Marc Brownstein of the Disco Biscuits Talks “Revenge of the 90’s,” Colorado, and Cover Songs

Photos by Jim Mimna

J2G Live has brought us so many great shows here in Denver that have become Colorado traditions like Dance Party Time Machine, Love Shack, and School’s Out, not to mention getting us to see our favorites bands safe and sound all while having a blast on their buses. What you may not know is that it all started with “Foolin’ Around in the 90’s” back in 2011, which eventually morphed into what we know today as Revenge of the 90’s. Although the epic night of 90’s hits took a three-year hiatus, it’s now back for revenge!

Taking place this Friday night at Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, Revenge of the 90’s will feature the usual J2G suspects and Disco Biscuits members Marc Brownstein, Aron Magner, Allen Aucoin; funky to the bone Jesus Coomes of Lettuce; and some of the best local musicians Colorado has to offer. Listen Up Denver! caught up with Marc Brownstein of the Disco Biscuits as he was finishing up a day on the slopes.

Marc Brownstein loves Colorado. “I can’t get enough if it,” Brownstein said of the state. Although he lives in Philadelphia, Brownstein visits Colorado frequently. “I think, if I’m correct, September was the first month in a long streak of coming to Colorado at least once a month. I was here in September, I was here in October, in November we played with Conspirator at The 1-Up, December was Dance Party Time Machine, in January we came out with Electron, in February I brought my son out and went to Keystone for a couple days. March, I’m back out here ridin’. I’m on an epic streak of coming out to Colorado about once every three or four weeks,” Brownstein said. Colorado is like a home away from home for The Disco Biscuits as they have a huge fan-base here and put on their annual blowout bash Bisco Inferno at Red Rocks. It was kind of a no brainer that Brownstein and his bandmates would forge a special connection with Colorado and J2G, as J2G co-founder and Listen Up Denver! contributor Gary Melini is a big fan.

But Brownstein was a bit late to the party. “The other guys, Allen and Aron, had been working with Gary for at least a year or two before I got into the mix. I was really happy when they finally invited me to come. I was like ‘yes!’ And the truth is, I don’t know if I had already been invited and turned it down or not. That happens a lot of the time. A lot of times people will invite me to do something and I’ll turn it down. Then it will go off and I’ll be like ‘why wasn’t I invited?’ and they’ll be like ‘you were invited [laughs], you turned it down for some reason.’ And I’ll be like ‘I did?’ It happens to me a lot [laughs],” Marc said. That being the case, this year’s Revenge of the 90’s will be Marc’s first and it’s a good thing too. According to Marc he doesn’t remember a lot about the 90s, but not for the reason you might think.

The Disco Biscuits were among the first generation of Jambands—then a relatively new term—to come up in the 90s behind bands like Phish and Widespread Panic. Back then the Jamband scene didn’t reach the breadth of people that is does today, as Marc explains. “Everyone always talks about cultural things in the 90’s, and I was not a part of it [laughs]. I truly was not a part of any of the cultural things that happened. Pop music. I looked at the list of songs we’re playing this weekend and they’re all hits. But I had not heard sixty percent of them. That strengthens my theory that I set foot into a Phish show and woke up in 2001 [laughs]. For sure that’s what happened to me because I don’t know anything abut the 90’s. I know about Phish and the Biscuits and everything that happened in my world, but it was a very small insulated world, especially when I got out of the Phish scene and went into the Biscuits’ scene. We were leaving in a very small, isolated world. There were five of us living in a van, and from 1995 to 1998 we were traveling around the country with like thirty fans. That was my world. My world was thirty-five people,” Brownstein remembers. For Brownstein, Revenge of the 90’s is great because he gets to relive a decade that he largely missed. And that’s a pretty cool thing. But Brownstein also gets to learn cool covers, which is something he enjoys doing.

Marc brought up a good point about playing cover songs that many beginner musicians who are original purists might overlook. “Last year Gary invited me to do Dance Party Time Machine and it sounded fun. I like playing cover songs and it’s really fun for me to learn new ones. I feel like it’s good for musicianship to learn other people’s music. Figure out what other people do, especially when you go into a show like this where every song you’re playing is a hit. You kind of get to deconstruct the hits and see what is going on chord wise. The people who put these hits together really knew what they were doing. So I take it as an opportunity to learn, and learn more about music, which is always good this far into a career,” Marc said. Some of those cover songs have even made it into the Disco Biscuits repertoire.

The song Marc and the band dug so much that they worked into their sets was Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony, “The funk version,” Marc said. “We played it and Aron and I felt like, ‘how have we not played this song with the Biscuits?’ We’ve played it at The Ogden, we’ve played it at Red Rocks, and we’ve played it all over. When you have something that is classical that you can get super funky with, you should just play it.” It will be interesting to see if any of the Revenge of the 90’s songs pop up on Disco Biscuit summer tour.

So be sure to check out the show this Friday at Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom so you can see where it all started.

REVENGE OF THE 90’S
feat. members of the Disco Biscuits, Lettuce & More

Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Friday, March 18th
Tickets: $25
PURCHASE HERE