First of all, welcome to Slam!
I’ve been listening to you since the time of your very first demos and I have to say I’m happy to see you’re back with a new cd. Can you tell us something about "The Black List"?
Thanks, it feels great to have something out after all these years.The Black List is a CD with songs not played out much or never released. For example, “All for the Love if Rock n Roll” was a Cover song that Hollywood Records wanted us to record for the Encino Man Soundtrack, but before we finished the song Hollywood Records dropped us from the label so the song was never released. The recording is a Demo version of the song.

"The Black List" includes some unreleased tracks, can you tell us something more about them?
The songs on the Black List were put together with the thinking that we wanted people to here some songs that were never released. So we were looking for all the songs we recorded, songs like “All For The Love Of Rock n Roll” “Pills” Manic Meltdown” “1994” “No Fear” that were never played out. Then we wanted to put out songs that were recorded in the last two years of the band, so that’s how we came up with the Black List title.

How did you come up with the idea of that new CD? How is working with Demon Doll Records?
The idea for the Black List came about after Johnny from Demon Doll Records and I started talking about doing a CD. We felt the CD should have songs that had never been played out before or that were never Released. So we went through all our recordings and found the material for the CD. There were about 5 other songs that were recorded that would have made the CD but we couldn’t find the recordings of. Working with Demon Doll Records has been great, any Glam Band would love to be on there Label, first class all the way.

In 2005 you released "Keep On Swingin" with Sunsity Records; apart from the track list, what are the main differences between the two releases?
Well the Sun City CD just had more of our Poppy Sunset Strip Rock stuff on it, The Black List has all our heaver music on it, two different eras of Swingin Thing.

1998 was the year of “The Things” project. Was it a change of name and sound due to the bad period glam rock was going through?
Kind of, when we signed with Hollywood they wanted us to change the name of the band, so we came up with The Things, which was one of the names we were thinking of before we picked Swingin Thing. We had no problem with it because we knew the Glam movement was over, but looking back I think we made a huge mistake changing our name because we lost all our credibility.

Have you been busy with other projects, apart from Swingin' Thing? What are the Swingin' Thing members doing right now?
Yeah we all have been playing Music since Swingin Thing, Chris, Mike and My self started a band called "It’s the Pigs", Henry started a band called the "Invisible Humans" and Paul played in a band called "Suckerpunch". Before that Chris, Mike, Henry and my self played in a band called "Faceplant". Henry and my self also played in a band called "The Church of Mars"

Sunny, I’ve seen you are a Manchester United supporter. Do you also see Italian football?
Yeah, I watch about two Serie A games a week. I like Inter Milan and Roma, but the team I support is Manchester United. One day I’m going to Italy and see Roma and Inter play that would me great.

Do you think there might be a football player which would fit as a member of Swingin' Thing? Why?
It would have to be Cristiano Ronaldo, he would be the singer and pickup all the girls, and Gennaro Gattuso would be our bodyguard!

Let’s go back in time for a second. Can you tell u show Swingin' Thing was born and why you did go for that name?
Swingin Thing started when Chris and I moved to Los Angeles, and started playing with Mike, we had a different Bass player at the time and no singer. On day these two friends of ours saw us rehearsing and asked who our singer was? When we told them we didn’t have one they were like “we have the perfect guy for you” They called Paul and we started talking, two months later Paul moved to Los Angeles from New York and we had our singer. About two week before our first gig our bass player quit the band, so we called Henry and asked him if he wanted to move to Los Angeles to play with us and he said yes, the band was complete. The name Swingin Thing was taken from one of our songs called Swingin Thing, Mike was like “Lets use Swingin Thing for the band name”. It was voted on 4 to 1 and the rest is history. By the way I was the one who voted against the name! Lol.

What are your first memories when you think of the early 90’s and the signature with Monster Productions?
It was crazy, we were always playing gigs, rehearsing or promoting the band. The Sunset Strip was alive and well, from Thursday to Saturday there would be between 2 to 5 thousand people on the Strip at a time. The people we met and the things we did will always be very fond memories for me! Some of the best times of my life. We started working with Sandy Oba, she then signed us to Monster Productions to release a CD and do a tour of Japan, we toured Japan for 10 days and sold about 5 thousand copies of our CD.

Your first gig and your best gig?
Swingin Thing, played its first show in July of 1989 we played at 9:30 opening up for a band called Tommy Gunn. We killed it! People could not believe we were that good, about two months later we were headlining clubs all over Hollywood. One of my favorite shows was in Venezuela, we played in a Bull fighting ring in front of 10 thousand people and the place went wild, there were fires in the stands and people going crazy!! I remember us sounding great that night.

The early 90’s feature many bands that were not that lucky. What can you tell us of bands like:
Alleycat Scratch:
Krayola Kids:
The Orphan Punks:
Peppermint Creeps:
Foxy Roxx:
Guttersluts:
Sure, Alleycat Scratch were friends of ours, except for one rough night between Eddie and myself we got along great. Lol. They were always playing shows around town and I thought they were a great band that always sold out clubs and put on great shows, we would always hangout after gigs and party. Krayola Kids came on the seine later and I think I only saw them play once, but from what I remember they were a good band. I never saw or heard The Orphan Punks. The Peppermint Creeps I saw after Swingin Thing was over, I became good friends with Traci when I was in The Church of Mars, he used to have all these live recordings of Swingin Thing, so we used to hangout and do shows together. I was very deeply saddened when he passed. Foxy Roxx and Guttersluts I never saw play.

You have worked with Tommy Thayer, who was also the guitar player of one of my favourite bands, Shake The Faith. Have you ever seen them live? What band was really worthy to see live those days?
Yeah, I used to go and see Shake the Faith a lot, after working with Tommy for so long we became good friends and I would always go out and see his bands play. My favorite bands in Hollywood at the time were, Taz, Candyhateful and Slamhound. Taz were just a great rock band! I was a big fan of The Brats who became Candyhateful, I thought they were one of the most underrated bands in Hollywood, I eventually joined Candyhateful after Swingin Thing. I was a big fan of Slamhound as well.

Talking of Swingin' Thing again, do you think they will survive or everyone will go on with their own projects?
Wow, who knows. If Swingin Thing were to sell a lot of Music and there was a big demand to see us live we would definitely play again, but I think that would be a tall order because the market for Glam music is not as big as it used to be.

That’s all. Thank you for your kindness; I hope I will listen to your brand new material soon.
Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, it makes all of the band very happy to know that there are still Swingin Thing fans in the world, thanks to them, the music still lives on..