1. Tell us, what made you get so much inspiration from Nirvana? What are your other influences? I was always somewhat into Nirvana from the moment I first heard them. Something about the lyrics, style, attitude, emotion, and sound always said to me that this was music from a guy in pain, a guy who resents his life and self so much that he has stopped "buying in" to the whole idea of what the world is supposed to be, what people are supposed to be like, what we're supposed to feel, what is considered cool, lame, good, bad, etc. I had a similar pain throughout my life and although it wasn't the result of Ritalin and the divorce of parents, it ran very deep in me for many years. I felt like I connected with Nirvana on that level, and thus on a level that I felt at the time no one else could truly share. Like me and Kurt were laughing in an awful horrible joke against the whole world, and at the same time ourselves as well. So yeah, beyond that emotional stuff, the music was easy to mimic, too. I sucked at guitar, AND was a horrible singer with little to no range, and to top it all off I was learning to play with my mom's 3/4th sized acoustic guitar that had strings literally a half inch off of the fretboard. I was a very very strong kid, and even then it took all the strength in my hands just to hold a chord on that guitar. Plus I was only able to strum "
power chords", which are basically one simple shape that you can use to make all chords just by moving your hand around in the same shape. Because of that, Nirvana was one of the few bands I was even capable of playing, which fit in nicely with my desire to play them. I absorbed myself in their music, day and night, practicing that stupid guitar, singing them in the shower, blowing out headphones laying on my bed at night, and falling asleep in the middle of the day to them on my stereo. I was hooked for a long long time.
I've always been the kind of guy to absorb himself in what he is doing, and shut everything else out. So while I enjoyed other bands occasionally, it wasn't really until my hands got so strong that I could form actual chords on my guitar, that I started to branch out musically. I slowly got into Offspring,
Green Day, Cranberries,
Soul Asylum,
Counting Crows, Aerosmith, and a ton of other random bands. Today I'm into Colin Hay - the guy fromMen at Work, and regularly play his songs "Beautiful World", "Waiting for My Real Life to Begin", and "Maggie" at gigs. I'm also into John Mayer right now too - his song "Who Says" is a masterpiece and basically makes me want to get stoned constantly, even though I don't smoke pot at all. Not that I'm against it, I'm just such a damn lightweight that the few times I tried it, I literally completely forgot who I was with and what I was doing, ignoring everyone around me pretty much the entire night just to focus on not making silly faces lol. I also love
Bob Dylan, Oasis,
Coldplay, Deathcab, Social D, Jimmy Eat World, and dang, I guess a million others.
2. Do some of your songs depict stories based in your own life events? Can you share one with us? Yeah pretty much every single song I've written was about either a real story or at least a real temporary feeling I've had. That goes back to the whole Nirvana / My-Life-Sucks thing I had going for me through most of my childhood. I was so messed up that I regularly turned even people who liked me, against me. I would magically not be attracted to nice/good girls who were into me, and good friends who wanted to build me up... and attracted to anyone who would hurt me. And sometimes when I was wrong and picked a girl or friend who was good to me, I would somehow screw it up or abandon them. The self sabotage was just part of how messed up I was back then. So that's basically why I have so many songs about lost love and heart break - it was a constant element in my life. Even today, even though I've come a huge long way towards being able to love myself and be happy, I still have a tendency to be anti-social, or naturally gravitate towards the corner of the room, or become terrified when a nice girl asks me out. Because of that I usually only hang out with people that I have a specific purpose to be with, like if we're doing a project together, I'm helping them with something, or we both have to be at the same place at the same time for some reason. And as for girls I'm pretty much hopeless ha ha. I can think of about 5 times in the last 2 months where a really nice girl tried to get my number or hang out, and all I did was blow it by saying something stupid or acting scared or uninterested, then later regretting it.
So as far as the song goes, song, I'll go to "I Heard". The lyrics in it are pretty self explanitory - "I heard that you didn't smile at my name. It hurts to think of your gentle face. I heard you told someone else to call you, instead of me". I won't name names but this was a girl in highschool that I had a huge crush on. She was actually one of the good ones, not a bad person or anything. She was really pretty and always nice to me in spite of my incessant awkwardness and clamming up that I did around her. It took me months and months of wanting to be with her, and talking about her to all my friends before I had the guts to even ask her to hang out. We ended up hanging at her place, in her bedroom watching TV and talking about school and friends and life while her parents ate dinner in the living room. I was so scared that I didn't make any sexual or suggestive comments, or make any moves on her or anything the whole time. I didn't even try to make plans for a second hangout. I had a slight cold at the time, so I also stayed away from getting close to her, to not get her sick. Then at the end of the night, still worried about getting her sick, I made my final fatal mistake. She was holding my hands, saying goodbye to me at her car after dropping me off at my house, and giving me the "i want a kiss" gaze deep into my eyes. I leaned forward and gave her a small peck on the lips and that was it. She drove away and although I hadn't yet realized what I had done wrong, that was the last time we would ever hang out. I have a tendency to build things up in my mind to magical proportions, and to romanticize everything and everyone, so although our hangout wasn't that great and I blew it at the end, I convinced myself that she was the perfect girl for me, and that we were only steps away from being a couple. Weeks after her not calling and me being too afraid to call, I heard from a friend of a friend that she saw one of my good buddies in the supermarket and gave him her phone number. My heart sank, I wrote "I Heard", and that was that.
