MP3: Blak – “Staring At The Sky”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:08 — 2.9MB)

Gypsy Blak, vocalist and the creative mastermind behind BLAK, is a motivated fellow to say the least. Starting BLAK in his hometown of Los Angeles; with his move across the country, he refused to let the dream die and started a new version of BLAK here in Indianapolis. The local rendition of BLAK will be playing Punk Rock Night this Saturday (July 23, 2011) at The Melody Inn. Gypsy Blak was kind enough to let me amuse him with some questions. If his answers are any indication on BLAK’s onstage performance, expect the unexpected and prepare to be intrigued.

BLAK now resides in Indianapolis but left its original breeding grounds in Los Angeles. What brought BLAK to Indy?

Honestly. I moved out here due to financial reasons and a temporary living situation to get things together. The job market in Los Angeles in 2009-10 really sucked at the time. Sorry, not a very exciting answer!

How would you describe your style of music? Who are some influences?

Death Rock, with a dark post punk influence and thrash added in to make it heavy. We got a lot of influences: Misfits, Samhain, The Damned, Blitzkid, The Ramones, Christian Death (Rozz Williams), Motorhead, Turbonegro, Joy Division, Black Flag, Dead Boys, Alice Cooper and Gary Numan. Between my influences, Shug and Boomstick’s influences; we’re all over the place!

You’re a writer as well. What inspires your writing?

Depends on what I’m writing, usually frustration! I do an occasional rant article for a friend’s magazine in L.A. called Lost Anarchy. I’m currently working on 3 different things: a black comedy/horror novel, a book of my various poems/writings and a book about growing up in L.A. I hope to be done with at least one of them eventually. That’s my biggest issue with writing, finding the time to do it. When you have a list of crap you gotta do on a daily basis and the drama of life; that and of course writers block….

Since leaving L.A., what is your take on the Indianapolis music scene?

Hmm…well to be honest I have not got to experience as much of the Indy music scene as I would like to. I know you guys have some awesome artists from out here (one of my personal favorites, Harley Poe). But what few shows I have been to out here were not very promising, except for, well, Punk Rock Night. Otherwise, a lot of bands that I have seen out here are metal bands that all try to sound like Pantera. So, Indy, in my opinion is not great for metal (then again, I’m not so much a metal person anymore). But theirs some decent other stuff I’ve heard out here…

What has been your most memorable moment (good or bad) when playing a show?

Every show, in one way or another is always memorable, but it’s tied really. Opening up for Greg Ginn, playing the Whiskey A Go Go for the first time and the last time with my former band (Elegant Bastards). Most recently, playing in Bloomington with BLAK which was my first time playing live in a year. Bad? There’s a few. Any show we played where the place got shut down by the cops (happened to me 3 times!). One of the first shows I ever played we played basically for the bartender and the promoter (E.B.’s 4th show I believe). The one time, while playing, I didn’t see the edge of the stage and fell off, hit the concrete ground with BOTH knees; playing it off, though it hurt like eight bitches on a bitch boat. HOWEVER, one of THE worst moments and memorable, was when me and my old band played Las Vegas for the first time. The promoter that put together the show hooked us up. We had a hotel, tons of beer; probably the closest I’d ever came to the whole “rockstar” thing. It was all fun up until we got to the club. Us and a couple of local bands were actually opening up for a couple of tribute bands. One of them, an all girl AC/DC tribute band, who, we were gonna play after. They played for 30 minutes; broke a snare drum, took 30 minutes to change it, then played for almost an hour. By the time we got on stage it was 2am. The sound guys kept fucking with us and on top of that, one of our friends that we brought with us got drunk and got arrested.

What should we expect from BLAK in the near future?

All kinds of things. I am eventually going to be playing with the Los Angeles version of BLAK in a few months, in the meantime Shug Nutz and Boomstick will be continuing projects. There will be some more recording with them in the future as well. Basically, I have 2 bands on both sides of the country! Until then, we have 1-3 more shows coming up, including Punk Rock Night this Saturday and 2 more shows (hopefully one in Columbus , Ohio as well). Expect to be hearing the name a lot, seeing my face a lot. New and better music coming, bigger and better shows as well; here in Indy, Cali, everywhere!