Real
Cool Killers
This article originally appeared in NFH #19 in
the summer of 1990.
If Noise For Heroes
is about anything, it's about bands that play great rock and roll but don't get the
recognition they deserve. This goes for almost any underground band, since playing real
rock and roll these days essentially guarantees that only a handful of people will like
what you are doing.
In France, the
situation is tougher yet. In addition to the usual obstacles any band would face, there's
a bias at home that says that bands from the US or Australia will be better, and there are
high import tariffs and a perception abroad of French inferiority that make it doubly
hard. This is grossly unfair, because there have been a lot of really great French records
in the past couple years, but they don't get the attention they deserve...Les Thugs, Fixed
Up, the Noodles, the City Kids, and the Jet Boys, to name a few. The Real Cool Killers are
a perfect example of a band victimized by this situation...I heard of them only through a
friend in France who sent their mini-lp Black and Wild, which turns out to be a
really hot piece of guitar rock that could make itself right at home among your Australian
lps.
The name "Real
Cool Killers" came from a paperback written by an American Black writer named Chester
Ames. "He's one of my favorite paperback writers", says lead singer, guitar
player, and band founder Buck. "I'm very fond of this paperback literature. What is
strange is that I didn't choose the name of the band because of that, but the Real Cool
Killers paperback begins with "Big Joe Turner was singing a rock and roll adaptation
of "Dick's Blues". The loud licking rhythm blasted from the jukebox with enough
heat to melt bones." Very appropriate.
But you can't melt
bones if you can't get near 'em, and there's a big frustration involved trying to be heard
overseas: "It's very hard to export, and to sell a license of the Real Cool Killers
lp is for us like to go in a UFO and to meet little green men. It's really impossible at
the moment. We want to, but we can't", says Buck.
This is a shame,
because the Real Cool Killers' record is one that a lot of people could really be loving
over here. The band started in June of 1986 as a trio. At the beginning they were a garage
band influenced by 60s garage bands and Australian groups like Radio Birdman and the New
Christs. "In the beginning we formed with an intention to do real garage music with a
noisy sound. But we changed our mind, and now we want it to be OUR sound. I want to keep
the power and wild approach to our music", says Buck.
In 1987 they decided
they needed another guitar player, so they added Buck's friend Sergio to a lineup that
already included Jeff on drums and Steff on bass. Sergio had played bass with Buck in a
previous band, and with his addition they progressed fairly quickly for a while, getting
support slots for the Fleshtones and French bands like Fixed Up. In 1987 they decided to
do a single, which Buck really wanted to do with Swedish producer 4-Eye Thomas since he
was really into Swedish bands like the Nomads and Sinners at the time. But it was
impossible to work this out, so instead they got Les Thugs drummer Christophe Sourice,
which made Buck equally happy as he rates Les Thugs one of the five best bands in the
world.
The resulting single,
which was recorded in Bordeaux in the south of France, consists of the rocking "No
Fun With You" and a slower, moodier track called "Mad" on the flip. Both
tracks have a great rough edge to them with loud guitars and a really punchy feel.
"Mad" is especially cool; despite being slow it still has a strong feeling of
energy and a feeling of tension. The record was released on the French label Spliff, which
is run by Buck and his co-hort Gilbert out of the Spliff record shop in Clermont.
In 1988, the band
supported the New Christs in Paris, but then suffered an upheaval as Sergio quit to live
in Paris, where his girlfriend was living. Buck has mixed feelings about Sergio
leaving...Sergio was a close friend, but he was also a bass player playing guitar, and the
new guitar player, JP, proved to be much better player and was able to take over the lead
role from Buck, who felt that both playing lead and singing together was too difficult to
do well.
The lp Black and
Wild was recorded in May of 1989. This time the band went to London, again with
Christophe producing, and recorded in the same studio where the Damned did Machine Gun
Ettiquette. Buck found the English studio to be vastly superior to French studios, and
in six days they recorded eight really solid tracks, recording during the day and sleeping
on the floor at night. The recording was done mostly live with just vocal and lead guitar
overdubs, and the result sounds more cohesive than the single.
