The Saturday Shakedown is a weekly radio show on Glasgow University's 'Subcity Radio'. Hosts Ben and Matt did an interview with King Khan when he passed through town with his band. The MP3 of the show is here, but the transcript is below...
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Shakedown Ben– Hello, you’re listening to The Saturday Shakedown on Subcity Radio with me Ben
Shakedown Matt– And me Matt
SB– And we’re here with Handsome Al out of The Bucky Rage, say hello Al
Handsome Al– Hello guys
SB– And we’re very privileged today to be interviewing King Khan, from King Khan and the Shrines who is in Glasgow playing with his band tonight. So we’ve got a little bit of time and Al’s just bought you a local drink there. A fancy whisky, what do you think about that?
King Khan– There is hair growing on my chest as we speak!
SB– I think that is a Jura, quite a smokey one. Anyhow, we’re delighted to see you here in Glasgow tonight – you’ve been on tour. Is this the middle of the tour, the end of the tour?
KK– It is actually right in the middle of the tour right now
SB– So are you hitting your stride?
KK– We’re doing good, everyone is surviving, everyone is happy. A lot of drinking going on. It is our first time ever really touring the UK like this.
AL– It has been a long time coming! We have been waiting desperately for it to happen.
SB– We play you quite a lot on our radio show, ‘The Saturday Shakedown’. With King Khan, BBQ and on your own and with The Shrines, and with The Almighty Defenders and all kinds of folks.
KK– You guys got the Defenders record?
SB– Yeah we played the track “Bow Down and Die”. What was the story behind that LP?
KK– Well it basically happened that The Black Lips got kicked out India and they called me, from India, on my birthday in January and then Jared was distraught and was like, ‘We got to get out of here!’ And they felt they were in danger and stuff so they came to my house and me and Mark Sultan were recording our new record and we just put all our heads together and wrote a bunch of songs, and they kind of had this gospel theme going through it so, we kind of went with that and I am really happy with it. I’m glad it happened.
SB– It sounds like it was a lot of fun to make, it is quite wild and you all obviously get a long…
KK– Yeah, we’ve been touring together for the longest time and we’re pretty much like brothers and you know the Black Lips were covering some songs of ours and I recorded the ‘Let it Bloom’ record also in my living room, or half of it. So it was kind of going to happen eventually. It took them showing their balls in India for us to get religious. (laughs)
SB– They’re in the news quite a bit at the moment I think the Black Lips guys…
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AL– I really love the new album it sounds like you guys just turning up and having a jam and getting some great results from it. Very honest as well.
KK– We literally recorded everything in three days. I was really excited because of the calibre of everyone’s singing voices, having Joe and Mark together and so, it was a pleasure. So far the shows that we’ve had have got really wild and so I think the future is really good for the defenders.
SB– So you have the Defenders album out this month, in the UK anyway, a new record out with BBQ in November, and you’re touring with The Shrines
KK– Actually I have another album coming out too in November or December on ‘In The Red’, of a punk band I am involved in called The Black Jaspers. A friend of mine who is British – he grew up a street punk in London for a long time. He was living in Bremen for a long time and now in Berlin. We recorded an album in 2002, also in 3 days. I sent it around to a bunch of people and got some good responses back. Then finally In The Red really wanted to put it out. And that is coming out 8 years later.
SB– How do you divide your attention between all the different things or is it all one project?
KK– I think they call it A.D.D. (laughs)
SB– I wanted to ask you, is it an everyday thing? Do you do music every day of your life?
KK– Well I have 2 kids. And so it is really nice to have a family to go home to and get away from the retarded-ness of everything. But I love recording, I have a home studio and I like to record bands that I love and know well. Because I don’t like to think of it as a job, it is more of a passion. So I do a lot of recording, I do music with my kids.
