Dropout With Baby Woodrose!

By Jens

Lately things have really started to work out for Copenhagen's finest fuzz
merchants; lotsa airplay on mainstream radio, articles in bigass magazines,
excessive Euro touring and now their third album, "Dropout!", is about to be
released. The 10 track record (see review elsewhere in this issue) is a grand homage to their musical heroes of the past including covers of wellknown garagerock artists like Love, Stooges, 13th Floor Elevators, Sonics and more obscure cats like West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and The Painted Faces - all getting the unique Woodrose treatment. So I went directly to the main source, leadsinger/guitarist and eclectic fashion icon Lorenzo, to get the latest shocking and revealing news from Camp Woodrose. Other members of the psychedelic tribe incl. Rocco (drums & Fine Festival beers) and crossdressing 4-stringer Riky. It's a revolution, baby, so get ready to turn on, tune in and drop out!

LC: Congrats on your recent Gutter Island performance, what the hell was that kinky leather Levis vest thing about? They're sponsoring you, just like they did with Turbonegro?

Lorenzo: I thought I would give the girls something to look at. Hahahahaha! We get free denim and we wear it because we think it looks cool and that's it basically, but then they just sent me this leather thing and it just looked so incredibly homosexual I had to wear it! Ha!

LC: You've been touring Europe like crazy this year, tell me some of the highlights?

Lorenzo: Let me see, well, first there was Germany which was ok I guess, then we went to Holland a couple of times and it seems we're slowly building an audience there too, so that was mostly great. France was mostly a bit strange and kind of a bummer compared to what we're used to. Then we went to Spain which is always great. Then we came back.Uh, I'm sorry. The whole tour is kind of a hazy blur in my memory,being some months ago now - but we've got it all on video! Highlights, highlights..El Sol in Madrid - that was a highlight!

LC: Roskilde this year was a completely different experience than last year wasn't it? Seeing Peter Belli with you guys on Orange stage was nothing less of than immortal Danish r'n'r history...

Lorenzo: Yeah, it felt very different for us too. Last year we felt kind of shaky,
playing for a big bunch of people who didn't really know us. This year more people definitely knew us and they weren't just waiting for Shitallica and we got a chance to get used to the sound on the stage. The roar of such a big audience is just amazing! Wow!

LC: You also had Scott Morgan on stage on "1969", how did you get him to do it? Wasn't Iggy up to it?

Lorenzo: We asked Scott Morgan because we really like that Solution album and thought he would be a nice guy to meet. When I asked him what kind of arrangement of the song he wanted us to play, he just said "I dunno, let's just jam, I'll probably fuck it up more than you do anyway!" And he was right! He's a very warm and friendly guy.

LC: The psychedelic lightshow was the most very impressive for a Danish band I've ever seen...

Lorenzo: Yeah, it was really expensive but when we watched the video we all agreed that it was worth every penny! It had to be done very fast too, because it wasn't more than four weeks before the festival when they asked us to play.

LC: Lets talk about "Dropout!", your new cover album of your favorite artists, how did idea came about? Four of songs were recorded during the "Money For Soul" sessions, right?

Lorenzo: Right. We were discussing how to use those four tracks - Dropout Boogie, World Ain't Round, Not Right and Child Of A Few Hours - and originally agreed to do an EP or something like that, but then we started playing some other covers live and we ended up recording those very fast during a weekend session and it ended up being 30 minutes of music anyway, so.

LC: I'm very impressed with the raw re-working of Captain Beefheart's classic
"Dropout Boogie" where you changed the original weird middle part with an onslaught of monster riffing. Covers shouldn't be done strictly by the book?

Lorenzo: Yeah, with almost all of them we've tried to arrange them as if they were our own songs. Covers are most interesting when you add something to them yourself I think. I've always been crazy about that song and I've always hated that middle part, so we just had to find a way around it. There are so many killer riffs that only pop up once or twice in that song it's amazing, so we just took one of those and repeated it instead of going into the ¾ time part. It's a really complicated arrangement to play actually. We've never played it live because we're afraid we'll fuck it up!

LC: You have chosen to release Love's "Can't Explain" as the first single, why? And have you met Arthur Lee in person?

Lorenzo: It's a catchy little song. I really like that buzzing riff in the beginning
and middle. That's an OctaFuzz! We're using that on most of the solos on this album. We opened for Arthur Lee at a gig in France recently, his band are such nice guys and they really seemed to like our music. Actually, the whole road crew travelling with them are Danes - fun fact! When we arrived at the venue we sat down backstage and started to roll up a joint and Arthur's (Danish) road manager sort of sniffed and said: "Do you realize what Arthur is gonna say when he smells that?" Uh-oh! The room was absolutely silent for 30 seconds until he delivered the punchline: "Gimme some! That's what he's gonna say!"

LC: I take it you'll send the cd to the artists you've covered on "Dropout!". What'd Roky Erickson's response be to "I Don't Ever Wanna Come Down"? That's a pretty rare track not included on any 13th Floor Elevators albums? You met him a few years back in Austin?

Lorenzo: Probably Roky won't remember the tune at all. He seemed to be doing alright, but also said he didn't feel like continuing his career anymore. Actually when we played our version of Fred Cole's song for him at Studenterhuset, he said he hadn't thought about that song for 30 years, he had forgotten about it completely. That's also a pretty obscure tune we found on a biker movie soundtrack called "Angels From Hell" from '69.

LC: "This Perfect Day" by The Saints is the only non-60s song on the album...

Lorenzo: Yeah. I love The Saints. The first two albums are so great. The thing about them is they always had that cool sixties punk groove and those snotty vocals going. They didn't really sound like any other 70's punk bands, did they?

LC: The Defectors has gotten the thumbs up from Little Steven's Underground Garage, has he heard Baby Woodrose?

Lorenzo: I don't know! After all these things started happening, we haven't really had time to think about the US and many other territories as well. We're so busy playing every little shithole in Denmark, the US seems so far away. We would love to go to Australia too.

LC: I saw you being interviewed on some local TV station at Roskilde, and you admitted being a huge Devo fan as a kid (I worship their three first LPs as well) before getting into more guitar based rock'n'roll. Can we expect a Devo cover in the future, or maybe some Devo robo-fashion statements?

Lorenzo: Haha! You never know! Some of those songs would be really cool to translate into guitar rock actually! Devo was one of the first bands I fell in love with at a very early age. My brother taped me some of their stuff and I was hooked on that synthetic sound - guess I was about 11 or 12.

LC: Seen any groovy 60s psych drug movies lately?

Lorenzo: I finally got to see "Mantis In Lace" recently and liked it a lot! We
brought "The Trip" and "Psychout" for our Euro tour, but the DVD wouldn't play them for some reason, but then we had a copy of "Historien Om Kim Skov" which is a really cool Danish educational movie from the late seventies about the dangers of bullying kids. Many people my age have seen this in school during the eighties and I guess at that point it was already hopelessly out of date. There's a gang of loser kids in that movie that look exactly like Iggy & The Stooges in denim and sunglasses!

LC: What are BWR's plans for the rest of the year? Anything to add?

Lorenzo: We still have a few more places to go around Denmark, about 10 gigs I think and then we're slowly starting to record our next album as well. We've got 25 new songs we need to arrange and record during the fall.

http://www.babywoodrose.com