conducted by Chris Beyond on July 7th, 2007 in Downtown L.A.
[Intro text starts here]
I first saw LACO$TE at a little hidden treasure of a club called Il Corral, just off Melrose in Hollywood. The show was put on by Sean Carnage and I was looking forward to seeing ANAVAN who I had just learned was created by two of the people in NEW BETHEL whom we had interviewed before.
To my surprise came this amazing Electro-Rap band fronted by a tall thin guy in his underwear and this crazy girl, both of whom got right into the audience as they performed, getting into people's faces - and behinds - all while rapping and jumping up, down, and rolling on the floor while their band performed on two keyboards and whatever randomly spliced together electronics where in front of them. They really blew me and the rest of the audience away. I only wished I had heard of them earlier.
Months later, we did this interview at a club I've never been to called The Airliner in Downtown L.A. after a show put together by HOW TO BE A MICROWAVE on the street as lots of drunk people started flowing out of that and nearby clubs.
[Intro text ends here]
C=Chris Beyond; interviewer, tape recorder holder, and typist P=Dr Puchukaru aka DJ Felldown aka Peas Knees; raps, make beats, makes shirts, senior tech X=X; raps, sings, jumps, plays, rubs, grabs, formerly jr. solderer N=Nasta Canasta; beats, keys, not present at this interview
[Interview starts here]
X: Once Peter had a dream that his hamster who had died came back to life and it was talking to him and stuff after it became a snake and swallowed another hamster. It came back to life to help him with his soldering. It would hold, like...
P: Different resisters in its little paws and it would hold the resisters while I soldered them. Because my hamster died... It was like her personality (indicating X) grafted onto my hamster.
C: Soldered onto the hamster.
P: Yeah, soldered onto the hamster.
C: So would it just hold it onto its back?
P: No it was like little wires and stuff and he's be holding them. And being sassy.
X: And it was sad because it never had sex. What else happened? It wanted a bigger cage. This all came out after he died.
C: (can't help but laugh) Did you find a note?!?
P & X: Dreams.
P: I have these dreams. I had a few dreams about my hamster after my hamster died.
C: Aww... What was the hamster's name again?
P: Samster.
C: Samster the hamster...
P: Also aka Cali Cali for California Caligula.
C: DJ Shamster...
P: No... That would have been a good one. Also his name was John Holmes.
X: That was a really boring name.
P: That was a dumb name. But Cali Cali didn't stick and it ended up being Samster.
(We talk a bit about the Origins of Samster's name.)
C: SO the big normal question is how did LACO$TE begin?
P: Um, we started in Chicago in...2003? Yeah, 2003. We decided to form a band together.
X: No, you were playing a show with your other band TEEN WOLF and you were like, "Oh, they need an opener!" cuz they were playing with some indie-rock band and then then you were like, "Hey, it'd be really great to have a French Hip-Hop band!" And so, yeah, we had one week and then we didn't have any songs and we made up all these songs in French to have this first show for a band that didn't exist and we basically spent the first two days thinking of a name which I can't understand because it's kind of a retarded name.
P: Yeah, it's a retarded name.
X: We just took out an Andy Warhol book and then came up with LACO$TE.
C: I was actually thinking about you guys when I was in France a couple months ago. There was a Lacoste store and I thought, "Oh, I can probably use that in the interview." So I will probably have an arrow pointing to that right now.
X: Yeah, I never owned any LACO$TE before. Then people started giving it to me thinking I'm into the label or something. Yeah, it's just sort of random.
P: Your mom bought you some...
X: We were almost... What was our name? We were almost SAN TROPEZ but then somebody else took that name.
P: That's good that didn't happen. That's even worse.
C: A friend of mine was wondering if you were going to get sued. I said, "No, it's a word..."
X: We were thinking, like, Timberland hasn't been sued...
C: And LE TIGRE.
X: And LE TIGRE.
P: That's true.
C: No, I think you guys are totally safe. Hey! Wasn't there a fourth person in the band?
P: Yes!
X: Let's not get into that!
P: No, there was a third person who is...
X: At one point there was Kyle. Kyle was in the band first.
P: Kyle was our first third person. He was officially our Hype Man, but he played the electronics and jumped around. And then...
X: He took off his shirt and harassed people.
P: And then...
