LOS ANGELES, CA- It looks like rocking shows in packed venues won’t happen anytime soon… at least in Los Angeles… for a while, and it has us yearning for the good-ole pre-COVID days, and the showcases we co-hosted at Madame Siam in Hollywood. Recently, Blurred Culture was able to catch up with the rock ‘n roll band Terrible Child, who played for us before the pandemic hit on March 7th.
Terrible Child consists of Michael Strauss, Gunnar Sidak, Colin Sidak & Kyle Raudensky. They are an upstart band inspired by an amalgam of genres including 60s and 70s Americana, gospel, heartland, punk, and new wave. They recently released their album Cult Classic and it’s a really fun listen that’s got, IMHO, some Robert Francis/Sam Fender vibes. “In-N-Outta Love” and “King of La Brea” are a pair of our favorites.
Press play above, read the interview and check out some photos that we captured when live shows were a thing.
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So, how have you and the rest of the guys been holding up the past couple of months? Have you been able to stay creative and relatively sane?
We’ve all had our own ways of finding relief from the stresses of global madness. We’re all from the east coast, so before we could concede that our safety was our primary concern we set out to finish our album which we began in November 2019. Finishing this thing during a global pandemic has presented a whole other set of challenges which I think have made us more creative and, in the end, has been keeping us all connected for the past 6 months.
Are you guys still out here on the west side, or did some of you have to head back to East Coast because… well… life?
Some of us headed back east. Gunnar is back there writing songs for the next project. I was back east for a movie… I’m also an actor… right before COVID hit. But we came back for our show at Madame Siam in March and I haven’t left since. We keep referring to “the last show in LA” even though we really hope it isn’t!
Yeah…fingers crossed that we get a better handle of COVID 19 going forward. Tell me a little bit about the new project you guys are dropping. Is it all music that you had in the can before the pandemic? Or did you guys add any of the newer songs to it, and have the times affected your music, either sonically or thematically?
Fingers crossed indeed! Our first full album, Cult Classic features a lot of music we wrote before the pandemic. However, most of the music was not recorded before the pandemic. At best we had a few demos down and maybe a scratch track here and there. So the album was recorded pretty remotely with an incredible mixer in Brooklyn and a legendary Master-er, Kramer (Daniel Johnston, Butthole Surfers) in Florida.
Do you think the recording parts remotely had an impact on the album’s sound?
Because of the DIY nature of our album, the songs definitely have a very specific soundscape and theme. And I think that the DIY sound is very rock n roll, which is what we are, a Rock N Roll band. The theme isn’t very tied to the pandemic. I’m one of those people who keeps saying I was born at the wrong time, constantly yearning for a bygone era. Cult Classic is a bit of a journey through 40 years of rock. But what comes with that is a vitriol nostalgia for moments from our childhood listening to our parent’s music, adolescent rebellion, and sophisticated adulthood. Maybe that’s a pandemic sort of theme; a desire for a shared mourning/celebration for our lost memories, birthdays, dates, hookups – what have you.
And one last thing about the pandemic – we really felt like we had some momentum with the band and we love the hyper-retro LA rock scene which seems to resemble the excitement of the NYC scene of the early 2000s while capturing styles from all eras of rock. The viper room was cool again and rock can be heard at all the popular bars in LA, Davey Waynes, Peppermint Club, Harvard and Stone, Madame Siam, which we were plugged into. At a certain point, we had to decide if we were going to turn the album inward to those stuck inside or if we were going to keep them dancing until they can get back to their favorite upscale-retro-dive. We chose the latter.
What’s the future look like for Terrible Child going forward? Will the team be reforming like Voltron back in Los Angeles at some point?
The future is already here and we’re working on the next thing! We want to be the guys who get LA back in action. I look forward to hitting all the spots I mentioned before and then some. Raging at the Hotel Cafe or Peppermint Club on a Saturday night is what we live for. People forget that rock and roll was alive and well before the pandemic – so, like Voltron, we want to transform your solitude and isolation back into the parties we were throwing at the standard before the shit hit the fan 2021, a live return of Terrible Child, and LA. We gotta make it happen.
Do you have anything you’d like to tell you fans… any message or “parting shot” you wanna drop before we wrap this up?
I had to think about this for a second… Because communication is hard right now… for everyone. There’s a lot of uncertainties and what-ifs right now. But I guess I would remind everyone to indulge and do something for themselves. And it’s not easy to get there; to get to that place where you feel like you’re deserving of worth and reward. If our music helps you find what you’re looking for we’ve done something right.
Follow Terrible Child on Facebook and Instagram.
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