Rad Disaster in long form.

So I have started writing for the BeatRoute magazine because it now features some Skinny Magazine content across about four pages, and what would the Skinny Magazine be without my name in it? Nothing, that's what!! OK, it'd still be something. Anyway, I go off and interview bands that I want to interview, transcribe our conversations and then chop everything out in an attempt to fit it into 400 words. The whole flow of the conversation goes to shit, so I figured I might as well just post my transcription in my blog for a good laugh. These guys are pretty darn funny. I will eventually get around to doing this for Crystal Swells as well, both bands playing Oct 6th (this Saturday!) @ The Railway Club for the Rad Disaster CD Release party. It's going to be a wild evening of great tunes.




To set the scene I suppose I could let you know that Lee is the guitarist/vocalist, Pat Truman is the bassist/vocalist and Tyler is the drummer/vocalist. Also most of the words that came from Lee's mouth were dripping with sarcasm, and half the words coming from Tyler's mouth were the same. Sometimes sarcasm doesn't play well in print. And now onto the interview!

DM: How long have you been a band?
Lee: I think 4 years, but with actual lyrics only 2 years.

DM: How did you come up with the name?
Lee: We had an idea to call the band Plaid Disaster because my sister called us that one day when we were all wearing plaid, but our friend Nick had to one up us and called it Rad Disaster.

DM: Where do all the members of your band live?
Pat: I live in East Van.
Tyler: I live in Burnaby.
Lee: I live on the Westside.
DM: Of what?
Lee: Vancouver.
DM: Really?
Lee: No. I don’t want to say where I live.
DM: That’s why I asked.

DM: How did you guys meet?
Pat: Tyler and I played in a band together called Secondstall and Lee was in a band called Harmless Heroes…
Lee: THE band.
Pat: And we played shows together and became friends.
Tyler: More like acquaintances.
Pat: Yeah acquaintances, Lee is kind of annoying.
Lee: For topless cruises!
Tyler: We went on some topless cruises, a couple bottomless cruises…
Pat: (Laughs) Yeah we met on a bottomless swingers cruise.
Tyler: Yeah, and eventually both bands just disintegrated and I started jamming with Lee, and eventually we decided we needed a bass player…
Pat: And I was second choice.
Tyler: First choice for Rad Disaster. Secondstall was done so we asked Pat if he wanted to join.
Lee: And there were other people who came and went.
Tyler: Yeah some are in Crystal Swells.
Lee: And some are interviewing us right now!



DM: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you before?
Pat: Total music! That’s ripping off the Fucking Champs. I don’t know, it’s early 90s funcore.
Lee: It’s kind of poppy at times, energetic, I don’t want to say punk, but it is.
Tyler: It’s music with…
Pat: …baggage.
Tyler: (Laughs) It’s music with baggage. It’s music to walk your dog to.
Pat: No way.
Lee: It’s smart and sexy. I’d say it’s pre pop punk in a way. There’s lots of bands we look up to like Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, Descendents, Big Drill Car, and bands of that style paved the way for our identity.
Pat: They paved the way for us.
Band: (Laughs)
Lee: Yeah, I guess that’s not a good choice of words.
Tyler: Husker Du and all their careers have led up to this point.
DM: Of influencing Rad Disaster. 

DM: Where was your first show?
Pat: Shed Rock!
Lee: We used to play a lot of half shows.
Tyler: We didn’t have any lyrics, so all our first shows were instrumental.
Pat: We’d say each other’s names a lot.
Tyler: And our song titles were like song 1, or song 2.
Pat: Untitled.
Tyler: Song 6.
Pat: New song!  
Lee: We had a very different approach back then, we were sort of going for a prog rock metaly fusion thing, it’s a lot different now.
Pat: I call it melody metal.
Tyler: Pat calls it that. No one else does.
Lee: Yeah, cut that out.  
Pat: We played our friend’s basement for his birthday. And then we played a crappy bar at UFV. Some guy threw his fries at me, and it was just so terrible and stupid and it was the worst idea.
Tyler: And then Henrik Zetterberg stole Lee’s truck.
Lee: Oh yes, that was a bad night.
Tyler: Yeah some coked out guy that looked just like Henrik Zetterberg took off in Lee’s truck.
Pat: Look it up, it’s on Wikipedia.

