Robot Kill City is an Ottawa band who's been around for a little over a year now and they've already played with Q and Not U, Don Caballero, Enon and Black Eyes.  Ummm.... their musical influences include Jesus Lizard, Fugazi, Shellac, The Dismemberment Plan, and Gang of Four.  What else?  Ummm...  They always wear matching outfits (wow, what a gay word.  I don't know what else to say though.)  This time they wore black t-shirts that said what instrument they play on them.  If you were smart, you could've figured that out yourself by looking at Pierre's slammin' photos that adorn this page.  This interview was done on the couches in the back--well, I guess technically the FRONT of Maverick's after their CD release show.   The show rocked balls, in case you were wondering.  Good LORD I hate writing interview intros.  But not as much as I hate TRANSCRIBING interviews.  I need an intern.  If any of you kids wants to finish transcribing an interview with Jesse "The Devil" Hughes and get dick-all for it, contact me.  Anyway, here's an interview with Davey and then Davey and Mike (who joins us part-way through, so don't be alarmed) from Robot Kill City.  We were all drunk, of course.

BEN: You know what I've noticed that is missing in rock and roll these days?  Matching outfits.
DAVEY: [laughs]  I know.  Uh, the shirts that we wear, when we started the band, we thought it'd be funny to be like an autonomous unit with like shirts like "guitar", "guitar", "bass", and we thought that that would be funny 'cause it's kinda like pointing out the fact that like "yeah, this is what I play".

BEN: Exactly, man, because... too many times, I've watched a show, and I'm seeing a guy and I'm like "What the fuck?   Are you in the band or are you just some guy with an instrument who wandered on stage?" It's too confusing.   Right?
DAVEY: Exactly.  Sometimes, like, if you've ever seen Buried Inside play, they have like Mitch who comes up from the side and he's all like "WHLAA!" and I'm like "That'll never happen at one of our shows!" [laughs]

BEN: I don't like being confused at shows.
DAVEY: [Laughs]  Me neither.

BEN: Uh...  Do you wanna talk about Pitchfork Media for a second?
DAVEY: Yeah, I do.

BEN: 'Cause obviously, from your comments today, we share a common, uh... is "enemy" the right word?
DAVEY: It's not "enemy" it's more like "disdain".

BEN: "Disdain"?
DAVEY: I--I feel a lot of, uh... sorta like... I feel like it's unfair that they would... y'know... [Bear with Davey here; it's difficult coming up with the best words to describe the maximum suck that is Pitchfork Media.]   [Pitchfork]'s such a huge resource for most people, y'know?  Like, so many people find out about bands JUST from that.  And they [Pitchfork] pick certain bands that they like and-- you look on the internet and it's like "oh, The Arcade Fire, number one!  Oh, they're huge!" Y'know?  But, like, honestly: what have they done before now to like [work] toward that?  Not that I'm saying The Arcade Fire is bad, but...

BEN: What happened to CHOPS?
DAVEY: Exactly!  I mean, we'll never be in Pitchfork Media, which means that we'll never have the internet resource we need to be like HUGE, y'know?  It's such a scene.  Like, the internet has become the scene that carries everything that like, the indie-rock scene is about, and I don't agree with that.  Like The O.C..   Like, honestly, I've never even SEEN it, but I hear about it ALL THE TIME; it's SO silly!

BEN: Y'know what I don't like about The Arcade Fire?  One time at Zaphod's--before Zaphod's was totally beat--some girl came up to me, she's like "Aren't you in the Arcade Fire?" I looked at a photo of them, they were all fucking UGLY!
DAVEY: Yeah, I know.

BEN: But then I saw them on Conan the other day and the dude DOES look like me!  EXACTLY like me!
DAVEY: I have a friend that used to...

[Mike joins the table.]

BEN: Oh.
DAVEY: Oh, we've got Mike here now.

MIKE: Dave's too intoxicated to be interviewed, so I just thought, I'd...

DAVEY: Oh, no I'm not, yeah, okay.

BEN: Well, I'm too intoxicated to do an interview, it's gonna work out FINE.
DAVEY: Funny story about the Arcade Fire: You know the band Les Angles Mort?

BEN: Yep.
DAVEY: Four out of five members of that band have been in The Arcade Fire!  [Laughs]

MIKE OR BEN [I can't tell which; the fucking bar is playing My Name Is Jonas way too fucking loud for interview purposes.   Assholes.]: Are you serious?  I did not know that.

DAVEY: The drummer, the bass palyer, the guitar player, and the other guitar player were ALL in the Arcade Fire at one point and they were ALL kicked out by the same guy; the guy that sings in The Arcade Fire kicked them out.  He's like "You guys don't have the CHOPS!" and he kicked them out of the band!

BEN: Yeah right.
DAVEY: Yep.  And, uh, my friend Evan, he has a web site called nocarsgo.org.  That's HIS song, and The Arcade Fire has a song called No Cars Go.

