Wild Bill Ketelhut provides the "blog" to this anti-blog
He has a radio program on WXOU out of Oakland University
Wild At Heart
When I do searches of music in the US, the diversity comes across in many forms. You see mention of blues musicians and jazz, pop singers and punk rockers, folk artists and a whole multitude of different styles. Doing a quick look at the musical history of Italy, you get a different perspective. While the music tends towards the classical, there is a big infusion of cultural influence from the people who have lived in the area, including the Arabs, Greeks, Slavic Peoples, French and Spanish. Music in Italy seems to be integral to their way of life though they don’t seem to have a "national style". Their folk music is mainly unique to its region and its classical music, esp opera, is part of Italy's identity. However, for all of its style, one can be hard pressed to find alternative music in Italy. Lucia, lead singer of Betty Poison, states the music of Italy nowadays is all “shitty pop music ad old melodic Italian songs”. The underground has no chance to break out and gets “regulated to a ghetto”. Basically, this means if you are an Italian version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or REM, there is very little chance you will make it big or get radio airplay unless you promote yourself outside of Italy. She states “discs are made by old people with old minds” and “the people are sleeping and watching football. People used to fight and now they don’t…our asses don’t burn enough”. Actually, the only alternative band I could think of from Italy was Lacuna Coil. Now these bands will play Rome or Milan, as Betty Poison opened for Hole during their last tour dates in Italy which the band was excited about and she was seen artists like PJ Harvey when she played Rome.
She does look at a few positives in the Italian music scene. She says the underground scene is vibrant and there are some beautiful big festivals though they can be hard to find. The internet is another big factor since “the net allows you to do things that you couldn’t do 10 years ago”. It allows people all over the world to find and experience music they normally wouldn’t. Betty Poison has their own site where fans can buy their merch (http://bettypoison.bigcartel.com/) which is important since the band knows they might not hit it big, but they would like to make enough to keep touring and putting out new music. That is what a site like this allows. They are also on myspace (www.myspace.com/bettypoison1) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Betty-Poison/135514172883) with videos on youtube like their fun and raunchy “Paris Hilton Up Your Ass”.
This isn’t my favorite song by them but it tends to be a crowd pleaser. I was wondering how a girl from the underground scene came to write a song about an American heiress, and IMHO, waste of space. In Milan, Lucia has a friend in the fashion business who works with a lot of models. One day, he invited her to a party where she felt a bit out of place. While starting out as a blonde, she had a makeover by a top hair designer in Milan who switched her to a darker brown before she decided to go pure black. At this party, she was the only short, dark haired girl there and felt “like a fish out of water”. She tried talking to some of the girls and found herself getting very annoyed by their airheaded ways so like any self-respecting alternative chick, she proceeded to get drunk to “help get me through the night”. These girl’s were just saying stupid stuff and she remembers one talking about how much she respected Paris Hilton and Lucia thinking about how stupid that was since she basically inherited all her money. It’s not like she worked hard to raise herself up from poverty to get where she was and here are these girls who are getting by because of how they looked and know they will be washed up by 30. When she got home that night, she was just pissed off and the song just came to her out of that anger.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that Lucia is this mad, crazy, upset at the world punk girl because that would be unfair. She is very grounded in the here and now. We talked for about 2 ½ hours prior to the show about all sorts of things that surprised me. She loves movies, growing up on horror films though admits Hitchcock is one of her favorites and horror directors can take a clue how to really create suspence by watching “Notorius”. She is also a fan of the films of Woody Allen, David Lynch, Orson Wells (a genius) and oriental cinema. I’m jealous because we both share a passion for the movie Brazil (in both of our top 5 films) and she got to meet director Terry Gilliam on the beach during Cannes. She also likes Clint Eastwood and admits she can picture herself in her later years “like Clint Eastwood in the movie Gran Torino all attitude and such”. I always considered myself a good reader, but she puts me to shame with a love of Kafka, Joyce, Emile Zola and more authors that would make an English Lit professor jump for joy. Her most recent read was “Atonement” which she loved. It is really nice to meet someone in this industry that is so cultured and grounded in reality.
