Chris Shar lives in a cramped and smelly van six months out of every year, he doesn’t have a phone and he doesn’t have a job but he does have an alter ego–Sergei Sogay.

Sergei is a Russian spy who is Man Man ’s bassist, keyboardist, back-up vocalist, glockenspielist and slide whistle player. Sergay might be a near famous rock star and is part of a band that is rapidly taking the world by storm but Chris Shar is lucky if he can pay his rent.

Man Man is an indie rock group that has a fan base similar to the ones at old Hard Core shows. People mosh, dance, sing, crowd surf and sometimes cross their arms and stare. When I attend one of their shows I feel like I’m fifteen and in a dirty-squatter basement again with people who love the music so much that they don’t care if they look like an idiot. A Man Man record, however, is not Hard Core record. Their music has influences as varied as those of a Talking Head’s album and is a variable mash-up of just about everything. Listening to one is an adventure in not knowing what to expect next.

I talked to Chris at The Last Drop, Philadelphia, just before he hopped a jet to continue Man Man’s current tour in Europe. I was hoping to get an idea of what it’s like to be in a band that’s a huge deal, to be touring all the time, and to still not be really famous. I found out a lot about dirty vans, bad jobs, failed bands, war, and MySpace:

HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW

The Vulture: So, you’re in Philadelphia in between what was a pretty long tour, and then you’re leaving for a couple of weeks in Europe?

Chris Shar: Yeah.

V: Is this going to be Man Man’s first European tour?

CS: Yes.

V: So you’re pretty excited I guess?

CS: It will be my first time on the continent of Europe.

V: Wow.

CS: Yeah. I’m excited. We’re going to the Netherlands and the UK. We’re landing in Amsterdam.

V: Oh. . .

CS: First night. Get that over with.

V: Do you have any thoughts on how shows in Europe might be differnet for you then shows in the US?

CS: I have no idea what the fan base is like over there. Every once in a while we get a Myspace email from a kid over there. But who knows what that means? We might be playing to nobody. We might be playing to packed houses.

SOME ARMS ARE CROSSED, BUT MOSTLY THEY MOSH

CS: I think we’re getting kind of spoiled here in the states.

V: What are your shows like here?

CS: Almost every show has been packed to the brim. They go crazy. People sing along. It reminds me of the old Hard Core shows I used to go to when I was in school.

V: Yeah. I was really impressed when I saw you guys. It was fun. People didn’t care what they looked like. They were dancing and singing with wild abandon.

CS: Yeah. It’s pretty much like that across the board. I mean, there are spots where kids will just stand there with their arms crossed and stare.

V: Where is this happening?

CS: It happens a lot of places. LA, North Carolina. In Florida it was like that.

V: Why that reception?

CS: I think in LA it’s deffenatelly the cooler-than-thou thing. They don’t want to look like idiots. I think in the smaller towns, kids are just unsure of what they’re supposed to do. They don’t know if they are supposed to dance or what. A lot of times people are seeing us for the first time. Most of it is they just want to watch the first time.

A lot of times when we come back to a small town, it’ll get crazier every time. We played Atlanta four times this year. The first two times it was an arms-crossed show but the last time it was the craziest show we played. There was a mosh-pit, crowd surfing and Hard Core style sing alongs – which is crazy to me because I never would have expected our music to be moshable.

V: That has to feel really good.

CS: Yeah.

CHRIS SHAR, BORN MUSCIAN

V: How long have you been a musician?

CS: Pretty much since I was born. Both of my parents were musicians, that’s how they met–playing in a band together. From the time that I could sit up I was holding a guitar. . . I mean that’s how far back it goes. There’s a picture of me, as a baby, pretty-much holding this guitar and banging on it.

V: Are you self-taught? Or have you gone to school?

CS: A little bit of everything. My parents showed me how to start off by following simple songs; “Sweet Home Alabama”, things like that. I had an older cousin who played drums, he was about ten years older than me–so he was pretty good by the time I was learning. I took Bass lessons for about two months when I was twelve and I hated it.

Most of the time it was just sitting there and figuring things out. I never liked playing other people’s music, even from the get-go. I initially learned how to play a few Metallica songs, a few Iron Maiden songs. . . things like that. All my friends wanted to sit around, listening to records and playing other people’s music. I hated it. I wanted to play my own stuff, make my own stuff. A lot of the way I play just comes from figuring it out on my own and trying. Right from the very beginning I was trying to write my own songs.

I am more self-taught than anything. My whole way of playing comes from being self-taught.

SOME BANDS GO NOWHERE SOME BANDS GO SOMEWHERE

CS: I’ve been in a lot of bands. . . a lot. The only band that I have ever really done anything with is a band called SuperGrub. We toured the east coast and put out a couple of records, then we changed our name to The Division Group. Then I was in a punk rock band called Stiffed for a while. We put out a few records. . .

