TASK interview

The following interview with Texas’ MyDolls took place as they were preparing for a concert in New York for the premiere of the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas at the New York Film Festival.
Steve Kaye

SK: With me on the phone is Trish and Jorge, of MyDolls, who are currently loading up their van to go on tour.

Trish: Yeah, we’re coming toward your town.

SK: To play this Sunday (Oct. 18) at Danceteria. Why don’t you tell everybody why you’re heading to New York, what’s so special about Sunday?

Trish: This Sunday is the New York film festival, and we’re going to play at a party afterwards and everybody’s invited. There’s going to be a lot of people there already for the film and it’s gonna be great.

SK: The movie is by Wim Wanders and it’s called Paris, Texas.

Trish: A German director. The movie stars Nastassia Kinski end Harry Dean Stanton and we play some in the background.

SK: How did you get involved in that, did Wim Wenders contact you after hearing your music?

Trish: Well I met Wim after an art performance that happened at Rice University here. And after the art performance, the people that were left over that could stand it, because it was a really terrible art performance, well a friend of mine took us to a hotel suite where he was and Wim Wenders was there and that’s how I met him. We just became friends, he’s really interested in new bends, he’s real supportive of new music and unusual acts. The soundtrack of Paris, Texas is done by Ry Cooder and it’s absolutely beautiful. It has a real dreamy sort of Ry Cooder music, more than he’s ever done before. It’s a real good film, it’s showing in Europe right now.

SK: What’s the response been?

Trish: Real good. A friend of mine saw it that didn’t even known we were in the movie, and he said it was a great film.

SK: Has your record (Speak Softly and Carry A Big Stick) been selling in Europe because of the movie?

Trish: Well, we have a few distributors in Germany, Italy, some in France, even Poland. I don’t know. The Director of CIA Records is here, he could tell you more.

(Bob Phillips, who runs CIA Records, joins in)

Bob: I don’t think the film is showing in Europe yet, has it been released over there?

Trish: Yeah, its been showing in England. Bob: Yeah, we’ve had just some small orders, but it’s expensive to ship overseas direct from just small orders from a label to Europe. The shipping rates are real high, so we rely on most of the European distribution through the bigger distributors, Systematic, Rough Trade, Important, companies like that.

SK: Did you have trouble releasing the record, compared to groups like Really Red, Doomsday Massacre? Did you have any doubts releasing a unique band like MyDolls?

Bob: Actually, MyDolls were the second band on the label. It started out being Really Reds’ label, and then MyDolls wanted to release a record. We said why not, go ahead and do it like a cooperative type of thing. And that’s pretty much still what it is, with the other bands involved too, Introverts, Marching Plague, Doomsday Massacre, and I’ll Be On The Fone To You.

Trish: Culturcide.

Bob: And Culturcide. And it’s just each band doing most of their own promotion, and what CIA records does, or what I do, is just get the records out to the distributors and help a little bit with the promotion. We just all act as a pool of information and friends working together to put records out, and do things that you couldn’t do on your own, as individuals. SK: Trish, how did the band get together?

Trish: Jorge, you tell him.

Jorge: Well, just hanging around and doing regular things, and we decided to form a group. Basically it was gonna be an all girls group, but it turned out to be three girls and myself. And we decided to, having all the same musical interests and the same ideas and inexperience. And we kinda grew together, and we’ve been doing this for almost 3 1/2, almost 4 years.

Trish: Its fun.

SK: Most of your background seems to be affiliated with the punk scene, but listening to your music I hear everything from punk to folk to surf musicÖ

Trish: There’s some waves down here, not very big ones, it’s the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, we have a lot of influences, I was just listening to a Gene Autry Christmas record a while ago. We’re pretty much influenced by everything.

SK: But how did you get connected to the punk scene?

Trish: Well, we’re on the same label as Really Red, it’s just that the music that we play is so strange that it seems like they’re the only group of people that kind of accepted us when we first started out. They like us a whole lot, we all share the same philosophies, as the punk people, and punk movement. But we don’t know what to call our music, what do you think we should call it?

SK: I really don’t like to label bands.

Jorge: Neither do we.

Trish: Wait a minute, you must know. ..reactionary music?…

SK: Do you have problems playing to a punk audience when you start playing your slower stuff?

Jorge: Generally no. We generally get a fairly good response from people down here, whether we’re an opening bend for a hardcore act, or whether we are the act and they come to see us and there’s a bit of curiosity about our band. We seem to cover a bit of different areas, so we’ve never gotten a real heavy negative reaction anyplace.

SK: Even with the group composed of three women?

Jorge: Right, generally it’s the people in the scene, friends of ours, it’s all good clean fun.

Trish: Well a lot of times people don’t really move around too much, the first time they see us I think they’re kind of mesmerized by the fact that we’re women, the fact that we’re playing as fast or as hardcore as we do. And a lot of times people don’t move around as much, but then it seems like, after we play a couple of times to an audience over and over, they get more familiar and they start dancing. Or by the end of the set they’re dancing, they’re used to us. I don’t know what it is. I have a feeling it’s that we’re predominately female, and that they’re not used to that, and they’re not used to what we’re doing. We have a lot of fun, we want everybody else to.

SK: How do you feel about playing New York?

Trish: We’re just gonna jump in. It doesn’t make any difference. Our first big gig we opened for Siouxsee and The Banshees, and we had only been together as a band for a year and a half, and it was pretty terrifying, there were so many people there. But she said to a paper here that we were great and had potential. So, if she thinks we’re great then we’re gonna so ahead and jump in and we don’t care, if they don’t like us, well, it’s okay. But I think they will and we’re gonna have a lot of fun.