Al– I watched a video of you yesterday I think with your eldest daughter doing something with Erin from The Spits as well
KK– Yeah, there’s a song called ‘Broken Heart’ and Erin does the back up vocals and the psychedelic stuff. Yeah, they have some crazy uncles! Two lucky daughters. They really love it too.
Al– I know some Glasgow bands and their kids are just not impressed at all. Your kids seem to be into it
KK– I guess I do it in a family way. When bands come to record, the kids are running around. Joe will be teaching them how to play something funny on guitar. I think that is what comes out on the recordings a lot also. It feels like everyone is really laid back and not worried about having to pay 50 bucks an hour, on the clock. So I try to bring that kind of family love into the whole thing and I guess it comes out and the kids, they really benefit from that. They have so many crazy song ideas and stuff. If we’re washing dishes or something like that one of them will come up with a song that sounds like Captain Beefheart or something like that. I think growing up like that is the most ideal thing, as a Dad that is what you want to offer your kids you know.
It is amazing when kids are learning to talk and they hear Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry it is like they freak out. It is so sad that some people don’t give their kids the opportunity to hear all that stuff. At that age you want to listen to all you can and slowly digest it all when you grow up. So it is rough when I see people just dump their kids in front of Teletubbies. You might as well, you know, give your kids crack! (laughs)
SB– I wanted to ask also about the scene in Berlin. Because you live in Berlin and some of the groups and people you are into from home?
KK– To be honest I am kind of like a recluse in Berlin. If I do go out it is just to see friends of mine who are passing through. I guess I haven’t paid very much attention to any kind of scene. But it is such a big city that there is so much going on. I don’t really know any bands that blew me away. I can say that because I am from Montreal and Montreal is the best! (laughs)
SB– So you’re inspirations are from Montreal rather than Berlin?
KK– No I shouldn’t say that, I love Berlin because it gives me a place to think freely and relax and the beauty of it is that you don’t have to pay over the odds for rent and the smaller things in life. I have been able to raise a family and be happy there and not worry about what is going to happen next month. And basically for any kind of art, that is really what you need. I don’t have to worry about bullshit.
Al– Do you find any, obviously the Spaceshits were barred from a lot of places - has that all moved on with your new approach?
KK– (laughs) Me and Mark Sultan used to think we had this curse, this Spaceshits curse, but that was mainly in Canada. There was this one show in Canada and there was this one guy in the audience, it was at a New Bomb Turks show, and someone shot a bottle on stage and someone on stage shot it back and it happened to hit one of the main promoters and this guy happened to have friends in the distribution companies and he was so pissed – I remember he went round the back after the show and said ‘You’re never going to play in this town again’. Which was a kind of empty threat but at the same time he actually tried to blacklist us from all these distribution companies and blah blah blah. And it is the same guy who put on the Dwarves you know! Who were throwing full beer bottles into the audience. They were just picking on us because they were jealous because we got to travel around, I don’t know. But that was 10 years ago and since then I haven’t felt any bad, evil curse or anything like that. At least not from music.
Al– I was reading you are quite into voodoo?
KK– Yeah I really love voodoo
Al– The thing about you and Cole playing the Devil Card game?
KK– Oh yeah! That was something that we made up a long time ago on tour. Actually we were down south where the crossroads are where Robert Johnson apparently met the Devil and we went there and it was me, BBQ and The Black Lips and the first thing that me and Cole did was we jumped into the dirt and we threw the tarot cards down and we tried to play this game called ‘find the devil’, and just to pull the Devil card out and it didn’t work at all and we kept trying and trying and it didn’t work. And then the next week for like the next 6 days we had show and every day in the morning we would do this thing where Cole would try and concentrate on the Devil card and try to pull it out and he did it every time. Like, once every day and we were amazed and then I followed that thing on into Brazil. Me and BBQ went there and in a way I was looking to get scared you know – like go to a voodoo ceremony and like, run out screaming or something. But the more and more I looked into the churches it was more and more kind people and everything was nice and so well done. So in the last few days me and BBQ got invited to go to a camping place at an International park between Rio and Sao Paulo and some friends of our had this house and on our way there my friend said, ‘I have to warn you that there is haunted house across the street’. And we were like, ‘Yessss!’, excited. And we showed up at the place and sure enough it was this old looking house with this big cement gate around it and on the gate was this big Valhalla sign so we were like ‘Oh Shit’ and it turns out it was like a Nazi hideout and Dr Mengele lived in that place at one point when he was still high ranking and stuff like that. And then of course we broke into the place during the day, because we were curious, and it was quite frightening. You are trying to find the Devil in this strange country and then you find it in another form. It was pretty intense.
