The Party Is Over: Mel Gagarin, Punk Rocker & Public Servant

Hapa Mag - MARCH 10, 2021

By Matt Park

“The party is over. Here comes the hangover.” The opening line of Scarboro’s title track from their album Here Comes The Hangover pretty much sums up the world for me right now… but you know, hangovers are a good thing if listened and responded to correctly. We’ve all got the shakes, the headache, and are desperately fighting the urge to puke. It’s time to drink some water, take some aspirin, and get to work. We can’t go back to the way things were, and I don’t want to. The old world is dead. I want to find the new one. Mel Gagarin is the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the band Scarboro, and I believe he is one of the many people who are out there busting their ass to show us the road map to the new world.

Mel’s band Scarboro has been writing, recording, and touring since around 2012. They’ve released 2 singles, 2 EP’s, and one full length album. This band deserves a serious listen. If you like punk rock and New York Hardcore, you will love Scarboro. If you don’t like punk rock and New York Hardcore, you will love Scarboro. If you give them a listen and this doesn’t turn out to be true… well… then you’ve got problems that only you can solve.

The solo on “Daddy Issues” off of The Safe Word is Yes is truly inspiring. Mel basically sums up everything the song expresses in one awesome riff, repeated twice. The opening of “Here Comes the Hangover” begins as a haunting two-note riff on an acoustic guitar which then blooms into a loud, beautiful heartbreaking sound. Jack Counce plays bass for Scarboro and is a monster on the instrument. The precision and intensity of the basslines make me feel like I’m riding shotgun while he makes the jump to lightspeed. Their search for a new drummer was put on hold due to Covid. One more reason why I hate this fucking virus.

Oh yeah… Mel also ran for congress to represent NY-6 in the 2020 primary, and if politics wasn’t the trash fire that is, he would have won. One of the many policies he ran on was The Golden Years Security Act, a policy that would “make sure the basic needs of our elders are met: from preventing dsicrimination of LGBTQIA+ elders in nursing facilities to addressing the specialized medical needs that our current infrastructure fails to.”

I spoke with Mel over the phone for this interview. The first time we did it, he knocked it out of the park, but I had the record function on standby. The second time we did it, he knocked it out of the park again, and luckily I made sure it was recording.

The pandemic has put bands on hold. When you can write and practice and record again, how do you want to go about it? You have talked about wanting to make a third album. Are you dreaming up what this album would be about?

Not quite yet because that’s been the interesting thing about this pandemic and the way that the world has changed. The first couple of records for Scarboro were really focused on confronting mental illness and the challenges and struggles with that. Here Comes the Hangover is semi-autobiographical with some colorful stories that aren’t necessarily based on true stories but are shared experiences from a composite of folks in my life that deal with those same issues. “Wolves on the Radio” is very much [about] coming to grips with a more mature look and coming to the other side of those struggles.

Then this pandemic hit, and where we go from here is this big open-ended question. So much of Scarboro’s songwriting is not so much intentional as it is a natural byproduct of a feeling. It’s really the energy and feeling that drives it. It’s sort of this big question mark because you’re faced with this reality that there’s no going back to the old world. It’s a good question mark. It’s an exciting thing to not know. It’s good to embrace the unknown. What does the future of Scarboro sound like?

How has being a father changed your creative process?

It’s kind of like they change you, and you affect the art. If anything, it’s been able to give some perspective and create a space between myself and the art in a good way, to be sort of objective and braver about it. When you’re younger and doing a lot of this writing, it’s obviously a very personal process, but you’re so attached to it that you let it define you, rather than telling your story or telling a story. Now that my kids are older, and can listen to the music, we have those tougher conversations about my own struggles with mental health and what that was like... or even the experiences of touring, but you’re not just going to be like let’s sit down and talk about depression out of nowhere. They get to listen to the music and ask their own questions about it. Hardcore punk isn’t exactly something that the masses consume, but I’ve always had a perspective of trying to write about experiences in a way that’s accessible to everybody. I think that these are shared experiences that folks have, and I want more people to be into punk rock… especially in this day and age when I think it’s needed.

Do your kids like the music you make? What type of music do they listen to? Do you hear echoes of your musical tastes in their musical tastes, or are their tastes different?

It’s different. They like it, but there isn’t a lot of punk and hardcore that young people are listening to these days. But surprisingly they genuinely like Scarboro on their own. I think because they grew up listening to all of these records being written, so they hear a song from its inception. You know, from when dad is just kind of screwing around and the song sounds like crap, to watching it come out produced on a record.

When you play/record how does the band communicate with each other in the moment to get to the creative places you need to be?

That’s been one of my favorite things about Scarboro and being able to play with [bassist] Jack [Counce] for the past few years, because we really have become a unit in a way that we know where we’re gonna be. It’s happened organically, it’s strange. It’s like how couples finish each other’s sentences. I know right now we haven’t played in months, but we would be able to walk into a rehearsal space and within the hour we would be firing on all cylinders again. It’s dope because we don’t have to think about what we do when we’re onstage. We just play the songs, and that energy naturally transfers over to the audience once we’re sort of connected. You have to be that tight when you’re going that fast, or else it just ends up sounding like a garbled mess of sound.

