Interview with Poets And Pornstars
Poets And Pornstars are: Randy Austin (keyboards), Hal Ozsan (vocals, guitar), Sally Hope (bass), Domo (guitar), Dave Plesh (drums)
Poets And Pornstars are a Rock N Roll band. They aren't following a trend that will be dead in 6 months, and they damn sure aren't crying over a broken heart. They are a brand new band playing music that is timeless. I saw them perform live with the Classic Rock band Tesla and was completely blown away. It was like watching the birth of a future legend. In 20 years I'll be able to say that I saw Poets And Pornstars first US tour and people will be jealous. Think I'm blowing smoke up your ass? Check out their self-titled debut album for a taste of what's to come from them. Rock N Roll is essential to the soul, and the world has needed Poets And Pornstars for quite some time. They are here now, and to give you heads up on the band I hooked up with guitarist Domo for what turned into a full band interview. They are some of the nicest and most fun people I've ever met, so this turned into a free-for-all. Would expect anything less from the band that is ushering in a new age of Rock?
Anarchy Music: First of all, I just want to say that I totally support what you guys are doing.
Domo: Thank you man!
Anarchy Music: How did you guys find the only other people on Earth who wanted to put together a kick-ass, rootsy rock n roll band?
Domo (guitars): Man, I've been through countless auditions, I've started countless bands and it's almost impossible to do what we're doing, I think. I ended up running into Hal through a friend of a friend and we both gelled with ideas. He really had this idea for this down and dirty Rock N Roll thing. I've always really loved that so we got along like a house of fire. It's really great.
(We are then led into where the rest of the band is seated and introductions are made)
Hal Ozsan (vocals, guitar): Come sit next to me, handsome.
Anarchy Music: Great, I knew I'd get some action backstage at this show.
Hal: Even if it is from a greasy long haired dude.
Anarchy Music: You guys are from the Sunset Strip, which is a legendary scene, but also a scene where everyone has seen it all before. How did you manage to capture that audience and energize it again?
Hal: When I first got to LA, I expected to walk in and have it be just like in the days of GNR, with all the fucking best Rock N Roll bands in any given club, but it was a fucking dead zone, a total fucking dead zone. People were just standing around with their arms folding going "impress me". There was this thing that happened in LA called "Pay To Play" where any fucking dip-shit could put a band together, pay the club $50 and sell his own tickets, so it just killed the vibe. we were lucky because from the very first day, we never had to pay to play. We were a decent band and we were one decent band among a lot of mediocrity. I think people just responded to that. They just embraced us and took us in. It went fucking crazy.
Anarchy Music: In fact, your fans have earned a name. Where did the term "Sex Ninjas" come from?
Hal: I used to always start our newsletters with something stupid like Sex Ninjas or Love Nuggets and Sex Ninjas just stuck.
Anarchy Music: My last girlfriend called me that because I could go in, fuck her and leave and she never knew I was there.
(laughs)
Hal: Stealth work
Anarchy Music: Exactly. So tell me abut the Sex Ninjas, is it like we remember in the 80's where the fans just rose up to make the band big?
Hal: That's absolutely right.
Randy Austin (keyboards): They're crazy, we love them.
Sally Hope (bass): We have a lot of support from them. They're willing to do anything to help us out. They're always on our Myspace giving us love and showing up to shows and following us around.
Hal: It gets pretty crazy, dude. We whip them up into a frenzy and they whip us up into a rapture and then between the lot of us, it's like one big fucking orgy every night.
Anarchy Music: That's exactly like I imagined it was.
Hal: You're absolutely right.
Domo: It's like a huge exchange of energy.
Anarchy Music: One of the things i dig about you, among many things, is your attitudes. A lot of times I'll be with a band and point out some hot chick and the band will go "we don't view our female fans in a sexual way" which is just bullshit. You guys are pretty open about bringing the sexy back...thanks Justin Timberlake!
(laughs)
Hal: So the question is?
Anarchy Music: The question is...are you starting a new musical sex revolution, revolving around you?
(laughs)
Domo: You're the first person to ever ask that question.
Randy: I'm trying to get it to revolve around me.
(laughs)
Anarchy Music: So, how do you a become a Sex Ninja? Do you climb to a mountaintop and grab a grasshopper from a masters hand?
Dave Plesh (drums): You know, we really should have some requirements.
Hal: Anyone who embraces us is a Sex Ninja
Domo: Rule #1 is hanging with Randy
(laughs)
Dave: Okay, I guess we can abide by that. If you can get by Randy you can pretty much handle the rest of us.
Hal: Truth be told man, the way I see it is that Rock N Roll lost it's soul in the 80's.It became just about the periphery stuff. It became just about the drugs, the drink, the cars, the chicks, the Saturday night. In the 90's, as a reaction to that, it lost it's sense of fun. It became fucking boring, depressing and introverted. I think Rock N Roll has one foot in one and one foot in the other, the poet and the pornstar. To us it's about bringing Rock N Roll back to what it was, which is the music of revolution, the music of fun, all of that mischievousness and insolence all in one.
