an island, close to the sea, full of sun and green

in a huge and chaotic, besides beautiful and unique city

BIG MOUNTAIN COUNTY is a relatively new but great psych garage rock band somewhere in Rome. They are blessed with ability to write hits, even in the manner of Butthole Surfers. Moreover the bassplayer Wolfman Bob is our old comrade. He played at rnr666 party in Budapest with three different bands: wild garage rock Ultra Twist, lo-fi punk Trio Banana, and of course Big Mountain County.

How you have become musicians?
As for many other musicians: listening to music at home, trying to play any instrument and finally being completely captured by the desire to play over and over.

Your hometowns are Catania, Bari, Pescara, Rome. There are long distances between these cities. How you have got together? You understand each other without problem, or there are difficulties because of the language differences?
We come from different and quite far towns, but there are no particular language differences. So no communication problems. Alessandro and Bruno have met each other in Catania, their common hometown. They met Bob in a music festival, where they were performing with their respective past bands, Bruno and Alessandro with “The Boliers” and Bob with “The Ultra Twist”. A few years later, they all moved to Rome, where Alessandro and Francesco met each as roommate. They began playing guitars and writing songs together and soon they decided to start a new band, involving Bruno as drummer and Bob as bass player. We believe that the difference between our origins is one of the keys of the band. Alessandro and Bruno come from Catania, a hot and spirited city, Bob comes from another lively and dynamic town, whereas Francesco comes from a quiet village close to Pescara. These differences reflect on our music styles. So yes, we have different languages, but just “musical languages”. However, this is not a problem, but an unbelievable resource, since playing and writing together is a continuous mutual exchange, which every time creates new songs, new sounds and new atmospheres. We definitely like to be different but to appear as a unity on the stage.

You spent a month together to produce a better sounding in a house on the base of Etna. Was the session successful? Could you use that under ground latent energy?
Definitely yes! We live in Rome, a huge and chaotic (besides beautiful and unique) city. Sometimes we need to escape from the rhythm of the city life in order to find new inspirations. Therefore, when we had to complete our first LP Breaking Sound, we decided to stay a month in a nice house on the base of the Etna, where we had more time and the right atmosphere to write new songs and find out new sounds. Those days were relaxing, inspiring and stimulant. That was the right place in the right moment.

In some songs (e.g. Brain Machine) I have discovered the strong influence of Butthole Surfers. Are there accidents, or are you also big fans of those funny guys?
We know Butthole Surfers and we like their music. Anyway, we do not know if they directly influenced some of our songs. As said before, we are four and we have various and very different musical influences.

Psychedelic music is very trendy nowadays, almost every second village has a psych fest. What do you think about this revival?
We like psychedelic music, we play psychedelic music, so we follow the trend… Psych music surely is not new, but we believe that many bands are proposing new different, modern and interesting interpretations. We think that this kind of music can be fully expressed just during live shows. Therefore, we promote the spread of psych fests and we hope every second village will have more than one psych fest. We are so sure about this that we are contributing to the organization of the first Rome Psych Fest, which will be held in next October.

As band what was your biggest show experience?
We had many unforgettable shows, but if we have to choose one, that is Sarajevo in 2013, during our first European tour. We were very far from home, not only because of physical distance, but also because of history and culture. However, we felt at home. People got really involved by our show and our music. The atmosphere was perfect, in poor words, unforgettable.

Where is Big Mountain County geographically?
As for songs, pictures, or poems, each can have its personal idea about the Big Mountain County. Therefore, we cannot say where it is. In our minds, it is probably on an island, close to the sea, full of sun and green lands. Do you know any place like this?

What are your plans for the future?
In this period, we are promoting out live CD Anachronicle, out for Area Pirata Records. In the same time, we are writing new songs to record our second studio LP, which will be more psych and experimental than “Breaking Sound”. Our idea is to record in autumn and release the album at the beginning of 2017. Meanwhile, in next October, we will share the release of a 12 inches split, out for Annibale Records with the Italian band “Lame”, a project of Stefano Isaia from Movie Star Junkies. It will contain two new tracks by Big Mountain County, one to dance and one to dream.

