Artists: Rockbitch's 'Kali and Babe'

Interviewer: Glenn Milligan, BA Hons CS

1. What was the main reason for forming Rockbitch and who initially came up with the stage show ideas?

The people who formed Rockbitch all live together in a commune. There were always musicians, playing in a band, but Rockbitch as it is, is about nine years old. The commune is a pagan sex community and at some point we decided to take our lifestyle onstage with us, rather than just sing about it.

The commune existed long before the band as it is known today. But there were always musicians in the commune, the Bitch, the bassplayer, is the founder member of the community. So there was always a lot of musical activity and there were several bands
under different names. The commune is a pagan sex community and at some point we decided to take our lifestyle onstage with us.

The songs were always about female empowerment, lesbianism, the raw ancient honesty of female sexuality and one day we decided: We live this lifestyle, let's take it a step further and actually show the audience what we do.

So the band can be seen as one of the expressions of our lifestyle, rather than the other way around.

 

2. Who would you say your main influences are and why?

*Because there are so many of us, there are many different musical tastes between us. From Philip Glass to traditional Indian music, from the Prodigy to Kate Bush, from Pink Floyd to Bach.

It is hard to put a label on our music, because everything influences us in some way... But the styles that influence us most at the moment are probably a mixture of progressive dance music and metal, with hint of ancient pagan music styles.

3. How long did it take to get the nucleus of the band together?

* The people who join, usually join through a relationship with one of the commune members. When people join it's usually through falling in love with someone !

Amanda basically used the band she had at the time to 'recruit' women into the community, Julie joined like that, so did Babe, Nikki fell in love with Babe and joined. They have been in the band for over nine years. It is a continually evolving process.

Kali met the girls years ago in Holland at a concert, caught the Golden Condom and fell head over heels in love with Luci. She joined the band last year.

Chloe the mediawhore and Julie fell very much in love and Chloe ended up joining last year as well. Erzulie the Merchwhore fell in love with Babe last year and joined.

 

4. What would you consider to be the most extreme things that you've done
on stage?

* We consider what we do onstage to be extremely mild ! What we express of our lifestyle on stage are snippets of our private home life as a community of sex magik practising pagans, things to give the public an idea of an alternative lifestyle. We're much more intense at home, but that's our personal life.

The public and the authorities considers the most extreme things are p*ssing and fistf*cking.

 

5. When you've gigged, what shows have been standouts, and for what reasons?

* The Gay Games in Amsterdam a couple of years ago; it was a women only gig and it was one of the best experiences we've ever had, all that female power in one place! We cried after that gig, it was such an emotional, empowering experience.

On a lighter note, a recent gig in Brighton stands out as one of the best we ever did, we were so elated most of us crowd-surfed naked during the encore...it was brilliant.

 

6. How were you approached by SPV when you were signed ? Did you have many other offers at the time? Why did you choose SPV - was it a money thing? Or are there other reasons as well?

We're not really in a position to talk about our dealings with the record industry, let's just say we won't walk down this path again.

 

7. Were many of the songs from the 'Motor Driven Bimbo' album written previously which you'd been performing live for a long time?

 

* The album 'Motor Driven Bimbo', has some songs on it which we performed live, like 'Eveline', but most of it was new material.

 

8. What are your favourite songs on the album and why?

Depends who you ask in the band !

9. Why did you call it 'Super Driven Bimbo'? Were other titles considered at the time?
Motor Driven bimbo! A reference to industrialised sexuality - for example the way female sexuality in particular is used as spice or packaging by every selling industry. Not just the music biz - but always with a solid vein of hypercritical self denial -quote example " we're not really like this we're just doing it for the video " type thing - where as WE really ARE like this and not just doing it for any damn reason other than that's the way we live.

Alternative titles were Psychic Attack, and The Kali Yuga.

 

10. Are you referring the term to anybody in particular or a particular type of woman?

See 9.

