TLOBF Interview :: Black Lips

TLOBF’s Peter Bloxham was lucky enough to meet Joe from Black Lips while milling around North London one afternoon last week. They had a rather nice chat about what it’s like to play in a band all over the world from Canada to Hong Kong.

What brings you to England?
Obligation

Hahaha!
Contractual Obligation. No no no! Ha, we’ve been trying to focus on the UK. Because a long time ago we, uh, the very first time we came over to Europe was like 2003 or 04… it was like an underground tour and everything was going decently enough over there but as soon as we came to the UK for a week it bankrupt our tour, we were getting like £15 a show and like no food, no accommodation, no anything and we got really discouraged by that and gave up on the UK for a very long time. Until recently, the past two years, I guess about two years ago we started coming back, giving it another chance and ATC are helping out with co-ordinating everything so now yeah we’re back.

Things are different now that you have a label and management to pay for shit now?
They are. I mean we’re still broke! But at least people come to the shows.

And you have guitars that work and stuff now…
Yeah yeah, that always helps too!

So do you have things you like to do when you’re here?
Erm, we don’t always have a huge amount of free time when we come here but it’s always fun to hang out in East London, Shoreditch and Old Street over there, that’s always a lot of fun. Lots of pretty girls to look at and talk to, always a party going. It’s always a pleasure to go to Glasgow, great people, always a rager, heavy night when we’re there. I usually leave hungover! I wish I had more time to stick around and check out museums and things but y’know we’re usually pretty busy while we here, it’s always pretty intense.

So you’re doing gigs at the moment…
Oh we have about four weeks coming up, two weeks are in the UK plus one show in Ireland and then to the continent. We used to hit areas around the Mediterranean a lot more which I guess we all enjoyed because y’know, great food, awesome people who love to party and the weather is beautiful most of the time but we haven’t had much of a chance to do that as of recently although we are going to play Primevera in Spain which is going to be fun we did that about two years ago and we did Benicassim, we had to fly to Spain do Benicassim and then fly straight to Russia, which was awesome because it was kind of a dream for me and I guess we got in there at just the right time before the economic collapse because I wouldn’t recommend anyone go there right now, it’s a little bit dodgy.

Was it a bit crazy?
As usual, yeah. I mean we were in the centre which is kept clean and free from homeless people and freaks and things, so we didn’t get to see too much of that but. There are people out there who just don’t seem to have much to lose or just don’t give a fuck.

Jesus, so where in Europe do you really like playing? The live shows are notoriously crazy so who really ‘gets’ it?
Erm, everyone mostly. Scandinavia is really good for us, the people are really nice and they get into it. And Spain, people really go crazy. London as well, occasionally. I’ve noticed that a lot of the kids are kinda snot-nosed around here when they come to our shows, whenever the bouncers or any kinda of authority pushes, they just push back and things can get pretty chaotic and fun.

Yeah, some of our kids are pretty badly behaved.
Heheheh, snot nosed. I think we might encourage such behaviour is some form or fashion. Maybe indirectly.

Haha, do you guys get banned form many venues these days or have you calmed down?
No, not recently. I think we used to get banned from venues for the same reason, these kids go crazy and they’re kinda snot nosed, really disrespectful and young and people weren’t having that. But money talks and every place we’ve ever been banned from, we’ve been invited to come back.

That’s the way to do it. Get banned on the first tour, come back for the second because you can bring the cash.
Mmm-hmm.

What about India though? Gonna go back there any time soon?
I don’t think so. If we were a metal band or if I knew other metal friends or kids who were into 90′s alternative rock – like Nirvana is just getting big over there- I’d say “go over to India, they’ll love you”. But if you just play sloppy rock n roll they’ll probably just think you’re bad a playing.

Yeah, maybe they’re not quite ready…
I would like to think that there is actually punk and punk rock going on in India but we just weren’t working with the right people but erm, it’s gotta be there, in a country of over 1 billon people, there has to be.

I think places that have quite conservative values can breed a blacklash cultural movement
A hardcore band might do quite well in India.

Really?
If they were a really tight hardcore band.

You think.?I would’ve thought they’d just think ‘Woah, woah, what the hell is going on here?’.
They like the heavy stuff. They like the trash.

Oh do they?
Yeah, most the shows are just dudes. All of that pent up testosterone, y’know not being able to get too close to girls and things. Aside from the cities, there are vast areas that are really conservative.

Met any cool British bands recently?
We were at this bowling alley in central London, it’s got like Karaoke and a hot tub…

Bloomsbury bowling lanes?
Yeah! And we saw a band called The Vicars play and they were cool. I didn’t think that there was all that much Rock n Roll happening in the UK but apparently they’re keeping things alive. They’re sloppy, seem like they’re having a good time.

It’s hard to keep track of what the buzz is around the UK.

Yeah?
Yeah I heard about this thing called Post.. Nu.. Rave? I.. I just think that maybe it’s a little too soon.

