ROCK N ROLL HELLRIDE: KADAVAR @ the masquerade

[iwishuwould]:  With the Kadavar show looming on the horizon, I'd been on a rock n roll hellride lately.

I guess I got a bad case of the nerves because I could barely sleep in the days leading up to the show. I kept having these off the wall dreams. The first was that we went to the Masquerade, and each band that was gonna be playing had their own bar, with a craft station. The other band touring with Kadavar were Mothership, from Dallas. In my dream their craft station was a tie dye curtains station: FUN.




Well the day finally came and we took our drunk asses down to the masquerade ready for a good time. The shows did not disappoint. We caught the entire Mothership set and it was fucking awesome. I gotta say, I had not heard much from them before hand and I was thoroughly impressed. They did a great deal of shredding and hair tossing (in sync!).

Here goes a shitty picture of Mothership rawking our fucking faces off.

They were great, and they're brothers.... not only did they totally fucking shred, but they also kept syncing up and tossing their hair all around, in a way that was reminiscent of Wyld Stallyns, like so, but with a metric ton of hair:

[area.personality]:  This would be where I drunk tweeted, "#Brothers?  I like where this is going, @mothership!"  For some reason they neither replied or re-tweeted.

[iwishuwould]:  Next up was Kadavar. They also did not disappoint. But more about that in a moment. At this time I would like to say that I thought it was fucking weird that they were playing Masquerade. I would have expected them to play the Earl. They are an awesome band, who should have at least enough fans (in Atlanta) to play the Earl. Its just the best choice. and plus its my favorite venue, and its right around the corner from Casa Nueva. But alas, they are from Germany, and therefore had no way of knowing about the Earl vs Masquerade. Although maybe there is some new thing going around why bands are playing the Masquerade. I've noticed several shows coming up that are gonna be there and it seems like a new trend.....that being said, Masquerade was actually a pretty good spot for this show- there actually were not so many people there as I expected (but it would've been enough for the Earl, IJS). So it was cool to be able to get up close. Also the sound was pretty good. The stage was just like a platform so you were really up close to them. that was fun. 

This shit was highly anticipated by the ladies of RawkTalk (and my neighbor, Thunder). They brought all the righteous jams out (I mean shit, they only have two albums, what were they really gonna do?) But they played a nice long set and lots of songs off both albums, and of course all the "hit singles" (that would be all the songs they got videos for, natch). Leading up to the show I actually tried to refrain from listening to their albums because I honestly had played that shit out so hard when I first got a hold of it, and I really wanted to get myself all in a twist for live version. Which would explain why I mistakenly thought they were jamming at some points, when it was really just songs off the first album. Also shit sounds different live. Also I drank my weight in Jaegar and beers before they went on, as per usual. this is also the reason that I will never be the kind of blogger who includes set lists- like I'd ever remember that much detail! I'm a nerd and a spazz over music, but not to the point where I'm taking notes, and thinking about what I'ma write about it while its happening. I like to let go and let God, as it were, in the presence of live music. That's also why you'll typically only see a couple of shitty photos out of me- just enough to prove to myself that i was actually there the next day. 

speaking of...

Here goes a shitty photo of Kadavar rocking our fucking faces off.

But why be satisfied with my shitty photos when you can watch the whole show all over again! courtesy of this man who filmed the entire thing and uploaded it- RIGHTEOUS:

You can totally hear area.personality holler at 12:43!!!

[area.personality]:  I am like a kitty!

[iwishuwould]:  They were tight as all hell- you can tell they been playin them songs the fuck out cause it was just tight and easy for them. and I think they had a fan going so their hair was like fluffy ass cotton candy just blowin in the breeze. That drummer was playing his fucking nutsacks off- and it looked like he never even broke a sweat. Nice job, Kadavar! 

Following the epic facemelt I wandered down to the ladies room and spotted the Brothers Mothership at the merch table. I had to stop them and tell them thanks for rawking our fucking faces off, and they totally also obliged for a photo. Here we go flossin our earthbling and haiyuh for the camera:

What a nice coupla brothers! Finally, they gave me their business card: wicked logo, yall!

I wandered back to find area.personality and she had cornered Tiger of Kadavar! Now I'm not gonna lie- I totally prepared a gift bag for them (perhaps inspired by my crafty dreams?) that included mixtapes and lotto tickets, along with several other small, ahem, tokens of adoration. So I presented him with the gift bag and told him in some mangled german what was in there. Then I think we begged for a photo, and he took off into the back, and I was like oh shit- are we supposed to follow him or is he running away from us? But we totally followed him and he took us back to get the photo with the bassist, Dragon, too!

