Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Rock Cafe / Postojna / Slovenia
Interview date: 18.02.2010
What does real homegrown Ribnica rock n’ roll sound like? Only the rowdy rascals of Chicksy Dicks know. In a short but juicy chat, the guys showed that the whole point of rock is going all in or not at all. The half-assed approach most bands peddle today just doesn’t work!
RockLine: So how did it happen that tonight here in Postojna we finally got to meet rock a la Chicksy Dicks?
Chicksy Dicks: We’ve never played here in Postojna before, and I can honestly say this is a really “cool” club. Props to the sound guy, the only thing is, a bit more light show and the whole thing would be perfect. But above all we wanted to present our material to the crowd, and that’s the main reason we came here tonight.
RockLine: You’re driving down a pretty raw, gritty rock track, no detours. How would you describe your musical approach?
Chicksy Dicks: We’re one hard-as-hell motherfucking mix! You know, it just comes out on its own. Nobody was thinking about what would come out when we started getting together for rehearsals. We never played any covers either, so there’s really no point looking for influences. If you ask me, five years from now we’ll still be playing the same way we “bang it out” now, heh, heh.
RockLine: You come from Ribnica. How friendly is the scene there to rock n’ roll?
Chicksy Dicks: Heh, once a year you even get a gig there. Yep. The alternative scene pretty much suffers, there’s nowhere to play, and young people are poorly looked after.
RockLine: Your singer carries a lot of it with his playing, his presence, his stage craziness. Where did you “pick him up”?
Chicksy Dicks: Obviously, we’re bound together by similar thinking, the same take on rock n’ roll. We’re all a bit disconnected, a bit nuts. He’s especially interesting because he switches between different approaches really well, and the stage acting too. He’s just got the gift.
RockLine: How does your original music come together?
Chicksy Dicks: You know how it is? We keep playing a basic riff until we like it. Once the idea is there, we build on it. When we feel that we’re all “in the groove”, I mean all the members as a band, then that’s it. That’s also when you realize how that first idea for a song ended up turning into something totally different.
RockLine: What’s the crowd response like? How do listeners take you in?
Chicksy Dicks: Actually, we pick up more and more people from gig to gig. People also say that when they see us several times, we get better from gig to gig.
RockLine: And the band has existed since?
Chicksy Dicks: The full lineup has existed since 2007. We’ve swapped a few more members since then. But since 2007 this has been Chicksy Dicks, really what you can see on stage. The repertoire we play has been quite varied too, in step with the band’s own development and the search for the right lineup.
RockLine: You spew out insane energy on stage.
Chicksy Dicks: We run on energy. You’ve got 15 songs and you rotate between them. You pick seven for a gig and let out all your rage and passion. Everyone works in this style.
RockLine: You’re about to release an EP.
Chicksy Dicks: Yep. It’s got six songs. It was done as a self-production. We recorded and released it completely on our own. If we’d waited around for some kind of help, we could’ve waited an eternity. The title of this release will be dead simple. “Demo”.
RockLine: How far off is the first Chicksy Dicks album?
Chicksy Dicks: Well, we’re still a bit short on material, actually. We’re pretty picky about it. For example, it can happen that a new song comes together, we polish it for like two months at rehearsals, and then realize it doesn’t work for us and start over. From scratch. Musically, the worst thing we could do is come out with music so bleak that folks could “slit their wrists” to it.
RockLine: There’s quite a lot of that “wrist-slitting” music around today, isn’t there?
Chicksy Dicks: You bet. There are more and more of these “wimpy” bands. You go to some festival, you watch bands, they play great, and then the singer comes out on stage all teary, like he’s singing with a stick up his ass. That’s not on. If you’re going rock n’ roll, then scream, or else pack up your stuff and go home. Those half-assed approaches really don’t fit. And that so-called “new age metal” is so awful it’ll give you a stroke. Not long ago I read the general verdict of music critics on the last decade. It was devastating. They only praised two R&B artists, and everything else wasn’t worth a mention. No progress, nothing new or interesting created. Evidently that’s where progress finally stopped, in 2000.
RockLine: And then you realize how much a reunion of a band like Faith No More can mean to you?
Chicksy Dicks: Yes. That’s a band you can have an orgasm over. I saw them last year at Nova Rock festival. I was in the fourth row below the stage. It was unforgettable. But the crowd there, though… It’s not worth wasting words on. It’s awful. It’s 15-year-old kids who have no clue about anything. It’s this “instant folk” with washed brains, when you see them… I mean, when you see them in a mass like that, at a festival like that, that’s when you can truly get scared for the future of rock n’ roll. You watch thirteen-year-old girls shoving their way into the “fan pit” below the stage, and then “moshing” to Faith No More. Sometimes you get the urge to put every one of them over your knee and give her a proper spanking.
RockLine: Back to Chicksy Dicks. When will the album be out, your studio debut?
Chicksy Dicks: Probably by June this year at the latest. So we’re putting all our strength and working energy into this project now. To get a proper studio album out of us as soon as possible.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photo Gallery
