B I O

"The anti-establishment is wearing suits...
Kiss was one of the first concerts we went to.
The Pistols reenergized our lives.
Now it's time for their logical progeny to shake things up all over again."

Mars Needs Women takes what was best of the ethics of all, and come away with something new and exciting.

"I can't get away from writing really poppy songs," confesses singer/songwriter/guitarist Shawn McCabe, "but I refuse to turn my guitar down."

With that combination, this New Jersey bred band is out to kick in the crumbling old jams. They've taken elements of all that was great about the music we were weaned on, and made it fresh and cool again.

"I love the glitter rock bands from the '70s," he says, "like Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, the Stooges, and MC5."

McCabe and Jack Roberts, who heighten the guitar theatrics, played together for a while in other bands before deciding to start their own band in 1992. At that point, Roberts brought in bassist Ted Licinski and drummer Ray Kubian, who were buddies from high school.

Playing around the small towns of Jersey seemed to infuse these performers with a love of women, cars, and guitars.

Their small town background helped reinforce their staunch DIY attitude.

"We try to keep everything very grass-roots," McCabe laughs. "Our heads are pretty small. We were always doing whatever self-promotion we could. If we had a show on Friday we would clear off the dining room table, and I would get out the squeegee and the screen and make up two dozen shirts, and just have a party around it."

This dedicated work ethic, combined with a desire to find the fun in any given situation, has been captured on their debut SPARKING RAY GUN.

"There has to be at least one harmony vocal," McCabe says, "but at the same time, I love a really biting guitar. I want the drums to be really pounding, but I want you to be able to walk away humming the song. To me the biggest compliment is when someone says, 'I can't get that song out of my head,' instead of, 'Man, you guys kick ass, you're so heavy.' To me just being heavy would be easy, but I want to infect someone with a melody as well."

This interest in living in the center of contradiction was well served when drummer Kubian, an avowed Damned fanatic, convinced the others they should cover "Problem Child", which sounds just as contemporary today on Sparking Ray Gun as it did on Music For Pleasure.

Now they are ready to stride out of native New Brunswick, New Jersey, at the fore of the neo-glam movement with like-minded acquaintances D Generation.

The band was formed less than four years ago, quickly garnering a number of awards locally, and in 1995 signed to California based independent label eggBERT. Paralleling their brethren from the big city, they had to move to another label before finding success. Sparking Ray Gun is being re-released on aggressive indie Discovery Records.

Mars Needs Women harken the listener to simpler times and pursuits. They stole their name from an early sixties B-movie "that was so bad it went right to television," adding to the glam/punk credibility.

"The lyrics aren't really deep," McCabe says. "I'm not trying to save the world. I'm not writing poetry, although I do like it to be clever now and then. With the song "Big American Cars" I'm just talking about what it was like to cut school, jump in a car, and head to the coast."

"The original cover was going to be of this gun the guitarist Jack has," McCabe infuses. "It's from the forties, and actually says Sparking Ray Gun on the side. Then the Foo Fighters record came out...It wasn't the same gun, but it was the same idea."

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