How has being in public service influenced you creatively?

Scarboro itself is not a political band, let’s say, like an Anti Flag is. But for me, these things aren’t separate. The anger and frustrations that I feel about things on the policy level definitely have root causes that are germane and mundane, and that’s in the music. On the one side it’s an outlet to take all of that frustration and be able to put it into some angry music, but at the same time, I’m a huge advocate of Medicare For All and believe healthcare is a human right. The crises that we face with mental health wouldn’t be as endemic if everybody had access to healthcare for. I think “Eyes of the Enemy” is very much about the structures of society and what’s expected of you, to be this nine-to-five workhorse but I’m not Greg Graffin. I’m not going to lecture folks. Take it for what it is, but those things are very much related.

I love the title of your song “Wolves on the Radio.” Where did you get the idea for that title?

When that song was written I was so stoked to be writing it. It made me happy. I was thinking of the band itself. In my mind I always considered us an underdog band that’s skulking around the edges and then we just kind of lash out. When people see us live, they always love. We always get complimented, and it’s a humbling experience, but it does make me feel like we’re wolves with this fast, quick attack that comes out of nowhere. The radio part is wherever you listen to us. No one listens to the radio anymore, and we need to remind people that the radio exists.

In your past work you told me you were writing about confronting mental illness. What was that process like and how has it helped you? Any advice you have to artists living with mental illness?

The title track of Here Comes the Hangover is very much about confronting those demons. For me, in writing it, it was a hopeful song even though it’s somewhat of a sad song. It’s confronting suicidal ideation. That was part of the healing process for me. That record was very much about confronting the reality of knowing that I had lived with undiagnosed depression for a long time. For artists, or anybody that’s confronting it, it really is about just hanging in there until the next day. I know that in the darkest moments — and especially in this new context where a lot of folks were forced into isolation and discovered that they suffer from mental illness — it can be a very scary thing. But it’s like any disease. I think our society stigmatizes mental health to the point that people feel shame, or it’s a matter of weakness, or they don’t know how their family is going to react.

The message is really to hang in there. That there is no panacea. There is no miracle cure, but [know] that you will get through it. You can work through it no matter how difficult it [is] or how hopeless a situation feels. In that darkest moment it’s good to know that it will pass, as all things do. There is no permanence to this thing, and it’s like the weather in some ways. You’re gonna have some bad days, but hang in there.

You grew up in Elmhurst, Queens. You grew up in and are a part of the New York Hardcore Scene. You have a Filipino/Puerto Rican background. How has all of this influenced your songwriting?

Identity has always been sort of a struggle. Never feeling at home in either space. When you are in the punk and hardcore scene here in New York, it very much feels like a family where everyone feels displaced. Where it’s a bunch of outsiders, so your pride really does gravitate to where you’re from. Over the past few years we’ve seen such an influx of folks that are not from New York, that don’t seem to understand the love that native New Yorkers have here. That’s true for any town to be honest with you, but there is something to growing up in one of the most diverse counties in the world that gives you loyalty to it. Those experiences that you had growing up in New York are something that you’re proud of and does show up in the music. When I think of the song “Watch Your Back” off of Here Comes The Hangover, It’s not entirely autobiographical, but it kind of is. It’s like I may be this older father now, but once upon a time, growing up in ‘90s New York, you always had to kind of watch your back. New York sucked, and you had to be tough and scrappy to survive as a youth. There’s the luxury of adulthood now, but it does show up in the songwriting. It takes you back to those times, seen through the eyes of somebody that never really felt like they fit in either sort of silo when it came to family.

What music are you listening to these days?

Miles Davis. To me, if there were any other analog to punk rock, I think it’s jazz. You can hear it’s a music that’s written by feel and not by some thought-out process. That’s integral to the way I write, even though it’s more structured, it’s guided by emotion. You can ride the waves with jazz in a way that you can with punk rock, or at least the way that punk rock speaks to me. Maybe that’s why I like it. But then again, it is only Miles. The rest of jazz can like... whatever.

Check out Scarboro on Spotify and @scarboropunx on Instagram and Facebook.

Matt Park is a songwriter, guitarist, poet, and actor. He co-wrote music for Ma-Yi's production of Peer Gynt and the Norwegian HAPA Band at ART/NY in the winter of 2016. He played lead guitar in Diana Oh's My Lingerie Band and performed in My Lingerie Play at The Rattlestick Theater in the fall of 2017. He is 1/2 of the band CUTE with Diana Oh and co wrote 24 Punk with her which was performed at The New York Musical Festival, Joe's Pub, and The Bushwick Starr. He is currently working on orchestrations for Rebecca Lee Lerman's Heartbreak Hotel which is being works shopped at the Tank and Gallery Players in the winter/spring of 2019.