Besides that, Lucia also is a very self-made woman who doesn’t have a lot of free time because she is also the band’s booking agent and manager along with her creative talents. She sings with this harsh voice that should make any hard rock singer proud, but there is more her than that. I know my friend Saad would like the fact that she introduces every song they play and sometimes tells stories which brings the audience in. When her guitar strap broke during the show, she and the drummer fixed it with duct tape which is very DIY. She also was wearing a bracelet which states she is over 21 and reassured the audience at one point to point that out as she was drinking her beer on stage. The crowd where I saw her was only about 15-20 people but she was happy to be playing in front of a responsive crowd and the size didn’t matter. On this tour, their first of the US, has been enjoyable. She stated the NYC audiences were very warm and interactive which makes their job so much fun. She is happy the fans are supportive of their music and “really listening to the music” and she hopes after this tour they will be able to come back to the states and do the west. I pointed out that they should make an opportunity to play Detroit (I can see them at the Machine Shop, Harpos, Magic Stick or the Emerald) and they were open to that. Fingers crossed for Detroit music fans for that to happen.
I admit I have spent a lot of time talking to Lucia, but she is not the only member of the band. Mirko is the drummer and the only member of the band who doesn’t speak English so he basically sat back and occasionally smiled when Lucia would make jokes and translate for him. He is a very passionate drummer and does a great job keeping the beat strong. Nunzio is the other guitar player and a very good friend of Lucia’s. The band started as the Betty Ford Center but had their videos taken off youtube due to interference by the rehab center here in the states which surprised the band considereing how small they were in this country. Lucia and Nunzio met is a way that makes me jealous. Lucia was playing in a band and Nunzio hung out because he “loved her”. It was “everything, her music…I loved her personality, her voice” and he went on to do t-shirts for the band and Lucia remembers that he “would put plastic hearts on my boots” which seems very endearing. Anyway, Lucia’s bass player left the band and they never got to replacing him until one day she got to thinking about Nunzio and got him to join.
Lucia admits that they were “outcasts” and for her music was a matter of surviving. Here she was 23 and thinking life was almost over with no strength or reason to live. She bought a Stratocaster and started writing songs about stars and fake lives which gave her motivation to live. I “had been abused and have not been able to scream” which was what the music allowed her to do. Nunzio, on the other hand, had a different path. He is very nonchalant about music. It was something he always wanted to do and he would play around making up band names. For lack of a better word, he just fell into playing music naturally. Together they make a tight outfit. Lucia looks at music saying “if it can be reduced to 1 guitar and 1 singer (unplugged), you know the song has merit”. The songs take on a life of their own because “once you play it, you don’t own it anymore” like your children and they “grow up and go away to create there own damage”.
They even have different looks at religion which I found interesting. One thing I always think of about Italy is religion which is easy to do when Rome and the Vatican are so influential. Lucia wants “to believe in afterlife but I don’t believe, I can’t”. She has a total lack of religion which she seems to come from her attitude of doing what told not to. Her grandma would tell her not to kiss a man and she did. She also thinks of the pope as an evil man, liking him to Mordor from LOTR. Religion is “a middle-aged issue that should be done away with”. Nunzio does believe but is not fully committed. He relates that in his house there is an alter and praying is part of everyday life which he can’t kick. Those attitudes really show how different these two are but they come together nicely despite that. If you met them separately, it would be hard to think of them working together but seeing them interact, you can tell there is a strong friendship bond between them which comes out in their music.
I would like to thank the band for the time they spent talking to me and they really rocked the stage that night. They do have a new album coming out which they asked to keep some info on the down low until it comes out. Let’s just say the album cover will speak out to religious issues of the day and show Lucia’s belief that, while not religious, the downtrodden are the true Jesus Christ’s of this world which sounds like something I read in the Bible. They also will have some new videos out so make sure to check their websites and youtube and if they ever come to town, make sure to go out and buy a ticket. I hope this band continues to keep it real and is able to gain some success here in the US. I have interviewed many bands over the past 5 years, but it is rare to have so much fun doing so.
If you are traveling around the East Coast, her are their remaining dates:
JAN 9 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ CHOW! BELLA, ST.ALBANS (VT)
JAN 11 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ THE TRIPLE - RICHMOND (VA)
JAN 12 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ HOWLERS COYOTE CAFE, PITTSBURGH (PA)
JAN 13 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ ASYLUM - WASHINGTON, D.C
JAN 14- BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ TRIUMPH BREWING, NEW HOPE (PA)
JAN 15 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ BUBE'S BREWERY-BOTTLING WORKS, MOUNT JOY (PA)
I’ll leave you with this video which is my favorite song by the band.
