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
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?”
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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!)
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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.
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Liz: Yeah,
we’ve improved immensely.
Vicky: Yeah,
that’s why we don’t wear stupid fucking costumes anymore.
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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 10th
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 9th 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.
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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!)
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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
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