Those zany kids in Bonde do Role - they don't answer their e-mail, their tour manager misplaces his cell phone - it's a regular sitcom over in BDR HQ! Too busy livin' it up, I guess. Anyhooo, after much ado and no interview by the time today's issue hit print, I finally heard back from the band's Rodrigo Gorky. Here's what he coughed up via e-mail; you can check what they're about for yourself at the Independent on Friday, Sept. 28.
Bay Guardian: How did the band get together?
Rodrigo Gorky: After one rehearsal with a "proper band," we all just got drunk and started doing baile funk tracks using the most impossible samples possible - from the Darkness to AC/DC and Alice in Chains.
BG: What inspires the group's lyrics and album and song titles?
RG: Mostly stupid jokes and bad sense of humor that we find funny. (I know, sounds twisted, but that's what it is!)
BG: The recent album is titled With Lasers - why LASERS?
RG: Again, jokes that only we find funny. The whole "lasers" thing started with the idea of everything would be a whole lot better with the addition of lasers (imagine if your cat had lasers!), so that's why With Lasers is the name of the album...
BG: Any thoughts on bossa nova and more traditional forms of Brazilian music - do you see yourself fitting into a continuum? Or breaking away ala CSS?
RG: I think that we have a whole lot of Brazilian influences, but we're trying to make it sound more international, but at the same time, super-regional. And I also feel that even CSS continues the Brazilian music tradition - not music-wise though, but the attitude you find in them you can only get with Brazilian people. And that's something you'd also definitely find in us!
BG: What is the current baile funk or funk carioca scene like?
RG: It's still the same, I guess - there are only a few people in the scene who have a "forward thinking" position about it and they're not enough to make the scene move forward, so the whole scene is just repeating itself for the past five years.
BG: Would you say that your personal lives are as fun as your music?
RG: Not really - we do have a lot of fun when we're playing, but the whole "travel-eat bad food-show-sleep-travel again" has got to a point where even our dreams consists of us driving around to a gig.
BG: What's a typical night out for you?
RG: Off tour? Drinking loads, having fun with our friends, doing embarrassing things that you wish you didn't remember, but you do. When we're on tour, we try to do all that, but moderately.
BG: What kind of American music did you grow up listening to? And what do you listen to now?
RG: I guess all the three of us grew up listening to commercial pop and rock music that would play A LOT in Brazilian radio stations and MTV. Nowadays we still listen to these tracks (like, I don't know, Thomas Dolby?), but we've been listening to a lot of more indie bands now (like Juiceboxxx, Best Fwends, the Death Set, Magic Bullets).
BG: How would you describe your relationship or friendship with Diplo? Are you in his new film?
RG: We're all like a big family - love and hate, but in the end, we're all there for each other. We're gonna start working on the new record with him in Brazil next year. And no, we're not in his film (BTW, I've seen it - it's gonna be really good!), mostly because it focuses on the favelas in Rio.
BG: What do you really think of Afrika Bambaataa?
RG: He's awesome! If it wasn't for him, basically there would be no baile funk at all!
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