Baby Woodrose

04/17/04

Baby Woodrose is another offspring of the burgeoning garage rock-scene in Denmark/Scandinavia. While they're hardly rookies (singer/guitar player Lorenzo was a member of On Trial for 17 years, while drummer Rocco played in an early incarnation of The Raveonettes), they've only released two albums so far - the lo-fi, solo-project Blows Your Mind! in 2001, and the excellent Money for Soul, their first real 'band effort', in 2003. They're obviously inspired by the psych garage rock of the mid-to-late '60's, but add further influences from stoner rock, soul, punk, and about everything in between. On April 17th, they came down to the Sojo, and I got to talk to Lorenzo on the band's cosy tour bus a few hours before they set the place on fire. Despite the bulky 6'5" and grizzly-look, the guy proved to be a laidback and talkative softie.

How has the tour been going?

It's been very nice … I mean, we just started and are still getting into the rhythm.

How long have you been on the road now?

We did three weeks before in March, and this part of the tour has been goin' on for four weeks so far.

Do you usually play with the same bands or is it just you and some local band, like today?

Yeah, we mainly play with local support bands.

Any Spinal Tap-moments so far?

Spinal Tap-moments? No, we haven't had so much of that I must admit… uh, let me see, well, its been pretty… we’re doing a kind of documentary with some touring footage, that’s been pretty funny actually, with some cool shootings yesterday, with naked guys on the bus…

No women involved?

No, unfortunately (disappointed grin).

Maybe in the future! What always strikes me about your latest album, Money for Soul, is that it's very influenced by psychedelic music and garage rock, but the songs are always kept pretty concise, there’s hardly any extended jamming going on. Is that also the case when you play live?

No, we like to change the songs around. For the Money for Soul-album, we really tried to be concise and tried to use fresh ideas. We have a lot of songs that didn’t make it to the album and tried to only pick out the best and we tried to be as precise as possible on the album by cutting everything down to the most necessary elements. That also goes for the songs themselves. Actually, as a band, we’re more of a "on a feeling"-playing kind of band. I think you hear it a few times on the record, like on the song “Volcano.” We also like recording very much, because for the recording, it’s a whole different universe. You know, some bands have a kind of dogma or ethic that they want there… they want to be able to play their records live. We’re not like that, we don’t give a damn if the record sounds different, so for us its two completely separate universes, we don’t mind doing all kinds of stuff in the studio, whatever that we think the song needs to be the way we imagined it. So live we're much more a jamming band, playing on the feeling of real music. It's getting very seldom these days for a band or 'guitar-bass-drums', just getting up there and play without any extras. There are so many mainstream bands that use desktops and DAT-tapes for the live sound…

… to satisfy the expectations of the audience.

Exactly, and it’s a pity because it ruins music I think, it makes people expect a record quality live culture. I think that sucks, that’s not what satisfies me. I want real people giving it all they have, and that’s just not something you see so much these days. That’s what I think is good about the whole stoner rock-scene and also the garage band-scene. It’s real people playing real music.

I've seen it with several bands here. It’s mainly a stoner-scene, groove rock, ‘70’s rock and stuff like that, and when you listen to albums by those bands, they’re often like yours, pretty measured and concise, but usually they stretch out and it's often a blast to hear 10 minute-versions of much shorter songs.

You have to know that I’ve been playing for 17 years in a band called On Trial, where there were absolutely no rules. On our first four albums, there was like one big jam, it’s very hard to get the songs arranged because everything’s just kind of different… On Trial live was very much a jamming thing, so with this band I’m trying more to get into the songs and that’s what I need to do right now.

… something more song-based.

Yeah.

I’ve seen that some legendary garage bands are also on the road in Europe for the moment, like Dead Moon, Sky Saxon & The Seeds…

And Love!

Yeah, indeed. Did you get an opportunity to see them or meet one of them?

We played with Love in France.

Did you?

Yeah, in March, it was really funny.

Did you meet Arthur?

