If you grew up in Canada around Y2K, you probably remember an lovesick cartoon duo named Simon and Milo. The pair known as Prozzäk made uptempo, danceable tunes that turned them into mainstays on MuchMusic and YTV during the turn of the millennium. The short, neckless Simon and tall, Schwarzenegger-like Milo are played respectively by Jay Levine and James Bryan McCollum, both of the Philosopher Kings. During Hot Show, the duo sets off on a never-ending quest to find true love with a vast repertoire of catchy songs as their soundtrack: “Strange Disease,” “Sucks to Be You,” “Omobolasire,” “Wild Thing,” and “Europa” among them.
Their debut album, Hot Show, dropped in 1998 and is certified triple platinum in Canada. Prozzäk also proved to Canadian listeners that a virtual and/or animated band could be a commercially viable concept before Damon Albarn took that idea to new commercial heights globally with Gorillaz. Older generations had the Archies, the Banana Splits and Alvin & the Chipmunks, but Prozzäk’s Hot Show came along at a time where both music videos and animated TV shows were booming, and their profile would be boosted further by heavy airplay.
A sophomore album, Saturday People, dropped in 2000 before the duo attempted to break into the American market by signing with the Disney-owned Hollywood Records, though their name was altered stateside to simply Simon and Milo. They released one compilation album there, Ready Ready Set Go, in 2002, which included a song, “Get a Clue,” written for a same-named Disney Channel film starring Lindsay Lohan.
Two other albums, 2005’s Cruel Cruel World and 2017’s Forever 1999 have come in the years since, and Levine and McCollum continue making music and touring as Prozzäk today (they even tried launching an animated series in 2018). The duo will be performing at Edmonton's Pride Festival this coming August, as well as with Aqua and Bran Van 3000 in Niagara Falls in June.
Complex Complex talked with Milo about Hot Show’s legacy, opening for Destiny's Child at Canada's Wonderland, and arriving just before Gorillaz redefined the animated band.
Hot Show turns 25 in November. What goes through your mind when you think of that upcoming milestone?
Whoa! I hadn’t even thought of that 25 year thing yet, wow! That’s a long time ago. I feel old. But honestly, I’m so proud of that record, and it launched Prozzäk. And Prozzäk is the craziest, most amazing project that Jay and I came up with. It's a good memory, definitely.
What do you remember most fondly about that time?
So many things were different back then. When we came out, it was the beginning of the Internet. Which sounds crazy to talk about now, right? That was a while back. We felt like we were at the beginning of something new. There wasn't another animated band breaking at that time. We were before Gorillaz, who had made a splash after that. It felt like we were trying all these new things. Luckily, it all worked at the right time. We worked really hard at it.
What inspired you and Jay to come up with the idea of a cartoon band for the project?
It came out of necessity, really. The first song we did was “Europa”… Have you heard the whole backstory of how we got together?
Yeah, you guys got into a fight in Montreal.
We got into a fight [while we were] in the Philosopher Kings. We were opposite personalities, I'll put it that way. That's a nice way to put it. After we had a fight in Montreal, we had to work it out. We said, “Let's go and try to write a song together.” It sounds so cheesy to even say it, but it was the right thing to do. As soon as we did that, we realized, “Wow, we totally click when we're making music.” That's how Prozzäk was born.
Why did we do it animated? Jay sang “Europa” with this accent. It was in a character, this voice that he used on the tour bus while the Philosopher Kings were on tour. After the show, he’d have a glass of wine and put on this fake British accent and pretend to be an old, jaded rock star. That was Simon, it’s his alter ego.