He has a radio program on WXOU out of Oakland University
Wild At Heart
When I do searches of music in the US, the diversity comes across in many forms. You see mention of blues musicians and jazz, pop singers and punk rockers, folk artists and a whole multitude of different styles. Doing a quick look at the musical history of Italy, you get a different perspective. While the music tends towards the classical, there is a big infusion of cultural influence from the people who have lived in the area, including the Arabs, Greeks, Slavic Peoples, French and Spanish. Music in Italy seems to be integral to their way of life though they don’t seem to have a "national style". Their folk music is mainly unique to its region and its classical music, esp opera, is part of Italy's identity. However, for all of its style, one can be hard pressed to find alternative music in Italy. Lucia, lead singer of Betty Poison, states the music of Italy nowadays is all “shitty pop music ad old melodic Italian songs”. The underground has no chance to break out and gets “regulated to a ghetto”. Basically, this means if you are an Italian version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or REM, there is very little chance you will make it big or get radio airplay unless you promote yourself outside of Italy. She states “discs are made by old people with old minds” and “the people are sleeping and watching football. People used to fight and now they don’t…our asses don’t burn enough”. Actually, the only alternative band I could think of from Italy was Lacuna Coil. Now these bands will play Rome or Milan, as Betty Poison opened for Hole during their last tour dates in Italy which the band was excited about and she was seen artists like PJ Harvey when she played Rome.
She does look at a few positives in the Italian music scene. She says the underground scene is vibrant and there are some beautiful big festivals though they can be hard to find. The internet is another big factor since “the net allows you to do things that you couldn’t do 10 years ago”. It allows people all over the world to find and experience music they normally wouldn’t. Betty Poison has their own site where fans can buy their merch (http://bettypoison.bigcartel.com/) which is important since the band knows they might not hit it big, but they would like to make enough to keep touring and putting out new music. That is what a site like this allows. They are also on myspace (www.myspace.com/bettypoison1) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Betty-Poison/135514172883) with videos on youtube like their fun and raunchy “Paris Hilton Up Your Ass”.
This isn’t my favorite song by them but it tends to be a crowd pleaser. I was wondering how a girl from the underground scene came to write a song about an American heiress, and IMHO, waste of space. In Milan, Lucia has a friend in the fashion business who works with a lot of models. One day, he invited her to a party where she felt a bit out of place. While starting out as a blonde, she had a makeover by a top hair designer in Milan who switched her to a darker brown before she decided to go pure black. At this party, she was the only short, dark haired girl there and felt “like a fish out of water”. She tried talking to some of the girls and found herself getting very annoyed by their airheaded ways so like any self-respecting alternative chick, she proceeded to get drunk to “help get me through the night”. These girl’s were just saying stupid stuff and she remembers one talking about how much she respected Paris Hilton and Lucia thinking about how stupid that was since she basically inherited all her money. It’s not like she worked hard to raise herself up from poverty to get where she was and here are these girls who are getting by because of how they looked and know they will be washed up by 30. When she got home that night, she was just pissed off and the song just came to her out of that anger.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that Lucia is this mad, crazy, upset at the world punk girl because that would be unfair. She is very grounded in the here and now. We talked for about 2 ½ hours prior to the show about all sorts of things that surprised me. She loves movies, growing up on horror films though admits Hitchcock is one of her favorites and horror directors can take a clue how to really create suspence by watching “Notorius”. She is also a fan of the films of Woody Allen, David Lynch, Orson Wells (a genius) and oriental cinema. I’m jealous because we both share a passion for the movie Brazil (in both of our top 5 films) and she got to meet director Terry Gilliam on the beach during Cannes. She also likes Clint Eastwood and admits she can picture herself in her later years “like Clint Eastwood in the movie Gran Torino all attitude and such”. I always considered myself a good reader, but she puts me to shame with a love of Kafka, Joyce, Emile Zola and more authors that would make an English Lit professor jump for joy. Her most recent read was “Atonement” which she loved. It is really nice to meet someone in this industry that is so cultured and grounded in reality.
