NYWaste meets up with Lady Unluck, one of the best Punk Rock’n’Roll bands in NYC, before they go onstage at Don Hill’s.

Photographed by
Lucky Lawler

Lady Unluck are:

Vicky Voltage (vox)

Suzy Hotrod (guitar)

Lizzie Boredom ( Bass)

Cheetarah (drums)

Liz walks in wearing a She Wolves t-shirt. They are on the same bill tonight.

Liz: I’m here to tell you how much we worship the She Wolves! The She Wolves are amazing! In that completely non-sexual friendly way.

What do you mean,” In that completely non-sexual friendly

way?”

Suzy: We’re here watching female softball. This is what we do on a Wednesday night.

(We just happen to be in the Irish pub Emerald Green next to Don Hill’s and it just

happens to be the sport they are showing on TV! So there!)

Vicky: I can’t think of anything better to do than fucking kick back and watch. Lady basketball might be better…

Suzy: That’s the only other thing I’d rather be doing right now. Cheetarah said ‘nod’ in agreement. Hahahahaha!!

When did it all begin?

Vicky: Well, I had a really shitty idea of creating a one-man band, but I don’t know how to play any instruments. So, I found her (pointing at Suzy) and by the grace of the internet we found Liz.

Suzy: That’s a garbage story! The version is: she had a shitty electro-trash band that was awful, and a girl that I knew who I used to photograph said, “wanna join a band” and I said, “oh, sure, I’ll join a band.” I owned instruments, but didn’t know how to play them. So I joined and then I was like “Fuck this electro-trash garbage let’s make a Punk Rock band and then we kicked out that girl and found Liz on the internet.

Liz: I lied and said I was a bass player, but I’d only been playing like… three weeks!

Vicky: We were lying when we said we knew what we were doing. The fact that we didn’t know what we were doing either. Shows it was a match made in heaven! Do you remember that terrible drummer, named Polly Purebread. I don’t remember what her real name is. Then we had another drummer who was like a Hip-Hop drummer so that didn’t work out either, and then we found the lovely Cheetarah over here.

Suzy: We meet her way back in the day and we were like super intimidated by all her group, because they all knew how to play.

Vicky: Yeah, they were talking about notes and shit, we were like “What?”

Suzy: how did we get you? Yeah, Liz was filling in with your band.

Cheetarah : Yeah, I knew Liz from the neighborhood.

Suzy: The gay neighborhood.

Cheetarah: Yeah, the gay neighborhood.

Liz: I said I would play bass for her if she played two shows with us. That was two years ago! It was Arlene Grocery and CBGB’s the Medusa Fest! Yeah!

Cheetarah: Yeah, then they asked me to do another show, then another show after that, and I didn’t want to say anything in case they said, alright, we’re done we have someone now… But you see, this was the best project ever, so I just wanted to be in this band.

Suzy: Yeah, two years ago in May was the first show we played with her, and that’s all that counts so we’re two years old! I don’t think anything counts before that.

Liz: Yeah, we’ve improved immensely.

Vicky: Yeah, that’s why we don’t wear stupid fucking costumes anymore.

Suzy: Yeah, now we have our gang shirts. That’s because we’re lazy though.

Vicky: Yeah, we’re always showing up for a show in the same fucking She Wolves t-shirt.

Liz: I’ve got my She Wolves on!

Vicky: I decided to play it safe today and wore a plain one!

Suzy: Yeah, I’m in my Midnight Creeps one.

Liz: It just that we get free shirts from everybody.

Suzy: The thing about being in a band is you never have to pay for a t-shirt as long as you live. You just have to buy pants!

Vicky: We need to get sponsored by a pants company, then we’ll never have to shop again.

Liz: Yeah, Dickies.

Vicky: They’ll never sponsor us because we’re too short! (mad giggling girls)

Liz: We’ll have to have the capris. They might be short on you, (to Suzy) but Dickies capris fit me like regular pants.

Vicky: We never would have guessed! (mad, crazy giggling) Lip Service maybe?

Suzy: Yeah, but they’ll give us those awful stretch jeans that rip in a week. I ripped out the crotch of a pair of Lip Service jeans the first night I wore them at Meow Mix! I totally busted the crotch on them. It was awful

Liz: I’ve busted crotches out at Meow Mix quite a few times myself!

Hahahahaha (howls of laughter!) Hahahaha!

Suzy: What else is there. Oh, we’ve got two dates on the Warped Tour. Yeah, we’re playing Randal’s Island in NYC then up in Boston. Oh, yeah, we’re playing that fundraiser for Code Pink www.codepink4peace.org on July 10^th with She Wolves, Devil Kit, Stark, ICU, Grounded, Courtney Lee Adams Jr., should be a great night.

Liz: Yeah, for once we’ll be playing for a good cause, and not just free beers & free t-shirts!! Also opening for JFS July 9^th CBGB’s.

Any record company interest?

Suzy: We just do it all in our house. It works pretty good. The thing is with a label, if they take us on, we can’t go on tour. We’re kinda useless to a label because we can’t leave for more than a week at a time, we all have jobs. There’s like three of four that I wouldn’t mind sending it out

to, but other than that I don’t even care, like, everything we want to do we do here and we can’t even go out of town that much, except of course at weekends. It would just give us more distribution if we wanted it.

Liz: Except, of course, if someone wanted to pay us lots and lots of money, then we could leave our jobs.

Suzy: We would leave our jobs and sign with anybody who wanted to foot the bill on that one! Put us up in their LA mansion, that’s no problem. I dunno, everyone who I’ve ever know who went on a label, got fucked. So I don’t care what we’re going to gain out of it. We do sell a lot to Germans and French people.