We did the song, and we meant to pitch it for Ace of Base, who were huge at the time. We thought that would work. When we were recording it, it was in the Sony Music building. They had a really cool building at the time, where there were writing rooms and a full recording studio, where we recorded our first two albums. The head of A&R, who took care of all the creative direction for the label, came in and heard the song. He was like, “Oh, what is that? I love it! Can you do a whole album?” [Me and Jay] just looked at each other and said, "Yeah, sure.” (laughs)
As soon as we decided to do it, Jay was like, “There's no way I'm going to go out there and perform with a fake accent. I'd feel like an idiot.” Immediately, we thought of a cartoon [band] idea, as a way to kind of hide behind that. In the end, the cartoons became such a way better idea than if we just tried to go out there as two guys. Simon and Milo were born out of necessity.
I didn’t realize Europa was intended for Ace of Base. That’s fucking wild!
Yeah! They could’ve done it well, too… That’s what started at all. It wasn't like we sat down one day and said, “Okay, let's create a band.” That's the cool thing about music. Sometimes, random events happen and they’ll lead you to a new path that you hadn't thought of. I personally never would’ve thought I'd be doing the Euro-rap in a fake German accent, a second before I came up with Milo. I was like, “Oh, well that’s kind of the only thing I could do!” (laughs)
Why do you think a cartoon band such as Prozzäk was able to tap into a wide audience so much in Canada for kids of a certain generation?
That was it. It was the biggest time for music videos, really. Now, yes, everything has to be on video and your socials. But back then, that was the height of making videos like little movies. MuchMusic was really important. Everybody watched MuchMusic, and then everybody watched YTV. Luckily, both of them supported our videos. I guess the first video we did was “Omobolasire.” Then after that, when “Sucks to Be You” came out, and then “Strange Disease,” we were like, “Okay!” They knew people liked it. It was a very different time, when everyone was watching the same thing!
Yeah!… And at the time, anime cartoons were big on YTV—Pokémon, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z. In a way, it was perfect timing.
Yeah. In hindsight, of course, you can see why it happened, and all the factors that went into it succeeding. But at the time, we weren't aware of that side of things. I wasn't aware. I wasn't watching anime. We didn't know that our fans were really into anime. That’s actually something I didn't even realize until we came back in mid-2015. We did a reunion show at a cosplay event [the Atomic Lollipop Festival] at the Science Centre in Toronto. We showed up there, and all these fans are dressed up as Simon and Milo and all these other characters. Then we just click, and we're like “Ohhhh! That makes total sense…” Now, looking back, there were a lot of factors [behind Prozzäk’s success] besides just writing a catchy song, or coming up with the characters.
We weren't big enough in England or the States to have the splash Gorillaz did, because Damon Albarn was already big in Blur at that time. So it wasn't going to happen exactly the same way.
What do you remember about the musical climate of 1998?
It was so pop. It was the Max Martin, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears era that was just taking over from grunge before that. It's funny—our first band, the Philosopher Kings, came out in the midst of ‘90s grunge. We were totally the opposite of whatever was happening, so we always felt really left out. But it was also good, because you have your niche. With Prozzäk, we felt like, in a way, it was pop, but it was also quirky and weird and unique. We were committed to doing it that way. We didn't try to replicate those Britney Spears songs, even though Jay and I respected Max Martin and all those Swedish songwriting masters.
What inspired the animation style for Simon and Milo?
We worked with a really talented illustrator, Scott Harder. We had an idea of the look—both Jay and I grew up on Scooby-Doo and that kind of thing. We both liked that look. We also were vaguely aware of anime—certainly the big eyes. We thought that would be a cool element for Simon. He’s so emotional and open, and we thought the eyes would reflect that. Scott was a great illustrator. He helped us develop the characters, and then he passed away really young. He had a heart attack when he was in late 20s or early 30s.
That’s horrible, I’m so sorry.
Yeah. He didn’t get a chance to really see the characters take off, unfortunately. But we ended up working with an animation company partly owned by Anne Murray, called Animation House. Toronto, L.A. and South Korea was where they were based. All the cel animation was done in South Korea. It was totally influenced by whatever they were doing at the time there. We really worked on the characters initially, and on getting the look of them. But as far as how the rest of the world looked, that was partly the animation studios, too.