Yeah, we’ve met. We’ve smoked a joint with him.

Cool! When listening to Money for Soul, you can hear that it’s mainly inspired by, let’s call it "Nuggets-bands," like Love. Are these indeed the main inspiration? There’s of course also the contemporary aspect - you sound like a modern band with influences from the sixties - but would you agree that those bands are your main examples?

Yeah, very much so. Of course the music reflects what we listen to, and basically we listen to a wide range of music, all of us. What it has in common is that its all old, like early '60's soul music, surf music, even early '70's black funk, Sly & the Family Stone, … we like garage rock, we like psychedelic music, we like acid rock, progressive, we even like 50s thrash culture stuff, country, all these kinds of styles that are at the root of rock ‘n’ roll.

When were you introduced to these bands? I only heard of the Nuggets-bands when I was 20 years old or so…

Nuggets, that's kind of uh, just the tip of the iceberg, really, there’s so many cool bands who also did albums in the '60's…. I guess I was about 15 or something. I was searching for some kind of music that would satisfy me. I was into stuff like Bauhaus and stuff from that era - early 80s - like Killing Joke, that type of band: dark, gothic and punk. But then me and a friend tripped over Bull of the Woods by the 13th Floor Elevators in a record store called Superlove, in Copenhagen. The shop itself was like stepping into the '60's universe, because there were a couple of old guys in the shop who’d been there since ’69, I think, and there was an atmosphere of smoking bongs in the back of the room, psychedelic music, and they also - in the 70s and 80s - sort of developed with time and sold punk stuff. It became a meeting place for the first punk movement in Copenhagen, and we just picked up this album. And it was such a weird record, with a weird cover of a bull sticking his head out of a frame and the whole album background was like a tapestry, like wallpaper retro-style, very weird and the back was just black, it was kinda punk, almost. I just had to check that out, so I bought that album, and…. it’s not that it’s their best record, actually it’s probably their most underrated, or 'lowest rated album', but I loved it, so I started getting also into the Nuggets-stuff, the Pebbles-stuff, slowly digging out this weird music and it just felt right. I felt it was what I’d been looking for.

Are these records easily available in Denmark? Because over here they’re all pretty rare…

Yeah, but at this point, mid-'80's to right up until the beginning of the '90's, it was possible to find these things at flea markets. All the American '60's stuff that they couldn’t sell in the States had cut-out holes and they took it back from the shops and the record companies sent it to Scandinavia, so there are a lot of these cut-outs in Sweden and Denmark, even albums that you see on eBay selling for 100 to 200 dollars. You could still find these records in flea markets, just because there were so many cut-outs. "Just send ‘em to Scandivia!” Nowadays it’s really expensive to buy this stuff, but I still buy some now and then …

I saw a Music Machine album a while ago, and it cost about 60 euros or something and it was in a bad condition.

The first Music Machine-album, that was one of the first that I found. You could still see a copy back in the '80's. There was no – or not to my knowledge – literature about this stuff or a rock encyclopaedia, they just didn’t write about these bands. At that point in time, well before the internet, you didn’t know anything and I hadn’t heard any of the stories about 13th Floor Elevators, or Music Machine, all those bands. I just picked up the covers and spent a lot of time looking for stuff … “Why are they all wearing black gloves?” and it just seemed so strange, I just had to check it out.

It’s cool when you discover bands one by one, take your time, get a chance to get into ‘em.

Yeah.

Now, vintage gear, is that also a part of the deal? Do you insist on having or playing on the big Ludwig-drums and the Farsifa-organs, etc.?