X: He was good at that. Then he quit cuz he was sick of us. He's like, "You guys are no pro enough for me." cuz we never make it to shows on time. We're always breaking up every other day.
P: And fighting and stuff. He quit. But then I was in a band with him and then I quit THAT band for revenge. (laughs) That's not really true.
X: Yeah, so then we got Daniel, who was actually... He came to our first show where we were reading the lyrics off a piece of paper and then we toured with him and then he came back to L.A. and...
P: He was in another band we toured with. GEMINI.
X: Then there was Lee.
P: Well Lee was before Daniel actually, but Lee lived in Riverside and he didn't have a car so it was really hard to make practice. Plus with Daniel it was getting too noisy, so we're trying to work things out as a trio first.
X: (to me) Did you like it with the fourth person? I don't know...
C: I liked it, I have to say.
P: Lee was a nice guy.
X: It was getting really noisy, I think. We were kinda wanting to do more dancey stuff I think.
P: Yeah, for a while I was into making it as noisy as we could...and then when we got to that point where it was really noisy I was like, "Yeah I really like pop music again." So now we're trying to go back to our...
C: Pop roots!
P: Yeah. I guess, yeah. I didn't like pop music before, but then I got into it. (pause) Sorry, I'm a little faded now.
C: What influences your music and lyrics and can you say it in the third person?
X: In the third person?!? I think you know... I've always wanted to talk about LACO$TE in the third person.
P: LACO$TE is influenced by Buster Keaton heavily. We've...LACO$TE has seen every Buster Keaton movie, pretty much, right?
X: Yeah, cuz people come up to us and be like, "I really like the sexual energy of that show." And I'm like, "No, it's just physical comedy. I don't know what you're talking about." Yeah, I think that's a big influence. And, uh, what are your other influences Peter? I know you've been dying to...
C: You said that in the second person...
X: Oh shit!
P: Oh oh... I would say JAPANTHER cuz they book their own shows and they didn't know how to play when they started and their high energy. The music doesn't sound like JAPANTHER, but I would say JAPANTHER. I guess experimental music cuz that's what I kinda was into. And then I like Timberland and pop music.
(X lists off a bunch of things Peter likes)
P: I like a mixture of weird noise stuff and pop music like hip-hop.
X: I like Ice-T. I like ODB.
P: WU-TANG's really good. Serge Gainsbourg.
C: Who is your favorite comic book character?
P: Oooohhh... Dude, I like The Maxx. It was a short lived series put out by Image Comics.
X: We're going to really nerd out here.
C: It's ok.
P: Of course I like Tin-Tin because I'm Belgian. I like the Robert Crumb comics in general. I really like comics, but I can't think right now.
X: It's weird because I grew up reading Korean comics and I remember being able to read them which I can't do anymore because my Korean really sucks. And then like I learned English reading comics cuz my dad always bought...
P: Her dad is obsessed with comics.
X: He's a pack-rat and all he does is read comics.
P: He has thousands of comics everywhere.
X: The weird thing is I remember reading this comic called Wicked Wanda when I was a kid, I guess that my dad had laying around. What is it, 25 years later and it's like totally published by Penthouse, right? I remember just like reading it and thinking, "Ok, this is how the world works." Rich heiresses go and have these sex slaves. And THAT was an influence I would say.
C: I got into, last Summer, this comic called Little Annie Fanny that used to be in Playboy.
(X laughs.)
P: Oh, I think I know that one. Is it like Little Orphan Annie, kind of?
C: But she's got a sugar daddy, kind of. I think that Wicked Wanda is a little more hardcore than it. It was done for Playboy by the Mad Magazine people. So it's that old kind of art that I...
X: But did you get that thing where you discovered years later that, "Oh my god! This is kinda like porn!" You know when you're a kid it like, "Wow, this is just like a a nice cartoon and blah blah blah. I didn't think about it until years later.
C: My dad had a comic book of... It was in book form of a bunch of real comics but done in porn style like Popeye and stuff...
(Everyone laughs)
C: And I've since found out that they were called "Tijuana Bibles" I guess. They were these little cheapy things that just cost five cents or whatever and you buy them from people.
P: Oh, is it like the large breasted...
C: No, no, no, that's a whole other thing. Someone just put out a book about those.
[Part one of LACO$TE interview ends here]
[Click This Thing to continue to Part Two]
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