Here goes area.personality with 2/3 of Kadavar. Scope their immense height, would you?! When I instagrammed this shit I totally hashtagged it #tallasallfuck #brickshithouse:

[area.personality]:  Like a goddam jungle gym, man.

[iwishuwould]:  Finally here I go with my rock hero, Lupus Lindemann. I was feeling pretty ballsy thanks to a wide array of beverages that I had consumed earlier in the evening, so when I seent him perched by the merch table, I just went right up and said along the lines of "Hey- thanks for rawking our fucking faces off, you guys shred! Hey you just came back from Nepal, right? OMG me too! How did you dig it, man?"

Dawg has the biggest balls of anyone on earth, so she asked him for an interview for Rawk Talk. Miraculously, and perhaps fatefully for him, he totally. fucking. obliged. 

[area.personality]:  Thank ye.

[iwishuwould]:  We asked the hard hitting questions that are on everyone's drunkass mind: what do you like to eat for breakfast? and tell me about your rings? 

(the answers are "coffee" and "this ring is from Tibet", although we had to wrangle those factoids out of him)

Snippets of info that I do know we acquired from this interview are that they have been writing new music in Austin in the time in between SXSW and the start of tour. How many? whats the inspiration? How has success and touring affected songwriting? Where do y'all plan to record the new album? All questions we did not ask.

I also seem to recall a brief discussion about snow on the bluff, and how the drummer was hoping to go drive through it. We did have enough sense to advise against that. As someone who has previously volunteered with the Atlanta Harm Reduction Center, I would advise people driving big ass tour vans full of expensive gear, and with European accents to stay clear of the bluff. you *might* be a target IJS. 

i also felt like a total fucking creeper because i had researched them ad nauseum for my previous piece about Kadavar, so I came off like a total psycho, as was confirmed when Lupus said " i think you know more about this than we do". Sorry. But I would like to take this opportunity to point out that Kadavar are not the first band I have delved into so completely. Before Rawk Talk I was obsessed with Ween, Black Sabbath, Dungen, the Allman Brothers, and Motorhead, among others (perhaps less intensely). I've read books about Ween and Ozzy. Not to mention watched documentaries, and really trolled deep into youtube for new shit to see. I hate to be a creeper, but its also what I was trained to do professionally, although about like neurons, and molecules, and whatever. Music just happens to be a thousand billion times more fascinating so I get to use my science creeper skills for that instead. Deadly combo.

[area.personality]:  I made some memes that I think would be helpful in describing our interview styles at this point.

[iwishuwould]:  after feeling like oh god we've quite possibly blown it- here is Honks giving us a pep talk about the positive power of the pelvic thrust: when things aren't going according to plan, just give a pelvic thrust and all will be right in the world.  (according to ol Honks-a-rino)

[area.personality]:  (Side note:  the Jabba the Hut defense mechanism, pictured here, works perfectly against pelvic thrusts.)

[iwishuwould]:  but to be honest, I don't think a pelvic thrust was gonna fix the lingering sense of dread and defeat that welled up inside of me after that night. I hate to be so fucking emo but I srsly like couldn't even eat for two days after that. (and i always want to eat). so i reached out to homeboy over at monster fresh.

[area.personality]:  It's totally ok to be emo in times like this.  I was drunk FB'ing Dungen at the beginning of the show.  It was exactly like drunk texting an ex on a first date with a new person.  WTF.

[iwishuwould]:  monster fresh is a a blog i like to follow (time permitting). I think i found monster fresh back when I was obsessed with ween, before they broke up (RIP). There was some great photos and the story of Gene Weens epic meltdown. ever since then i follow along, and on facebook too. homeboy is based out of Seattle, so when he has contests or posts about upcoming shows, it generally doesn't apply to me here on the east coast. but there was a contest for a Nirvana book recently and I thought to myself, Shit, I can win that. My sisters are both constantly winning shit online, now's my time. So I entered, and guess what: I fucking won that shit! like so:

so I started this email chat with homeboy from monster fresh. it was educational and awesome. we got some truly sage bloggin advice, that we both swear we will enact immediately (in a few months). The chat petered off, as chats tend to do, and I had not chatted with monster fresh for a few months until i felt devastated by the botched Kadavar interview. so i guess in an effort to cheer myself up I sent him an email to tell him how excited I was about having our first interview, and how bummed I was that we fuct it up. and he sent me back this inspirational tale of his first interview. its such a great story I'm going to share it here, now.


