Who is behind Bad Tripes and why did you choose this name?
Bad Tripes is my baby, if I may say so. I founded this group about fifteen years ago (or even more), with a high school friend who played bass. I wrote the lyrics and played the guitar. Being a living disgrace to the six-string, I gave up. I was also the worst singer in the world, but as I absolutely wanted to yell at my lyrics, I persisted behind the microphone. At my side, there is my pillar, Seth, a real human Swiss army knife. In addition to being a guitarist, he is also the exclusive composer, the backbone of the project. Sir Mac Bass, as his name suggests, brings his groove and his virtuoso touch with his bass from space.
As for the name Bad Tripes, it just comes from a bullshit released during a rehearsal. I liked a trash performer who called herself Lily Bad-Trip (or Miss Trash, or Marijane Miracle), who did shows with Jean-Louis Costes, I suggested for fun that we take the “Bad Trip” and make it disgusting and frank with the French spelling. No one found anything wrong with it, and it just stuck.
Can you introduce us to your album Life the Whore and his universe?
The album was written and composed during confinement. And like a lot of people, it wasn’t very happy. In addition to loneliness and uncertainty, we have faced a lot of personal drama (suicides and death from illness, in particular). I drank a lot, ruminated a lot, and being depressed for a long time, the cocktail didn’t work for me mentally. On the other hand, it allowed me to write on subjects that I would perhaps not have approached in other circumstances. For the universe, let’s say we offer a joyful and dancing despair, to celebrate the end of the world while having fun.
What are your sources of inspiration and how do you compose?
For me, Les Tétines Noires was one of the biggest artistic shocks of my life. I must have been 13 or 14 when I discovered this group by chance, and it had a huge impact on me both in my approach to music (the choice of singing in French, the outrageous side) and from the stage, giving me the theatrical aspect. For the composition, Seth does everything. He composes constantly, relentlessly, according to his mood and the films he has seen: he has a very cinematographic inspiration, hence certain touches evoking John Carpenter. For other pieces, it falls on him by I don’t know what miracle. All of a sudden, he will send me compositions with a touch of cabaret, polka, electro-clash, even though he is neither a fan of Lili Marleen, nor of Ivan Rebroff, nor of Peaches. It must be visited by spirits, I see that. However, I know it is owned by IAM, and that’s why the track that gives the album its title, La Vie la Pute, has this urban and hip-hop color, totally exotic with us, but which has been very interesting to work on.
As far as the texts are concerned, it is quite rare that I write “spontaneously”, even if I jot down ideas for subjects to be treated, “punchlines”, verses, or simply a working basis, even in prose. .
Generally, I write from Seth’s compositions, depending on the images that the sounds put in my head: sunshine, sinister alleys, wooden pub tables, broken glass… The lyrics are guided by the clip that the music broadcasts in my head basically To sum it up in the simplest way, let’s say that we are the fruit of a terrible orgy involving Rammstein, les Elles, Catherine Ringer, Diapsiquir, Nina Hagen, Vladimir Cosma, Laibach and Richard Gotainer . Said like that, it sounds a little disgusting, but really, it’s nice and warm. (smile)
Would you like to tell us about studio recordings?
We started recording during the January 2021 curfew, at Seth’s old tattoo parlour. The singing cabin was located in the storeroom/kitchen next to the toilets of the shop.
We had put on a musty-stinking sheet – deftly refinished with a swipe of toilet deodorant – to soundproof the makeshift cabin. We were recording from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., with breaks for coffee, food, whiskey and stupid videos for a little laugh. It was a bit surreal as a way of working, exhausting, we couldn’t wait to finish the takes… However, as soon as it was all finished and sent to the mix, we were all nostalgic!
Is Life the bitch giving you a bad trip?
Life is a very long bad trip, a festering and following wound, with a few small sun spots, a few golden dusts here and there which allow you to hold on.