I remember also, I started dressing up like this one character in Brazillian voodoo called Zapalintra (??) – he is supposed to be the king of the night. He is supposed to be like the bad guy who says to you, ‘try gambling one more time, you’re going to win, you’re going to win’ – the guy who sits on your shoulder. They call him the king of the night but he is like this night devil. So I started dressing up like him and doing tarot cards for people at the bar. And it turned out that every time I did it the Devil card would pop out at every reading. So it was kind of spooky and then I left a statue of this guy in my room and the next year there was this big fire and everybody’s place was burned except his place and he said, ‘I have to get rid of this thing’ so he took it back to the church and then as soon as he took it back some kid graffiti’d the exact same statue right in front of the bar. (laughs) So it all comes back but we are all children of the Devil!
SB– Well we better wrap this up because you have some Whisky to drink and some food to eat and getting prepared for your show tonight. But just before we end, we play a lot of new stuff on our show, me and Matt and I was thinking you might put us on to anything that we might not have heard? What are you listening to at the moment?
KK– Well we are on tour right now with Jack of Heart who are a really great band from France. I just saw The Demon’s Claws, I don’t know if they came out here but, that is one of my favourite bands. I just heard this great band called ‘Group Inerane’ from Africa, that is an amazing band. It is like an African tribe that plays really crazy guitar style. And…. Omar Souleyman, yeah there is lots of great stuff out there.
SB– Great! We’ll check all that out… That's Fantastic...
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Shakedown Ben– Hello, you’re listening to The Saturday Shakedown on Subcity Radio with me Ben
Shakedown Matt– And me Matt
SB– And we’re here with Handsome Al out of The Bucky Rage, say hello Al
Handsome Al– Hello guys
SB– And we’re very privileged today to be interviewing King Khan, from King Khan and the Shrines who is in Glasgow playing with his band tonight. So we’ve got a little bit of time and Al’s just bought you a local drink there. A fancy whisky, what do you think about that?
King Khan– There is hair growing on my chest as we speak!
SB– I think that is a Jura, quite a smokey one. Anyhow, we’re delighted to see you here in Glasgow tonight – you’ve been on tour. Is this the middle of the tour, the end of the tour?
KK– It is actually right in the middle of the tour right now
SB– So are you hitting your stride?
KK– We’re doing good, everyone is surviving, everyone is happy. A lot of drinking going on. It is our first time ever really touring the UK like this.
AL– It has been a long time coming! We have been waiting desperately for it to happen.
SB– We play you quite a lot on our radio show, ‘The Saturday Shakedown’. With King Khan, BBQ and on your own and with The Shrines, and with The Almighty Defenders and all kinds of folks.
KK– You guys got the Defenders record?
SB– Yeah we played the track “Bow Down and Die”. What was the story behind that LP?
KK– Well it basically happened that The Black Lips got kicked out India and they called me, from India, on my birthday in January and then Jared was distraught and was like, ‘We got to get out of here!’ And they felt they were in danger and stuff so they came to my house and me and Mark Sultan were recording our new record and we just put all our heads together and wrote a bunch of songs, and they kind of had this gospel theme going through it so, we kind of went with that and I am really happy with it. I’m glad it happened.