Of course we like that kind of sound, because we like this kind of music and the sound of these instruments, but I also think a lot of the garage bands are too dogmatic about it, they have to dress this way and have their hair the right way and play the right instruments. I mean, that gets a bit silly. But I love the sound of a Vox-organ or amp. They’re good instruments, it’s been 35 years, it’s like old LP’s, you can find LP’s that are 40 years old, and they sound so fucking good. The music that was recorded in that time, it was more about the performance of the artist. You set it up in the studio and you recorded. You played your songs, you recorded, and that’s it, that’s the record. You mix it the next day, and then it’s finished. Today, it’s like “I don’t like that bit there, can we move it a bit?”, and the Pro-Tools and "Maybe we can move that snare drum hit a bit"… it’s a whole different thing today. They made better records, and I also think they made better instruments. That technology, old amps, and old Marshall-amps, they just sound better today, forty years later, than the modern Marshalls. The guitars that were made in this period… good craftsmanship.

Do you guys belong to some scene in Denmark? Most bands from Scandinavia that we are introduced to are the kind of “high-energy rock-bands”, like The Hellacopters, Gluecifer, Turbonegro, etc, they have an “MC5-plus-everything-that-comes-after-it”-sound, but you guys seem to prefer the stuff that came right before that…

I think we’re maybe a bit of a crossover band, really, because they’re two scenes, the stoner rock-scene and the garage scene, that have sort of met and gone together in Copenhagen. There’s a pretty good garage scene in Copenhagen, and there were some people who were into stoner rock, but I think most of the people who like bands like Kyuss or Fu Manchu, I think they also appreciate old sixties-stuff, so it has merged together. We’ve experienced a lot of people coming to our shows in Denmark and have gotten to a point where we’re sort of a big underground name and even have some mainstream success…

You guys won a prize or something [P3-prize on Danish National Radio]? Does it mean something there to win it, is it a mainstream recognition?

Yeah, it’s a mainstream prize, and it’s money and it’s a bit of recognition. I mean, we don’t care too much for stuff like that, we were nominated for the Danish Grammies too, and we didn’t get that, but it was fun being at that party with all these mainstream artists and celebrities, and we had a lot of fun being there. But it’s not something that means a lot to us, but the good thing about the prize was the money and that helped us a lot.

What about Bad Afro, your current label? Are there any restrictions or do they just say to you to “Go ahead, deliver a product and we’ll release it”?

Lars [Krogh] called the guy who owns the label, and he knows good music. He has an ability to find good bands before they’re, you know, something. He’s not really into putting restrictions on bands like that, he trust us to deliver our best. One little funny detail, actually, there’s one thing he always says to any band that releases a record on Bad Afro: “I like handclaps”, so when we were in the studio, we put some clapping on the album (laughs). That’s the kind of guy he is.

It’s a one man-business, right?

Yeah it is, but he’s got financial beggars now, sort of a bigger distribution chain that backs him up financially, so that makes it easier for him to do it.

Are you also trying to keep up with the current music scene? Do you try to keep up with more popular 'garage' bands like The Raveonettes and The Hives, but also those that are “hipper” but aren’t that interested in basic rock ‘n ‘roll, as well?

The Raveonettes are good friends of ours, and our drummer played in the band before they were The Raveonettes. I have a big respect for them, I think they really deserve the success they have. I think we consider ourselves an alternative to the mainstream scene. I hate… I don’t like bands like The Strokes and The Hives. I mean, I don’t know them that good, … it’s good that this kind of music can become successful on such a level, but I also think it’s very weak calling this kind of music “garage,” because it just doesn’t seem as natural and as real to me. That’s because I have other values for my music than most people have, and I know that, so there’s nothing strange about it, it’s just that… I mean, if I wanna hear garage music, I want the Dead Moon-kind of sound, I want it to sound like the amps are breaking down, I want it to sound like the cymbals are old and crashing…

… a ragged sound…

Yeah, and that’s just not the kind of sound you get, so the whole garage hype … I’m not really sure if it’s been good for the genre. Maybe it’s good that a band like us can break into the mainstream so that people with mainstream taste can watch us on TV and maybe buy our records. That’s OK, but I’m just not sure it’s good for the music as a genre.