Tell us about the title Madrague of the Maccabees…
After all the darkness (or, to be more precise, the spectacular deluge of various and varied shit) that has marked our daily lives over the past 2-3 years, we wanted to make a clip completely out of step with our usual universe, rather gory and altogether quite dark (even if there is often a touch of humor in our clips, as well as during our concerts). If, in itself, the text of the song is not particularly perky – it is a kind of sinister and suicidal parody of Trap de Bardot – we wanted color, pep, cheerfulness and kitsch to mark the occasion. It was a slightly offbeat way of signaling our return to “what the fuck?!” mode. “, but also to close a rather melancholy chapter, marked by a lot of trials, pains, disappointments. But let our dear love listeners be reassured: the blood and guts will be back for the next clips.
Why do you do crowdfunding?
We are a self-produced group, and a self-produced group cannot live on love and fresh water, any more than on vodka and chocolate… at least not if it hopes to develop. And that is our objective with Bad Tripes: we want the project to prosper. We went two and a half years without doing a concert because of the health crisis and the lot of worries that resulted from it. The frustration was terrible. More than ever, we want to see the country and spread our loud and fragrant good word. But all this has a cost, and we have need a little help to carry out our next projects. We invested heavily in mixing and mastering by the German studio Pointbreak Recordings, as well as in the filming of La Madrague des Macchabées. In short, in a month as in a hundred: we are ruined (laughs)! And as we believe very strongly in this project in which we put our guts, our soul, my wife, my kid, my job (cross out useless mentions), as we know that getting a grant is science fiction, we are asking for the benevolent help from our contemporaries who are all magnificent, wonderful, full of kindness and endowed with advantageous forms.
What do you want to give to the public with the album Life the whore ?
Joy, fury, emotion, consolation. An outlet for gloom. The desire to kiss, too.
Do we ever know. On a misunderstanding.
What were your choices on the artwork for the album?
We wanted to radically change from our previous albums by opting for a very colorful cartoon side, a bit comic at times, but with a rather sinister background. It was Seth who took care of all the drawings: he is a tattoo artist by trade, so he is doing very well. His main inspiration was the work of Jamie Hewlett and Frank Kozik, to whom we owe many posters for Pearl Jam, and the Buttholes Surfers, but also the famous Offspring Americana cover. Seth is a big fan of this mixture of candor and trash, color and cute gore, furious madness that arises in banality. It’s like our music: under the funny, funny and cheeky cartoonish side, there is a lot of sadness, despair and rage.
Do you have an anecdote or an indiscretion to tell us?
During the recording, we were visited by the police. It was dark and the bay window of the “studio” was swept up and down by a very powerful flashlight. Looking outside, we see a big, sturdy guy, all alone, dressed in black… We thought we were facing a burglar on the lookout.
After a few interminable minutes, the guy turned on his beacon, and Seth and I opened the bay window, half-reassured, half-perplexed. The guy was in fact accompanied by two colleagues: they were patrolling by car and saw the dim light of the studio from the road. Believing in a burglary, they tumbled. But our good heads of bewilderment quickly convinced them that we were not vile brigands.
You hope to be able to release a vinyl. What does it represent for you and what does this ancient support bring to your music?
In the world of rock and metal, even if everyone (or almost) is a fan of streaming platforms, there are always a lot of collectors, fans of “beautiful objects”, hence our desire to release a CD with a beautiful booklet that people will enjoy leafing through. Making vinyl is part of this continuity: even in the dematerialized era, vinyl has this attraction, this seduction. We have a lot of tenderness for this fetishistic side. We have a fairly marked visual identity, and it seems natural to us to use this medium. It is both a game and a challenge.
Are there concerts planned and what does the stage give you?
We have a few dates in preparation in Marseille and in the Var at the start of 2023 and we plan to perform all over France in the coming months.
What do you want to say to conclude?
First of all, thank you for giving us the floor. We are preparing lots of beautiful things to celebrate our return to stage life in sound and fury. Piss and love.
thanks to bad guts for responding to our interview!