Holy shit, what does that sound like? Is it like a MicroKorg played really slowly for half an hour?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s even more pretentious than Nu-Rave.

Ha! So how long have Black Lips been together?
It’ll be ten years this fall.

Wow, that’s a long time.
Yeah since we were fifteen.

How to you think the creative process has changed since then?
It’s constantly changing, we’re always trying to do things in different ways so we don’t get bored – I feel like if we always produce the same sounding songs in the same way we probably wouldn’t be doing this any more because all the joy would’ve been sucked out it. I don’t understand how so many bands will create the same album over and over again. Also, I’ve noticed in a lot of pop music in America and the UK that you get the same producers producing all of these different bands that end up sounding exactly the same and usually it’s like, over compressed, there’s no dynamic whatsoever and it sounds like it was recorded over a click track and…. Music’s supposed to be about expression, whether it be emotional expression or artistic or conceptual expression or some sort of expression and most of that, when you get a producer involved it just gets sucked out. Often they wont like a take and you’re doing it over and over again and once you’ve played something a certain amount of times, it loses whatever charm or sparkle that was originally in it.

I think that’s all true. And throughout your times you’ve tried to keep the energy?
Keep the energy, the one thing that hasn’t changed that we may change on our next recording is that everyone has songs that they’ve written on their own, they write all the parts and when we’re in the studio we’ll show each other the songs and play it five or six times and actually get the song structure tight. Once it’s tight, five or six takes and then we just record it. It’s pretty fresh but it’s come back to bite us the ass occasionally when we play live and we work out whatever kinks might’ve been there before. But for the most part it keeps things fresh and a little mistake here or there adds to the charm I feel.

So once you’ve recorded it sometimes you’re thinking ‘Oh but this bit would work better like this’?
Mmmhmm.

Right, but that’s a lot of the point of live performance isn’t it? You don’t hear the same thing over an over again, it’s unique.
Yeah, we never want our live performances to sound like the CD. You’re going to a show to be entertained, you’re not going there to see a bunch of schmucks standing there what they’re playing sounds exactly like what you’ve already heard… why would you even be there? Just listen to the CD. We want people to have fun we want them to feel energy and obviously it’s not going to sound the way it did in the studio unless you’re very obsessed with those types of things. We’re just not. We prefer to just let it happen.

A gig is a gig.
Exactly.

So what’s planned for the next couple of months?
Uh we have this tour here in Europe, June and July we have a couple of one-offs here and there a show in Seattle called the Capitol Hill Bloc Party, it’s got like Sonic Youth and Deerhunter and we’re also doing a show in Vancouver with Deerhunter which’ll be our second show back in Canada since Jared’s got all his… problems cleared up. And then September, October hopefully we’ll be recording. August back in Europe for some festivals so we’ll be back here. I think tentatively slated for beginning of next year I think is Australia and New Zealand. We had an offer for some other shows, hopefully we could do it in February it’d be Hong Kong, Jakarta, Tai Pei – we’ll see if that actually comes to fruition. I think it’ll fair a little bit better than India, maybe not Singapore may not because its such a conservative kinda place.

And Indonesia could be that way I guess but it’d be awesome.
Yeah if anything it’ll be an amazing experience an adventure. And also there’s a possible China tour, we were going to it as part of the India thing but didn’t get it together, but China’s such an emerging music market. Google in China just did something really interesting they made all songs available for download on low quality MP3 for free and if you want to pay a certain amount you can for the higher quality ones, just to combat piracy. Google split the ad profits from the download sites with the record label. It’s an interesting model, I don’t know if the Western world is necessarily ready for that or if it’s completely necessary but over there piracy was so rampant that they were like “okay this is the best thing we can do”.

I’ve heard the punk scene in China is pretty vibrant. Again, maybe somewhere with an element of oppression and a cultural backlash…
Friends who’ve gone over there and toured have said that it’s pretty awesome, they have a huge underground scene for a huge amount of stuff. A lot of media is mass produced over there so I think a lot of it bleeds over.

Australia, New Zealand, what are they like?
People are real cool, they’ve got their own thing down there, Melbourne is definitely an epicentre for music culture in Australia, you see bands playing on the streets there all the time. They’ve got a real interesting way of doing things, not as generic as some places. They have their own style.

New Zealand is cool too, I like going there. No offense to the people but they’re kinda whacky.

There’s a great indie pop scene out of the South Island, I can’t remember which city in particular. But there was a record label based out of Wellington called Flying Nun and they did a bunch of early indie pop. A lot of great very simple indie pop, non pretentious. Good!

Most indie music or at least what indie has become is pretty, I dunno, self fulfilling.

Yeah, I think maybe sometimes people try a bit hard to hit ahead of the curve.
The problem is too many people are aware of the curve. If they weren’t concerned with the curve they’d probably be making some cooler music.

Think outside the curve.
Yeah.

Black Lips on MySpace