In the beginning of the garage-hype, I thought: “Well, this is cool, The Strokes and all those bands, they get the garage-tag, and maybe the people who are into them will check out more bands" - like Baby Woodrose. You don’t seem to agree that some of those bands reaching the mainstream, as a ‘garage band,’ will also benefit these smaller bands…

I’m only saying I’m not sure that’s what will happen. What eventually will happen, and is already happening, is that…. “Garage? That was last year, we heard that, we don’t wanna hear it anymore, we want something new now!” So, the next thing is grunge-revival or whatever. You just can’t explain to people that this kind of music is a tradition that’s been going on for 40 years, you know. Actually, there’s been no time in the history of music where there wasn’t a garage wave somewhere in the world. If you look at the ‘80’s, the first Swedish wave, that was also something that inspired me back then. Bands like The Nomads. There were a lot of Swedish bands coming out in the ‘80’s, a lot of ‘em were really good bands.

What’s next for Baby Woodrose? Are you working on a new album?

We finished it.

Already? Is it an album of originals?

No, it’s a covers album called Dropout, and it has ten covers of obscure sixties songs. Well, some are not really obscure.

Which bands?

There’s a Stooges song, there’s a Sonics song, one by an Australian punk band called The Saints and the rest of it is by bands that we think have inspired us, like Fred Cole’s Lollipop Shoppe, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Captain Beefheart. But we’re gonna record our next album later this year, so that’s gonna come out in 2005. We’re working on new songs and I think we’re gonna play some of it tonight.

Just imagine that later tonight, some young guy comes up to you and says “I dig your band, I dig your sound, I wanna check out more garage and start with the basics.” What would you recommend as a starting point?

I would recommend him to check out the Back from the Grave-compilations, there are eight of them, with really good material that’s very obscure, stuff by bands who did only one ’45. That’s a good place to start.

I saw you guys brought along a new single you recorded with Peter Belli. Who is this guy?

Peter Belli is a Danish beat legend. He sort of has a status as the originator of Danish garage music. It wasn’t called garage music back then, but something that can be translated as “barbed wire-music”. In Holland they also called it beat music?

Yeah.

He was the instigator of the scene, and was also the first person in Denmark to have really long hair in ’66. He was also the first person in Denmark to be arrested for smoking hash, because he was asked in an interview if he had tried smoking and he admitted it. He also had this band called Les Rivals and made a couple of singles that we like very much.

Has he always been playing since then?

Yeah, but totally different styles of music. He’s been making schlager-pop.

Oh no!

Then he was TV Bingo-host in the ‘80’s. Do you know a German character called Drafi Deutscher?

Uh, no…

He started that kind of stuff. So, we had this idea, and he just has the voice for this kind of music, even though he’s 55 now.

Who set it up?

We did, we contacted him, and we said “Look, we think we play the kind of music you started out playing and we’d like to hear your voice on top of our music”, and he liked the idea, so we did a couple of songs in Danish. He’s always been singing in Danish. His English pronunciation is not very good, he doesn’t speak English, so he always had translators and did songs like “If I Was a Carpenter,” “A Well Respected Man” by the Kinks, Pretty Things, and all these British beat groups, with lyrics translated to Danish. He also did “Little Red Riding Hood,” songs like that.

Did you use Baby Woodrose-songs now?

No, it’s the same principle, it’s a Monkees-song and a Donovan-song and I wrote Danish lyrics. We’re very proud of the single. I know it probably doesn’t appeal to people from other countries, because they don’t know who he is, and it’s got Danish lyrics, but we consider it an ‘accomplishment’. You should hear this 55-year old guy go “YEEAAAAAAAAAHHH.” that’s just so cool. He’s been making only pop music…

Maybe he was waiting to freak out once again?

Yeah, I think he liked it. I really think he enjoyed himself, so that’s cool.

Okay, I’m through my questions. Anyway, thanks a lot for the interview and good luck with the show tonight. I hope we’re gonna get a rock ‘n’ roll party!

I think we’re gonna have a good time.

[They did!]