Oh, I forgot to tell you this. The girl on my skating team who went to Paris last week, saw us on TV. You know why, their running the USA Olympic commercial in France. No wonder the French hate us! But it’s on the all American channel that they have over there. That’s our big news, we were on the Olympics commercial, that’s big news for us.

Vicky: Our ugly faces prevented the Olympics from being out here! Hahaha!

Suzy: Nah, we did a good job , and they lucked out just by getting a girl band and one that’s actually good. They fucking lucked out! Yeah, my doorman where I work said “ohh, I saw you on TV!” I’m like, wow, we’re famous.

Liz: My aunt saw it and asked if I knew the band! “Yeah, that’s my band,” she was like, “I thought you would know” (everyone cracks up!)

Vicky: When they asked us I didn’t know what to say, then they said, “We’ll give you money” and I was like “Yeah!” Oh, you know we’d sell out souls for the Olympics! Hahahaha!!

Suzy: Other than that, every fortune we’ve had we owe to diarrhea! Every time something happens where we win by default, like when we played with the Addicts, and the band that was supposed to open for them didn’t play, we’re like “Oh, they must have diarrhea, totally, we’re going to open for the Addicts now.”

Liz: And the Addicts were like “Really?”

Cheetarah: I just think that we have so much fun, that’s why I love this band. We’re fun to watch, people tell me, and at every show I have a good time.

Vicky: If we’re not having fun then we shouldn’t do it.

Suzy: Yeah, and we gave up looking glamorous! Let me get my cowboy hat out. We gotta do this right. What else, the fucking leather pants.

You’ll start to look like the Village People!

Vicky: We’re more like the Village People than you know!

Suzy: Who knew the recipe for rock’n’roll was there all along. Thank you Village People. Oh, and Cheetarah does wear the Indian headdress!

Cheetarah: of occasion.

Suzy: But, seriously, when we used to dress up, we used to wear ‘fuck you’ things, like we dressed in Muu Muus, ‘cause we’re assholes, and we make fun of people who dress too sexy, so we dressed in Granny outfits.

Cheetarah: Yes, like the time you actually wore a potato sack!

Suzy: Yeah, except it was cut too short so it was kind of a whorish potato sack.

Liz: And the time we dressed like Kiss.

Suzy: Yeah, dressing like Kiss was fun too.

Vicky: We did that before the Sex Slaves did! (Hahaha! Hysterical laughter!)

Suzy: But it was a L’amours so nobody knew about it.

Vicky: That was awesome and then there was that crazy kids followed us to the next gig and they were like “oh, where’s the makeup!”

Liz: Yeah, three dollars Kiss make up kits at Wal-Mart!

What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you?

(All together Oh, oh, oh, oh!!_)

Suzy: We played a show where the PA blew up! And we were not thanked for even showing up. We were even, dare I say it, bad talked for leaving the show after the PA blew up.

Cheetarah: Smoke was actually coming out of the PA.

Suzy: I think what magically was going to fix it was people starring at it, and then turning it on and off thinking maybe it would go back on. But, we’ve never really had a bad show. Even one’s where we go in thinking it’s not going to work, it comes out really good.

The best show?

Suzy: The NYC Sin show. and playing the Addicts at the Continental was really good. You just looked back and the whole club from the stage to the back door was packed.

Cheetarah: That’s a nice feeling.

Suzy: We started playing with the Vibrators two years ago. We were begging to be put on the bill, so they put us on at, like, 6:30pm. So we played for our boyfriends and girlfriends, then the next year, we got to play right before them and it was packed.

Liz: We tend to book ourselves on gigs that we would have gone to anyway. We try not to do shows that we wouldn’t go to see ourselves. We aim for bands that we really like.

Suzy: No-one hates us! We have friends in every city in the entire country. The only enemies we have is the F-Units after they blew up the amp! Yes, we’ll blame it on them! Hahaha! We love the F-Units. We don’t give a shit about anything! We’re all shits and giggles! We’re extreme hobbyists. We owe it all to diarrhea and extreme hobbyism.

Liz: “We are going to get free beer for playing shows,” that was our goal to begin with. That was like out main thing and “How do we get to CBs?”

Suzy: Yeah, when we got free beer at CBs, we really made it!

Liz: Yeah, we’re in good company when we are out there, everyone, even the girls who are notorious. It’s like tonight, we’re more excited about seeing the She Wolves than the fact that we’re playing too.

Liz: Now is the time! It’s good!

Vicky: I think we are too rough around the edges for the mainstream. And that’s fine. We don’t care. Every one of our songs has expletive depletive, and we don’t give a shit. All our songs are about drinking and fucking. But the rockers don’t like us, because we’re too Punk.

Liz: And the Punks don’t like us because were too rocker.

Suzy: Good thing we’re chicks! It’s enough to get them in, you know. Then we can woo them with our talent. Our diarrhea inducing mayhem.

Liz: It’s true man.

What’s your favorite position?

Suzy: Pitcher, I don’t know? (Hysterical laughter) What?

Vicky: Forward

Cheetarah: the occasional goalie?

Liz: Yeah, we’re going to quit rock’n’roll to play basketball! Basketball players get all the chicks. Rock’n’Rollers not so much.

Suzy: Yup, I think that’s a myth dispelled. I don’t think any of us have definitely gotten much along that way being in the band, that’s for sure. We’ve gotten more gifts than we have propositions. Hahaahahha!! And that’s pretty sad, we only got one!! Hahahahaaha (everyone cracks up!)

We’re like KFC. We’re good but people just don’t want to go there!

Suzy Hotrod is part of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby team and they are included in the June issue of the German Playboy, in the 10% that is not pornographic! Downside, no pay!)

www.ladyunluck.com