sábado, 1 de julho de 2017

No Waves, Just Sharks with The Mad Doctors - An Interview


Pic by Jeanette D. Moses
Existem momentos que você precisa de tranquilidade, existem momentos que você quer algo viajante, para flutuar no espaço, existem momentos que você precisa de algo denso pra se afogar em você mesmo, e existem momentos que você precisa de insanidade total, que é necessário encher a cara e se jogar de cabeça num mosh bem dado e literalmente se acabar e para esses momentos existem bandas que podem te auxiliar, é o caso do trio caótico de Nova Iorque, The Mad Doctors.

Reza a lenda que a apresentação dos caras é um verdadeiro esporro sonoro, regado de fuzz, barulheira e todo mundo que for necessário, mas como estamos um tanto quanto longe, pegue o mais recente trabalho dos caras "No Waves, Just Sharks" e escuto no volume máximo, feito isso, saia pra rua e vá se divertir.

O The Mad Doctors é Rock´n´Roll em letras maiúsculas, do jeito que deve ser.

***** Interview with The Mad Doctors *****


Pic by Jeanette D. Moses

Q. When did The Mad Doctors start? Tell us about the history...
A: The beginning of The Mad Doctors as a musical unit takes us back to the year 1963 AD. Greg Hanson was working as freelance photographer for National Geographic and found himself in the thick of the Sahara on a mission to capture the elusive rattlesnake. No stranger to perilous situations, Hanson had decided to travel only with a bowie knife, a few choice khakis, and his trusty Pentax...the rest of his wares to be foraged for. Meanwhile at the base of Pompeii, Josh Park was performing a commissioned study to measure the effects of volcanic activity on used car sales. It was the summer of '63 when he decided to take advantage of his position as a respected after-market sales statistician to abscond from his research site with classified information he had been given by the mayor of Pompeii Township. The information chronicled an encounter with an other-worldly being who claimed to be on a mission to find the Milky Way's purest tomato-based hot sauce. Holding these files hostage posed a serious risk to the security of the general populous of Mother Earth, so Josh claimed. In the early months of 1964, a young scribe named Seth Applebaum was penning the biography of Boca Raton's most storied above-ground pool PH tester, Earnest Viglione. At the age of 89, Earnest found himself compelled to get his story on paper before he would succumb to memory loss. Having heard of Applebaum's renowned skills in penmanship, Josh Park made an international call to request his services in transcribing the documents he was holding hostage. After many months of oppressive weather conditions and an utter lack of pure maple syrup, Greg decided he must abandon his mission in the Sahara and return to his beach bungalow in North Carolina to rethink his commitment to nature photography. Coincidently, he had also received a memo from Josh Park who was requesting his photography prowess in capturing what was to be one of the first arranged meetings between man and space alien. As the story goes, the three men went undercover and decided to meet at a Frank Zappa concert to discuss details of the operation, noting that the conversation would seem natural in such a setting. In what would prove to be a serendipitous turn of events, Frank invited the three bearded fellows to the stage to help him perform "Joe's Garage." It was during that song that Seth, Josh, and Greg realized that perhaps they had been destined for something other than their previous careers...

Q: Who are your influences?
A: Every band that blew our collective minds growing up.

Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
A: This is maybe the most impossible task so we will leave it by saying that we listen to Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf every time we leave NYC because it brings us good luck.

Q. How do you feel playing live?
A: Fucking sweaty and awesome. We have a tendency of putting it all out onstage and getting as moist as possible, collapsing afterwards near the bar. Needless to say, we're rarely up for the after party cuz we can't even make it there.

Q. How do you describe The Mad Doctors sounds?
A: Well, our new record was birthed from this. After a show in Pittsburgh, one of the members of The Shit Boys was describing our sound and said we sounded like really heavy surf: no waves, just sharks. And now that's the name of the new LP.


Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs ?
A: Our recording process has been a little different for each release. For "Fuzz Tonic" we did a hybrid of analog and digital, using a 75% functional reel to reel for the instruments and then adding vocals and percussion on the computer. For "Snake Oil Superscience" we did everything on a Tascam 488 cassette recorder, and for "No Waves, Just Sharks" we did everything digital because all of our tape machines had broken. Regardless of the medium, we always play the instruments live in the same room, which for these releases happened to be Seth's former bedroom. Our next EP will be the first that we didn't self-record. Instead we opted to work with Julian Fader at Gravesend Recordings so that for once we could just focus on playing and not have to worry about managing the recording process so much.

Q. Which new bands do you recommend?
We are huge supporters of all the bands on King Pizza Records. Our buds Sun Voyager are so stupid heavy and groovy. The Royal They kick us in the teeth at every turn. Stuyedeyed are gloriously head-bangin and wild. The Rizzos are just the right amount of sugar to help the medicine go down. Vamanos are total and utter ragers. There are so many amazing bands we get to play with all the time and you need to check em all out. We also all love bands like Absolutely Not from Chicago who slay discordant punk nastiness, Playboy Manbaby from Phoenix who lift you up and make you dance, A Giant Dog from Austin who will send shivers down your spine, Zip Tie Handcuffs from Boston who will rock your fucking socks off. There are too many great bands out there right now to name em and we're real happy to know em.

Q: Which band would you love to made a cover version of?
A: Our favorite bands to cover are our pals. We try and learn our friend's songs and surprise em at one of their shows or something. It would be really rad to cover something kind of out of left field like our bud's Sweet Spirit from Austin or slow down a Trampoline Team song and make it real nasty.

Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We have a split 7" on the way with some pals and a new EP in the works. We're also headlining an insane 3-day festival called Pizzafest we throw every year with our label King Pizza Records. But these are all really just fronts to get us around the country to devour pizza and slather ourselves in wing sauce.

Q: Any parting words?
A: I read this first as "partying" words and my thoughts were "kowabunga!" and "beer" so that seems like the best way to leave it.
*
*
*
Thanks

https://themaddoctors.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheMadDoctors