Interviews: Aside

Angie Lalonde writes:
"Sometimes I wonder why in hell I would chose to sit in a van all day long with stinky touring bands but experiences like this one don't even make me questions my intentions when I roll-up my sleeping-bag. Meeting these guys, the first day they saw snow; Aside from Portugal dragged me on to their first 'Live & Starving 2003 Canadian Tour" for too many hilarious culture-shock moments, constant Tim Horton's and Subway high-way stops and educational sessions of dirty Portuguese words. All in all it was amazing to see them experience punk rock in an entirely new culture with new people, personal venues and mostly unknown to them always all-ages shows of so many kids wearing DC shoes they'd happily regularly note. Another far-away talented punk-rock band sincerely trying to make a voice for themselves beyond their country, they definitely worked hard to get out here, every chosen risk served them well and their music was heard with recognition from eager kids for their next tour.

This interview was done on a night we all got stranded, the great beauties of transmissions... so I rounded up the tourists and sat them down in our hotel room for this interesting session with their Canadian label owner to get their outlook on their Great White North mission, of course they didn't let me down, they had more than enough out of the ordinary things to say practicing their newly polished English for this first Canadian interview... "

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ANGIE: First can I get you guys to say your names and
PARDAL: Our addresses, our phone numbers
DANIEL: I’m Daniel and I play the guitar, I am left handed
P: Hello! I am Pardal, P-A-R … um and I play the drums (laughs)
NETO: Hey I am Neto and I play the bass
DAVID: I am David and I am the singer
R: I am Ricardo and I am the guitar player (Ricardo spits as he says it) and I drool (laughs) sorry
A: So have you guys ever been to Canada before?
P: Oh yes all the time, how many times a year!
D: Every weekend!
P: Yeah this is our first time in Canada, we’re enjoying very much, the people are very kind, they have the mind open to any objective…
R: Hey, hey! Tim Hortons rules!
P: No way Subway!
A: And how would a kid get a copy of your record?
DAN: Well it’s on Freedumb Records, go to www.freedumbrecords.net or you can get it at www.asiderockers.com
A: Have you guys ever played any other international countries before this Canadian tour?
DAN: Um, no but once we did one show out in the Netherlands cause we won a contest that was like two years ago.
A: How did you guys get on a Canadian label being from so far?
R: This all about the internet
D: The communication and doing things by ourselves
R: Mp3.com, setting up our site…
DAN: Basically what we did was record some songs and spread it where we could to every people who would be able to listen to and somehow Mike from Freedumb Records listened to it and he wrote us, therefore we started emailing and talking and that’s how we got on the label.
P: It’s simple Mike saw us on the internet
A: Oh so he thought you guys we’re cute!
P: Oh yeah he saw us on portuguesegaysarethebest.com (laughs)
A: And the title of your record
D: ‘Good Enough For Someone Else’ it’s good enough. I think it could be better…
DAN: Basically what it means we’re never satisfied with what we do so every time we record a song and we listen to it we think it could always be better, that’s to us what the title means.
A: When was it released?
DAN: It was supposed to be a year ago but we had a lot of problems with the album at a Portuguese studio, it only ended up getting released this October.
D: Yes, the album is actually to us one year old
P: Yeah, it was like the draw was gone
DAN: Mike has been waiting a whole year to release this album
P: Thanks Mike!
DAN: So this album is not even what we play anymore
DAN: It doesn’t give us justice for now
A: So yeah we’re all on the ‘Live & Starving Tour’
D: Yeah we are alive and starving
(all at the same time ‘and without money!!!’)
A: But hey guys tonight we’re drinking someone else’s beer, staying in a hotel on someone else’s credit card, night off, c’mon not so bad!
(everyone raises their glasses to this fact!)
A: So how withstanding is the independent music scene in Portugal?