Which song did you have the most fun writing for that album?
There was a lot! “Strange Disease,” definitely. We knew that one was special as we were writing it. We just pictured Simon saying, “A little sexual frustration,” and that was like, “Oh my God, that sounds like a hit.” That one was fun. “I Like to Watch (Milo’s Night Out)”—for me, it was so random. That’s not even my thing! (laughs)
Every song was really fun as we were writing them, just being really free creatively. In the end, there's a lot of heart in all the songs. Jay will say for sure that a lot of it was autobiographical as far as what he was going through at that time. That's why I think people connect with it, because there is real emotion in there. It's not just coming from some cerebral place.
Let’s talk about “Sucks to Be You” for a second. How much pushback did you get from radio and TV programmers over that song? I've always admired how you managed to get the word “bastard” on the radio.
Right! Which is so funny, because now that's so tame… But there was some pushback. I remember we were coming up with that on the way to the studio one day. Jay had the idea of the verses, but it was as a grunge song. So that part, “I’m a bastard if it’s true,” was way slower—more like Kurt Cobain would’ve done it. I really liked that melody, but I was like, “Okay, I wonder if that could be Prozzäk. Can we speed it up? Let’s try that.” Then I was like, “Yeah, that's cool, but it's not a hook. We need a hook.” We were talking about [either] a specific date he'd been on, or I think someone had said that to him, "sucks to be you.” It was a saying that was around and in the air. Everyone was saying it at the time. Once we realized that would work, we were like, “Oh yeah, this is the moment to bring ‘Sucks to Be You’ out.” That just happened to still be the right time when it came out, because people were still saying it.
And you managed to get “bastard” past radio censors.
Yeah, I’m sure they gave us some pushback at first. Like, “I’m a jerk if it’s true,” “I’m a bad guy if it’s true”. They came up with something totally stupid. We were like, “No no no, it’s got to be ‘bastard’.” Throughout the whole process, there were moments where we had to put our foot down, for sure. Actually, choosing that as a single was something that we fought for, because the label didn't understand it. They didn't think it was a hit. You hear those stories all the time, and this is another one. We knew as soon as we did it, “Oh my God, this has got to be a single.” And they didn’t get it. So we just had to keep pushing it, and eventually they gave in.
Sucks to be them for not recognizing it sooner.
Well, in the end, they luckily came onboard. And honestly, Sony was amazing at the time. It was just the right moment where Canadian record labels—specifically Sony —had money for domestic Canadian music, which they didn’t really have before. Céline Dion was the biggest artist on that label. When she blew up, all of a sudden there was all this money at Sony Canada, so they could sign these other [Canadian acts]. They signed the Philosopher Kings, Our Lady Peace, Chantal Kreviazuk, all these other people… That definitely helped pay for those animated videos, because they were hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time.
What inspired how you guys made those music videos? They felt like a bit of an episode of a cartoon show in some ways.
We always envisioned it as a bigger story. We wanted to do an animated series from the get-go. We saw it as, “Let’s tour it as holograms,” back before that was even a possibility. Once we had the characters and the story, we really saw all the potential, like, “How can we keep going?” It definitely was bigger than just the song. But another great thing was that we had a great head of the video department at Sony who we worked with on all those. He was just the right guy. His name was Marc Lostracco. He had just come out of film school. He was 23 or something at the time, but he was the head of the video department. He loved the characters. He loved the music. It just happened to work.
Jay and I would write out the synopsis for the video, and line-by-line what we would see happening. We’d work with him to storyboard it, and then he ended up directing some of those videos, too. If it weren't for him, it wouldn't have happened the same way — another right person at the right time on the team.
You guys tried to break into the U.S. and you partnered with Disney. Your project was renamed Simon and Milo. Was that because Disney felt iffy about marketing a band named after an antidepressant to kids?