[Monster Fresh]: It was in a college paper.  I used a lot of profanity then too, I'm sure.  I didn't even have anything to record it; it was over 10 years ago.  Eek is like 7 feet or something ridiculous.  Probably not really that tall, but close.  He's a giant black man in a black mesh tank with hardcore scars all over his giant muscly shoulders.  His black leather jacket looked like it was made from half a cow.  We were sitting at little round pedestal table on stools and the table kept wobbling, as did his drink.  Little splashes here and there.  A woman would come up and he'd pause and snap a selfie with her, then go back to chatting.  I had dreadlocks, at the time, so he's spit out some jabber like "Wyo bomba skett, riddle bap danoo" and finish it off by confirming with, "You know dread?"  And I'd just nod.  

The New Jack shit was funny because he said, "I's in New Jack City" and we were just like, "What?!"  That movie was already old at that point and the statement seemed super fucking left field.  So he was like, "New Jack City mon.  Wesley Snipes, Judd Nelson.  I in that film."  And my friend Jon Rainbow (his real name, by the way), just just like, "No fucking way.  I have that movie.  You're not in it"  Then Mouse called one of the members of his Caucasian backing band that he was using while touring the states--they were called the 420 band--and used that guy to verify it.  "What movie I in?"  The guy responded with something like, "Oh shit.  This again.  What's that fucking movie with Ice-T in it, again?"  Then Eek asked that band member why he was asking so fucking pouty and why he's always bummed out.  "Smile.  Why so down?  You one of 5 billions sperm!  You made it!  Cheer up, you made it"

I can't really remember what else we talked about, but he told me that he's toured for so long and loves it because it's like a free vacation, playing spots like Hawaii, etc.  Eventually, he just kind of propped himself up and said, "Where my jacket?"  Then stumbling off back toward the stage was singing, "I got to find my jaacket."  It was on his stool, but he wasn't listening to me. 

Then I went up to him and asked him to sign this book of Mormon from the 50s that I used to get people to sign--Wesley WIllis, Mitch Hedberg, and Ike Turner signed it too.  He said, "I want to be a Moormawn."  And sang, "I got 9 wive."  He signed it to "From Eek-A-Mouse to Chris the eek-a" or something screwy like that.  Then I asked him to pick and sign a move in my 100 Deadliest Karate Movesbook and he got irritated.  "I don't know karate!"  Then we left.  That was that.

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[iwishuwould]:  This story provided me the only laugh I had in those bleak days following the show, and I truly appreciated the words of monster fresh wisdom. It provided me the strength I needed to pick myself up to rawk talk again another day.

I loved his story because it brings all the awkwardness, but its from the artist's side, not the interviewer's side. I wish Kadavar had been the ones slurring their words and going on and on about girly gibberish. But one good thing was borne of this debacle: we have a unified vision of Rawk Talk now. Before we were just bloggin haphazardly, without any real mission. But it has become apparent based on our interview questions that we are truly the Tiger Beat of Stoner/Psych Rock. Its weird to be a chick and be into all this heavy music because, like guys who are into heavy music, you really just dig the tunes, maaaan, and you really feel the sound, and get hype for the rawk, yet, unlike dudes, you get to develop debilitating crushes on the musicians if you like. And you get to look at them all lusty and imagine what their hair smells like, and totally photoshop your picture next to their picture and cackle about it with your BFF, and draws hearts and kittens all around pictures of them, and totally plan how you will ultimately come down on them and destroy them... wait... sorry...I mean all that's if you want to. You can also totally just appreciate the music and all the blood, sweat, and tears (and probably farts) that these guys put into the music, and have a damn good time with it. 

[area.personality]:  It might still be a little haphazard.

[iwishuwould]:  But if you thought that this was the end of our Kadavar shitshow, think again. In only two weeks time from this show we were going to be heading off to the Austin Psych Fest to get our eardrums assaulted by Kadavar yet again!! But that's still not the end of the story because right after that they announced they were coming the fuck BACK TO ATLANTA for ANOTHER show opening for Wolfmother!!!! Talk about shitting bricks! So stayed tuned for the third installment of the Kadavar Saga Trilogy™.........