Looking back: ?A Q&A with Sick Velvet

Before their Sunday set at Poorcastle, we caught up with Sick Velvet, speaking to their drummer Cherry Boy about glam rock, and what’s on the horizon for the band.

LEO: Would it be fair to say Sick Velvet is reaching into glam rock’s past for inspiration?

Cherry Boy: We looked back at the relationship rock and pop had with glam when it first began, and then reapplied the formula to rock and pop today. We feel that glam had a much more meaningful impact on music, so, yes, it would be fair to say we reach into the past for some of our inspirations.

LEO: The early incarnations of punk rock were seen as a deliberate attempt to take rock ‘n’ roll back to its roots — 1950s/early 60s bands such as The Ronettes, the Crystals — with early proponents such as The New York Dolls covering bands like The Shangri-Las, and actually dressing up like them, with lead singer David Johansen being a dead ringer for Shangri-Las identical twins Mary Ann and Marg Ganser. Of course, when you resurrect something that is dead, it comes back different. More sinister perhaps. This comes to mind when listening to your self-titled EP. It’s a little more dangerous sounding than the original glam genre. Was this intentional?

CB: It was intentional, and it comes naturally. Rock ‘n’ roll is always going to get more dangerous as time goes on.

LEO: The first track, ‘Choke A Loved One,’ would be a good example of glam danger — a classic pop track with infectious hooks, a proper glam love song, but with the glaring title that suggests this love walks a dangerous line. What was the motivation behind this track?

CB: This is our ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ It’s about losing yourselves in the moment together. There are things you just enjoy so much, you need to write a song about it. We all practice the holiday Choke a Loved One Day, where we find someone we hold dear and let them know how we feel and they return the favor.

LEO: The second track, ‘Daisy Rock,’ is another example, with the opening bars being the exact chorus from Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock and Roll.’ Gary Glitter, a once-beloved glam rock icon turned hated pedophile. What was the motivation for using the intro of his glam rock anthem in the song?

CB: We gave a nod to glam rock by using a very familiar glam tune as an intro. The song is about being rough around the edges, down on your luck, and still pretending you can maintain a fabulous lifestyle. We only drew from his music and act, not from his personal life. We all think it is horrible what he has done.

LEO: Was Glitter himself taken into account when using his song for inspiration?

CB: There are some artists whose music seems to have no personal substance in their songs. We feel they can paint themselves in a light that makes them look like rock stars and not relatable people. We enjoy both the vulnerable songs and the godly rock-star songs just the same, a good song is a good song. We find Glitter to be one of these rock-star artists, and it makes it easier to separate the songs from the child molester, since we find him un-relatable.

LEO: Can you give us a hint as to what is on the horizon for Sick Velvet?

CB: We have been discussing maybe releasing another EP on a local label, maybe releasing something a little longer even. Be on the lookout, late-2016/early-2017.