DOOM! Magazine

Posted by Libbi Rich on Saturday, September 25th, 2010

Calabrese - Atomic Comics Fright Night ©2010 Libbi Rich

We’re here at Atomic Comics, in Mesa, Arizona for their Fright Night Celebration.   To cap off today’s events, the horror rock band, Calabrese, will perform.  The Calabrese brothers took a few minutes away from their ghoulish fans to speak with Doom.

DOOM:  Greetings, Calabrese bros, why don’t you introduce yourselves to our readers.

Davey: My name is Davey Calabrese, and I’m the drummer.

Bobby: Bobby Calabrese, I play guitar.

Jimmy: Jimmy Calabrese, and I play bass.

DOOM: And both Bobby and Jimmy sing.  Davey, you’re known for contributing a lot of antics to the band’s performance, do you contribute your voice, as well?

Davey: One time, on Venom Wolf, at the very end.

Bobby: He’s screaming into the microphone; five, six layers of screams, of Dave’s tormented screams.

DOOM: You three are brothers, and you band is named for your family name.  How did the band get started?

Jimmy: Um, around 2001, when we decided to, me and Bobby were in different bands and we decided we didn’t like what we were doing, compromising too much with music, and we’re, like, hey, since I showed them the kind of music I liked, so they liked all the same music I did, so it was easy to go from there.

DOOM:  The trickle-down effect.  What were you listening to back then?

Jimmy: The same stuff we’re listening to right now, basically.

Bobby: Boy George.

Jimmy: Huey Lewis and the News.

DOOM: Pat Benatar?

Jimmy: You know, Danzig, The Misfits, AFI, Type O Negative…

DOOM: The good stuff…

Jimmy: Yeah … Black Flag.

DOOM: Davey, I’ve heard that your brothers taught you how to drum by yelling at you.

Jimmy & Bobby: Emotional scarring (laughter)

Davey: (laughs) Yes.

DOOM: Did it leave any emotional scarring?  Do you have terrible psychological damage from the abuse your brothers piled on you?

Davey: Yes.

Bobby: The insane don’t know they’re insane, so he can’t probably answer that.

Jimmy: Well, let’s just say Bob cries in the shower because of what he’s done to Dave. In guilt.

DOOM:  Was it you intent to inflict this damage or was it just a way to drive him to be a better, faster, harder drummer?

Jimmy & Bobby: Yes.  That was the intent.

Bobby: We destroyed his psyche for our own gain.

DOOM:  The band keeps things all in the family.  Papa Calabrese is manning your merch table. Is Mama involved in the band’s business?

Bobby:  She likes to pack the peanut butter and jelly for us before we head out tour.

Calabrese @ OCtoberflame 2008 - ©2008 MiseryXchord All Rights Reserved

DOOM: You guys did a tour in Italy, an Germany as well.  Do you find there’s a difference between European fans and American fans?

Jimmy:  Well, let me state this:  The venues treat us a lot better

Bobby:  They don’t know the truth about us out there.

Jimmy:  They think we’re royalty.

Bobby: Basically, we got spaghetti one night.  Spaghetti and beer.

Davey: That never happens here.

Bobby: And they had snacks …

Jimmy: Bruscetta!

Davey: Yummm…

Jimmy:  I don’t think it’s because we’re in a band.  That culture, they just love to eat and drink and smoke and have a good time all the time.  We played a bar, and they wouldn’t have the show start  until the soccer game was over.  All their priorities are …. hmmm.

DOOM:  The band was approached by a few of the larger indie labels, and you declined their offers and decided to go ahead and create your own label, Spookshow Records.  How has that worked out?

Bobby:  All the offers, basically, they couldn’t do anything more than what we could do with a couple of credit cards, so we just did it ourselves and cut out the middle man.

Jimmy:  If a record label could make us as big as Lady Gaga-slash-Beyoncé-slash-Michael Jackson and Elvis, combined, OK.  Then we’d think about it.

DOOM: A lot of bands who’ve been around for decades are breaking away from the big label mold.

