Rock out with or
without cocks out

>> The Black Lips aim to entertain
you come hell or high water

GOOD TIMES, BAD BEHAVIOUR: The Black Lips

by SHANE SINNOTT

Since 2000, Atlanta-based foursome the Black Lips have been playing noisy garage rock in a style that seemed destined to keep them loved but relatively unknown, their fans being predominantly those types at the front with beer-soaked hair who find the occasional introduction of bodily fluids into a live set endearing. A year, however, can change everything, and with aVice Records deal, a well-received live album, and now their newest studio effort, the Black Lips are poised to become everyone’s new favourite band.

On Sept. 11, their fifth album Good Bad Not Evil was released, and guitarist Ian Brown, on the road after a show in Chapel Hill, is hard-pressed to name his favourite song on the record. “That’s like asking a parent what kid you like the best,” he says, though it would hardly be a stretch to say that “Katrina,” the most instantly catchy song on the record, means a lot to him. A New Orleans native, Brown was with the band in Holland when the hurricane hit. “That first night, when Katrina hit and New Orleans withstood it, I was ecstatic, I was floored.”

But less than 24 hours later, the levees broke, and Brown couldn’t get a hold of his family. “That night… it’s kind of corny, but we went backstage and wrote ‘Katrina.’”

This past summer, the band travelled to Israel and the West Bank. “We have a burning desire to play everywhere, and see everything,” says Brown. “The West Bank wall is gigantic, with gun towers—it makes the Berlin Wall look like a kiddie gate.”

It’s hard not to contrast this with the band’s idyllic view of Atlanta and the South: “I love it. The feelings, the smells, it’s who we are. Atlanta is the only city I’ve ever gone to where people just throw down, no matter if they’re black or white or Asian—everyone just kicks it.”

The Black Lips do have their own infamous ways of kicking it. The most notorious incident occurred at New York’s Mercury Lounge in 2006, when singer Cole Alexander managed to urinate into his own mouth and spit it into the crowd. The use of fireworks and playing guitars with penises were also part of the repertoire, and as the band became bigger, the inevitable pigeonholing began.

When asked whether there was now pressure to be crazy all the time, Brown was adamant on the matter. “We’re not puppets. We execute in interesting ways when we feel the time is right, but we don’t feel pressure. Look at Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry—at any time, did they do what most bands do now, which is stare at their shoes? We’re doing everything that Jerry Lee has done, just up a notch.

“Will something happen on stage? Yeah. Will it be a good show with songs? Yeah. Will you get piss in your mouth? Maybe. But you’ll be entertained. We come from a long line of entertainers. This is what we do.”

With Demon’s Claws and
the Selmanaires at la Sala Rossa on
Saturday, Sept. 22, 9 p.m., $15