As Baebles interview with Joe Bradley, drummer for Atlanta garage-rock band Black Lips, begins, he is just about to embark on the 14-hour drive to Austin, TX for South by Southwest. This shouldnt surprise anyone familiar with the band. Since forming in 2000, the quartet has lived most of their lives on the road, hoping to, as Bradley puts it, go where most other bands wont.
The Lips live show has become legendary in rock circles. Urine has been spit at the audience. Firecrackers have gone off in mouths. Guitars have been played with body parts usually hidden cept for a Stooges concert. But all that would mean nothing if the music wasnt up to snuff. In support of their recently-released
Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo, recorded live in Tijuana, Bradley shared with Baeble some memories of their last European tour (37 shows in 41 days if youre counting at home).
Baeble: Im bummed, man. I missed you guys when you came to Mercury Lounge in New York last year.Joe: Well, that was kind of a ridiculous show. That was basically us being brats because the club wasnt being very kind to us and the roadies from Wolfmother tried to fight us. It wasnt a good vibe that night. We tend to have a problem with really legitimate venues because they try to do all these things that they think is legitimate, but they forget about the relationship between the club and the band. The clubs not supposed to be assholes to the band cause the bands just gonna turn around and fuck some shit up.
B: Tell us briefly how you guys got started.J: Back in high school, there was a huge group of kids that we were a part of that didnt really fit in to the other generic stereotypical groups. We were a big group of social rejects or whatever and we all loved music. We all started playing together when we were 15 and we said, Lets do a band just for fun.
B: Has the live show evolved since you started or is it pretty similar now?J: Well, Atlantas an interesting place. The kids always go nuts here. It became a staple for us to have a crazy show because when we started, we couldnt really play our instruments that well. It was kind of a balance: either the musics really good and the shows not that exciting or the shows are
really wild and the music is terrible. We figured if people werent really enjoying the music all that much, we could at least put on a good, wild show so people could have a good time. But were not trying to put too much focus on gimmicks because we figure the music could speak for itself.
Occasionally, though, if theres good energy in the room, if theres a good transfer of energy between us and the audience, then something crazy might happen. Its always possible, but were not like a shtick or a gimmick band where thats the only thing we have going for us.
B: You just got back from Europe. Do you see a difference between European and American audiences?J: They seem to be not so jaded, especially in the major cities where its Oh, theyve seen one band, theyve seen 1,000. People in Europe generally have a passion for music that comes over and they really get into it.
B: Can you share some thoughts from last years European tour?J: Sure thing.
SardiniaWe toured Sardinia for a week and played all over. People are kinda starved for music down there. How many bands go and play Sardinia? Theres a group of promoters down there who live and work in Munich during the winter and they save up all their money and they go to Sardinia and just put on these skate festivals, shows and barbecues with boars and squids and shit.
We had been awake, asleep, awake, asleep for 30 hours or so and we finally get to play a show and the first place we play is this extremist, separatist bar. Theres a sect in Sardinia that wants Sardinia to be its own country and we played in one of their bars. They took us into the back room and started getting really deep and intense about their beliefs in Sardinia. We were just trying to humor them to some extent. I was wearing a hat with the Die Slaughterhaus [Records] symbol on it, which is a red star with two bars next to it. I think they thought we were communist or socialist, so it probably made it a little bit easier for them to talk to us.
FranceBordeauxs cool because its kind of a dirty city. If you get in the city center where all the old shit is, theres a lot of people yelling at you and wouldnt understand you unless you were from their home country. But theres a great energy vibe in the south of Europe in general. Whereas the people in the north are a little bit more conservative in their actions. Its kind of a tradeoff: the people in the north spend more money on merchandise but theyre more conservative and dont really go so crazy.
In Paris, theyre very proud to be from Paris. Most of the time, the people in Paris dont give a shit about anything that doesnt concern them directly. But there are some really great people in Paris who are down with the same stuff were down with.
SpainIf you need to get anything done on the weekend in Spain, it just wont get done cause thats not the way they do things there. Our van broke down on a Friday and we couldnt get it repaired for a week.
NorwayNorway was a lot of fun. We got into a fight with the promoter in Oslo because they refused to pay us. I had great expectations for Oslo. I always heard its a great city and the sidewalks are heated in the winter so the snow melts and shit.
GermanyThe thing about the Germans disposition and some German guy said this to me they get all fired up every 100 years and then they calm down. So give it another 20 years or so when the generations are far enough removed from what happened in the 40s and once that happens, then well start seeing less stoic and more excited people. They may not go as crazy as other countries, but they genuinely dig the music.
Some Random City Whose Name Escapes BradleyWe played one place that looked like a bomb shelter. There was a dirt floor and I didnt even have the proper equipment and the promoter couldnt provide it so I had to use my suitcase as a bass drum. They didnt have proper cymbal stands, so I think I used a broom or something.
* * * * * * * * * * * *The Black Lips are, as always, on tour. Check out their Vice Records website and Myspace page for dates.