Anarchy Music: Despite the last 15 years of history in music proving me wrong, I think that people have a primal urge to escape through music ad have fun. Agree?
Hal: Dude, the word Rock N Roll mean "to fuck". That's what it means. I'm rocking with my baby. I'm rolling in the hay with my baby. I'm rocking and rolling.
Anarchy Music: Did you just define that?
Hal: It's from an old blues song
Anarchy Music: Can I Wikipedia that?
Hal: Yes, you certainly can.
Sally: Hal's going on Wikipedia to add it in there.
(laughs)
Randy: There's nothing against Rock N Roll in the 90's. There's some great bands that came out of the 90's musically. The thing that 90's took away for me is that when I was grew up, when I was a little kid, you'd see bands in the 60's, 70's and 80's and when you saw a band on screen or in concert, it was your escape from reality. In the 90's, Yeah there was some great bands and great music throughout the decade but they took away the escapism and fantasy of rock n roll. They sang about all of the shit that we're actually going through. Maybe we needed that, but that time is over. When I think of Rock N Roll I think of getting away from my daily life and getting away from my problems. Looking at someone on stage and wanting to be that guy or with that guy or thinking that's the life for me. That's Rock N Roll.
Hal: I think there's some truth to that. For me, what it's all about is that I consider myself a fiction writer. I've never been of the school of "therapy is art", where my dad beat the shit out of me so I'm going to whine about it for 10 fucking records. I think that there's truth in fiction, there's personal truth or otherwise it would have no resonance, but it's also a form of entertainment and I think that a lot of bands have unfortunately forgotten that.
Anarchy: I know that for one of you (looks at Sally) people are going to be looking on stage and wanting to get with that rock star.
Hal: That would be me you're talking about right?
(laughs)
Anarchy Music: Of course, that's why I sat next to you.
(laughs)
Anarchy Music: You were talking about looking up to your heroes. When I was a kid, the very first album I ever bought was Mechanical Resonance by Tesla.
Hal: Good band!
Domo: That was my third record!
Anarchy Music: That was a great record, and very few have been that good since. What's it like to tour with them?
Hal: Are you fucking kidding dude? It's a fucking dream come true! It's fucking Tesla!
Domo: Oh my god, dude. They are the coolest people. Their crew are the coolest people. They work like a family and they are a fantastic rock n roll band. They never hit bad notes. They're never mean to us.
Hal: They are all about their fans. They're all about the music and having their support band be happy and getting us on the bus and making sure we're fucking fed. They're just good fucking people.
Sally: They're just real down to earth people.
Hal: And every night we get to watch a kick-ass Rock N Roll show.
Domo: Especially when the merch both is near the stage, I get to watch them all night.
Anarchy Music: Obviously they have been around the block and they know how to be a great Rock N Roll band. What have they taught you all?
Hal: Dude, I'll tell you something really fucking cool. Randy was having a conversation with them. Randy turned around to (Tesla bassist) Brain Wheat and said "hey man, I hope we're doing all right. We're trying to warm the crowd up for you". Before he could even finish, Brian was like, "I never want to hear you fucking say that again". Randy was like, "what, we're the warm-up act, right?" Brain said, "never refer to yourself as that again. Your job is not to warm them up for us. Your job is to kick our fucking asses and embarrass us before we get on stage. If you do that, we'll be a better band and that's what we need you to do." We must be doing something right because we've been on tour with them now since fucking June.
Anarchy Music: You're out there kicking ass, what are you bringing to the table?
Hal: We try to make it so that from the walk in the door to the moment they leave it's the best rock n roll show they've ever seen. That's our job.
Domo: A constant fire onstage, at all times, just chaos.
Anarchy Music: The records out, the single is "Rock N Roll", what's next? I'm sure we can scratch MTV off the list...
Hal: I'm sure if we had a reality show then MTV would show it. Unfortunately that's the criteria.
Anarchy Music: Well, you don't want to vote somebody out!
(laughs)
Dave: We're going to vote everyone in!
(laughs)
Hal: What's the plan next?
Anarchy Music: Yeah, is there another tour planned or anything?
Hal: We're setting one up right now, but we're just going to keep rolling the circus into town and setting fire to the locals.
Anarchy: That's awesome. Do you have any idea how many bands I see and just leave midway through their set?
Hal: You're like, "you're fucking shit".
Anarchy Music: Quit whining, high school's over. You guys do what I want music to do. You put me in that place where I am the coolest guy in the room, I am the life of the party. "I've got a girl on the left of me, a girl on the right. I know them well, I slept with both last night". Thanks Poison!
(laughs)
Hal: Abso-fucking-lutely!
Anarchy Music: The single is at radio now?
