NOTES
HE GREASY GLITTER ROCK WAS ENGULFED BY
a tide of flames with the Swedish invasion of
the Backyard Babies-a two-night stand at the
Bottom of the Bottle, I mean Hill, in SF.
Please state your name and occupation.
Nicke: I'm Nicke; I'm the plumber.
Peder: I'm Peder, the drummer.
Dregen: I'm Dregen, guitar player.
Johan: Johan, bass player.
Have your gold records and Grammy
Awards gotten you more vagina than ever?
D: Well, we get a lot of female interest. That
has been part the band for a long time; it's
good to play for a mixed audience. There have
always been women around, but the more
albums you sell, the bigger your dick gets, and
the nicer the ladies look.
N: Sometimes it's enough to have a guitar case
to get pussy. I know people who are just walking
around with a guitar case, no guitar and no band,
and they get pussy. Rock bands have always
attracted women; it's just a fact.
D: If you start selling a few albums the women
are better looking but are weirder as well.
I have your baby...
D: Exactly. It's like when we went to Japan for
the first time-if you shag a girl, the first time
they're cool with it. But if you do it a second
time, they're sending drawings of you and her
holding hands and then there are small kids and
babies. Whoa.
N: And then they're outside your doorstep with
a baby and shit, like, "Here I am!"
You toured with Rob Zombie and walked
off at a show?
All: Yeah.
Didn't you start throwin' fists?
D: That's happened a few times. I know this
is Thrasher magazine, but I never got the
stagediving and shit. It's like, if you want
to be on stage, start your own god-
damn band. There have been a few
fights, but we aren't really a violent,
band. But that Rob Zombie guy-
he was really fucked up.
BASS
DRUMS
N: He was really an asshole. He
wanted to run everybody down.
D: He was scared. On purpose we
I couldn't have a sound check. Not
even Monster Magnet could have a
sound check. It was planned to be a
whole Europe tour. But Rob Zombie
cancelled Germany just because
Monster Magnet are way better and
bigger for the kids down there. It
I was good for us because we just
went on with Monster Magnet. In
London, where we're pretty big,
there was some weird stuff about
the doors opening.
N: We were on stage before
they opened the doors. So we did
one song and were like, we're out
out here.
D: Zombie got really pissed because
we didn't do the whole set. I love
White Zombie though; that's why we
went on the tour. We thought, wow,
Rob Zombie, great cartoons and
drawings and everything.
BACKYARD
BABIES
A question for the drummer: How many times have
you seen the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee tape?
P: I've not yet seen it, actually.
N: I've seen it censored on Norwegian pay TV.
D: The big thing was to see Tommy Lee's dick, because
you can see Pamela Anderson everywhere. But it was all
blurred out.
All male citizens of Sweden must enlist in the
army. Did you guys get to drive tanks or anything,
or did you find a way to skip out?
PLUMBER
N: We all skipped out. On paper, no
one in this band can hear anything.
D: Johan took it a bit too far. It
was really funny, because
when he did this test for his
hearing, he faked too
much. So the doctor
GUITAR
Mu
said, "Oh hell, you're not
supposed to hear when
the phone is ringing!"
Normally you have to
spend two months in jail.
So Thrasher shouldn't
print this, then?
D: Yeah, you should,
because I can take two months.
It's way easier now than it was ten
years ago. We're not going to have an army because of all the kids.
N: There is way too much money in that stuff. Sweden is just a little country. It's like,
what's the use? If someone wanted to invade Sweden it would be really easy.
Do you think America is still wild in the streets, like back in the days of the
Boston Tea Party? Do crazies come to the shows?
N: We haven't had that much experience of what it's like around America. We've more
or less played Los Angeles, New York, and Austin.
D: The Midwest was really good, with Social Distortion. We were with farmers in Kansas;
it was phenomenal. We've been going for ten years and some Americans have been with
us since the first singles. This is the first time we've had the opportunity to come here, and
so sometimes it turns into this rock police. They've been waiting so long that they're just
checking everything out. Hopefully we can just start touring.