MIKE: [I think Mike says two words here, but he's pretty quiet.  Or maybe My Name Is Jonas is just too fucking loud.  TURN IT DOWN, COCKLICKS!]

DAVEY: No, I just don't agree with the internet pertaining to music, like, I think they should be seperate.

BEN: [To Mike]  We were just weighing in on Pitchfork Media and the internet in general.
MIKE: Okay, there's a lot to say about Pitchfork Media.  Pitchfork Media gave the new Trail Of Dead FOUR POINT O [out of ten] and they would give like a new Ja Rule track like six point o.

DAVEY: All I have to say is that the new Trail Of Dead rocks.

BEN: Trail Of Dead fucking KILLS.
MIKE: Here's the thing I don't understand about that review.  I was reading it, and it said that the singer, Conrad, probably has the worst voice in the universe.  Alright?  YET, they gave their last record 10.0.  How could he have the worst singing voice in the universe but they gave their last album...

DAVEY: THAT'S why I don't trust reviewers in music!

BEN: Pitchfork Media can eat two bags of dicks!
DAVEY: And Ryan Schreiber, editor-in-chief, this one's for you.

BEN: Should we end [this interview] on "Pitchfork Media, eat a bag of dicks" and "Ryan Schreiber, this one's for you"?
MIKE: Well, have you got any more questions for us?

BEN: I dunno, man... Oh wait!  One second: I think we've reached the point in the interview where I pay you guys the ultimate compliment.  Alright?  You ready?
DAVEY: Yes.

BEN: Alright.  Some day... for my birthday... I want you guys to sing... that "this party's awesome" song.   That is the ultimate compliment.
DAVEY [Incredulous, for some reason]: You want us to sing for your BIRTHday?!

MIKE: That song is actually about people doing cocaine.

DAVEY: Yeah, it's about Zaphod's.

BEN: Well, what's my BIRTHDAY about?
MIKE AND DAVEY: Ooooh!  Snap!

DAVEY: Oh shit!  [Pause, and then:]  Hey, we're gonna have--

[At this point, it seems some drunk girl comes over and says something about Pitchfork.com and the three of us tear into her for a bit.  Well, not her personally, but Pitchfork; I guess she said something pro-Pitchfork?  Who knows?  It's hard to make anything out, it happened over a month ago and I was drunk then and I'm drunk now.  On with the interview:]

DAVEY [jokingly]: We've gotta get labeled as a "party band".  Even our party songs have kind of an undertone of something serious.

MIKE: We're kind of ridiculous [something something], but I mean, there's sort of like a seriousness behind us.

DAVEY: We're not ALL clowns!

BEN: The "this party's awesome" song kills it though, that's wicked.  And, uh, the traffic light song.
DAVEY: That song [the traffic light song], actually, when we started the band, we wanted to have songs where we switched instruments like ALL THE TIME.  We were like "okay, this new band is gonna be so like, so like, uh, a co-operative thing where we switch instruments constantly, and we never did that, and then recently, we were like "alright, that's it, me and Mike, we're gonna play bass for a song", so we're like, "let's have a song with two basses".

BEN: It works, man, it works.
DAVEY: We refer to it as the two-bass song.

BEN: What I like about you guys--honestly, I think this interview probably ended about two minutes ago, but this [the digi rec] is still recording, so I mean, if anything turns out good, man, we'll keep it, but I think... I think this doesn't count now.  But what I like about you guys is that you cite Jesus Lizard as an influence.
DAVEY: Of course!

MIKE: Always.

DAVEY: We fucking--honestly, this one song that we have, like the song we opened with--when we wrote it, I was like "let's just write a song that sounds like Jesus Lizard".  [Starts to make Jesus Lizard-ish guitar riff impressions.  He's a regular Rahzel.]

BEN: Jesus Lizard is fucking epic.
MIKE: Except we don't whip out our dicks and put them on people's faces.

DAVEY: Exactly.  The drummer for our band saw them at Barrymore's...

BEN: They played Barrymore's?
DAVEY: Like eight years ago; Jay's pretty old.  [Something something]  He saw them playing, and what the singer did was, he went into the audience and took a girl's sunglasses off her face, whipped out his dick and put the glasses on his dick.

BEN: Like, with the penis as a nose?
DAVEY: Yeah.

BEN: Alright.  Right on.
DAVEY: I just wanna say that this INTERVIEW'S awesome.

MIKE: Yeah, this interview is awesome.

BEN: Could you sing-- could you sing "this interview's awesome", like in the "this party's awesome" song?
MIKE AND DAVEY: [They do.  And it is MARVELOUS.]

BEN: Alright, man, maybe I'll just play THAT over the loudspeakers at my birthday party.  Alright, man, I think that's a wrap, that's it.  That's fuckin' over.