by Ida Griesemer
This interview with Alex Bleeker (of the Ridgewood, New Jersey bands Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks) took place on January 13, 2010. It will appear in six parts.
In which Alex, Matt, and Julian all have the same guitar teacher who lives in a windmill in Paterson, New Jersey.
LL: Did you continue practicing separately that year?
AB: Well, what happened was, we couldn’t hold Emerson X-Ray Solution together because egos were just flailing, people wanted to take the band in different directions, some of us didn’t even really like ska. It was continually frustrating to me to be just a singer. I was learning guitar as rapidly as I possibly could because I felt self-conscious about being just a singer and not having the songwriting capabilities. So we’d get in a lot of fights and stuff at practice, and I’d go practice guitar in a corner.
LL: Was someone teaching you?
AB: I took guitar lessons. I also learned a lot from Matt and Julian - Martin was a bass player at the time, he didn’t play guitar until college really, he’s always been a really talented musician – I’d go over to Matt’s house, once we become friends, on Saturday afternoons and after school, and he was maybe a year ahead of me in terms of guitar playing skills at the time, so he would show me how to play Pixies songs and Weezer songs. A lot of great learning happened. I had a great – we all had the same guitar teacher. He would teach Matt, Julian, and I on the same day. He come to our houses, then the three of us would hang out after our guitar lessons, and we’d show each other things. We learned a lot from each other.
LL: Are you still in touch with that guy?
AB: Tony Scally. I wish. We talk about him all the time. We’re like, I wonder if Tony Scally knows that we’re quasi career musicians now. And would he like the music that we’re making, or would he hate it? He’d see my Grateful Dead CDs and be like, Why do you like this band? They’re terrible.
LL: What was Tony Scally into?
AB: Jazz. He always had good stories. He knew we were all potheads, so he’d try to be a positive influence. He was a great guy. I remember he was a big influence on all of our lives because he went to Columbia, he was really smart, but he decided to be a musician and he taught lessons for a living. He lived in Paterson, New Jersey, which is this urban, run-down, dying city in our county. He lived there in a windmill. And he was married to this jazz singer who I never met but I always imagined her to be very beautiful. Her name was Grady Stone.
Tony was like a bard. He would come and teach you a little bit of guitar and then tell you really good stories. And we’d share stories that Tony told us. We still do.
LL: So you’re all learning guitar. And ninth grade begins.
AB: So Emerson X-Ray Solution fell apart, very dramatically, as ninth graders are. It was the most important thing ever and we just couldn’t stop fighting. Egos collided. I quit the band. There were three of us who sort of staged a coup. We left and formed our own band. I quit, but it was also – something had to break. So I left along with the drummer and keyboard player. And Martin didn’t quit the band, but he came with us too to form this other band. And that band was called Marc. We were basically a cover band. And then the ska band got a new drummer, got a different guitar player slash lead singer songwriter, and they became this band called Fletcher and the Sticky Wickets, that Martin was also in. Between Marc, and Fletcher and the Sticky Wickets and that other band Paperface who stayed together through this, we became this trinity of bands in high school. That was our little taste of hometown glory. We made stickers and buttons and we played all the open mics. People knew our songs and our covers. It was the hugest thing in the world. I remember there was a girl who I had a crush on, and I asked her to borrow her calculator, and it had a Marc sticker on it. And I had never talked to her. It was my own little private victory.
We threw our own show one summer – I think it was right before we went back to school – and we bought risers, we bought a stage, and we got a PA. Something like 150 people came, which was so awesome. And my brother, who I always had a rivalry with, his group of friends came, and he was older than us. We were these nerd kids but we threw a good party.
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