And for the past? What would you change in the history if you could?
To answer this question is not easy. Everything could be better, but worse also. We think that what is done is done. Fortunately, just music and songs remain. We prefer to learn from the past in order to make the future better.

pic: Gyerage. More BMC at RNR666 Party in Budapest pics

This year The Monsters – the band of Reverend Beat Man, Voodoo Rhythm Record boss and his male club – turn 30 years old. To celebrate this nice round anniversary, they re-released their – by now totally unavailable – 1995 10”, originally released by the German Jungle Noise Records on CD and LP, supplemented by 7 more songs.

This was the first Monsters album where they used electronic bass instead of the double bass, and since their guitarist left the band, Beat Man remained alone at that position. So he distorted the hell out of his guitar. In addition the band decided that they will not deal with studios anymore, and record the whole album at home on an AKAI 1224 recorder, and that should be it!

This way, they nicely departed from the psychobilly sound of their first two albums, in a GOOD way, the RIGHT way, that is none other than the TRASH FILTH BRAIN-FUCKING PRIMITIVE ROCK N ROLL!!!

And on the occasion of this anniversary release, let me tell you a personal story.

Exactly 10 years ago in 2006 I found out that The Monsters will play in Graz. I told my – then girlfriend, now beloved wife:
– We are going!
– OK, but we hardly have any money.
– Let’s hitchhike! Budapest-Graz is not that far.
– OK.

To tell you the truth, none of us thought that we would ever hitchhike abroad for a concert; we were no teenagers, not even twenty-somethings, and we were over thirty. We had some pretty good rides though, the last one being an Italian owner of a sweets shop in a suit who was heading exactly to Graz to attend his new shop before its opening. He insisted that we visit his store too. We didn’t really feel like doing so, but said SURE. It was getting dark already by the time we got to the pastry shop, he opened the store, all three of us went in, he was explaining all kinds of things to us while everything was foiled up (there was some renovation going on), and this Italian guy in suit with a mustache.  The whole thing was as we were in a gore movie, so I told my girlfriend, let’s get the hell out of here! We left our guy there and stepped outside to the street, and who was walking across the street? The Monsters! Of course we told them right away that we are their fans from Budapest and we are heading to the concert! A magnificent moment, I will never forget: Marta all smiley, hugging Beat Man and padding his shoulder. And him, being a gentleman, offered to take us in to the concert. Danke Schön! This way we could also buy some records.

The concert was extra super, both of us had quite some vodka, and the whole audience was really getting into it, dancing and so on. Everything was just wonderful except for the one manager who discovered us sleeping in behind one of the speakers after the concert, and kicked both of us out.  Afterwards things became a bit torturous; going through the trash early morning at the railway station (I found a handful of unopened chocolates – though melted) as while dancing during the show I managed to lose all our sandwiches that were in our pockets. Then we came across an old (Hungarian!) gypsy who advised us to go back through Wien. Then we were on the train from Graz to Budapest in the morning, no tickets of course, trying to hide from the conductor till we are in Hungary, then my good ole trick with the conductors there, and we are already at home. True, it was tiring, but it was worth it! And I am not only saying this after 10 years, but also when we got home back then, and opened up our first beer in the kitchen.

Here are two little videos from this concert:

And now a few words about the album. How would a record be like that starts out with ‘Psych-out with me’? Awesome! Brutal party R n R! Then the song ‘Searching’, hard as Venom; then pot hymn ‘Pot’, then one of my favorite, ‘It’s not my way’, perfect fast pogo punk song!!! And damned be whoever’s legs don’t start moving after listening to ‘The Rock around the tombstone’ – he or she is hopeless! Then a fucking great Rolling Stones cover, ‘Play with fire’, and so on. Oh yeah, and all bonus tracks are also great! It’s worth keeping in mind that this brutal rock n roll record was recorded and put out during 94-95!

Note: Today it is worth to follow Voodoo Rhythm’s own Instagram page, where you can continually discover such treasures like this photo down here:

So a lot of things were trendy during the 90s, but a record sounding like this surely wasn’t! On one side all the Seattle rip-offs were going on, techno and all kinds of electronic dance music was coming in, and everyone was trying to figure out how to force together genres that were completely different from each other. On the other hand only people who really knew and liked the Ramones and Moorhead were wearing their t-shirts, even if they could not pronounce their names correctly (Motorhead or Matorhid were in quite widespread usage, and I for one did not know a single soul that pronounced the Ramones Ramonz vs Ramonez). Of course back then I did not even hear about The Monsters.

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magyarul