  

DM: Where was your best show?
Lee: Denis’ house!
Tyler: Every show is our best show.
Lee: It was the one above that place on Main Street.
Tyler: On my birthday, and I was way too drunk, and Pat called the crowd a bunch of ingrates.
Pat: I think Lou’s party out in Richmond.
Lee: That party this summer was pretty fun.
Tyler: The best show that people paid to see?
Lee: The Media club?
Tyler: The Media Club was good. Also that show at Fortune with Black Wizard and Ancients.
Lee: The more we get paid the better.
Tyler: That’s really how we judge it. How much did we get paid?

DM: If I was to ask you about the most fucked up thing that happened at one of your shows, what is the story that comes to mind?
Lee: At Lou’s there was a rather classy chick that asked us if we knew any Pantera, and we did unfortunately.
Pat: Last year at Shed Rock dudes were on the roof lighting off fireworks while we were playing.
Lee: And all the fights we get into, on stage.



DM: Where and when did you record the new album?
Lee: Bully’s Recording Studio in New Westminster with Mike Kraushaar.
Pat: We started recording last year, and it was a bit of a learning process so it took a little while, but I think in the end we’re really happy with it.
Lee: The upper crust portion of this band went on vacation several times.
Pat: Went on a soul search or life finding mission. Fact finding mission.
Lee: So the less fortunate member was stuck with most of the responsibilities with getting the tracks finished.
Tyler: Our next album we’re gonna aim for a week turn around.   

DM: Did you do any other weird stuff while recording the album?
Lee: We shouldn’t talk about that.
Tyler: So much donkey semen. But Mike said it was good for your voice, so we gargled it.
Lee: It was a pretty hard time, Pat was in a bad mood most of the time. It was variable his moods. 
Pat: What are you talking about?
Lee: Sometimes he is angry, and sometimes he is irate.
Tyler: There was that one day I came in expecting to watch them track and it was Canada Day, so I started drinking tallboys at 10am and by 1pm Mike asked me to do a vocal harmony, and I tried but I couldn’t because I was way too drunk and useless. 
Pat: I should mention that there was a significant amount of cuddling that Lee and I did. We had some serious cuddles.  

DM: Wasn’t there a story about putting an amp at the top of the stairs?
Pat: Oh yeah, one of the things Mike did was put a microphone in the bathroom outside of the room that we recorded in and we took some tracks from there.
Lee: For the intro to Dive he rigged his mic at the bottom of the stairs and put my amp at the top and recorded it from quite a distance so it would be more atmospheric. That was pretty neat. Mike’s got some cool techniques.
Pat: Yeah he’s a real creative guy.
Lee:  And I’m not just talking musically. I mean generally speaking. 
Tyler: Yes, in the bedroom.
Lee: No, not even that. I just mean generally he’s got some good techniques.



DM: How come it has taken you so long to release it?
Lee: Oh shit. Cause we’re as organized as hell. No, I don’t know, travel?
Pat: Scheduling. We all have lives we like to live. It’s mainly because we did it very piecemeal. We just worked at it when we could all get in and when the studio time was available.

DM: Explain the album title.
Lee: My girlfriend is a teacher and gets to experience some funny things kids say. So in a story there is one of five different conflicts, like man vs man, or man vs nature, or man vs technology, and there was one kid that didn’t understand the prescribed conflicts and listed one as man vs truck. We considered that as the title, but then we just went with vs. man so the album could be Rad Disaster vs. man.
Tyler: I just like the implications it brings up.
Lee: We’re pretty cynical, so we hate everybody, so vs. man is appropriate.
Pat: Sometimes there is an animosity towards your fellow man that can’t be explained.
Tyler: That pretty much sums it up right there.   
Lee: We’re not selling ourselves very well.
Tyler: Sure we are!
Pat: We want money.
DM: Yeah you’re gonna come off as total assholes for sure.
Tyler: But people love that. 

