AN INTERVIEW WITH JOE BRADLEY OF BLACK LIPS

- By Jason Newman

As Baeble’s 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 shouldn’t 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 won’t.”

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 wasn’t 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 you’re counting at home).

Baeble: I’m 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 wasn’t being very kind to us and the roadies from Wolfmother tried to fight us. It wasn’t 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 club’s not supposed to be assholes to the band ‘cause the band’s 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 didn’t 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, “Let’s do a band just for fun.”

B: Has the live show evolved since you started or is it pretty similar now?

J: Well, Atlanta’s 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 couldn’t really play our instruments that well. It was kind of a balance: either the music’s really good and the show’s not that exciting or the shows are really wild and the music is terrible. We figured if people weren’t 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 we’re not trying to put too much focus on gimmicks because we figure the music could speak for itself.

Occasionally, though, if there’s good energy in the room, if there’s a good transfer of energy between us and the audience, then something crazy might happen. It’s always possible, but we’re not like a shtick or a gimmick band where that’s 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 it’s “Oh, they’ve seen one band, they’ve 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 year’s European tour?

J: Sure thing.

Sardinia

We toured Sardinia for a week and played all over. People are kinda starved for music down there. How many bands go and play Sardinia? There’s 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. There’s 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.

France

Bordeaux’s cool because it’s kind of a dirty city. If you get in the city center where all the old shit is, there’s a lot of people yelling at you and wouldn’t understand you unless you were from their home country. But there’s 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. It’s kind of a tradeoff: the people in the north spend more money on merchandise but they’re more conservative and don’t really go so crazy.

In Paris, they’re very proud to be from Paris. Most of the time, the people in Paris don’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t concern them directly. But there are some really great people in Paris who are down with the same stuff we’re down with.

Spain

If you need to get anything done on the weekend in Spain, it just won’t get done ‘cause that’s not the way they do things there. Our van broke down on a Friday and we couldn’t get it repaired for a week.

Norway

Norway 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 it’s a great city and the sidewalks are heated in the winter so the snow melts and shit.

Germany

The 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 we’ll 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 Bradley

We played one place that looked like a bomb shelter. There was a dirt floor and I didn’t even have the proper equipment and the promoter couldn’t provide it so I had to use my suitcase as a bass drum. They didn’t 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.