INTERVIEW: CHEESE TOUCH
A CHAT WITH @CRAZYFROGFAN42069 AND @ORONOOOOOO
I’m not afraid of TikTok. While other Aging Millennial Hipsters might spend their free time watching middling A24 movies or going on Twitter and arguing about the future of the Democratic Party, I’m out there in the digital badlands, scrolling my ass off like a goddamn jackass. That’s where I came across a lyric that seemed to perfectly tap into the gonzo heart of contemporary American culture—a lyric repeated and iterated upon in video after video by a mysterious rapper with the username @crazyfrogfan42069: “Jake Paul Logan Paul making out.”
These chaotic freestyles would’ve been good enough on their own. But I started digging and found more than just variations on a one-liner. I found a whole world. In many of crazyfrogfan’s freestyle videos, there is a woman cooking or eating food in the background, seemingly indifferent to the insanity taking place in front of her. That’s the singer Orono, who is known for her work fronting the band Superorganism. Crazyfrogfan42069 also makes indie pop under his real name, Mitch Marsico. Together, the two have a new project: cheese touch.
Is cheese touch The Moldy Peaches for the TikTok generation? They only have three singles out, and that is including a recorded version of “Jake Paul Logan Paul Making Out,” but they all do a good job blending hooky chops with anti-folk irreverence. “POOL” in particular seems to capture the essence of Y2K-era dirtbag pop—it just dawned on me that The Moldy Peaches and the Bloodhound Gang have a few things in common. The duo was recently in New York. We met up at a Dunkin’ Donuts next to a gas station in Ridgewood, Queens. This was a few weeks before the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight.
So what has the past month been like for you?
Orono: Chaotic.
Mitch: Stressful. It’s not natural for us to make content. I even hate that word, content, it doesn't really mean anything. But we've been grinding really hard trying to make videos and then some stuff took off on @crazyfrogfan42069, which has been nice. But we've been traveling. We're kind of like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, that movie—we're traveling on buses and planes, so it's been nice to finally have a little celebration with the show we just did.
You've been taking buses?
Mitch: Yeah.
Orono: All sorts of transportation.
Mitch: Long bus rides.
Where have you gone?
Mitch: We’ve taken multiple bus rides because we've been going around the country. We were in California, then Denver, so those were planes, but we would take a bus to a city and miss a bus and then get a ride from a friend.
Greyhound?
Mitch: We've been using it, was it?
Orono: All sorts.
Mitch: OurBus. It’s just a blank bus and they tape a piece of paper that says OurBus on it. It’s really cheap. But, yeah, it's been kind of chaotic, but it's been awesome. We've been writing music and playing some shows.
So where are you based now?
Mitch: Everywhere. I’m from New Jersey.
Orono: The internet.
Mitch: Our Spotify says Beverly Hills.
You were in LA, though, weren't you?
Mitch: We were in LA. That was my first time there, which I loved. I've never really been out of New Jersey, but I'm 28. This is the first time I've really traveled. I never saw a desert before being in Arizona. But it's been fun. We're wiped out. Yesterday we were stressing out about the show, trying to get people to come. Then it turned out to be super fun.
Were there TikTok heads in the building?
Mitch: Oh yeah. A lot of people would basically be like, I found you guys on TikTok. Some people would be like, I know Orono from Superorganism, then I saw you, and then I found cheese touch. It's kind of a weird pipeline. Someone came to the show and he's like, I remember I saw your Better Call Saul edits and now I started listening to you guys' music. All that stuff—it's nice to see that people find the music somehow.
Yeah, Mitch, I was going to ask about the Breaking Bad edits. They make me feel kind of crazy when I watch them.
Mitch: How so?
In a good way. Breaking Bad is in that chasm of culture where it's not new, but it's not old. Combined with your music, it’s sort of cloying and funny at the same time. It's good stuff, what I'm trying to say.
Mitch: Thank you. It's like the Greek mythology of today.
So, when did you start freestyling?
Mitch: I did the “Jake Paul Logan Paul making out” freestyles earlier in the summer, just because I was bored. And then me and Orono were in Arizona with our friends, they have a band called Ring Finger No Pinky. And the drummer, David, is a freestyle prodigy. He’ll freestyle for 45 minutes. Like, I took a whole shower and came back and he was still freestyling. That inspired me to do it again, and then it just kind of took off. Orono was eating cereal.
I was going to ask you about that. There was something mysterious about the whole setup. Orono, were you on board with this rapping? It felt like you were maybe ambivalent about it, from how you act in certain videos.
Orono: I was just a bystander, an innocent bystander.
Mitch: In the one video, you’re cooking or something, and you have headphones on, so you can't even hear. But you were like...
Orono: Listening to three hours of interrogation footage.
Mitch: Yeah, Orono listens to...
Orono: JCS Psychology. It analyzes interrogation tactics for serial killers.
Mitch: I literally get so stressed out when I hear it.
Orono: It puts me at ease.
What's more stressful, him rapping or the interrogation footage?
Orono: Him rapping.
Mitch: It's a good combo. But yeah, we were just vibing and having fun on TikTok.
But then, Orono, you got in the mix. You kind of warmed up to the whole “Jake Paul Logan Paul making out” thing.
Orono: Did I? What makes you say that?
I feel like I saw a video of you doing the vocals, into a laptop maybe?
Mitch: We started making it an actual song. I asked Orono, do you want to make this a cheese touch song? She's like, Yeah. She came back with a whole verse. It's the most epic verse ever.
Orono: Yeah.
Mitch: She brought the emotion to this silly song. You know what I mean?