SB– It sounds like it was a lot of fun to make, it is quite wild and you all obviously get a long…
KK– Yeah, we’ve been touring together for the longest time and we’re pretty much like brothers and you know the Black Lips were covering some songs of ours and I recorded the ‘Let it Bloom’ record also in my living room, or half of it. So it was kind of going to happen eventually. It took them showing their balls in India for us to get religious. (laughs)
SB– They’re in the news quite a bit at the moment I think the Black Lips guys…
AL– I really love the new album it sounds like you guys just turning up and having a jam and getting some great results from it. Very honest as well.
KK– We literally recorded everything in three days. I was really excited because of the calibre of everyone’s singing voices, having Joe and Mark together and so, it was a pleasure. So far the shows that we’ve had have got really wild and so I think the future is really good for the defenders.
SB– So you have the Defenders album out this month, in the UK anyway, a new record out with BBQ in November, and you’re touring with The Shrines
KK– Actually I have another album coming out too in November or December on ‘In The Red’, of a punk band I am involved in called The Black Jaspers. A friend of mine who is British – he grew up a street punk in London for a long time. He was living in Bremen for a long time and now in Berlin. We recorded an album in 2002, also in 3 days. I sent it around to a bunch of people and got some good responses back. Then finally In The Red really wanted to put it out. And that is coming out 8 years later.
SB– How do you divide your attention between all the different things or is it all one project?
KK– I think they call it A.D.D. (laughs)
SB– I wanted to ask you, is it an everyday thing? Do you do music every day of your life?
KK– Well I have 2 kids. And so it is really nice to have a family to go home to and get away from the retarded-ness of everything. But I love recording, I have a home studio and I like to record bands that I love and know well. Because I don’t like to think of it as a job, it is more of a passion. So I do a lot of recording, I do music with my kids.
Al– I watched a video of you yesterday I think with your eldest daughter doing something with Erin from The Spits as well
KK– Yeah, there’s a song called ‘Broken Heart’ and Erin does the back up vocals and the psychedelic stuff. Yeah, they have some crazy uncles! Two lucky daughters. They really love it too.
Al– I know some Glasgow bands and their kids are just not impressed at all. Your kids seem to be into it
KK– I guess I do it in a family way. When bands come to record, the kids are running around. Joe will be teaching them how to play something funny on guitar. I think that is what comes out on the recordings a lot also. It feels like everyone is really laid back and not worried about having to pay 50 bucks an hour, on the clock. So I try to bring that kind of family love into the whole thing and I guess it comes out and the kids, they really benefit from that. They have so many crazy song ideas and stuff. If we’re washing dishes or something like that one of them will come up with a song that sounds like Captain Beefheart or something like that. I think growing up like that is the most ideal thing, as a Dad that is what you want to offer your kids you know.
It is amazing when kids are learning to talk and they hear Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry it is like they freak out. It is so sad that some people don’t give their kids the opportunity to hear all that stuff. At that age you want to listen to all you can and slowly digest it all when you grow up. So it is rough when I see people just dump their kids in front of Teletubbies. You might as well, you know, give your kids crack! (laughs)
SB– I wanted to ask also about the scene in Berlin. Because you live in Berlin and some of the groups and people you are into from home?
KK– To be honest I am kind of like a recluse in Berlin. If I do go out it is just to see friends of mine who are passing through. I guess I haven’t paid very much attention to any kind of scene. But it is such a big city that there is so much going on. I don’t really know any bands that blew me away. I can say that because I am from Montreal and Montreal is the best! (laughs)
SB– So you’re inspirations are from Montreal rather than Berlin?
KK– No I shouldn’t say that, I love Berlin because it gives me a place to think freely and relax and the beauty of it is that you don’t have to pay over the odds for rent and the smaller things in life. I have been able to raise a family and be happy there and not worry about what is going to happen next month. And basically for any kind of art, that is really what you need. I don’t have to worry about bullshit.
Al– Do you find any, obviously the Spaceshits were barred from a lot of places - has that all moved on with your new approach?