3. I noticed that you are a very creative writer and coming up quickly with new ideas are already a part of your nature. Your previously described dream with Jay Leno caught my attention. If you were offered an opportunity to go to his show, would you present yourself in the same way as you did in your dream, and why? Ha, thanks. Hmm.... that's a tough question. Its not really a question of whether or not I would WANT to, so much as whether or not I would have the nerve. I've always been a fan of the "joke? what joke?" Andy Kaufman es que humor, where instead of telling an actual joke or being purposely funny, you present yourself as if you're crazy or deranged in some way, and stick to your character with such dedication that your audience is half laughing because they're laughing, and half laughing because they can't tell if you're actually crazy or just a comedic genius. When I was in school I used to pull pranks like that all the time - tripping on a chair and then getting my foot stuck in it, and flailing around like a mad man in a futile attempt to shake it off, then pretending to get super angry at the whole situation. Only after everyone was done laughing would I tell my friends around me that it was all just a put-on, and sometimes I did so well at it that they wouldn't believe me. A few times I walked briskly in the rain and took a huge fake fall into a big puddle, then got up quickly and looked around nervously to feign embarrassment that someone else might have seen (which of course caused EVERYone in the immediate area to laugh quietly). Several times while drunk at parties I would walk face first into a wall just so the people around me would laugh, "Oh my god!!! That guy is so drunk he just walked into a wall!!!!".
So to answer your question... I think if I were feeling very brave, centered, confident, and focused, I could probably do it. I know that half the audience would LOVE the sheer madness of it all, and the other half would be entertained because they would have someone to complain about and make fun of to all their friends for the next few months. I'm hoping
Jay Leno would secretly appreciate it too for the entertainment value. However, sometimes other people can make me nervous. If all the back-stage people and handlers started to give me too much of the impression that I had to be professional and that comedic shenanigans wouldn't be appreciated, I might chicken out. Maybe I should just keep a photo of Jim Carey in my pocket if that ever happened.
4. Tell us a little about your new CD. Did you write all of your songs? I've got two CDs out. The one with all the acoustic tracks is "Music of My Youth". That's basically a collection of my most favorite songs that I've written throughout my youth all put in one place, with some strings in the background. I had to do that one on a tight schedule - took me about 2 weeks only to record because one of my old buddies wanted to throw a bunch of money at it to help promote it, and he also wanted to feature it in his online magazine. I came home after work every day for 2 weeks and would record on my little computer chair, with my stupid little mixer plugged into the back of my noisy PC soundcard. I even used a program to mix everything that was actually designed NOT for rock type music, but for electronica, lol. I basically did everything wrong except sing softly, but it still came out alright. I've been singing every song on that CD for such a long time. Each track is a part of me, a story of my life, a small secret pain that only I know about. Well I guess except for "I Heard" at this point lol. For a long time after I released it, I would drive all around up and down Anaheim and Orange singing to it in my car, trying to figure out how I could have done better, how I did better than I expected, and what it all really meant to me. Those tracks now are like a message from the past... like the Mike Peralta of my childhood, a lost boy in so much pain, speaking his stories to me so that I can learn from them and move past him. I used to think that the old me could never be fixed, and that the only thing I could ever do was just to die. Eventually, my own CD has helped me to realize that the old me needed to die in order for the person I am now to emerge. So I left him behind. And now when I sing my songs, it is my tribute to him.
My new / latest CD is actually just a single. Its called "I Want to Be Sad" and its available on
iTunes now. You know how they say people often get addicted to emotions, just like a drug? I was sad for
such a long time in my life that I actually was addicted to it. It was like a drug. I was so hooked that no other emotions felt valid, real, or right. Some alcoholics have difficulty kicking their habit, because deep down they WANT to drink - they're so addicted to the alcohol, it makes them feel so good, that they feel their best / happiest when they're drunk, regardless of how it effects their life.... Deep down, some alcoholics (maybe many or most for all I know) WANT to be drunks, because its the only thing that feels right to them. Well, sadness was my alcohol, for a very long time. Even years after I had set out to become a happier/better person, when I had made worlds of progress, I still missed it. I still missed the comfort that being sad gave me. It was like a warm blanket or something. So my track "I Want to Be Sad" is a tribute to that. Its a tribute to the tiny voice that still lingers in my heart, yearning for sadness. And its a tribute to all the situations that I subconsciously created out of thin air in order to achieve situations that made me so sad throughout my life. Again, putting these emotions into a song is more like allowing that part of myself to die off than anything. I have a tendency to do that - to use songs as my therapy (who doesn't, I guess). I still struggle with those feelings from time to time, but then again "I Want to Be Sad" is a relatively new song.
You can search for "Mike Peralta" on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Limewire's Store (if its still up), Napster, Jango, and a bunch of other links. More easily you can simply go to
MikePeralta.com and just sit on the homepage for awhile - I have an mp3 player there that cycles through choice tracks off "Music of My Youth" and my new single. Also I have a discography page on my website that has links to all the other digital distributors. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on my website to earn a free instant Mp3 download. Also, I have a "Tracks for Tweets" section on my website that earns you a download of my new single just for tweeting about me. Or you could just post in my forums asking for a copy.
