Interviews: Groovie Ghoulies
Check out the Groovie Ghoulies.
I went and saw the Groovie Ghoulies at the Metro Cafe in D.C. and had the chance to talk to singer Kepi, guitarist Roach and their new drummer, Jazz. Since their music focuses on horror movies and the like, that's what I decided to talk to them about and we found that we all could share some very common interests. The Ghoulies have 5 LPs out and a few 7"s to boot. They're on Lookout! Records. I also got to meet Russel, the fortune telling crystal ball that the Ghoulies got at Anne Rice's (author of the Vampire novels) yard sale in New Orleans. So here goes:
Smother: First off, how's everything going, been, going to be?
Kepi: Tour has been good until now that Jazz lost his I.D. and his band for his glasses.
(as they all search the cramped van looking for the aforementioned items)
Kepi: We've been following the Eyeliners and they drive fast and
furious.
Roach: They're always on time, that's for sure.
Kepi: They're from Albequerque. We met them in L.A. and started touring together. About for 5 weeks now.
Roach: We just completed week two and we're entering week three.
Smother: So have you guys noticed many differences between west coast and east coast stuff?
Kepi: Shows were good out here with us and B-Face (the bass player) tours with us and he's from Boston so we've done pretty well in those areas and we usually do pretty well in D.C..
Jazz: And the drac is here.
Kepi: Yeah, D.C. Drac, do you know that guy? He walks around in a cape
and gloves and stuff. Do you ever see him at shows? You'll see him
tonight, he's cool.
Smother: How many people have done interviews based on horror movies with you guys? Because I'm a big horror buff and I just thought that it would be cool to ask you some questions about that sort of stuff.
Kepi: Oh yeah, that's cool. There are people that talk about the toys and stuff like that, but if you have a specialty question...go ahead.
Smother: I was reading in the notes for the Forward 'Til Death comp. and it was saying that Re-Animation Festival was supposed to serve as a soundtrack to that movie, are you guys big fans of Re-Animator?
Kepi: I like the movie, but Chris at Lookout! made that up.
Roach: Somebody came up to us before and was like, "I tried to play
the song and it didn't quite work out!"
Kepi: Yeah, he's trying to create that Pink Floyd, Wizard of Oz thing.
Smother: So are you guys big Bruce Campbell fans?
Ghoulies: YEAH.
Kepi: And B-Face too, we'll try to answer for him since he's not here, but he would say yes.
Smother: I'd ask you for like a top 5 list, but I'm afraid that it would get redundant, so I won't worry.
Kepi: Yeah, there are so many and I always forget some.
Smother: So do you base yourselves on more current movies or the older films?
Kepi: I really like Universal and Hammer and all the classics, but we also like newer stuff like Evil Dead too. And Scream and stuff, we'll go see on tour. Like Jazz went and saw The Faculty but I don't think that it has that cinematic greatness.
Jazz: I had no problem going to the bathroom, I think I went twice.
Kepi: I guess I'm kind of curious to see the new Mummy movie since Universal is making it. It looks kind of Indiana Jones-y.
Roach: So when does that come out? We can go see that on tour, that's fun.
Kepi: I wanna check that out, I just hate if they get too pandering to the audience or so they can market the toys and the t-shirts better.
Smother: Like not bloody enough.
Ghoulies: YEAH!
Roach: Yeah, like Godzilla or Planet of the Apes. We were so disappointed with the body count in Godzilla, that was so tame.
Kepi: And Planet of the Apes is so bad because Oliver Stone wanted to make a totally R-rated, bloody movie, but the studio had to cut it back so they could sell action figures or whatever.
Jazz: I heard that the new Spawn is going to be R.
Smother: That's good because the first Spawn movie sucked.
Jazz: The special effects were rad but...
Roach: The whole demon thing was just sooo silly.
Jazz: Didn't we talk about this in El Paso?
Kepi: Yeah, we actually did (laughs) but fan's of McFarlane's art would say that everything that he does but that movie was pretty cool.
Smother: Yeah, I thought the HBO special was good.
Kepi: Yeah, totally! That's how we are, we think they should've made a 2 hour animated film and everything would've been peachy, but I think he [McFarlane] learned from it.
Smother: How about Peter Jackson stuff, like Bad Taste or Dead Alive?
Kepi: (starts clapping) Yes, now that's good stuff.
Jazz: They haven't seen Bad Taste though, tell them about it.
Smother: Incredible.