CS: Here’s Pow Pow. . . this is Annette.

V: Hi.

CS: Annette this is Chris.

(to Pow Pow) What are you doing? Just kicking it?

PP: Yeah. I ran all my errands and now I’m celebrating with a cup of coffee.

CS: Awesome.

PP: I gotta take care of some internetting for a sec.

CS: Well, we’re doing an interview.

PP: Sweet.

CS: Ha.Ha. That’s our drummer Chris. So? Yeah. . . Stiffed. I was in a punk rock band, we toured overseas a little bit. We toured all over the country. Those bands didn’t really go anywhere.

It was the sort of thing where it should have gone far but the energy was just placed in the wrong places.

V: What makes a successful band versus a band that doesn’t get anywhere?

CS: Everybody has to be on the same page as far as where they want it to go – how much work has to be done. That’s one of the problems that I’ve always had with other bands. In the Division Group the other main member was this guy Ben, and he didn’t want to tour. He thought that that was the worst way to try and make fans.

He tried really hard to breack into the scene through other routes. He joined The Roots and he thought that that was a good way to get into the music industry and get a record contract and all of that, but all that that did was build his career on that end and we were over here.

A similar problem occurred with Stiffed. Our singer, Santi was our head buisness person. She wanted to work really hard and she had a great work ethic but she thought that we needed a record contract before we toured and all of that kind of nonsense.

It was kind of backwards. No matter how much we told her that we needed to tour to build fans and yadayadayada.

V: So the right way to become a successful band is a record first and then tour? Or a tour and then a record? Or both at the same time?

CS: It can happen lots of different ways. Man Man put out a record and then started touring. It was a small label and the distro wasn’t so good, but they went out and made the fans and then the fans could buy the record.

A lot of bands will just tour for a long time before they have any kind of record or anything like that. Then a record label sees that the band has a lot of fans and they put something out. That’s mainly what most people do.

The fatal flaw is to put out a record, be on a record label, and never tour. A lot of bands think they have to concentrate on New York. You know: “If you make it big in New York. . .”

V: Then you can make it big anywhere.

CS: You can make it big anywhere. Which is far from the truth.

V: Sometimes what’s made on the island stays on the island?

CS: Exactelly. No one else is really paying attention.

SMELLY AND CRAMPED

V: So, your current band: Man Man, what’s your touring schedule like?

CS: When we get back we will have toured six months out of this whole year. We basically go out for a month, month and a half, we come home. Then we go out, it’s just repetitive. You hit a lot of the same spots but only every other time. You skip over a town on one tour but then on the next tour you hit it.

It gives people enough time to breathe in between shows.

There’s a few that we hit every time. We always play Chicago. We always play New York. There’s enough people in those towns that they keep coming back and you’ll even see new faces every time. The small towns you have to let them get hungry.

V: Touring all the time sounds glamorous to someone who doesn’t do it. Do you feel rich and famous?

CS: Not at all.

V: Can you describe what your situation is?

CS: First of all, about everybody in the band has a job. I don’t have a job. I lost my job before this tour.

Now. There is money involved in the band now. Obviously. There are enough people paying attention that there is money. I make just about enough on tour to pay my rent and bills and stuff when I get back. . . and buy new jackets (points to his new North Face).

It’s not rich and famous at all. We get pretty much all of our meals paid for on the road which is pretty good. We don’t spend too much money. We spend all of our time in a really smelly cramped van. Even when we get a hotel, it will be all of us piling into one room. The theme is smelly and cramped.

V: So you usaully sleep in the van or at people’s houses?

CS: We usually sleep at people’s houses. On the floor or on couches. I actually sleep in the van more then anyone else because I prefer the privacy, not listening to people snore.

If we don’t meet up with anyone or make any friends we’ll get a hotel. We don’t prefer the hotel because it costs money.

TOUR IS WAR

V: Is tour fun?

CS: Yeah. It’s a love-hate kind of thing. I love going out there and I love playing the music every night. I love meeting the people and seeing what’s going to happen every night. But it also can be a real bummer because you start to miss home. I miss my girlfriend. I miss sleeping in a bed.

Eventually I get really sick of playing the music. The last couple shows of this tour just seemed like they were six hours long. Just because I was so sick of doing it.

V: What keeps you going when you get to the sick point?

CS: Have you ever seen Apocolyspe Now?

V: Yeah. Love it.

CS: In the beginning he’s excited to get back into the war. But it’s war! You shouldn’t be excited to get back into the war.

When I’m on the tour I get crabby, I get grumpy–everybody does. It’s hard to maintain a good attitude the entire time. You finally get out of it and you sit around for a couple of weeks and you’re (taps repeatidly on the table top). You can’t wait to get back into it. You can’t wait to go back out.

V: So is tour really like the Vietnam War?

