During Winter Week, the local band Lollipop Surprise, composed of guitarists Ben Wohlfarth and Hannah Mead, keyboardist Lowell Glovsky, bassist Matt Ripley, and drummer Ben Schattenburg, performed an energetic, if somewhat controversial, show for Wayland students.  WSPN interviewed members Ben Wohlfarth, Matt Ripley, and Ben Schattenburg.

When and how did your band originate?

Ben Schattenburg: Me and Wohlfarth have been making music for a long time. And then we included Lowell, in the band Project Lowell. Then Hannah and Ripley had interest in joining and we decided Project Lowell was a very boring name, so we renamed it Lollipop Surprise.

Where did the name ‘Lollipop Surprise’ come from?

Ben Wohlfarth: We really needed a new name, something goofy and off-kilter. And I said Lollipop Surprise, and Ben said “That’s a good name.” And so we just went with that.

Matt Ripley: I still like Schatt-tinsel and the Inadequate White Men.

BS: I still like the People’s Pan-Sexual Peace Party.

BW: We ran the gauntlet.

What are your favorite lollipop flavors, if any, and do any of you like surprises?

BS: I hate surprises. And a lollipop is really just hard candy with trash attached to it. I’ve never liked lollipops that much.

MR: I actually hate surprises. If someone’s like, “I have a surprise for you.” I kind of want to punch him. I love lollipops though, my favorite flavor is blue raspberry.

BW: We have experimented with how many licks it takes to get to the center of a lollipop.

MR: Actually, yeah I did that in fourth grade, remember?

BW: We have a long lineage of lollipops.

BS: We should have bought lollipops and given them out at the show.

MR: I said that too, but Ben [Wohlfarth] thought that was a bad idea.

How would you describe your music to people who have never heard you before?

BS: Eclectic. We haven’t found our sound quite yet. There’s some tension with that. Me and Wohlfarth sort of take a lot of inspiration from New Wave. It’s very aggressive, very abrasive. And I think there is enough musical cohesion that Hannah introduces a lot of folk elements.

MR: It’s like if a really popular band stopped being popular and were just really upset with themselves and tried to be good again, but they couldn’t really do it.

BW: Yeah…It’s kind of like a lazy Sunday afternoon with monsters involved.

MR: It’s not quite smooth jazz as much as rock. With monsters.

What artists/bands is your music inspired by?

BS: Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.

MR: Beck.

BW: Spoon. We steal a lot from Spoon.

MR: Yeah, we do. We stole a couple riffs from “White Lies.”

BS: And we do some direct covers. We did U2’s “Bad.”

How do you put your songs together? How does your music all come together?

MR: Ben [Wohlfarth] pretty much writes everything.

BW: Sometimes for the lyrics he’ll [Matt Ripley] come up with the bass parts. For this one song, Hannah came up with a guitar part and we wrote lyrics. It’s different for every song.

MR: Ben will have a guitar riff he likes, or we’ll have lyrics down or something, and then I’ll just put the bass under it or do some drums.

BW: Sometimes we’ll switch up and I’ll do bass.

BS: It’s a lot of give and take.

Of your band’s music, what’s your favorite song?

BW: It’s called “He Looked at Me Like a Piece of Meat”,  sung by Hannah. It’s feminist.

BS: It’s tied between “Iranian Disco-Suck” and “Piece of Meat.”

BS: We’re more influenced by people we know. We write a lot of songs about people.

BW: We have a song about Matt DeCarlo and Ryan Tuckerman. We have a song about wearing sweat pants on the weekends, which a lot of people do. We have a song about–

MR: Lesbians.

BW: It’s a full range of stuff.

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After the show we caught up with drummer Ben Schattenburg again for a few follow-up questions.

How do you think your performance went?

BS: I think for every person who enjoyed it, there was one person who ran out of the theater screaming, but that’s what we were aiming for. I feel if we didn’t offend someone, we were doing something wrong.

There was some controversy over a few of your song lyrics. Do you have any comment on this?

BS: I don’t think there was actually, you know, anything that profane. It wasn’t what we said but the way we said it that offended people.

From your perspective, what was it that caused all the “uproar”?

BS: Certain things sound different, different words have different meanings when they are yelled. I think the only halfway offensive line was when our lead singer Hannah Mead screamed to the audience, “Mothers kill your sons.” Now I can see why some people would be offended by that. It is mildly upsetting, but if you are going to sing that to soft acoustic music, it’s going to have a different effect than if you play it with a blaring, electric guitar.

What were Coach Parseghian concerns about your show?

BS: There was really no basis for this accusation, but we were accused of promoting pedophilia. I don’t know how that came up. Coach P talked to us and apparently there were a bunch of math teachers who were upset by it, but I don’t remember exactly what the accusations were.

Are you being punished for this incident in any way?

BS: I really hope we are.

You want to be punished?

BS: Yes. People don’t understand how punk rock works. The more you try to suppress it, the better it becomes, the cooler it becomes.

So overall you think the performance went well?

BS: Oh, yes.