Karl Steven once fronted Kiwi music colossus Supergroove. Now he fronts The Drab Doo-Riffs, a band whose gigs are reputedly just about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Gary Steel asks the questions.
Witchdoctor โ You majored in philosophy, but have gone back to music?
Karl โ Certainly the perception is that rockโnโroll music and books about ancient thinkers are polls apart. Actually itโs not all that different, but culturally thereโs a great abyss between them.
WD โ You earn your living doing production work?
Karl โ Yeah, producing and composing. Composing music to picture usually, for TV and films, and recording other bands and helping them out and mixing and stuff like that.
WD โ Do you literally write music?
Karl โ Yeah, I can do when necessary, but so much is done on computer these days that often you donโt have to. But if Iโm doing something for a string quartet or something I write out the parts.
WD โ You have musical training in the past?
Karl โ Only at secondary school level, although I have recently been studying orchestration and getting a little bit more seriously into it. Iโd like to be able to go nuts with an orchestra one day.
WD โThe Drab Doo-Riffs vs. the NZSOโฆ
Karl โ Absolutely. Theremin concerto. Thatโs what Iโd like to do.
WD โ Do you have a theremin?
Karl โ No, I donโt. And I feel like theyโd probably be too difficult for me to play properly. The amount of discipline it takes to determine the pitch with one hand and volume with the otherโฆ youโd have to be a Clara Rockmore. And we have a kind of proto-theremin in the Drab Doo-Riffs as well, this little red box, and it makes a theremin-esque sort of sound. Itโs a sampler with a couple of valves in it, and we take a sound and loop it, and change the pitch of it. It adds a bit of something science-fictiony, which we like.
WD โ How long has the Drab Doo-Riffs been going?
Karl โ I guess about a year and a half.
WD โ The lineup in the band is still the same?
Karl โ It hasnโt changed at all so far, which is great, because itโs a really awesome bunch of people to play music with.
WD โ Youโre the leader? Theyโre your musical ideas that inform what happens? Or is it more like a collaboration?
Karl โ Itโs definitely collaborative. I wrote a lot of the songs before I came back to New Zealand, while I was living overseas, so initially it was like โHey do you want to play music with me? Hereโs my songs, do you like them?โ And I am the guy historically taking the songs to practice and saying โwhat do you think of this?โ and so on. But I think itโs easy to miss the levels of collaboration with bands. Weโre all able to have as much or as little input as we want. So it’s a mysterious thing really. If it was a different group of people that I was taking my songs to, the music would be completely different.
WD โ Thatโs the thing with groups. Even the Beatles, you couldnโt imagine them without Ringo.
Karl โ Exactly. Imagine if John Bonham was in the Beatles and Ringo was in Led Zeppelin, theyโd be very different bands. And yeah, itโs been great working with Mikey and Marky and Phoebe and Lucy because theyโre justโฆ I canโt imagine this band without any of those people. And I hope I donโt have to.
WD โ Was there a fundamental idea behind the band?
Karl โ Um, make cool music. For me, everyoneโs in bands for their own reasons, I guess. For me, this is my second time around in bands, and I felt like firstly I wanted to just do the music that I wanted to do irrespective of how I thought people would react. I actually thought after Iโd written a bunch of these songs, about half the people in the room are going to hate this. Itโs almost as if weโve got to say at the beginning of shows, โhalf of you leave nowโ. But playing live it wasnโt like that, and people really seemed to think it was a blast. So one of the things I wanted to do was just to be completely honest and use all my weaknesses as a musician and turn them into strengths. Like a love of simplicity and not being able to sing like a singer can sing, and all those things. And the other thing was just not do all the boring kind of music industry type things that bands get bogged down with. And try and do all the fun stuff โ just all the reasons parents donโt want their sons and daughters to join bands. Just do all the cool stuff. And make music and have fun and play shows and not get all freaked out and bogged down in the boring stuff that no-one thinks is any fun.
WD โ I was going to say that after awhile it seemed that Supergroove were being bogged down by the industry, and I could imagine, having read quite a few rock bios and autobiographies, that it seems to be a typical thing that you start out with a bunch of mates and before you know it youโre kind of oppressed by industry and the need to market yourself and all that.
Karl โ In Supergroove we really enjoyed marketing ourselves because we liked coming up with logos and playing the game. But we did definitely get bogged down very early on. We got accountants on board and lawyers on board, because we were being advised by people to do that. Even down to the way we divided up publishing money and all that stuff. And a few years down the track we owed thousands of dollars to lawyers and accountants, and it was just really stink. So itโs nice in the Drab Doo-Riffs to get a second chance to have a fresh start.
WD โ Do you think the music industry is in a weird place right now?