Hal: Yeah, it's doing real well. We're getting a lot of love. A couple of interesting things have happened like we've won some cage matches against bands that we really love, like Velvet Revolver, which is really fucking cool. There's nothing like finishing a show at the Nokia theater in New York, walked out to the Virgin Megastore and bought my fucking album, shrink-wrapped right next to Poison. Life is fucking good. I don't are if it takes us 6 months, a year, 6 years, 10 years to be at the point where we've earned the audience that Tesla has every night, playing in front of 1000 crazy people every night. I don't care how long it takes. We're having a blast on the fucking road, we're having a blast on the journey and we're happy to be with each other.
Anarchy Music: What's happening to the Sunset Strip since you aren't there?
Hal: It's falling apart. It's gone to Hell. Every one's watching a lot of TiVo
Dave: We get a lot of emails from fans asking us to come home and play because their at the Roxy bored out of their minds.
Sally: They've been waiting at the Roxy for 3 months for us to come home.
Hal: I don't mean to toot our own fucking horn, but something that we were able to fucking do is make it okay to rock the fuck out on the Sunset Strip again. There's a lot of bands coming into the Strip that maybe wouldn't have had the chance to before. One we started selling out houses they were looking for other Poets And Pornstars. There's a band out right now called Daredevil Jane that are friends of ours that are playing god sleazy 3 chord rock n roll, and a couple of others.
Anarchy Music: So, like Motley broke big and a bunch of bands followed, you will be the next band to do that...
Hal: Lets hope so. Otherwise we'll just be the band you interviewed that opened for Tesla.
Anarchy Music: I would rather think that 15 million albums from now you'll be throwing me out of the venue...
Hal: I'll be going, "get him out or he's going to take a shit on my solid gold toilet". I'll have diamonds put in my food so my shit comes out sparkly.
Anarchy Music: (laughs) You are always on!
Randy: We plug him in at night to charge him up...
Anarchy: I think that kids are ready for this, don't you think?
Hal: You know wen I'm on Myspace browsing around, not that I spend a lot of time on the Myspace pages of underage ids, but when I happen to be on the profile of a 16 or 17 year old kid, it's Poison and GNR, fucking Aerosmith. I think the world is ready for Rock N Roll again and it's our civic duty to bring it to them. It's time for it. When you think about it from a sociological standpoint anyway, Rock N Roll was the music of blue collar, working man voice of the angst of the youth of the working class, then the middle class. Then it sort of became glossed over and packaged. It was making so much money that it was coming off the assembly line of the machine. So as a result, hip hop, which was the music of the streets, of the blue collar black kids became the same anthem of the white ids. It became the new rock n roll, for shizzy. Hip Hop has done the same thing. It's become overblown. In other words, sociologically I think we're ripe for fun, insolent, mischievous, angst music and I hope it will be rock n roll.
Anarchy Music: I hope so. I always felt that my odds of hooking up with a chick in the crowd were better if the band was singing about getting laid. I need all the help I can get.
Hal: So, basically if we've done a good show, we're going to come back afterwards and there will be a blond bouncing on your lap?
Anarchy Music: .Exactly, unfortunately it will be Randy.
(laughs)
Anarchy Music: To me a harder sell than the kids would be the older crowd that grew up with Hard Rock. They don't even really support the new releases by the bands they grew up with. So, is Tesla crowd etting reacting well?
Hal: Every night, we sell cds to 10-20% of the crowd, which is huge for an opening band.
Domo: That they have yet to hear of. They tell us that they were waiting for us to be created and they're damn glad that we're here.
Randy: Tesla loves us, and the other way that they love us is that their audience receives us so well. That's the big thing.
Hal: I'll tell you a story. Our first big gig was opening for Bon Jovi in front of 15,000 people. I'm wondering if I should even tel this story now... Fuck it, I'll tell the story. One of Bon Jovi's agents brought his daughter to see the show. I guess Richie Sambora was crashing on his ouch afterwards. So they go back to his house and the agent came back with his daughter...this is the story as told to my girlfriend by the agent himself...the daughter walks in and Richie Sambora turned around and said "what did you think of the show?". The daughter said, "You guys we're alright, but Poets And Pornstars kicked fucking ass!" which is a nice fucking thing to hear. So, I think old and young, people respond to god music and they need good rock n roll so I think we're in a good position to deliver music.
Sally: I think it's familiar enough to the fans of someone like Tesla and the rock that came out in the 80's, that they an like it, but it's also new and fresh. It's not a new Poison record, it's a new band, playing stuff that sounds similar to bands they already love.
Hal: Having said that, most of those bands aren't putting out the same kinds of records that they did back then. They're not making the same Rock n roll that they did. They're trying to make it contemporary, and in doing that they're losing the essence of what was fantastic about what they were doing in the first place.
Anarchy Music: One last question...what's more inspirational, a good poet or a good porn star?
Hal: I think you need both. That's the point isn't it?
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Poets And Pornstars is a band you need to check out! I want to thank our new friends Domo, Hal, Sally, Randy and Dave for introducing themselves to our readers, and I want everyone to go to PoetsAndPornstars.com and the bands Myspace page for more info and to hear some fucking music!