Kepi: And we've seen Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive, have you seen Heavenly Creatures yet? We saw that and then we saw the Butcher Boy.
Smother: Yeah, I've seen the Butcher Boy.
Jazz: He did that? That movie is fucking awesome!
(Jazz then tries to explain to Kepi what the theme of Bad Taste is)
Kepi: Well, by the next time we've come here, we'll have seen everything we'll discuss that.
(the Ghoulies then go into what to stick in the Eyeliners' spare tire compartment and then drift off into a place that they found on tour)
Smother: I know that I've never seen you guys before, but I've heard the stories of the toys and stuff at shows. Do you still do that every show?
Kepi: Yeah, we throw prizes and I don't know how big the legend has grown. It's not some super big theatrical show with monsters like the Misfits or the Cramps. But there are monster songs and we do throw prizes and have toys on stage. We just try to make it real high energy but fun.
Jazz: Butt fun?
Smother: So the stuff that you've been listening to, can you sum it up? I've been looking at all of these tapes lying here, but you could probably tell me about them more.
Kepi: I got some Daniel Johnson tapes in Texas for people that wanted to hear the original version of "To Go Home." We've been listening mostly to my friend Dan Janis in L.A.. A friend of mine wrote one of the songs on Re-Animation Festival. He's got a cd burner and he burns us cds of all of these crazy tapes and cds. But y'know, Motorhead, Jonathan Richmond, Van Morrison, NoFX, it's all different.
Jazz: It's all good unless it's crap.
Smother: So what do you think started you guys off musically? What sort of influence made you want to start playing?
Kepi: I think the common thread we all have is the Ramones of course, right now we have a big Motorhead affiliation. But it's not in the line up, it's just something that we all like. We all like the Cramps, the Ramones, and Van Morrison. It's cool because Jazz has that and he's 19 and I'm 34 and we both have the same record, y'know? Hey, ask Russel a question! Turn the light on! Did you like today's musical selections, Russel?
Russel: It will come to pass.
Kepi: See, he's still getting used to our musical taste, he's only been in the van for about a week. He was fifteen dollars.
Roach: We first got ripped because we thought it was one of those lightning balls, but then we got batteries for it and we didn't know why it didn't work. And then it started saying things every once in a while but then we figured out that it was a talking magic ball.
Jazz: Yeah and we got the new talking skull yesterday.
Kepi: Yeah, you'll see the new talking skull on stage. We went to this fireworks stand yesterday and next to it was this deserted carnival. This guy bought all this land and Roach found a barrel of skulls with light-up eyes and stuff and we were gonna offer to buy them but the guy was like, "you guys gotta go now, I've got to lock up."
Roach: He was scary looking too, he reminded me of a character on Scooby Doo or something. "You kids get out of here!"
Kepi: But the good thing about Russel, even though he was fifteen bucks, he came from a yard sale at Anne Rice's place in New Orleans. So it's a permanent souvenir of Anne Rice and Jazz got Tales from the Crypt comics and we found the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. So we got these groovy souvenirs at Anne Rice's place so that was kind of cool. And no one believed us at the first show in Florida.
Roach: Yeah, they were all shaking their heads no.
Smother: Well, I believe you guys, you wouldn't lie.
Ghoulies: Thank you!
Smother: Who would you say has been your favorite to play with?
Roach: Chixdiggit were so fun.
Kepi: We've never had a bad tour, it's been the Queers, the Muffs, Chixdiggit, the Donnas and now the Eyeliners. We got to play with the Cramps a couple of times, that's cool.
Smother: So what sort of plans future-wise do you have?
Roach: The new album came out a month ago so we're going to try and milk that for a while and there's an Italian 7" coming out.
Kepi: And we have a song on the Fat Records 30 second comp and that'll be out June 1st.
Roach: And the Motorhead tribute just came out.
Kepi: Yeah, we did "Ramones" on the new Motorhead tribute so we've got stuff coming out everywhere.
Smother: Okay, well, I'm running out of questions, so...
Roach: And you're running out of batteries!
Jazz: You're doing fine for someone without a question list or anything.
Kepi: And if you think of anything during the night, just come up and ask. If you want to talk to B-Face, just go up and ask him.
Smother: Okay, so the question that I always end up asking everyone is that I've got a friend named Carbomb and we always ask what they'd think of when they see Carbomb coming up.
Ghoulies: Carbomb? That's a pretty cool name, that's definitely a good one.
Kepi: He should write a song called "Carbomb and not Blue." That's my final comment.