Buck says that now he
is happy with the results, but he's anxious to do something new. "I was influenced by
a type of music and I did songs with this influence, but I did the Real Cool Killers songs
two years ago with a particular type of influence, and we can say the Australian rock and
roll or a sixties sound, and I'm now more influenced by American bands. So what I do now
is more influenced by that and for me the record seems to be a little bit old with songs
that we had done together for a few years earlier. We are very happy with the result, and
Christophe Sourice did a really good job. In this studio it was different than in Bordeaux
because we were at the table with him to do the mix of the single, but in London we went
shopping and left Christophe to do the mix of the record, and after one year I'm still
very pleased with what Christophe had done. A lot of people say to me that the Real Cool
Killers had great production. His brother Eric from Les Thugs didn't like the kind of
music that we play and said that we were too Australian influenced, but he liked the sound
and says it's the best lp his brother has done."
Shortly after the
release of the record, Jeff left the band. As with Sergio, Buck had mixed feelings.
"He was a great, great drummer. But he wasn't interested in the Real Cool Killers for
a long time and he was always saying "Not too many rehearsals because I'm not
free" or "Not too many gigs, because I work", and sometimes he felt good,
and sometimes he felt bad, and it was hard for us to rehearse and play with him in this
way." He was replaced by Dominic, who had played in a previous band with JP. Buck
feels that the current lineup is much closer together than any previous formation, and he
also feels that he now understands better what he wants the Real Cool Killers to be all
about.
"What I want to
do with the Real Cool Killers is to at some time be a real original band. I think we work
together in this way, because now we do the songs together and we have a lot of different
influences. At the beginning of the band I was a fan of rock and roll and I wanted to do a
record of my own, and I didn't trust the rest of the band. I wanted to do my own songs
which is what we did. Maybe I didn't listen as I must do to what the other members of the
band said to me when they said "maybe we should play it less garagey, Buck". But
I just wanted to do records in my own way, and now we did a single and we did an lp, and I
can say I did a single and I did an lp with my own songs, and now what I want is for the
Real Cool Killers to be more original, and with the ideas of the other members of the
band. They may not be my personal ideas, but I want to try that and I want us to be more
close and everybody suggesting his ideas. And maybe we will go to something really
original and really interesting, or maybe we will go to something that I won't like and I
would say "I'll leave", but I would prefer to go in a way more adventurous then
to stay in the line to play always garage music. But don't worry, I won't stay in a band
that doesn't have wild singing. I don't care about the tempo; you can play a wild song
with slow tempos or a wild song with fast tempos, but I want to stay wild, I don't want to
play pop. I want to still be a wild band."
"Of course, I
love the Stooges. Iggy with the Stooges went as far with this kind of music as you can go.
We can't go, and I don't think any other band can go as far as the Stooges went with this
type of music, especially if you consider the period at the end of the 60s. My favorite is
Funhouse. It's a masterpiece...nobody can do better than this recording. I don't
want to do it, and I can't. But there's a middle between the Real Cool Killers and the Funhouse
lp, and I want to reach this middle."
Buck feels that a
French scene may be starting to develop. He cites Les Thugs, City Kids, Ambulances and a
new band with Francois of Fixed Up called the Backsliders. Jokingly he says: "You
know, ten years ago there was a French sound...we had bad studios in France, French
records always had bad sound. We didn't have good singers, and French rock was a parody of
American and English bands."
"But now the
French scene is very active, but unfortunately there is trouble with the public...not many
people come to see the gigs. Too bad...we've sold only 1,000 copies of each band on the
label. One of the best bands on the label was Chameleon's Day from Grenoble. They were
really great, and after two years we had sold only 1,200 copies of their wonderful
record."
There's little that
the Real Cool Killers can do about their fortunes except to keep playing and improving and
hope that someone notices. Their plans are getting more ambitious...this summer they'll be
touring outside of France for the first time...to Spain and Germany. Next winter they plan
to do a full length lp. But Buck doesn't like to think about the Real Cool Killers in the
long term. "I don't think in long terms because to think in long terms means to be
forced to do something for a long time, and I just want to play in the Real Cool Killers
for the pleasure of being with close friends and for the pleasure of doing my music and
recordings and gigs that will satisfy us. The only long term plans that I have is that if
we can wait until things change in France, maybe like the punk '77 explosion, maybe
something will happen, and it would be great if we were there at this moment."
Write to the Real
Cool Killers c/o Spliff Records / 15 rue de la Treille / 6300 Clermont-Fd / France.