Karl โ Itโs having a nervous breakdown.
WD โ Do you think thatโs to your advantage in lots of ways, in the way that youโre looking at the band?
Karl โ I guess it is, in a way. I like to think that weโd be doing the same thing whatever was happening in the music industry, even if it was the mid-โ70s or something. That weโd still be going about things in the same way. Live music is really thriving in a way that it wasnโt 15 years ago, so we can play these little rockโnโroll clubs that just didnโt exist in the early โ90s. So thatโs awesome. And also, bands pressing their own CDs and selling them at the door for $10 โ thatโs not too frightening for people. So yeah, I guess it is a good time to do things in the way weโre doing them. But thereโs just the necessity ofโฆ we donโt have a record label, and we want to make records, so weโll do it ourselves. Weโre not going to try and coerce someone into signing us if they donโt want to, weโll just do it anyway.
WD โ But if you really wanted it, it must be easy enoughโฆ
Karlโ I donโt know. Maybe we donโt want it enough. It would be great not to have to pay for pressing the records, and to not have to walk to the record shop and give them the five copies ourselves. And to post them off in envelopes to people who email us. But itโs fun doing things in that way, too. Thereโs benefits to both things. But we just do what we do and if other people want to get involved, if theyโre enthusiastic enough about it, and get what weโre doing, theyโre very welcome, itโd be fun. But until someone comes knocking at the door weโll just do it anyway.
WD โ Why do you think the live scene has gotten so good?
Karl โ Iโm only speculating but one is that for the bigger bands money from record sales has fallen off, so theyโre forced to get back together or trot out and make some money from the live scene. And also I think part of it is that because people can get recorded music pretty much for free these days. Itโs become devalued, but if youโve got a hundred dollars you wouldnโt go to the CD shop anymore and buy almost three CDs, but you might buy a concert ticket. So I think that helps the live scene. And also things like MySpace, a lot of bands just being able to have their own websites with their music on and being able to connect to one another, you can go โoh, thereโs this other band that does a similar kind of music, we should do a show togetherโ. That just didnโt exist when I first started doing music in the โ80s.
WD โ Networking with likeminded souls and building enthusiasm that way.
Karl โ Thatโs right. I remember going to Dunedin with Supergroove in the early โ90s and it was like going to a different country or something. They hadnโt heard any of the music from Auckland, we hadnโt heard any of the unrecorded bands from there, and it was like a cultural exchange, sharing the different dance moves and stuff. Whereas now, everyone knows whatโs going on everywhere.
WD โ Do you have a lot of contact with other bands playing around Auckland? Do you get a good sense of how thriving the scene is?
Karl โ Weโre lucky that weโre sort of in a family of bands that include the Vietnam War and thereโs a bunch of bands I record with, the Hairdos, los Horis. And then thereโs Tourettes who I mix. Lucy, our guitarist, was in the Vietnam War. And I play blues with Crystal from the Vietnam War, and do this whole Country Club thing that happens once every couple of months, like a variety show with all these different bands and configurations.
WD โ Where does that happen?
Karl โ Itโs happened a couple of times at the Thirsty Dog, twice at the Kings Arms. Thereโs definitely a group of bands who are all friends. And Mikey used to play in Mean Street who are now called Street Chant and doing good things.
WD โ So really youโve got your own little mini scene, a kind of family of bands.
Karl โ Yeah, it feels like a family of bands, and there are visual artists associated with it as well, like the rapper Tourettes, he has a show where visual artists put his raps to make art works out of them, itโs called Daydreams Start Fires. Itโs a really great little community of people, and I feel really lucky to be part of it or on the outskirts of it or whatever. Itโs a lot of fun.
WD โ Tell us something about the music of the band. Where does that all come from? Youโve got what some people would call quite archaic influences in there.
Karl โ I can only really talk about it from my perspective, but the first kinds of music I really got into when I was 10 or 11 was punk music and rockโnโroll and blues. I was into rap music as well, everybody of my age and living in central Auckland was. I guess having been in Supergroove the challenge was to find my musical identity again outside of Supergroove, and after noodling about with different styles of music to my great joy I reconnected to that stuff that Iโve been into independently all my life. And it was like โof course, this is what I should doโ. I also โ and this is thanks to the internet โ I discovered music on the internet relatively late on. Only in 2006 or something! It was through listening to music on the internet, at the same time as writing a bunch of songs, I discovered thereโs this kind of lineage of bands that goes right from that rockโnโroll stuff and even the late โ40s jump blues right through to punk music in the โ70s, and it all connects. The blues and rockโnโroll and punk โ all those things I like are part of a long tradition. I didnโt know that before, I thought they were weird disparate things that I just happened to like. That was quite a nice surprise.
