Dick Venom & The Terrortones on music & Gillian Anderson!
aaamusic | On 21, Jan 2012
AAAMusic chats to Dick Venom & The Terrortones and discovers a passion for Gillian Anderson!
AAAmusic: You don’t get that many “new” psychobilly/old-school rock n roll bands these days, especially in the style you play with next to no metal influence. How did you manage to find like-minded people to start out?
Dick Venom & The Terrortones: Well I was houndin’ around in some Jungle Jane’s jelly bean, handin out the paddles for her skin canoe when I came across a tribe that just needed a leader. There was SugarBeats on skins, poundin away like a jumped up jack rabbit sat on a cactus, there was Wrex St.Clair makin’ a rumblin’ thunderin’ attack on the bass and Vicky Twist, whose prickly playin like a pinecone on a pin cushion just kinda had me hooked. There was no metal involved ‘xcept the end of their spears.
AAAmusic: Your press release says you’re “evolving the UK Psychobilly scene,” and on listening to your stuff, although your influences are clear, there is definitely something fresh in the mix. What do you do to make sure you don’t just end up falling into the old clichés of the style?
To be honest we don’t really do nuthin. We just write what we write between us and all out tastes are so unworldly different it means there’s always a mix. Hell, if we all thought the same as me we’d all be too messed up in every type of hell and havoc to ever make anything!
AAAmusic: Given your relatively niche sound, do you think that getting somewhere in the music business is any easier or harder for you than for more mainstream bands?
Hmmm, at’s a toughy. Well so far I’ve found that the folk that are especially into this kinda stuff have a habbit of being really seriously into it. They look after the bands that they like pretty well, give a load of support. I mean, we aint looking to get a number one because let’s face it, songs about rootin alien girls in bullet bras just don’t tend t’ get there, but the support is there to get somewhere. Man, those bullets get firing off rounds like a machine gun!
AAAmusic: Your songs seem to be very driven by the lyrics/vocals. Do you write songs around the lyrics, or do the instrumentals come first?
Now this is a special kinda special, those three are so fulla ideas they just seem to squirt out songs from every orifice. I got a backlog of lines as long as my …arm and something will always fit. We cut down the sections til they match with my ramblings and it just seems to sit. It’s the best kinda magic.
AAAmusic: What would you say are the biggest influences on your songs?
Gillian Anderson, 50’s B-movies, my daddy’s old dominatrix chamber. We did have a song called Stench Trench with 57 different names for lady parts so I guess that figures that. A diet of 60s garage and sci-fi seems to suit me just fine.
AAAMusic: What are your plans for 2012?
We got our single out in Feb with a big ol’ messy launch night here in Nottingham on Feb 10th. It’s a double A-side with ‘RockinRollin’ VampireMan’ and ‘StickyPants Trance’ on, plus another (out now on dickvenom.com and amazon/iTunes if ya fancy)There’ll be striptease and every type of wrong I assure you. There’s a video just out for StickyPants Trance, that’s getting around at the moment, catch it on our YouTube, then just plenty of gigs.
Wouldn’t mind workin on my menstrual detector either. It’s a work in progress… strap the DNA of a bloodhound and a pinch of piranha’s to a pocket sized metal detector and there you go. Works from 53 feet.
Wanna get whipped by Gillian Anderson too.
AAAmusic: Are there any other artists, new or old, that you would recommend to our readers?
Hells yes. For pure power The Stooges, Cramps, Standells, The Fall. Seen The Fall a few times live now, that man is one cantankerous rubberfaced reptile of a frontman. For a lil heartfelt heartache I’ll take the Practical Lovers. There’s a whole host of others… Bob Segar and the Last Heard, their early stuff gets me wetter than a wizard’s sleeve in a wash basin.
Katie H-Halinski
