4 Questions with Black Diamond Love

Black Diamond Love hails from the City of Angels with a neo-funk, sultry,  female-fronted version of Monster Magnet. “Teacher Preacher” is one of the most unique songs on No Lip Vol. 2, with its Latin flavored riff rock and powerful vocals. The band got together and brought up us to speed on the status of the LA Music Scene, replacing their guitarist and learning things the hard way.

1) Tell us a bit about your song on the No Lip Vol. 2 compilation.
Teacher Preacher is not about anything religious though at first it could definitely be taken that way. Instead it’s using the motif of a self righteous preacher as a critique of a certain mentality. At it’s heart the world is a beautiful place to be, and the humans who inhabit it are fundamentally noble. While some people do have much tougher lives than others, there’s always that one guy who is super pissed at the world. The guy who thinks the world is out to get him and who is just as ready to spite the world back – this attitude is often accompanied with a heavy dose of self righteousness. So whoever they may be, politicians, preachers, extremeists – all the peeps angry at the world, Teacher Preacher is for them.

2) How is the music scene doing in your town? What can be done to improve it?
Los Angeles has an awesome music scene – it’s just a little hard to find. Many new comers to L.A. think that the Sunset strip is where it’s at. Getting booked at The Roxy or The Whisky is usually at the top of people’s lists, but in reality the real scene is elsewhere. Places like Spaceland, The Echo, and The Smell are great examples of this. These venues totally off the beaten path that have a vibrant scene and a consistent die hard crowd. People come to Spaceland sometimes not even knowing who’s on the bill – they just know it’s going to be a good show. The smell didn’t even have a stage for several years but all of the best upcoming bands played there. Also magazines like MetroMix, ezines like Oh My Rockness, and DIY towns like Silverlake and Echo Park really provide that essential buzz about the scene and the bands that make it rad.

The fact of the matter is, just like Austin and New York, swarms of people come to this city every day with big dreams and aspirations. Many of them are ultra talented, ultra driven, and willing to make sacrifices and go the extra mile to rock your socks off. This is good and bad if you’re someone in a baby band. It’s good because it makes things like finding a new player for your group pretty easy, but it’s hard because there’s so many other bands that getting booked at the best places is really tough. All the radio stations are inundated with new stuff, what’s left of the record industry is still ultra connected, and there’s a ton of pay-to-play going on (especially on the strip). To make matters even tougher on any day of the week some ultra famous band is playing at one of the huge venues – which is awesome if it’s a band you love, but it also means no one’s going to come see you play a show on the same night that Radiohead is playing the Hollywood Bowl.

3) Why did you decide to go with Mohawk Bomb Records on this comp?
With a name like Mohawk Bomb it already had my nod of approval. We’re definitely a baby band and so doing something like this was an important step for us. We’re still learning the ropes with all this stuff and to be sure there have been some hard lessons. Our naivete is hard to hide at times, but Mohawk Bomb has been super patient and supportive even when they probably should have told us to sod off. Moreover they’ve picked a great selection of material that really gels together. Many compilations feel very random, each song being so suddenly different from the next – Mohawk Bomb Volume 2 is very cohesive and we’re stoked to have been included on it.

4) What are your plans for 2009?
In 2008 we lost our guitarist Chachi basically right as we went in to record our first full length album. He was going through a tough time in his personal life and he just had to leave Los Angeles. The band took it pretty hard, we love the guy and it was very unexpected. Moreover no one wanted to replace him. We’re a family and it just didn’t seem right to bring someone else in like we were replacing a battery. We reworked what material we could and ended up recording only six songs including Teacher Preacher, which is on this compilation.

2009 is going to be interesting because after going through all of that we sort of turned into a different band. In the past there was sort of an inner need to show off and prove something. Knock on wood, but I think we’ve emerged from that as better song writers. In the meantime we’ve attracted the interest of producer Jim Huff. He’s just a neat human and he seems to have a deep grasp on what makes music good – and even what makes life good. He’s worked with some rad blues musicians in the past and that resonates with the roots rock vibe that we’ve been developing. Hopefully 2009 will find us doing an album with him (fingers crossed), but wherever it leads us it’s probably going to be another roller coaster ride of emotions, music, and hard knocks.

Check Black Diamond Love out on MySpace ››

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