WD โ Would it be fair enough to call it dance music, not as in house music, but in the original spirit of rockโnโroll. You see footage from the โ40s and โ50s and itโs not what we would call dance music, but everybodyโs really going for it.
Karl โ Definitely, and I think this is what a lot of blues has in common with rap music, is itโs so rhythmical. And for me, and for the members of the group, we respond to the rhythms in the music. Itโs not melodically or harmonically very sophisticated. Thereโs stuff going on there, but itโs like b-movie emotions. Thatโs another big influence musically, films. But the rhythm is where the heart of the music is. And if the songs donโt have that good rhythm, if theyโre not danceable on some level they lose momentum and submerge.
WD โ From what Iโve heard it seems to have the spirit that early rockโnโroll and surf music and so forth have.
Karl โ Yeah thatโs another โ surf is great because they borrowed a whole lot of Latin rhythms, but they use blues chord changes, and quite over the top exotic melodies. I think thatโs a fabulous style of music that died a death in the โ60s. But thatโs a big influence on me, I just love that stuff, and it combines that movie music thing with dance music, which to my mind is the highest art form.
WD โ Well, anything that involves bikini-clad girls dancing on beachesโฆ
Karl โ Thatโs right. Actually this guy Ignatio is making a short film, but we were the band playing in the strip club when the massacre took place, so we got sprayed with a lot of fake blood. That was fun. That stuff really stings when it gets in your eyes. Itโs made out of golden syrup. I think the movie has the name of โBig Tits Massacreโ. He got in touch because he wants some surf music for the titles, but then he asked if we wanted to play during the massacre.
WD โ So you kind of see yourself as a b-movie band to some extent?
Karl โ Yeah I guess so. Thereโs a difference when youโre looking back at that culture. Itโs like ancient Greece or something. Back in the day all those sculptures would have been painted up with red lips and black hair. We prefer them all corroded and marbled, and thereโs something similar that goes on when you look back toโฆ whether itโs โ70s punk culture or โ60s surf culture or โ50s rockโnโroll culture. I think itโs better when youโre perceiving the medium as well in the distance. And you can kind of โ itโs mediated through these dusty black and white images, and thatโs part of the fun of it. I donโt ever think of the Drab Doo-Riffs as a band that is trying to re-create some lost holy grail of rockโnโroll. Weโre not a sound-a-like band. Weโre definitely now, but itโs inspired byโฆ when Iโm producing the recordings, trying to get a feel that you canโt quite place what era itโs from, and trying to make it a cultural artefact in that way, rather than hereโs a recording of us playing.
WD โ Do you think that your audience, going by the people you see at your gigs, that theyโre informed enough to understand your influences, and to be able to create their picture from that, or that theyโre a younger audience who are completely oblivious to the things youโre influenced by?
Karl โ It depends a lot where weโre playing. We were a bit worried when we supported Kitty Daisy and Lewis because theyโd appeared โ there had been a 1ZB push on them and a morning television push, and it got this older audience, like people in their 60s were there in force, and they all got there early, early enough to see the support band as well. And actually it went really well, because it was like โhey, this is rockโnโroll!โ And then these young folk who are more the night-time crowd around KโRd, they enjoyed it too, and theyโre very culturally savvy, theyโre watching cool music from all sorts of eras and watching videos of the stuff on YouTube, videos I would have given my eye teeth to see when I was growing up, and I just had black and white postcards of Fats Domino and Muddy Waters. Yeah, itโs incredible, just being able to sit and watch all the footage of somebody like Muddy Waters playing live. I donโt know what people are getting from our music, to be honest, but Iโve been really pleasantly surprised that people seem to dig it, and thatโs been awesome and different people might like different songs and different things about the songs, and some people like the lyrics or the drums, but thatโs the cool thing with bands, you can like all sorts of different things, and like it to different levels. Some people might just like to tap their toes to it, and others might delve into the motivations and various references and the whole Drab Doo-Riff religion that underlies and informs what the songs are about and stuff like that.
WD โ Is there an album in the works?
Karl โBecause we just want to keep recording and having stuff available for those who are keen, weโll probably do a handful of these EPs, but theyโll be short-run releases and if thereโs enough interest we might build them into an album of 18 two-minute songs.
WD โ Are most of them really short like that?
Karl โ Yeah, theyโre fast and theyโre short. Thatโs part of it as well. Itโs good to just make the statement and then move onto the next one.
* The Drab Doo-Riffsโ second EP, Postcards From Uranus, is just out.
Hi there
i was wondering how I can get hold of Karl from Supergroove or their Manager please?
regards
karen