Absolutely. They felt more than iffy. We knew going in that if we decided to work with Disney, they would probably have some issues with some things. They did, and we weren't really happy with how the whole thing went down, either. On one hand, working with [Disney] was a dream, because they were the biggest animation company. So we're like, “Oh, wow. We’re developing a Saturday morning cartoon show with them!” But it was a Saturday morning Disney cartoon show in the early 2000s. It's not Adult Swim—it was before all that. That was kind of the main reason we even decided to go with them.
In the end, it wasn't the right partnership, because Simon and Milo have a bit more edge than that, especially back then. We did have a champion there, though: Jason Jordan. He was the head of A&R—it was Hollywood Records, which is owned by Disney. He was the first guy who signed the Philosopher Kings to a U.S. deal when he was 19. We were one of the first bands he signed to Columbia Records. We had a long history with him, and he was always a fan. He happened to really like Prozzäk’s stuff, too. That was one reason why we wanted to work with them, because we had a good relationship there—with Jason, anyway. But the big Disney machine did try to soften Simon and Milo too much.
So if something like Adult Swim was around at the time, you would have been more inclined to try doing something with them?
Of course! Yeah, absolutely. That would’ve been ideal. I mean, it still would be ideal. (laughs)
How did you guys manage to pull off live shows in the late 90s, despite being a cartoon band?
The cool thing was, like we mentioned, the reason why we did it as a cartoon was because Jay was never going to be comfortable. He didn’t want to sing as himself onstage and show his face. So we were always trying to come up with something more creative that was just based around the videos. Luckily, at that time—again, timing is everything—raves were really big when we first started. It was maybe towards the end of that phase of the rave culture here.
The first few shows we did were just videos in the middle of a rave. We got to be in the audience watching people react to it and see when Simon says, “put your hands in the air,” when they were going to do it and how they would react. That was one of the coolest moments. It totally felt like I was the Wizard of Oz. It was so cool. So we did some raves, but the first show we did was actually just that screen, opening for Destiny's Child at Canada's Wonderland. That was pretty cool. At that time, it was Beyoncé before she was Beyoncé.
Just casually seeing Beyoncé at an amusement park. No big deal.
It was cool. She was friendly and professional—they all were. But then eventually, after Hot Show blew up, fans kept saying, “We want to see you, you’ve got to do a real tour!” Eventually, I think Jay got over himself and wanted to get out there. I love performing, so I was always down for being involved with the show. We came up with what we do now: the video screen is still the biggest thing, but we’re performing there.
We had massive Simon and Milo heads designed. Back then, for whatever reason, we had them made of the heaviest steel and fibreglass you could create. It [cost] tens of thousands of dollars to make these stupid heads, and then we had to carry them around. It was a total headache. When we came back in the mid-2010s, we found out you could just do an inflatable head that fits inside one suitcase—both of the heads. That was a game changer.
If you had 2023 technology in 1998, what would you have done differently with live shows?
We would’ve done a hologram show, and have it happen simultaneously in Toronto, London, and Japan the same day. That was our vision back then. I guess we're getting closer to that, but I don't know now if people would rather see a hologram [than a real person]. I think they'd still rather see a real person.
Hot Show proved that a cartoon band was a commercially viable endeavour before Gorillaz emerged, right. We’ve also seen Hatsune Miku and other cartoon bands like Dethklok from Metalocalypse. Do you feel like you were ahead of the curve, or was it something different?
We were just there at the right time, I think, in Canada. We weren't big enough in England or the States to have the splash Gorillaz did, because Damon Albarn was already big in Blur at that time. So it wasn't going to happen exactly the same way. It couldn't have happened any other way. It was the right time, with the right team around us, and with the help of the right media, MuchMusic and YTV. They all made Hot Show what it was.
What does the future hold for Prozzäk?
I hope the future holds more tours, for sure, because we love to play these songs live. Jay and I are always going to want to create new Prozzäk music. Hopefully there'll be [a Prozzäk project] that people will resonate with again.
