Smacking Lips were formed tomorrow and broke up yesterday. Go figure. They have a bass, a drum kit, a guitar and a roaring cat named Stella. They play arty post-punk or to put in simpler terms, pure primitive rock n roll. They’re made up of well-known faces in the downtown music scene, but prefer to remain relatively hidden away for this project. Those who have had the good fortune to see them play live, we’re in for a treat and certainly couldn’t stop their bodies from shaking and moving.
When where the Smacking Lips formed and what’s with the name?
They have always been there, in the subconscious and the mythology of the world at large and took on their current human guise in May of 2012, to remind everyone of all those things that we have forgotten. It’s a lyric from the Monkey Tree, but also that primal sense of expressing something you want a hell of a lot, primitively so.
Is it more important for everyone to be friends, or is staying focused on what you’re doing the essence of it all?
What’s important for a band is us. Being us.
Tell us a few Greek bands that stand out for you.
The Last Drive, as the grand daddies of it all, Gravitysays_i, because they don’t think, write or play with what’s commercial in mind, the Barb Wire Dolls for giving it all up and going to the U.S. and the Noise Figures, because they make our booties and heads shake.
Tell us a funny on-stage story or a funny story from a rehearsal.
The demons that entered Stella when we were rehearsing Richard the third one time. The tsipouro we consume in the basement where we rehearse. Shakespeare’s ghost that is almost a member of the band.
Each of you has a very different musical background. Where do you meet?
In the primal beat that the early man made when he first clapped his hands and thought “this is goooood”.
What would the Smacking Lips yell to 2014?
We will tell 2014 what we must in February, during our gig at Six D.O.G.S.
Interview: Natasa Koumi
