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Darkfaery Exclusive: Chibi, Lead Singer of The Birthday Massacre May 7, 2009 at the Marquee in Tulsa By TristaLou TL: “How did all of you meet and come together as a band?” Rainbow and Mike actually grew up together. They had attended the same public school, so they have known each other forever. They had been in bands together in High school and they met me in College. O-en and Rhim also attended the same college and we kind of knew each other. So basically it all comes down to we met in college. TL: “Your former name used to be Imagica in which you changed to The Birthday Massacre due to a conflict with a band with a similar name. How did you come up with this name?” Our song ‘Happy Birthday’ was actually called The Birthday Massacre so it just kind of logically made sense. People would recognize it as an Imagica song and also I think that it’s just cooler. You know with the whole thing we’re trying to do with the contrast and everything with the dark and light, scary and cute. So Birthday Massacre sort of encompasses all those things. TL: “Your sound is so unique, it’s getting harder and harder to pull that off for bands. Where did you get this inspiration for this sound?” I think it’s because all of us listen to a lot of different stuff, and we like to harken back to what we grew up listening to. I’d listen to bands like Metallica, Def Leopard, and Guns and Roses. My favorite band ever is Faith No More. Rainbow and Mike really like David Bowie. All of us like Madonna so it’s like different tastes and trying to bring that all together and make it sound passable. We just tried to encompass everything we liked when we were just discovering music. We just try to make it sound……good basically. TL: “Is there any bands that you take your inspiration from?” Oh absolutely. The Cure and Depeche Mode. Mike and rainbow really like Curve. they are REALLY into Curve actually. I really like Faith No More like I said earlier, they are my favorite band, and I also really like Concrete Blonde. TL: “Of all the amazing songs you have recorded, which one is your favorite and why?” See that’s impossible to have a favorite song, you know what I mean? There are songs that I really like on the album but then touring with them can be really difficult. When your in tour mode it’s like ‘Okay what songs are the most difficult’. For example the song Walking With Strangers, I really love that song, but I totally dread playing it live since it’s so high, and as you can see my voice is really destroyed. So when it comes time to play it I don’t really want to. But I don’t know, I really don’t have a favorite song at all. Some weeks I’ll be like I really like Falling Down this week and the next I like Good Night and then Happy Birthday. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like that. TL: “You have made some videos that are really great. The contrasts and darkness portrayed in them was done very well. Where there any messages you were trying to get across in these videos?” Umm…I don’t know if it was so much about messages like anything with deep meaning. We were working with Danny Ouellette, who’s from New York on both those videos we’ve done. He’s a visual artist as well so he had a lot of good ideas and I think we just sort of wanted to express, especially in Blue different visuals with the kind of creepy puppet faces that were designed by this puppeteer guy named Scott Radke. We also wanted it to have a Edward Gorey feel to it. I really like Edward Gorey as an illustrator. You might know him from the Gashlycrumb Tinies, like ‘A is for Amy who fell down the stairs’. You should totally look up the rest of his work. (she motions to her tattoo on her left arm). This is actually one of his drawings. But ya, we just try to make some interesting details and set different kind of moods in our ideas. It’s just kind of cool to have the cool masks, costumes, and different visuals. We like to make it fun. TL: “How has the tour been going with I Am Ghost and Dommin?” Super Good! We like always joke around because when any band signs up on a tour it’s like ‘We are going to be touring with these other bands, lets go check them out. We look at their pics and stuff.’ And the joke is, is if you look at any of the bands pictures they look like the biggest jerks. It’s just so funny that they can look like that but their not. We just joke around all the time and we get along. It’s actually just a really fun tour. We usually make pretty good friends with the bands we tour with. Everybody gets along so well on this tour and it’s kind of sad because the tour is only about a month long tour and we only have eight shows left, and we’re really bummed. TL: “How do you pass the time on the tour bus?” Video Games. The guys are all playing DC Vs. Capcom right now. I read a lot of books, we watch a lot of movies. It’s actually just a lot of nerdy stuff. Not anything like ‘drinking pee and killing babies’. TL: “Do you have any joksters in the band(s) that plays practical jokes on you? If so who and what was their best joke so far?” Ya, like everyone pretty much. We all have a pretty good sense of humor and we razz on each other. I think a good sense of humor is essential or else you would kill each other. TL: “Is there anyone who tries to keep the sanity in the band while on tour?” (she smiles and says this in a joking manner) Me probably. Their all going to disagree with me on this, but it’s so me. I’m the one with the most common sense. No but seriously I think it’s all of us, because we have been touring for a few years now and we’re not young anymore. We all just kind of understand the balance that has to be there. Like you can be an idiot, but you also have to be aware of what going on. So we’re all pretty good. We all keep the