News Segment
MARDO’S THE NEW GUN MAKES A BIG BANG:
May 26, 2006
Locked and Loaded
MARDO ~ The New Gun
Out June 13 on House of Restitution Records!
Sibling rockers MARDO pull into Texas today for the last dates of their tour with King’s X before the release of their new CD, The New Gun, on June 13, 2006 on House of Restitution Records! The brothers are winning over new fans coast to coast with their latest set of dirty party rock — the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a huge feature on the Fresno- born/LA-based rockers today (see below), and Music City’s Nashville Scene and the Asbury Park Press have been singing their praises.
The New Gun starts off with a blast with “Lolita Live and Learn” which was mixed by the legendary Tom Lord-Alge and is gaining momentum in radio at the rock formats. Also, check out their cover of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and title track “Bang Bang (New Gun)” for some funky dance music:
“Gritty party rock at its finest” – Nashville Scene
“Singer/bassist Aron Mardo sure sounds like a rock star. He and his drummer brother possess a swagger that’s been missing from much of rock lately.” – Asbury Park Press
“For fans of retro rock with a modern edge, Mardo’s The New Gun is aimed to please” – All Music Guide
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/entertainment/nightli fe/14665995.htm? source=rss&channel=dfw_nightlife
FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM
MARDO PACKS SIBLING REVELRY
By Teresa Gubbins
SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM
Say a prayer of thanks for Mardo. After all, we’ve gone so long without the arrival of a new rock band fronted by a pair of brothers. The Black Crowes have been busy cultivating marital bliss, and who even remembers Oasis anymore?
But unlike those more tempestuous acts, the brothers of California rock band Mardo are not punching each other in the mouth, jilting each other every other week or squabbling in print. At worst, Robert and Aron Mardo deliver the occasional good- natured jab, with no animosity, such as the one proffered by Aron when asked whether he or Robert is older.
“This is my brother’s favorite question,” Aron says, calling from Virginia while on tour. That’s because Robert is younger that Aron, by four years. Although they won’t say exactly how old they are, beyond the vague “mid-20s.”
“The way we look at it, in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re either young or you’re dead,” he says.
There’s more going on with the Mardos than rock ‘n’ roll. The brothers grew up on a Fresno farm and come from a family of artists, including their grandfather, Jack Jandegian, who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and Andy Warhol. An aunt, Aron says, was a backup singer for Charles Aznavour.
“My family comes from art and music,” Aron says. “My brother and I never had a single lesson. We don’t read a note of music. But we always had instruments around the house. Our dad would play when he got home from work. We never had our own record collection; we had our parents’ when we were kids.”
That might explain the retro-leaning sound of their music, including a new CD coming out in June, The New Gun, some of which we’ll hear when they open for King’s X at the Ridglea on Friday. Their music, a crisp and likable ’70s-style rock with the clarity of pop, has been likened to Aerosmith and Cheap Trick; on their self-titled ’05 debut, they do a cover of Huey Lewis’ I Want a New Drug.
They’ve opened for lots of bands, everyone from Fiona Apple to Brian Setzer, in Fresno, where they were kings of the hill, playing at the local coffeehouses and becoming the go-to opening act for bands coming through town. Eventually, they scored tracks on TV shows such as Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“I say, if you can’t conquer your hometown first, don’t bother,” Aron says. “But eventually, there was nowhere left for us to go. We were already on all the radio stations, in all the newspapers, and on top of all the lists of angry dads that had daughters.”
Aron also does the band’s album covers and Web site art, with its beautiful, saturated colors and hippy- trippy aesthetic. Sometimes it seems that music is a minor component in Mardo’s wide-ranging perspective.
“We’re more music-history fans than actual music fans,” he says. “We don’t get impressed by music stuff. When we played in St. Louis, we played in this big theater, and the owner had pictures of himself with everybody on the wall. There were pictures of him with musicians like Keith Richards, big whoop. But there was a picture of him with comedian Mitch Hedberg, and we were, ‘Oh my God, Mitch Hedberg!'”
Courtesy of www.gorgeouspr.com