In Europe I ran into some expatriates and their focus was on the US being a
police state. Do you think America is fucked up?
D: That's why America is the greatest. In Sweden it's hard sometimes because every-
thing is kind of perfect. I love America.
N: Musically, there was a time when all these bands, especially from the hardcore scene,
that were talking about growing up on the streets. That became more important than actu-
ally writing songs. Eventually the kids realized that the songs sucked. You can have all the
street stuff, but you have to have good songs or eventually it dies. That happened a lot
here in America.
Your power really pours on live, but how does it transfer to the studio?
D: It's changed a bit since we've found out that AC/DC is really sitting down when
they're recording. So now we try that as well.
It's hard to picture Angus in a chair.
N: Exactly. The sound guy on our new album was with AC/DC when they did their Back
In Black album.
D: The big strength in our music should be about the energy, and that may be the
hardest part, to get that feeling on tape.
N: It all comes back to having a good song. If you know what you're doing and you have
a great tune, then I don't think it's any problem. If you're not really sure how good your
songs are, you can still be a good live band, but you run into problems in a studio because
you have to work that energy with a shit song.
D: When we write, we're always thinking about playing live. We don't overdo stuff in the
studio with big arrangements. Even if the album's great, it should always be better live.
I had a great time in Spain with these Swedish girls. Are all Swedish girls crazy?
D: Swedish girls are pretty wild.
N: The grass is always greener on the other side, because I like American girls. The Swedish
always have this reputation for having great girls, and of course they're beautiful too.
D: They're good to go out and party with. American ladies, sometimes they have a few
beers and then, you know, start puking on your shoes.
What happened with Customs?
D: That's one fucked up thing about America. The bureaucracy. We were at the airport
in SF, and I could see my guitar, and they were like, well, you have to sign this piece of
paper, and the paper was in LA. They wouldn't accept a fax, so they were flying around
this piece of paper. But the gig went down fine.
N: We managed to grab some stuff together. There were all these nice people lending
us their guitars-people we've never met before.
The strip joint across the street is where the Pistols played their last gig with Sid
Vicious. What is tonight going to be like?
N: Well, I mean, he's dead.
What more could be said other than by the taxi driver in a Yellow Cab
marked in black as unit 666? Halting traffic in the neon skinscape of North
Beach, he yelled to the Babies who stood on the corner, "You guys fuckin'
rocked last night!" And then the devil set off. -James Jackson
FROM
UNDER
GROUND
I LOVE TO ROCK AS MUCH AS THE NEXT
guy, so going to a Fear show seemed like a
good place to get my ya-ya's out. I went to
the show at the Transmission Theatre in SF
with a friend of mine. He loves the
Streetwalkin' Cheetahs, who were opening up
and had been playing relentlessly. I was into it
and psyched for a good night of straightfor-
ward punk rock. Perhaps it had been a long
day, or perhaps I'm just getting old, or maybe
it was the twelve-dollar admission, but by the
time we got to the show, my heart was only
half in it. We fashionably missed the first
band, a bad habit I picked up after years of
going to shows. The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs
were met in the usual San Francisco fashion:
crossed arms and nodding heads with a good
bit of empty floor space in front of the stage.
The band rebelled against the snobbery with
full punk bravado, lobbing globs of mucus and
mouthfuls of beer into the crowd. A combina-
tion of this and constant taunting seemed to
break the tension and I even kind of liked it
when the singer spat beer in my face. The
Cheetahs like to shred and they shred well.
During the last song they jumped down into
the crowd and cockrocked on bended knee.
Having fun, not taking yourself too seriously,
and truly rocking out seem to be this band's
shtick. From there the evening proceeded to
get very oi. The ex-skinhead turned greaser
contingent was there in full force. The pit was
a mass of elbows and raised fists and Lee Ving
looking an awful lot like a shaggy, tore-up
Harvey Keitel. The dude is fucking funny,
cracking jokes between every song in a voice
made of gravel. He still shreds for all his wear
and tear, which reminds me that though we all
get older, you're never too old to rock!
-Kyle Ranson.
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