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Our interview with Municipal Waste’s Tony Foresta
With a brand new studio album out, titled Electrified Brain, we took the opportunity to talk with that of Municipal Waste singer Tony Foresta! To celebrate the release of this new album, we conducted a two part interview with the singer.
In part one, Tony shared with us his creative process, a song off the album he finds to be hilarious, his appreciation of Troma and science-fiction, and younger bands he is into. For part two, we shifted gears and had a whole conversation about wrestling! We at The Pit love wrestling and happen to know that Tony is a huge fan of the artform himself. He also happened to have worked for WWE over the pandemic. So of course we had to pick his brain when it comes to what he did for them, and wanted to learn more about his passion for the sport. Without further ado, here is part two of our interview with Municipal Waste singer Tony Foresta!
The Pit: We are real excited to learn more about what you have done with the WWE. First off, just to confirm – Are you still working for them?
Tony: Oh no I haven’t worked for them since, like the last [WrestleMania].
The Pit: Got it. So what did you do for the WWE? What was it like working WrestleMania (the world’s largest wrestling event)?
Tony: Dude, I was doing everything. I worked at [the WWE] ThunderDome too. I was there for like 7 or 8 months. I was doing anything from dishes to like mostly catering stuff. And then once WrestleMania started, I got the gig as like the runner. I had the WWE van and I was stocking dressing rooms and shit; [I] helped with setting up in general, and just feeding, like, fucking 200 construction workers [who were there and] building that massive set; it was really wild to see it from scratch start up.
[Tony shares a story about his traveling for WWE related work] – We were leaving the second Thunderdome, which was in downtown Saint Pete [sic] and moving the ThunderDome up to Tampa at the Yuengling stadium. So what happened was that, they split the crew in half, and I went with the WrestleMania [crew]; so while they were building up the set for WrestleMania, which is what I was doing, the other crew went to the Yuengling Stadium and was setting up the new ThunderDome, because they had to move the Thunderdome for the Tampa Bay Rays to go in there and play baseball. So I was over at Raymond James for a few weeks, I had a van and I was like setting up dressing rooms and doing all sorts of shit. I was up at 5:00 AM. I was at Blaine James at 5:00 AM getting shit from the stores and I had a like a fucking Sam’s Club card, a WWE Sam’s Club card. It was awesome. And it was really a fun experience.
The Pit: That’s rad. When did you enter the world of wrestling? Were you a kid or a teenager? How did you get into that world and what was your first show like?
Tony: Well, I grew up in St. Petersburg, FL, that’s where I live now and that’s where the Thunderdome was and shit. But there was a lot of wrestling going on when I was a kid; it was like in the Golden Age. You know, [Hulk] Hogan lives down the street from me; he lived near my grandpa, like, they lived in the same neighborhood when I was little. So I would see Hogan all the time, and where I live right now is Macho Man’s neighborhood. He actually died like, not even a quarter of a mile from where I live right now, where I’m sitting right now. We would see Big Show at Blockbuster Video getting movies and shit. A lot of Wrestlers live here, I think [Dave] Batista lives over here and Gray Wyatt. Yeah, it’s just a wrestling town, I mean since I’ve lived here.
[When I] fly out of the Tampa airport, I’ll see wrestlers there a lot; I see Ric Flair there, saw Rob Van Dam, you know, just flying out of fucking Tampa. Yeah, I don’t know if it was middle school or elementary school, but I remember being on TV on Friday Night Main Event, and like, Koko B. Ware is walking out and I was doing the Koko B. Ware dance as a little kid. I went back to school Monday thinking I was the fucking shit.
The Pit: That’s great! We saw on your Instagram some stuff with WrestleMania and it looked like there was a photo of you sitting near the ring. Did WWE give you any special VIP treatment or anything?
Tony: I mean, yeah, I had like All Access. I was everywhere. It was cool man. I did a wrestling podcast with my friend Colin, and I was explaining that it rained that year real bad and, outside, it was kind of fucked up. So they had this like plastic tarp over the lighting rigs and the water would build up in these pockets. Nobody noticed except for the people that were working [the rig], but these pockets of water were building up and building up, and they’re right above the ring. So at any moment, these things could burst and hundreds of pounds of water would drop on the wrestlers, maybe kill them.
I don’t know, it was fucked up and we were all just standing on the side, watching the main event, biting our fucking nails like, ‘Are these things gonna fucking pop or is the stage going to collapse?’ ’cause it was just raining down. We called it the “Zit” because it actually looked like a plastic zit that would just get bigger and bigger and droop down. It was fucking wild man, but hey, it held. I remember a few days later, we were breaking down the lighting rig, and I actually got to walk up to the Zit and see it from close up. It was the size of like three of me or something. It was still huge; it was just full of water, and that was days later.
The Pit: Damn that is wild! Well, for our last question, we wanted to ask if you feel wrestling expresses a heavy metal spirit? Do you feel that the sport embraces, or represents, a heavy metal ethos? And if so, why?
Tony: I mean, especially like with thrash metal or whatever, there’s a certain fun aggression to it where it’s like friendly violence. I think that’s a term that Gary Holt said about Exodus at one point. But yeah, it’s like everyone’s there to witness crazy shit go down, but nobody is really out there to try and kill each other. And when you see a wrestling audience, it’s very similar to a metal audience, where everyone is there to yell and talk shit and and get rowdy. But they’re all there for the same cause and they’re all having a good time looking out for each other. And I feel like that it’s very similar to like the metal scene – and maybe that’s what attracted me to it that early on. But yeah, it’s fun and I love being a part of both of those things.
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We would like to thank Tony for his time talking with us! The new Municipal Waste record, Electrified Brain, is out now. If you want to check out the first part of our interview with Tony, follow the link below.
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