficult to overcome…

Jason: "The third studio record 'Pissed', which came out in ‘94, should have been released as our second record. It's arguable that 'Pissed' was our best studio record. We kept doin' what we were doin' and 'Pissed' came out on an independent. We followed it up in '95 with 'The Rtist 4merely Known As Dangerous Toys' in which we had lost a couple of original members. I ended up playing bass…and therefore I was writing a lot more of the riffs, so it ended up as a hodge podge of what was DANGEROUS TOYS, hence the name of the record. We were fine with that, are still fine with that and we actually had a lot of fun on that record, but the fans didn't care how much fun we were havin' because they weren't havin' it. I wasn't singing about my dick or fuckin' in the backseat anymore. It was all these headstrong lyrics and serious moments and they weren't gonna have it. They still wanted to fuck, suck and drink beer all night long. That's fine, but it wasn't where we were as people... We still played stuff from all of the previous records when we were on tour. Those were the songs that everybody ultimately wanted to hear."

Blasting-Zone.com: In hindsight, do you feel the group made the right decision by recording a cover of (the BAD COMPANY classic) "Feel Like Makin' Love"?

Jason: "I probably would have done something different, but I gotta tell ya, our fans fuckin' love that for some reason. I don't think it does justice to who we are as a band, but that's how I feel about most of 'Hellacious Acres'. We were actually just messing around with that song in the studio and Roy suggested that we cover it. We weren't so excited about all the other material, so we were like, 'Okay, why not? Maybe we'll get played on some classic rock radio with that some day.' I think it does get a lot of downloads on the Internet. I see that on my royalty statements."

Blasting-Zone.com: Have you ever considered disbanding DANGEROUS TOYS in lieu of a more lucrative venture?

Jason: "Never. It's still happening and it's great. We play a couple of shows a year. We've got a twenty one song twentieth anniversary DVD comin' out this year on Corporate Punishment Records. As far as touring and surviving as a rock band on the road as DANGEROUS TOYS…it can't be done. No one wants to pay us what we're worth and what we feel like we should be paid. That, and I hate to say it, but the day jobs that some of us have pay more than rock 'n' roll ever did. Gold records and everything, the jobs that we have now as individuals now pay more… You can't argue with that when you have a mortgage and a family. Going out on the road and coming back with no bank…a dead wallet is not something all of us can do."

Read the entire interview at Blasting-Zone.com.