Orono: Yeah, you gotta balance the funny and the emotional.
Mitch: That's kind of cheese touch. We're emo but silly.
Do you ever listen to that band, The Moldy Peaches?
Mitch: Ah, yes. The Juno soundtrack.
It dawned on me that your band might be The Moldy Peaches for the TikTok era.
Mitch: I think we're like if Kanye West and Rivers Cuomo started a band together.
Orono: Kind of, yeah.
Mitch: We’ll do Juno 2.
Orono: The kid is grown up.
How old is that Juno kid now?
Mitch: Maybe the Juno kid is an adult now. And also pregnant. Twono: Juno 2. I don’t know.
How long has the band been around?
Orono: A few months.
Mitch: Well, what do you count? Our first song coming out? That would be August.
Was that your first show, then, at Union Pool?
Mitch: That was our first ticketed show. We've done a couple public shows, which kind of borderline on performance art, honestly—kind of just unprompted. In Denver, we did a show. There were more people at that.
Orono: Way more.
Mitch: 150 people showed up in Denver. It was just in a park. Union Pool was my first paid show, doing sound checks. I was pretty nervous. But Orono’s been around the world doing that with Superorganism. She was helping me—telling me the terms.
Orono: What’s a term that you remember?
Mitch: Front of house.
Orono: You remember. He's good at retaining memory.
Mitch: That's not true.
Orono: You're a good learner.
So, Superorganism. There’s a lot of members in that band. Orono, what do you prefer? You know, big band, tiny band?
Orono: I think there's pros and cons to both. I think we get way more done, probably, with the two of us. Faster, maybe?
Mitch: It's a little chaotic sometimes.
Orono: It is a little chaotic and it's definitely more stressful, I'd say, in a lot of ways. But I have more oversight and input to the final product. When I'm in a band with seven other people I can be more passive about it. So it's less of my own thing. Right now it's 50-50. In Superorganism I was like 1/8th. So there's a bigger piece of me in cheese touch.
Touring, if you do it, is going to be very different.
Orono: Touring is a big one because touring with Superorganism is very expensive. Paying for eight people and then five, six crew members and a bus and gas. It really adds up. But right now it's just the two of us. So we're opening for a friend's band, Cool Company, in DC and Philly. We can just take a bus or take a train. It’s so chill.
I've done full tours on the Greyhound bus. I was much younger. It's maybe not fun, but it's cost effective.
Mitch: Yeah, definitely.
Orono: And good for the environment.
Mitch: True. The band is definitely a super, like Orono said, 50-50. Also, I feel like I always have someone who's got my back, which is nice. I couldn’t imagine how people tour on their own.
You lose your mind, trust me. I didn't have a smartphone on those tours, but if I documented them in real-time, it might’ve been interesting. Theoretically, you could go on a Greyhound tour and broadcast it.
Orono: I would not livestream because I would be scared to get doxed.
Mitch: I’m scared of live streaming, but we do have my camera and we're trying to make a tour documentary. Also, me and Orono don't know how to drive.
Yeah, I don’t either, that’s why I toured that way.
Mitch: That gives me hope that it's possible, because we really have to plan and plot and scheme.
Orono: When you're touring in a van with a bunch of your friends, the ones that have a license, they have to take turns driving, but I was like, I can't drive.
In the case of Superorganism, you have enough members.
Orono: Yeah.
Mitch: Maybe we'll go on the Greyhound tour. The OurBus tour.
Orono: That’s right now. I think we'll never do this again. We decided.
Mitch: It's exhausting, dude.
Orono: Sometimes I'll remind him, like, dude, we'll never do this again.
Mitch: This is my first time doing it and Orono was like, It's not normally like this. We have a mental breakdown probably once a week. Which, honestly, this is great for the songs. We're gonna write some great great songs in the next couple months.
Orono: Great songs incoming. All caps.
MItch: Great songs coming, guys.
So, you're not down with live streaming. Have you had any unsettling interactions with the TikTok community?
Mitch: Sometimes you get a random crazy message, but mostly people have been really positive. People have come up to us and been like, “Jake Paul Logan Paul making out!” We had that happen like three times in New York City. We were filming a music video for the song and all these bros were like, “Jake Paul Logan Paul making out!”
Do you remember the eureka moment when those bars came to you?
Mitch: No. Like I said, I did it months ago, before we even officially started the band earlier in the summer. But my TikTok, you know, it's so random and stupid, I was just doing it for fun and I just said it. And that video got like 70,000 views but it didn't really take off as much. When I did it again I forgot that I did it months before. Like, I forgot I already did it, so I don't know. I think it's been programmed in me or something—maybe someone broadcasted it in my brain while I was sleeping. The 5G, probably, in my brain.
It’s exciting talking to such a new band. Orono, were you in Superorganism from the beginning of the band?
Orono: Mm-hmm.
With cheese touch, are you feeling that same kind of “new band feeling” you felt with Superorganism?
Orono: Definitely. It's really nice, because when Superorganism started and we were writing all the songs for the first record and making all the art and stuff—that was the best part of Superorganism, when we were making stuff and making things happen. And we're in that stage right now, so it's exciting.
Mitch: It’s brick by brick. Like, Jake Paul Logan Paul, okay, now we're going to have a show. We're doing one thing at a time.
Orono: And making music videos.
Mitch: Yeah we're making our own music videos. We make our own TikToks. We have great friends who will help us of course, but it's really just me and Orono kind of doing it. We make all the art and stuff and it's been super fun and rewarding. We're just gonna see where it goes.
cheese touch on Instagram
(Photo by Kenny Wooten)