Black Lips are a psychedelic freak-out filtered through distortion pedal garage rock. Like a car with snapped brake cables, Black Lips careen out of control, as if they could fly apart or crash at any moment; they are a raucous whirl of a punk band. Then again, they also rip off trucker country and listen to an awful lot of hip hop, not to mention doo-wop.
In anticipation of their upcoming show, I called up Black Lips drummer Joe Bradley (apparently while he was in the middle of making T-shirts) to talk about country music and the origins of crunk, the Wu-Tang Clan and dressing up like ghosts.
Phoenix: You guys feel like an old punk band in a lot of ways, but there's definitely some psychedelia in there. How do you put those two together and make sense of it?
Joe Bradley: For me it seems like a natural kinship between psychedelic and punk because some of the punk bands or garage bands from the '60s. It seems like that was kind of the roots of punk, actually. And then in the '70s it kind of detached itself. We're trying to bring that back together. The Butthole Surfers did a good job of mixing psychedelic and punk.
Phoenix: On the other hand, on Good Bad Not Evil, the song "How to Tell a Child That Someone Has Died" sounds kind of like a folk standard. How did you come to that?
JB: We were given a tape of truck driver country music, and we got really into it. And that type of music is about narrative and recitations, so when you're driving it passes the time when someone tells you a story instead of actually singing. It's kind of talking and then fitting it into the verse. So it was inspired by the truck driver country music of the '60s and '70s.
Phoenix: What do you think of contemporary country music?
JB: I think contemporary country is real ridiculous, but I do think the lyrics are so ridiculous that they're awesome. Every time I turn it on it's the most retarded lyrical content. Like, there's this one: "An' that's the truth about men." And then it's like, "Always on the couch eatin' peanuts and beer." I think old country was actually elegant and could actually be intellectual at times, and the new style is just the lowest common denominator. Dwight Yoakam is all right, but he's not new country.
Phoenix: You guys are from Atlanta, right? That's unmistakably "the South," which seems like a kind of permeating geography for musicians who hail from there. Obviously it doesn't affect you the same way as, say, Drive-By Truckers, but how do you feel the South fits into your music, if at all?
JB: In Georgia there's James Brown, Otis Redding, Ray Charles. Yeah, I think it's very influential. Just country and blues are kind of the roots of rock 'n' roll, and we listened to a lot of oldies growing up.
Phoenix: I've seen a couple promo pictures with one of you holding up the Wu-Tang Clan "W." Are you guys big hip hop fans?
JB: Oh, I'm a big Wu-Tang fan. I didn't really piece together that that was the Wu. I was flipping through a magazine and I guess Ian [Saint Pé, Black Lips guitarist] was doing a "W," and they were like, "Black Lips love the Wu." I was really excited that they wrote that because we love Wu-Tang a lot. The song "Veni Vidi Vici" was the first time we experimented with trying to use that kind of influence, like taking a loop of a song, and that's a lot of what Wu-Tang has done.
Phoenix: What do you think of the Atlanta hip hop scene? Isn't Three 6 Mafia from there?
JB: They're from Memphis, but they're my favorite rap group ever. It's like them and Wu-Tang, but they're like the Wu-Tang for the South. The Dirty South isn't as lyrically conscious or educated sounding, but it's more primal, which I can identify with better. I love the Dirty South. Outkast are from Atlanta; Ludacris, Young Jeezy - there are a bunch of guys from Atlanta that are awesome - Ying Yang Twins, Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz.
The thing about Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz is that they kind of came out with crunk in the late '90s when I was in high school, and they called it "crunk" because it was supposed to be a hip hop version of punk, and that's how there's the screaming. Lil Jon and some of the guys from Goodie Mob [were influenced by] a program in Atlanta called "End to End" where they would bus a lot of underprivileged black kids into rich white schools in the suburbs and then take the white kids and put them in black schools so that things were more integrated naturally. I think it had a lot of influence on that scene. People like Lil Jon were listening to some of the music like Agent Orange and stuff and they were picking up skateboards for a minute. I've read some articles where they said that was a kind of fuel for their hip hop.
Phoenix: You guys have a number of side projects. How do your side projects differ from Black Lips?
JB: Our main one is The Spooks, and it's a ghost band where we dress up as ghosts. There are members of this other band called Deerhunter in it. It's more like a kind of synth-punk. I would say some of it is more experimental than the other stuff because we're just f---in' around. [Bassist Jared Swilley] has a band called The Gaye Blades and they're kind of like Black Lips, but tapped into a particular part of Black Lips - the kind of girl group doo-woppie sound. … What city are you in?
Phoenix: Chicago.
JB: Well, we're doing this show called Camelot Kids in Chicago before we play Logan Square Auditorium. It's for kids with mental disabilities, and so it's going to be for those kids who are bipolar or [have] autism. It's going to be a kind of charity show. I just have an affinity for that because I was in special-ed classes growing up … so that's why we do shows like that.
Phoenix: Do you do that a lot?
JB: This is a first, but we want to get more into it.
Black Lips play Logan Square Auditorium Saturday, March 1 at 8:30 p.m. Now that you've read about it, listen to it. Visit www.myspace.com/theblacklips.
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