Besides that, Lucia also is a very self-made woman who doesn’t have a lot of free time because she is also the band’s booking agent and manager along with her creative talents. She sings with this harsh voice that should make any hard rock singer proud, but there is more her than that. I know my friend Saad would like the fact that she introduces every song they play and sometimes tells stories which brings the audience in. When her guitar strap broke during the show, she and the drummer fixed it with duct tape which is very DIY. She also was wearing a bracelet which states she is over 21 and reassured the audience at one point to point that out as she was drinking her beer on stage. The crowd where I saw her was only about 15-20 people but she was happy to be playing in front of a responsive crowd and the size didn’t matter. On this tour, their first of the US, has been enjoyable. She stated the NYC audiences were very warm and interactive which makes their job so much fun. She is happy the fans are supportive of their music and “really listening to the music” and she hopes after this tour they will be able to come back to the states and do the west. I pointed out that they should make an opportunity to play Detroit (I can see them at the Machine Shop, Harpos, Magic Stick or the Emerald) and they were open to that. Fingers crossed for Detroit music fans for that to happen.
I admit I have spent a lot of time talking to Lucia, but she is not the only member of the band. Mirko is the drummer and the only member of the band who doesn’t speak English so he basically sat back and occasionally smiled when Lucia would make jokes and translate for him. He is a very passionate drummer and does a great job keeping the beat strong. Nunzio is the other guitar player and a very good friend of Lucia’s. The band started as the Betty Ford Center but had their videos taken off youtube due to interference by the rehab center here in the states which surprised the band considereing how small they were in this country. Lucia and Nunzio met is a way that makes me jealous. Lucia was playing in a band and Nunzio hung out because he “loved her”. It was “everything, her music…I loved her personality, her voice” and he went on to do t-shirts for the band and Lucia remembers that he “would put plastic hearts on my boots” which seems very endearing. Anyway, Lucia’s bass player left the band and they never got to replacing him until one day she got to thinking about Nunzio and got him to join.
Lucia admits that they were “outcasts” and for her music was a matter of surviving. Here she was 23 and thinking life was almost over with no strength or reason to live. She bought a Stratocaster and started writing songs about stars and fake lives which gave her motivation to live. I “had been abused and have not been able to scream” which was what the music allowed her to do. Nunzio, on the other hand, had a different path. He is very nonchalant about music. It was something he always wanted to do and he would play around making up band names. For lack of a better word, he just fell into playing music naturally. Together they make a tight outfit. Lucia looks at music saying “if it can be reduced to 1 guitar and 1 singer (unplugged), you know the song has merit”. The songs take on a life of their own because “once you play it, you don’t own it anymore” like your children and they “grow up and go away to create there own damage”.
They even have different looks at religion which I found interesting. One thing I always think of about Italy is religion which is easy to do when Rome and the Vatican are so influential. Lucia wants “to believe in afterlife but I don’t believe, I can’t”. She has a total lack of religion which she seems to come from her attitude of doing what told not to. Her grandma would tell her not to kiss a man and she did. She also thinks of the pope as an evil man, liking him to Mordor from LOTR. Religion is “a middle-aged issue that should be done away with”. Nunzio does believe but is not fully committed. He relates that in his house there is an alter and praying is part of everyday life which he can’t kick. Those attitudes really show how different these two are but they come together nicely despite that. If you met them separately, it would be hard to think of them working together but seeing them interact, you can tell there is a strong friendship bond between them which comes out in their music.
I would like to thank the band for the time they spent talking to me and they really rocked the stage that night. They do have a new album coming out which they asked to keep some info on the down low until it comes out. Let’s just say the album cover will speak out to religious issues of the day and show Lucia’s belief that, while not religious, the downtrodden are the true Jesus Christ’s of this world which sounds like something I read in the Bible. They also will have some new videos out so make sure to check their websites and youtube and if they ever come to town, make sure to go out and buy a ticket. I hope this band continues to keep it real and is able to gain some success here in the US. I have interviewed many bands over the past 5 years, but it is rare to have so much fun doing so.
If you are traveling around the East Coast, her are their remaining dates:
JAN 9 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ CHOW! BELLA, ST.ALBANS (VT)
JAN 11 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ THE TRIPLE - RICHMOND (VA)
JAN 12 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ HOWLERS COYOTE CAFE, PITTSBURGH (PA)
JAN 13 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ ASYLUM - WASHINGTON, D.C
JAN 14- BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ TRIUMPH BREWING, NEW HOPE (PA)
JAN 15 - BETTY POISON + RIVERRAT JENKINS @ BUBE'S BREWERY-BOTTLING WORKS, MOUNT JOY (PA)
I’ll leave you with this video which is my favorite song by the band.