DM: What are some of the things that the songs are about?
Lee: It varies.
Pat: Personally ‘On Loss’ is a really meaningful song to me. We all had some rough years with parents, and that’s what that song is about, coping with getting older, losing parents and having to really fucking grow up.
Lee: And there’s also a childish element to the album.
Pat: Stay young, be fruitful.
Tyler: Don’t be a loser!



DM: Tell me about your Shed Rock experiences.
Pat: Shed Rock is a blast.
Tyler: It’s the event of the summer.
DM: How many times have you played it?
Pat: Every year, four times.
Lee: This year was good. No police officer came and threatened us.
Tyler: A police officer came.
Lee: No real aggression there though.
Pat: Yeah, the cops were pretty cool.
Lee: Two years ago there was female officer who was really irate, started swearing at us and being mean.
Pat: This year I got beat up by Ross’ girlfriend and that was after I fell off the Shed. Lee’s fiancĂ© kicked him in the balls and Tyler had a mustache.
DM: And I drank 9 cans of cider.
Tyler: One of us usually gets too drunk to play. That seems to be a reoccurring theme at Shed Rock. I remember the end of one of the songs Pat you played a note that was totally off.
Lee: The first song!
Pat: I played great, I don’t know what key you guys were in. 
Lee: Pat is usually the one to frown upon any mistakes, and he was all over the map that night.
Pat: I was in my element.
Tyler: And Lee would do these long speeches in between songs that went on and on, ‘Someday at a Shd Rwk in the future, not this one, and there will be people here, not us, that’ll say remember that one Rad Disaster song?’
Lee: And no one laughed either.
Tyler: I laughed, I thought it was funny.
Pat: Ingrates!
Tyler: And we also did a cover of Hope that everyone came up and sang on.
Pat: Yeah that was cool. Very broish, very fun.
Lee: Well I wouldn’t say broish, more scroish.
Pat: Yeah scroish.
Tyler: There’s a big difference.

DM: What’s the difference?
Tyler: Well a bro is a dude who is hanging out in an Ed Hardy T-shirt, he’s down at the Roxy.
Pat: He really likes Kelowna.
Tyler: Whereas a scro is some guy you wanna hang out with. He’s like your scro.
Lee: He’s like a cooler version of the bro.
Tyler: It implies the social tightness of your buddy.
Lee: He’s your mate or your bud, but not like the kind of buddy that wants to crush your hand when he shakes it.
Pat: The kind of guy you could go to the scrodeo with! 

  

DM: Who is Diamond Dave and how does he relate to Rad Disaster?
Pat: We used to jam at this place called Diamond Dave’s and the owner is this big guy named Diamond Dave and he is a total character. I remember the time he came busting into our room to collect the rent and trips over a cable.
Lee: He almost put his head through the wall.
Tyler: He almost fell right into my drumset, I could see him coming towards me.
Lee: And he’s at least 240 pounds.  
Pat: He’s like 6 foot 5 probably.
Tyler: Big long hair.
Lee: He’s a little rough around the edges.
Pat: And then one day at jam we were telling our friend this story and he comes busting in again and he’s like ‘oh you guys talking about me?’
Lee: He gave us this look like, ‘ahhh I caught you!’
Tyler: And he was laughing and we were all kind of nervously laughing. Just one of those moments where nobody knew what was going on.

  

DM: Future plans for the band?
Pat: Honesty, friendship and safety.
Lee: Mo money, as my fiancé would say.
Pat: We might write a thrash album!
Tyler: I heard that swing music was going to be making a resurgence, so I’ll be practicing my ride cymbal beat.
Lee: Play a lot more shows hopefully, make more albums.
Tyler: Maybe actually try.
Lee: I don’t know, I think we’re trying. 

The CD Release show is Saturday October 6th 2012 @ The Railway Club, and to hear a 3 song preview of vs. Man visit: http://raddisaster.bandcamp.com 

And to see how I turned all of this into 400 words click this link: http://beatroute.ca/2012/10/01/rad-disaster/





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