CS: I wouldn’t compare it to the Vietnam War. It’s the attitude of you miss it when it’s gone and then when you’re in it you think it sucks. I miss tour when I’m home and when I’m out on the tour I miss home.

V: Are you ever happy where you are?

CS: Totally. I don’t want to sound like I’m really grumpy and hate both. Maybe the problem is I love both.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (JOB)

V: So being a rock star isn’t all eternal glory, would you ever do anything else?

CS: I don’t really know how to do anything else.

V: But even if you did?

CS: No. I’ve had just about every type of job you can have. Office jobs, grocery store jobs, retirement homes, food, restaurants, coffee shops. I’ve done manual labor and I hate it all.

I don’t want to do anything else. If I can make a living doing something like playing music then fuck yeah. That’s what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. I have been doing it my whole life. There’s nothing else for me.

I have other friends who want to break into music and they want to make it big but they have to make it to their waitering job three times a week. They can’t not go. You either do one or the other. I’ve chosen this.

Even if I hated it I’d still do it. Basically because it’s the best out of everything I’ve tried so far.

V: What’s the worst?

CS: Um. The worst job I ever had was working in this office. It was actually an old closet with a desk, and I had to share the closet with my boss. My boss was a coke head who would chew gum really loudly in the closet all day long.

There wasn’t really that much work to do. That’s an odd thing to complain about, but when you have to spend your entire day. . .

V: Acting like you’re working?

CS: Yeah. Did you ever see Joe vs. The Volcano?

V: Yeah.

CS: Remember that office with the one light hanging? It was just like that, only just imagine that with your boss sitting across from you chewing gum in your ear all day long. Basically that job sucked the life out of me for months and months on end so i just stopped going.

V: Do you usually quit jobs, or do you usually get fired from jobs?

CS: I’ve only been fired once. That was horrible because that was being fired by the best job I ever had.

V: Can you talk about it? Or is it still a sore spot?

CS: No. It’s cool. I was working at The Gleaners Cafe, a coffee shop in South Philly, which is a really cool spot. I like it a lot. It is run and operated by my friends, so it was a very friendly environment. They didn’t care about much. You could get away with doing a very minimal amount of work and it was an overall very awesome vibe to work in.

I could listen to Death Metal if I wanted to, even with a room full of old ladies. It was great. I messed up really bad.

After coming off of a long tour, and my boss was covering my shifts for me while I was away, I was closing, running way behind, and I was also going to opening the next morning. I figured I would just leave the mess and clean it up in the morning when I got there, and no one would ever know. I’ll get away with this huge mess and no one would know.

Well, my boss showed up in the middle of the night and found the place a complete disaster. He told me that he didn’t want to fire me but “a line had to be drawn somewhere.”

V: Ouch.

CS: I was rather upset. I actually even offered to work a couple of days with no pay, just to keep my job there. But. . . That was the last job I had and I haven’t had to get a new one yet. I have managed to just squeeze by.

MYSPACE CHANGES EVERYTHING

V: Has MySpace changed public relations between bands and the public?

CS: Totally. Now it’s so much eaisier to contact the bands you’re in love with. I remember when i was littel you had to write your favorite band a letter.

V: Yeah. Mail-order records.

CS: The process took forever and who knows if they ever read your letter? Maybe they would respond. A few people would respond. . . with Myspace you can send a letter, and it’s there instantly and you can see if they’ve read it.

We get a lot of people writing us directly about very specific things. From “Why aren’t you playing all ages shows?” to “Can you sneak me into your non all-ages show?”. It’s kind of like calling someone or texting them. You see a band that you like and you can call them and ask to get into their show for free! I would never have thought of doing that, but now it’s so easy to contact people.

At the same time there are bands that I have loved my whole life on Mysapce. If I wanted to I could write King Crimson a letter. “How’s it going? I really like the new record”; and I can see if he has read it or not. And then there’s the little picture thing, you can actually see and know all about that person.

MySpace has one hundred percent changed the music industry. It has changed everything.

V: How do you feel about the public having that level of accessibility?

CS: I don’t want any fans getting super bummed out on me. We can’t always play all-ages shows, they just aren’t always available. I get carded at the shows. I have a beard and I’m going bald, we can’t sneak people in. I get sort of bummed when people assume that we can.

V: Do you feel like you have more of a responsibility to your fans becasue of it?

CS: Yes. We have built pseudo-friendships with fans over Myspace. We’ve found places to stay and hung out with people we’ve “met” online.

V: Isn’t it weird when you finally meet a digital person?

CS: Yeah. When I first got a computer, I tried to IM and I got all these friends who I would talk to everyday but I didn’t really know them. It started to freak me out. I stopped IMing because of it.

V: Right. That’s it, except for the question you have to ask every musician. What are you listening to right now?

CS: The new OOIOO record. It’s amazing.

End.