{"id":14663,"date":"2021-03-04T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T05:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=14663"},"modified":"2021-03-04T09:18:38","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T09:18:38","slug":"__trashed-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=14663","title":{"rendered":"Introducing… The Cavemen – Interview Exclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every year I like to draw up a list of who I’d like to interview and who I’d like to see live and obviously who I want to release a new album.\u00a0 A band that ticked all of those boxes was The Cavemen.\u00a0 They make great records and they’d be awesome live and I think they’d have some quality tales to tell and have well lived in faces that make for interesting people.\u00a0 So with this pandemic still kicking the backside of the globe, I thought I’d hit them up and see what’s happening before we all get the green light and they are chomping at the bit to get back out there and play some live shows and when they do I’ll be front and centre that’s a promise.\u00a0 So here is what I and Jack the guitar player chatted about. Enjoy…<\/div>\n
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Firstly let’s go back to the beginning you were formed in 2012 right?\u00a0 You relocated to the UK in 2015\u00a0 was that all of you or just one or two of you?<\/div>\n
Yeah, we’ve been destroying eardrums and brain cells together since we met in high school way back in maybe 2009? Memories are hazy. It’s actually the 10 year anniversary of our first ever show in April this year. We’re approaching dinosaur rock status! The move we did all together, much to the dismay of various London landlords over the past few years…<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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You took three years to release the first album but since then you’ve been full-on with four albums and a heap of excellent singles.\u00a0 The artwork is a thing of beauty, Do you have a favourite?<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Yeah, Paul Caveman does all our artwork\u00a0himself by hand, so it fits the warped worldview of our music. The first single and album covers are certainly up there, maybe because we hand-printed them so they’re forever seared into our brains or maybe it’s just because you always remember your first time… Special mention also has to go to the back cover of our Nuke Earth LP, which so offended the company that handles Slovenly Records album covers that they refused to print it!<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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What about song titles.\u00a0 Do they come before the music describe your process of writing and recording?<\/div>\n
The lyrics and titles all come from our deeply warped personalities and dark senses of humour and the music from our troglodytic musical skills. Sometimes\u00a0the riff comes first and the words later, sometimes a concept just hits us and we’ll work music around it. ‘Why Won’t You Take Drugs With Me?’ was one of those, I wrote it on a bus. Sometimes it just comes outta nowhere … like ‘Rides With The Reich’ I woke up from a nightmare with that one fully formed.\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a> Why London and the UK? weather-wise, climate-wise and generally what with the UK being Shit Island couldn’t you guys get into Australia or The US?<\/div>\n
We were never afraid of a bit of rain and cold, but the move came mostly because we heard that the rock ‘n’ roll scene in Europe was really wild, especially countries like Spain, where we’d already had some interest in booking us. Funtastic Dracula Carnival, Cosmic Trip, Hipsville … we wanted to be close to those kinda parties. It also helped that most of us have British or European passports…\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Straight from the off you guys meant business with song titles like…well, take your pick the titles were what drew me in many moons ago.\u00a0 ‘Mentally I’ll’\u00a0 for a start ‘Fucked In The Head’, ‘Fuck For Hate’ to name a few you laid your cards on the table.\u00a0 What made you guys so angry?\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
I guess growing up in a tiny country at the bottom of the world.\u00a0<\/b>Most people in NZ channel their boredom and frustration into drug abuse and problem drinking … which we also took to with glee but we craved some wild rock ‘n’ roll too. Very few bands that made the kinda racket we dug ever made it down our way, either cause they were dead or it was too far to travel, and with a few notable exceptions the local scene was limp indie or godawful BBQ reggae so we just decided we better do it ourselves.\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Who were your influences then and did it drive the music?<\/div>\n
All the usual suspects: Ramones, Cramps, Stooges, Dead Moon, Little Richard, Elvis well as a healthy dose of early New Zealand punk bands like The Scavengers, Proud Scum, Toy Love, The Spelling Mistakes and Suburban Reptiles. One lightbulb moment for us was when we snuck into a Guitar Wolf show as teenagers, it was in a tiny packed out concrete venue and we were deafened for three days. That certainly gave us some ideas.\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When you picked up the instruments how did you guys meet?<\/div>\n
We formed in high school, where we immediately recognised in each other (un)common tastes for wild rock ‘n’ roll, substance abuse and a depraved sense of humour. Not long after, while skating and blasting Blue Cheer, Paul Cavemen met our bass player Nick on the street. He was dressed like a drug casualty from the 60s. He joined not long after.\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Describe a caveman show for our readers?<\/div>\n
Loud, fast, sweaty, booze-fuelled mayhem. Jake will usually be passed out on the kit by the end.<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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How hard did you work on getting that sound its a real throwback in the best possible way to The Stooges and other garage rockers?<\/div>\n
Not all that hard really, it was just the sound we dug and wanted to make. We started out by plugging our shitty guitars into our broken amps and attempting covers of things like Strychnine, Loose and Mysterex and went from there. That’s not to say we were immediately\u00a0any good… there’s probably a demo CD in a basement in Auckland somewhere of our outta tune-outta time teenage years…<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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