Elise Gregg-Schofield
Interview 2011.
What would you like to know?
Well Elise, I’d like to know…. Who you think you are? Who I think I am?
Yea. Ok, I think, I would like to think that I am a friendly extroverted body piercer, who’s also in a metal band. I think the most, like the two big things in my life are like piercing body mod side of my life and music. That’s probably mostly what I talk about, body modification is a huge part of my life, I live and breathe it. You know, get up in the morning and go to work and that’s what I do. Can’t get away from it. It’s awesome I absolutely love it, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else and I hope that I never have to do anything else, it’s my life. Any yea, no I’m in an awesome band that I love.
Agreed that it’s awesome. Yea it’s pretty cool, it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a really long time. Because I did like a lot of vocals when I was a teenager in an acoustic two-piece band with my buddies but I was never really satisfied with doing that and I have always been listening to metal for a long time and it really is where my heart is. I actually feel really lucky and it’s really awesome to be in this band now with three really cool guys and it makes me really happy. That’s who I am.
Fun. That’s a bad ass person to be. It is. I enjoy it. I’m pretty happy with who I am right now, in this moment in time. Life’s going pretty sweet.
Good. That’s all you can hope for. Yea.
So what are your plans with the band? Well, onward and upward. When we started doing this like less than a year ago started this band with KK my mum said to me ‘what’re your expectations?’ because my mum often worries that I shoot quite high for the things that I want and that leaves me fairly disappointed every now and again. So from her perspective she just wanted to know where it was going. And I said well I’d really like to play at Medusa in Wellington. It’s really the goal that would be a massive accomplishment for me and of course we just did it last night so it feels like it’s just opened up. Like that’s where my expectation was, that’s really what I wanted to achieve and now that we’ve done that, and it happened so much faster than I thought it would and it was so much easier than I thought it would be that it’s like well let’s record an album, lets do a tour, lets go to Aussie! You know, it’s just blown up in my mind now. I’d really like to play in Auckland to a big crowd and I’d really, really like to record an album, and have something to flick out to people, that would be really fantastic, and it’d be really good if we could do that by the end of the year. But we’ll see.
Where do you think you’ll record it? At The Stomach, with Craig. He said from day one that he really liked us and would really like to record us, and it’s um like in Palmy it’s really awesome that we have that there. Affordable recording you know. And all of us have been saving up and putting money in a band account each week so we’ve actually got enough to just walk in there and pay for it and do it. So um yea we’ll definitely do it at The Stomach, Craig’s a really nice guy and he’s given us a lot of support since we started and um I think he’ll do a good job.
I think he will too. That band savings account is a good idea. It is! It was Andy’s idea at the start because he’s been in a lot of bands, you know, so this time around he’s like ‘if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it’ so um yea we’ve got a sweet amount so far and it’s grown pretty fast. So one of these days we’ll bowl in there. Because we’ve got seven songs now which is about half an hour of material, I think we should go and record that now and then we can like move on and start writing more material for the band and stuff.
Have you only ever worked at C2C as a piercer? Yes I um I got my first proper needle piercing the day I turned 15, at C2C, and um that day I knew that was where I wanted to work. And I pestered and I pestered Clint to give me a job and he was like ‘ooooh I don’t know’ and I basically just researched everything I could on the Internet about body piercings because I am just really naturally passionate about it and it really interests me. I just read everything I could get my hands on basically about different aspects of body piercing, different cultures, different techniques. Started piercing up my family and friends um and then once I started doing that, and started showing him what I was getting done um he offered me a job.
It came about at a really odd time in my life because I was really sick for a very long time, I just had a bad digestive system, and I had had this really amazing opportunity to have a consultation with a private doctor in Wellington who saw me once, and booked me in for an exploratory operation and cut out lots of ugly nasty growth from the wall of my bowl and then like the week after I got out of hospital when I was feeling really shit I got a phone call from Clint offering me this job. It was like the operation was this massive turning point in my life, all of a sudden I wasn’t sick any more, I felt amazing all the time, and I got given this job and I’ve almost been there three years now, and it’s fantastic. I’ve learned so much, and I’ve been able to do some amazing things, and I feel like I’m really good at my job, not to blow my own trumpet.
No, I can vouch for that - you’ve put holes in me before. Oh yea that’s right. And I am really passionate about it, and I do love my job. I love giving people a fantastic experience with their piercing, and I hope that feeling never goes away. But I can’t see it going away. I’ve been doing it for the last three years and I still get up and love my job as much as I did the day I first started. I had four days off the other day and by the end of it I was really amping to go back to work, I totally missed it. I missed the contact with lots of different people, and I missed piercing people and just giving people that buzz and a new piece of jewellery and a little bit more confidence you know. It is a really rewarding job, definitely.
"Giving people that buzz and a new piece of jewellery and a little bit more confidence you know. It is a really rewarding job."
That’s cool aye. It is, I don’t want to say lucky because I feel like I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am, I don’t feel like there was a lot of luck that came into it. You know, I did prove myself to Clint in the early days and because of that he’s given me a lot of really fantastic opportunities. It wasn’t luck; it was just that I worked my arse off. And I am really passionate about it and he always saw that, you know. If you’re going to put your time and energy into someone then you want to have someone who is going to take it to the extreme, which I have done. I am doing piercings now that he wouldn’t have even done, so that’s really cool.