11. Who's idea was to place the violin section in 'Diva' and what influenced it?

Our idea - and just because it's a sweet romantic love song.

12. What would you say have been your favourite forms of album promotion?

? don't really understand this question, but maybe that's because we haven't done any really.

13. If you could choose to have any famous females in the band, who would they be and why?

We're shallow - we'd all just choose women we want to f*ck.

14. How do you put your songs together lyrics or music first or at same time ? Electric or acoustic?

Acoustic and tune, then bring in the other instruments - this is Julie's main method of writing.

15. What was the reason behind the litigation with SPV?

Can't talk about this for legal reasons.

16. When you were out on the road, how did you amuse yourselves? Any
good tour stories?

Come on! How do you think! Good story is the very high class expensive brothel outside which our tour bus was parked. We got a tour of it, as we left on of the ladies who worked there who was with a client heard we'd just been and gone - she jumped off the guy who was buying her time, ran down the street naked 'til we stopped the bus and jumped on - the mass orgy that inevitably followed was great, but I don't know if her client got a refund...

When we're not doing that, we love to go and see the sites if there's time:
Museums, architecture, and the like. The best one was Pompei in Italy, an incredibly sexual place still, we all ended up sh*gg*ng and w*nking between the ruins....

17. Which countries appeared to give you the least amount of hassle with regard to putting on full live shows?

* Denmark. They are extremely liberal as far as sexuality is concerned. They are great, and the women are amazing!

 

18. Since you will not be doing gigs in standard live venues, can you see the band playing biker festivals or strip clubs?

The only gig's we'll be doing will be private 'members only' gigs for those who join our members website at www.rockbitch.com

19. Do you have any news regarding the next album? E.g. Title, cover, songs, musical styles etc.

All future music and the unavailable stuff from the past, plus unseen and archive video footage is downloadable from www.rockbitch.com ! That's it.

20. Do you ever intend to release some of the songs on CD that have only been part of the live show - e.g. the ones involving Nuns and Fists?

Keep checking out the website and you might find them there one day....

 

21. How are you now earning a good living since you aren't touring anymore?
Is Rockbitch still the full-time job - if not, what else do you all do?

At the moment we're house-building, being brick and tile layers - it's good fun, then we go to fetish parties and sex clubs in the evening. We are all artists and musicians at heart, so we'll never stop expressing ourselves creatively in some form or other. Just keep an eye out.....

22. Have you found that it has made it easier to make money since you've had the website? (The .co.uk one)

No, we're not as rich as people think we are !

 

23. Do you still do T.V. appearances like the one you did on 'The Sex Show' a few years ago - what recollections do you have worth talking about? What about Radio appearances?

There are a few things coming up - Playboy TV in November - details on their site, a program called Diners in the new year on BBC, and a new documentary on channel 5 - all these will go on the .co.uk site when we have the dates.
We've done a lot of documentaries recently, most memorable the 'Anna in wonderland' programme, which started the whole decision to stop touring in the first place, as a council member saw this as a reason to cancel our gig.
One of our fun radio experiences was in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the radio presenter brought a male sex slave into the studio during the broadcast, for us to play with!

The presenter himself had taken his shirt of, out of solidarity with our point of view, and wore a studded collar. It was brilliant.

 

24. What are the bands plans for the immediate and long term future?

Keeping contact with our fans through the www.rockbitch.com site is a big thing for us. On an inward level we are spending as much time together as we can, exploring new sources of creativity. Since the making of the SexDeathMagik video some of us have grown more passionate for making films.

Our commune will never cease to be as it's the heart of who we are, much more so than the band, which was just one of the ways of the commune to express itself. We have many other projects, hobbies and interests within our community.
When we are all old ladies we hope to be still happy together and still f*cking!...and we will be.

Both Babe and myself have answered the questions, but we haven't made a distinction between ourselves...that's being in a commune, we speak for each other constantly and represent all of our opinions at once!...:)

Kind regards,
Kali

A big Thank-you to Kali and Babe for the Interview