KK– (laughs) Me and Mark Sultan used to think we had this curse, this Spaceshits curse, but that was mainly in Canada. There was this one show in Canada and there was this one guy in the audience, it was at a New Bomb Turks show, and someone shot a bottle on stage and someone on stage shot it back and it happened to hit one of the main promoters and this guy happened to have friends in the distribution companies and he was so pissed – I remember he went round the back after the show and said ‘You’re never going to play in this town again’. Which was a kind of empty threat but at the same time he actually tried to blacklist us from all these distribution companies and blah blah blah. And it is the same guy who put on the Dwarves you know! Who were throwing full beer bottles into the audience. They were just picking on us because they were jealous because we got to travel around, I don’t know. But that was 10 years ago and since then I haven’t felt any bad, evil curse or anything like that. At least not from music.
Al– I was reading you are quite into voodoo?
KK– Yeah I really love voodoo
Al– The thing about you and Cole playing the Devil Card game?
KK– Oh yeah! That was something that we made up a long time ago on tour. Actually we were down south where the crossroads are where Robert Johnson apparently met the Devil and we went there and it was me, BBQ and The Black Lips and the first thing that me and Cole did was we jumped into the dirt and we threw the tarot cards down and we tried to play this game called ‘find the devil’, and just to pull the Devil card out and it didn’t work at all and we kept trying and trying and it didn’t work. And then the next week for like the next 6 days we had show and every day in the morning we would do this thing where Cole would try and concentrate on the Devil card and try to pull it out and he did it every time. Like, once every day and we were amazed and then I followed that thing on into Brazil. Me and BBQ went there and in a way I was looking to get scared you know – like go to a voodoo ceremony and like, run out screaming or something. But the more and more I looked into the churches it was more and more kind people and everything was nice and so well done. So in the last few days me and BBQ got invited to go to a camping place at an International park between Rio and Sao Paulo and some friends of our had this house and on our way there my friend said, ‘I have to warn you that there is haunted house across the street’. And we were like, ‘Yessss!’, excited. And we showed up at the place and sure enough it was this old looking house with this big cement gate around it and on the gate was this big Valhalla sign so we were like ‘Oh Shit’ and it turns out it was like a Nazi hideout and Dr Mengele lived in that place at one point when he was still high ranking and stuff like that. And then of course we broke into the place during the day, because we were curious, and it was quite frightening. You are trying to find the Devil in this strange country and then you find it in another form. It was pretty intense.
I remember also, I started dressing up like this one character in Brazillian voodoo called Zapalintra (??) – he is supposed to be the king of the night. He is supposed to be like the bad guy who says to you, ‘try gambling one more time, you’re going to win, you’re going to win’ – the guy who sits on your shoulder. They call him the king of the night but he is like this night devil. So I started dressing up like him and doing tarot cards for people at the bar. And it turned out that every time I did it the Devil card would pop out at every reading. So it was kind of spooky and then I left a statue of this guy in my room and the next year there was this big fire and everybody’s place was burned except his place and he said, ‘I have to get rid of this thing’ so he took it back to the church and then as soon as he took it back some kid graffiti’d the exact same statue right in front of the bar. (laughs) So it all comes back but we are all children of the Devil!
SB– Well we better wrap this up because you have some Whisky to drink and some food to eat and getting prepared for your show tonight. But just before we end, we play a lot of new stuff on our show, me and Matt and I was thinking you might put us on to anything that we might not have heard? What are you listening to at the moment?
KK– Well we are on tour right now with Jack of Heart who are a really great band from France. I just saw The Demon’s Claws, I don’t know if they came out here but, that is one of my favourite bands. I just heard this great band called ‘Group Inerane’ from Africa, that is an amazing band. It is like an African tribe that plays really crazy guitar style. And…. Omar Souleyman, yeah there is lots of great stuff out there.
SB– Great! We’ll check all that out… That's Fantastic...