You’re very determined. What’s the freakiest piercing you’ve ever done? Um well I guess in my mind there isn’t really such a thing as a freaky piercing.
What’s the most obscure then? Well I guess for other people, the male genital piercings. They’re always a big deal, they’re really difficult to do, there’s a lot of other stuff that comes into play. There’s a lot of acting that comes into play. You have to pretend like you have your shit together the whole time even if you feel like you don’t. There’s a lot of acting, a lot of being confident. Because if you waiver in your confidence ever so slightly that persons just going to freak out. So they are never ever allowed to see that side of it. I have to have my shit together, at all times. But I’ve gotten pretty good at it, I know how to do it. And these days it’s not hard because I do have my shit together and I know exactly what I’m doing. But yea, male genital piercings are always a bit tricky. It’s awesome you know, I really enjoy doing them. Not in like a… I don’t enjoy giving people pain. Sometime I get people coming in saying ‘oh sadistic as, you like hurting people’ but that’s really not what it’s about, that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about the happiness that people get afterwards, not about inflicting pain on them. I’m not like that. That’s not what it’s about.
Where do you see things going, and what do you want? Well I mean, for me, and my base being Palmy, I love that there’s just so many new bands here at the moment you know, and you can only hope that that’s happening across the whole country. I mean if there’s not young people picking up new instruments then the whole system just collapses on itself. And um, I just hope that more people decide to pick up guitars and start like playing the drums and just find that little piece of confidence that goes ‘you know what, I’m going to do this, I’m going to fucking do it’ and if that keeps happening you never know, we’ll get more shows, other people will get more shows, and we’ll all move our way up the ladder and that’ll be fantastic. Did you hear that Ulcerate got signed to Relapse?
Did they?! Yes, that’s pretty awesome news aye. So that sort of stuff to me is really promising for being a musician in New Zealand, in a metal band in New Zealand! To see New Zealand metal bands getting real recognition and real respect for it. And Ulcerate, they’ve been around for a real long time and they are some really hard working guys. They’ve put in the time and the effort, and the blood and sweat and tears, and they’re getting something tangible back for that. That’s awesome; I mean that gives all the rest of us hope.
There used to be this mentality of ‘oh you’re a New Zealand band, you’re never going to get anywhere, this is just fun and games. This is just a band for the sake of being in a band’. Where as now days I feel like we have way more hope for actually getting somewhere, if that’s what you want to do, getting out there and actually achieving real stuff. Getting signed to massive record labels, touring the world. You know, it’s a real, tangible thing to think about. That’s what’s exciting.
It’s possible. Yea it is possible. It’s not just a fairy tale, it can happen. But you know it takes a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of stress. But at the end of the day, if you work all those years, play all those shows, write all that music, and you’re going to get signed to a record label like Relapse then surely it’s all worth it. You know? You’re making albums that’re being released worldwide. All these different people are going to be hearing your music. And I guess at the end of the day, that’s all it comes down to. We can all say we play music for ourselves and a lot of it is, you know, I do write music for myself and a lot of it is very self centred, very selfish, but at the end of the day I could keep all of this to myself and never let it go. But there’s no real satisfaction in that you know. You write music, you start a band so you can share it with other people. And all of a sudden there’s all these possibilities of being able to share it with such a massive audience, its’ really exciting.
Fuck yea. You summed it up. You’ve said everything. I kind of did. Bla bla bla. I’m sure you’ll have enough there.
What’s your favourite drink? My favourite drink is coconut rum and pineapple juice. So tropical, holiday drink.
Is there anything else you’d like to say? Um…. Come into C2C, get a piercing. And come to a Cephalopod show as well. Our next show is on the 3rd of December at The Royal with some really cool bands.
Where can people hear Cephalopod? Um, people can hear our music usually at the Royal, we’re getting ready to release some music, or you can find us on Facebook. We’re putting up some demos soon. So at least there’s something. I kind of didn’t want to do that, I didn’t want to have some half ass, live recording of us but I think, because we’ve got over two hundred people on our page now, it’s like hrmm, I mean we’re a band but there’s nothing to listen to. So I think a half ass live recording is better than nothing. So we’ll be putting up some demos soon. We did get a pretty awesome recording from Swampfest, so I might chuck up a couple of songs from that, but yea, any day soon we will be recording an album which will be released just through me. Chucking it up on the Internet and taking it to shows and stuff.
Cool. DIY. For sure, that’s the only way to do it. I found all these awesome CD cases, you know the slim line ones and they come in like ten different colours and they’re all really neon. Everything about our band is bright and colourful. For a metal and it’s totally like not…
Nah it’s good. It is good! Because I am like a bright and colourful person, and I feel like that has to be portrayed through us as well.
It’s kind of like a point of difference as well, without wanting to have one. Yea. It is exactly. It’s a point of difference just because that’s who I am. I like to be loud and excessive, and in your face. It’s a good thing if you’re the front person of a metal band, maybe that’s why I’m so happy doing this. Finally found the thing where I’m allowed to be loud and obnoxious and get away with it.
It’s funny how everyone just listens to you when you have a microphone. I know it is aye! No matter what you say they just stand there and listen. You can just abuse the shit out of them and they don’t even know. Not that I do that!
Do it next time. Yea maybe I should.
Ha. Well thank you. No, thank you.
Photography by Katie Cheer.