DAN: It sucks, well we have… Um well it’s hard
D: I think the independent scene in Portugal is completely dead and devastated, it doesn’t exist at all. The bands are trying to reach something that doesn’t exist so we just have a couple of bands that help each other, and that’s it nothing more. I think in Portugal we have a big problem with competition…
P: That’s the thing, we are all so small and then we are fighting to open the door and everyone’s like ‘no, no! I am going to open it’ ‘no, no it’s me!’ we don’t need that we need to help each other.
D: We have thousands of doors but it seems that everyone wants to get in that ‘one’ door, door number one and it sucks.
DAN: What I think is the bands are not trying to work, they just want to have a band and be on top of everyone, just don’t do the normal stages that every band should do like from the beginning, record a demo, start touring as much as you can, release your first CD continue touring and learning and leaning but… They just want to have a band and be on TV or be a punk rock rockstar…
DAN: But you know one year from this conversation I know I am going to sleep with my mind totally clear, I never going to think that I was a rockstar, I don’t want to be a rockstar, it’s just me.
P: We are not at all judging the quality of the songs, the bands are all really good, they keep really, really good bands we’re simply saying that the bands need to help each other out more
DAN: Yeah there’s lots of great Portuguese bands, I can name you some; Easy Way, More Than A Thousand, Fiona At Forty… Those are for me some of the bands. Another problem we don’t have is a gig-circuit so it’s really hard to play in Portugal and we don’t have any venues…
A: Yeah I was going to ask about your venues?
DAN: Ahhh, yeah it sucks! Cause we used to have some good venues…
D: We do have but you have to fight for it (laughs)
DAN: In Portugal we have either really tiny, small venues or really big ones, we don’t have those medium size kind of venues that these (Canadian) kinds of bands are used to play. So either you play for twenty to thirty people top or you’re going to play in a venue for five or six thousand.
N: 12 million!? laughing (Neto doesn’t know English very well)
DAN: The promoters and the bookers basically aren’t really interested in booking Portuguese bands they just want to bring bands. And of course the other problem, people just don’t go to the fucking shows, they just don’t care, really it’s true.
P: They will only got to the internet to criticize your band but when the band play they don’t show?
DAN: Yeah that’s another problem with internet, people always critizincing without going there, they just sit on their chair and say you guys suck, it’s like ‘have you ever been there?’ ‘no’ well how can you say that? ‘Well someone told me’ this is the mentality we see. In some ways, in other ways we have genius guys who are always there, always making efforts to go completely. We have some venues out in Porto it’s a little bit far from Lisbon but people just catch a train and go there for shows which is fantastic!
A: And what’s the weirdest food you’ve eaten in Canada so far?
P: Ahhhhh, oh yeah! Well Burger King sucks
(Everyone yells out ‘poutine’!)
DAN: Yeah we ate poutine, it’s supposed to be typical Canadian food but it’s just fries and cheese with sauce on it (laughs)
P: I like it, poutine is really good and I like Subway! Their veggies Subway rock
A: Weird though let’s hear weird
D: I can compare this kind of food to what we have in Europe or the Netherlands, it’s about fried things (makes a disgusted face)
DAN: Buckets O’ grease, all oil
D: But ahhh what can I say about the food
A: But you all have nice shoes!
N: Ahhh yeah! Great sponsor
DAN: Although in Canada everyone wears these shoes! It’s weird it’s nothing special or anything it’s just really weird.
A: So yeah you guys are sponsored by DC shoes
D: I do love Reebok but we couldn’t have them (laughing). Stop, kidding, kidding I am kidding. Yeah that was another do it yourself thing we did
R: No one came to us and was like ‘hey can we sponsor you?’
D: We had some examples of other people trying to get in contact with DC’s and they were like ‘oh forget about it!’
P: Everyone was like forget it, you don’t have the credibility to be sponsored by them
D: And we tried! We tried with the illusion box
R: We were like whatever who cares, it was shot in the dark
P: Tut is the name of the guy who sponsored us, Tut is the best! He was like ‘hey you want to be sponsored, fine show me what you got, show it’ we showed him our material and he was like ‘oh fucking shit let’s go!’ props and big thanks to Tut he’s part of their Portuguese crew and also we’d like to send out big props to Jean who’s on tour with us right now, he’s been too amazing to us all!