order. TL: “Is there any place that you have not yet gone to on tour and really hope to go someday?” We’ve never played Scotland before, or Italy. I’m actually half Italian and half Scottish and always wanted to go to both places. We actually get to go this summer. I am so excited. TL: “Tell me about your new CD.” Well it’s a live CD and it was recorded a year and a half ago and it was not planned. It was a thing where we kind of showed up and there was a crew and they were like “We’re going to record the show”. They were nice guys and they did a great job. then a year and a half later they say it’s going to be a CD and a DVD. And we thought it was great, but had I have known I would have done my hair better. But no, it’s really great, it was just kind of a surprise for us. We’re really excited about it and we made a little adjustments here and there. It was a really unpredictable environment and you don’t want to release something that is terrible. But we were really happy with it and honestly, Thank God it was a good show that night. TL: “Usually I really don’t like Live CDs much but I listened to yours and I actually enjoyed the songs. They didn’t sound distorted and the live music actually translated very well over into tracks. How did you guys pull that off?” It was difficult. In a studio you get multiple times to not sound bad. We had to go back and add things back in that were missing from the live tracks. and we just tried to make it sound good. Live recordings are just too unpredictable. I think it’s impossible to just release something without looking at it first. TL: “This will be my first time to see you in concert. I am looking forward to it even more since your live tracks sounded so good and I can’t wait to see the real thing. What can I expect to see and hear at this concert?” We have a lot of energy at our shows because we sit around all day and we get kind of sore, cramped, and really bored a lot. So when we play is when we get to have our fun for the day. Our main thing is the energy and people always say that we are more energetic than they thoought we’d be. It’s important to us for people to have fun at our shows. I think it’s fun to dance and I think our music is pretty danceable, and the people who like our music are going to be fun, so they get to have fun too. TL: “I am sure all the girls out there would love to know what you are planning on wearing on stage and how you put the outfit together and where they could find that outfit for themselves.” She laughs and says at the Goodwill. I usually wear like a kilt and a shirt with a tie. Something that will wash easily. The guys have these boy scouts shirts that have patches on them, but the patches are trying to fall off and they are like ‘Hey can you sew these on?’ I just tell them no and that I glued them on so they can either do that or they can sew them if they want them sewn on. TL: “Did the band ever expect to be such a fashion icon to the goth scene?” I don’t think so. I don’t consider us that at all. I think all of us are pretty grateful that we’re even on this tour. Especially with how the other bands just starting out are trying to had. We feel lucky to be on tour, let alone having people care about what we are wearing. TL: “What do you guys bring to your concerts that you would consider unique to your band?” I don’t know….We have six of us so we have a lot of people in the band. We bring scrims to try to set an atmosphere and again I think we just try to bring a lot of energy to our shows. TL: “What are your favorite horror movies?” Oh God…..I like Session 9 a lot, The Blair Witch Project, Let the Right One In. that ones a vampire movie. It’s not so much a horror movie as sort of tragic, romantic, very odd. It’s just awesome. Ummm there’s so many. I love the Hostel movies, all the old Nightmare on Elm Street movies, all the old slasher movies. Hellraiser would be one, we just watched that the other night. TL: “What are your favorite movie monsters.” I like the old school, like the Bride of Frankenstein. I like cthulhu, the dormant squid monster. I just watched Frankenhooker recently, she’s cute. She’s supposed to be a monster but I’m always like ‘I want to look just like her’. TL: “So the 80s style and icons seem to be coming back, what are you most excited to see come back? Is there anything else you’d like to come back?” It seems like every band I liked as a child is on tour now. I always manage to miss them though, I’m always touring at the same time they are. Like last year there was a tour with Cheap Trick, Journey, and Heart. I almost had a heart attack, I was so excited and I love Heart, and I missed it. TL: “What are your hobbies?” Knitting and crocheting. It’s therapeutic, and totally productive. I like to crochet little toys and bears. It’s a really good hobby. I recommend it. I have a store with a friend called Goodbye forever on my myspace. We don’t have much on there right now, but after the tour we will have more stuff up. TL: “Is there anything that people would be shocked to know about you?” a lot of people think we are going to be snobby, but we’re not. We are very nerdy actually. We are approachable, nice people, and very down to earth. Always come say Hi to us . We always hang out after our shows. We are up for autographs and pictures. More Birthday Massacre: Also see The Birthday Massacre Official Web Site http://www.thebirthdaymassacre.com/ and http://www.myspace.com/thebirthdaymassacre About TristaLou: TristaLou is the regional manager of promotion for darkfaery subculture, she’s the head of the Darkfaery Girls and also a Paranormal Investigator/Researcher. http://www.darkfaery-subculture.com/ http://www.darkfaery-girls.com/ http://www.myspace.com/darkfaerygirls Full Audio: http://www.darkfaery-subculture.com/birthdaymass-trista.MP3