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OA : From remote past to burning present: about the tour now: how did you guys get in touch with Jean Genet? They are following you for the whole tour, right? PR: We have a booker in Münich who likes the underground scene, he likes helping bands out, he likes... having a punk rock roster.. you know, people who still care about the music industry, or saving the music industry, so a lot of the times, he will pair up bands that have more experience than others to like piggy back on what others are doing and so that's why Jean Genet are on tour with us.
OA: You basically met them on tour, then BB: Well, LoE played with them once before, a year and a half ago in Leeds, that's where they're originally from.PR: That's kind of a mentorship this tour... a forced mentorship, as adorable as they are, the other day I was just like: what is that pile of chords? "huh, it's a patch chords" and I was like (shouting in a deep voice): "roll your chords!... and buy a guitar case, for godsake" And they've been telling us that they'd never done more than two shows in a row... so they are pretty cute. But also: it's good for them to just be learning how to travel and how to take care of your gear. You can still be punk rock and take care of your gear. They were really big in Strasbourg, people went crazy for them. It's a good learning experience for them. It's always fun to watch people go on tour for the first time. Cause some people are born to it: you can handle it or you can't. They are doing really well. And we had a long night's drive, we were super exhausted and everybody was kind of drunk... kind of drunk. They were in the van, they were gonna sleep in the van. There were both like completely passed out on their face. I was like: "do you guys wanna take a shower or go to a hotel room?" And they were like...(she imitates snoring). So I just closed the door on them and then I thought: bad the next morning... but then I realized: "oh, that's right, you're twenty two..." And they were like (she says in a fresh breakfast voice) "good morning" I coudn't do that anymore.
OA: And you've been playing quite a few queer event on this tour, and many had invited almost exclusively women artists, like the Female New Rock festival, in Nantes, F: Linn Breedlove, Stink Mitt, Scream Club, Rhythm king and her friends... PR: Yeah, and it's always fun to play with Stink mitt, you never know what s gonna happen. Kate ended up... she was saying that she
had carpal tunnel from holding a microphone and she'd wrapped her whole arm in a tank top, that was her wrist brace and then the next thing
you know at 4 in the morning, we're smoking hash out of a pear... but they are great, you know, like total rock'n'party. It was good,
watching Scream Club and them...
OA: But you knew them from before, yeah, they appeared on Giggles on the Dark, too PR: It s good 'cause these bands have a lot of ownerships of what they do. That's always so comforting: "this is what I do, fuck you if you don't get it! Let s just party and have fun on stage" It's always a good time.
PPB: You know this 1980s, then the 70s, a rock opera... What are you going to do next? Are you going further back? BB: Or all girl garage bands...Shirelles. After we did the first album, people told us: "that s cool, but what can you do? How much lesbian music is there out there?" That's why it made me go "hum, how much of lesbian music IS there out there?" A lot of the bands that we did on the second album I had previously never heard of. I went looking. I had all these friends that were records collectors, and I was like: look for this, or look for that, they were bringing stuff for me to listen and we would hear the most obscure stuff, you know that got only printed one time, lost in some record stores. It opened my own eyes to the fact that people like KD Lang or Melissa Etheridge, they're known, they're radio gits and that's kind of easy to find, but the history of lesbians and lesbian music, women's culture... it kind of evaporates pretty quickly. Doing this project, it really forces me to dig and research, and that's what is awesome about it: It's so much stuff. I was amazed and surprised. I mean people forget so easily. I think that s what a lot of DJ and the mix culture is about: rediscovering artists and sounds and musical styles that got a bit forgotten. People like ESG were thrown back on the scene because they got sampled so much. That's what we're doing to lesbian music, first it used to be called women's music, not lesbian music, so we're taking that up now, we're going to be digging through the crates and we're gonna find all sorts of crazy shit there so much stuffout there. I think at this point right now we're more free with it because I think we kind of broke the... you know, we're the ones who created the formula and then we broke it ourselves after the first album and now we can do whatever we want. We can sample movies, we can sample textbooks, music, or we can just write our own things and sample ideas, whatever we want to do. I just think it's quite of interesting to look back to history and keep feeding it forwards, so that people get a sense of where they're coming from.
PPB : it's like reaching the generation gap BB: yeah! Seriously, when people said this to us the first time, we were like "what will we do?" But actually, we discovered there was a world of stuff out there. People don't know about it because women's culture is constantly undermined... or erased. Looking for it is therefore utterly exciting
PPB: That reminds me of Jack Alberstein's archive theory BB: yes exactly!
Thanks so much, lessies, marty and Sushi. This goes to you. |