A: You guys have a fun intro for your live show
P: AC/DC ‘Back in Black’!
A: Do you guys always do that one?
DAN: No we have more, we have a bunch… (everyone is rambling and Daniel starts mumbling in the recorder…) They don’t make any sense, I think they’re already drunk, you’d better put that in…

Now Mike, their label owner emerges from the hotel bathroom in a fury arguing with the boys about who left something in the bottom of the shower that is neither shampoo nor conditioner…
DAN: Ahh, forget about that! We don’t have any specific set-list we only decide a few minutes before the show, what we feel like playing it happened to be all the shows till now in Canada with the same intro but we have other intro’s but we’ll see what happens on the next shows on the tour.
A: Okay guys enough about the sperm, please back to the interview, I really don’t care who did it (laughing)
DAN: They are discussing who masturbated in the bathroom in Portuguese
A: You know this is all going to go in the interview, Pardal everyone might now what you did in the shower
P: Jesus! No I didn’t okay if you want to write it you can but I didn’t do it…
(the guys keep arguing over this topic some more…)
A: On your record it says you guys did the production
DAN: Oh no we had help of a really good friend of ours…
A: Did you literally rent your studio time in Portugal and…?
DAN: Ahh, it’s just really a long story…
D: It’s like twenty pages
DAN: We can’t talk about it right now cause it actually involves legal questions…
D: I am writing a book about it so you can see how large is the history (laughing)
A: You guys support and also have IDA (In Defense Of Animals) appear in your record slip.
DAN: IDA what’s that (laughs)
P: Yeah, yeah it’s true!
DAN: Oh yeah, that’s Mike, Mike!
P: Mike! Mike come here you have to talk about this
MIKE: No I don’t agree with that
DAN: Mike answer the question
MIKE: No it’s just an organization that Freedumb Records supports and we’re giving a percentage of the sales to the organization
A: What’s been your favorite tourist attraction you’ve seen in Canada so far?
(someone yells out boobies)
DAN: Ah man, girls
P: Babes!
(David starts ranting about how it’s our by now stinky hotel room)
D: No… Okay three important points here, Niagara Falls, Quebec and
N: The snow!
R: The Parliament in Ottawa
D: Oh yes, snow fights! That’s number three
R: We’ve seen so many cities
N: Molson Dry is cool too
D: So Niagara Falls, Quebec, snow …
DAN: And the girls
D: No
P: The Quebec City night was cool we went to a bar that was really cool it was like a punk rock bar with a lot people it was really cool.
D: Oh yeah and the venue of Labaie! I forget the place but it was too, too, too cool but okay Niagara Falls was the best one
DAN: Ah for me it was the snow! For the first time I’ve seen snow it was in Canada.
P: Me too! Now everytime I see snow or I touch snow…
A: Ricardo you put your ass in the snow
R: And my balls
D: Yeah that’s true now it burns
(David starts singing ‘I’m already burning, I’m already burning’)
A: Anything else you guys learned in Canada?
DAN: A lot of French dirty words
P: We can turn right when the light is red
DAN: Yeah! That doesn’t happen in Europe
D: You can have the license to drive, without having license (laughing) but eh I want to say that Canadian people have a different kind of mentality…
DAN: Open-mind
D: Yeah it’s completely different from the Portuguese, I can say that you guys… well being here I feel completely safe…
(things go quiet and finally everyone cracks up…)
D: Okay well being here at night and going to some bar or whatever it’s completely different in Portugal, I feel totally safe here at night in Portugal I can’t say that.
A: Well thanks much guys, I guess anything else, your website www.asiderockers.com, any tours…
DAN: We’re in Canada till the end of December and check out our website!
P: Yeah and sign our guestbook!
DAN: Send emails
D: Most of all we like to be criticized by anyone or anything
P: Negative or positive we love to hear it!