Bobby: Yeah.  I noticed that even Weezer I think is going with Epitaph, or smaller labels, and Alkaline Trio.

DOOM: So, how do you feel about internet marketing and dealing with your fan base more directly, through technology?

Jimmy: It’s awesome.  Just awesome!

Bobby:  That’s how we started as a band.  It’s all we’ve ever known.  Starting with mp3.com and MySpace exposure, and Facebook, YouTube, twitter.  I don’t know how bands used to do that.

Jimmy:  You just had to tour.

Bobby: You definitely needed the labels back then when thy didn’t have that.  But now that we can just do it ourselves; hit the target audience directly…

Calabrese @ OCtoberflame 2008 - ©2008 MiseryXchord All Rights Reserved

DOOM:  Do you find it hard to break into the bigger venues here, since you’re not on a big label?

Jimmy:  Yeah.

Bobby: Well, when we get asked to join bigger bands on shows, like Tiger Army, we can (play the larger venues); so it’s cool to ride on their coat-tails when they do it.  But when we’re just dealing with it ourselves, we just hook up with the bands at smaller venues and it keeps it more real when it’s punk rock and face to face.  When we played The Grove, in California, with Tiger Army it was a huge seven foot stage and a lot of people out there and the energy’s just not the same, even though it probably looks cool, and in your memory, looking back, it’s like ‘god, that was awesome!’

It’s not the same with the fans like 10 feet away, and you can’t see ‘em, and the lights are in your eyes.  You’re just like ‘who am I playing to? What am I doing?’

Jimmy: You can only see them when they flash the lights on them.  It’s cool though.

Bobby:  It’s the other side of the coin.  You make more money doing that, but it’s not the same.  Being face to face when you’re singing, people just step up on stage and jump off.

DOOM:  You’ve just released your third, full-length album, “They Call Us Death: Calabrese III”.  Some might say that you sound like the mutant offspring of The Misfits, The Ramones, AFI, and The Reverend Horton Heat.

Jimmy:  Oooh!

DOOM: It’s a combination of horror rock with a punk-a-billy swing.  How did you come up with this bizarre, crazy mix?

Bobby: Well we can’t tell you the secret!

Jimmy: We grab it from the universe.  Basically, we grab a Rolling Stones song and flip it around.

DOOM: What is your song writing process?

DAVEY:  This guy (pointing to Bobby) hides a little bit.

JIMMY:   Yeah, Bob doesn’t like to jam.  He’s not into the  jam band kind of stuff.  He’d rather go into his …

BOBBY: hibernation

JIMMY: Working room, yeah, hibernation, with a candle and commune with the spirits

DAVEY:  Whoooooooo

JIMMY: It’s evolved over time, but now it just seems to be more of Bob bringing riffs that he’s created…

BOBBY:  I think most of the songs are petty riff-oriented; they all start with a riff.  As soon as we have a riff, we build the whole song off of that.

DOOM: Do you work on the lyrics together?

BOBBY:  (points to Jimmy)  He’s pretty good at the lyrics, I kinda suck at lyrics

DOOM: You’re obviously inspired by horror movies; …Did you grow up watching the old horror flicks on late night TV?

JIMMY: Monstervision!  Joe Bob Briggs!  That was fun.

DOOM:  Do you have any favorite horror movies?

BOBBY: House on Haunted Hill.  That’s one of the great B movies.  A lot of those are just crap, except for some of the  campy parts that are fun, but that was one you could watch all the way through.

DOOM: Your songs are like the really old classic horror films; Dracula, Frankenstein … with the music building up as the creature swoops down on the girl.  You see that in the videos you’ve made.  How did you hook up with renowned comic artist and emerging filmmaker, Brian Pulido?

JIMMY: We met him here, at the first Fright Night.  Him and Bob started dating, bro dating … they went on man dates.

BOBBY:  It was the first time he saw us.  He liked the merch that we had, and we found out who he was, we didn’t really know and he didn’t know about us.  I asked him about scriptwriting, and he sent me some comic book scripts that he’d wrote.  and then we did the two videos.

DOOM:  And then you appeared in his film, The Graves.  How does it feel to be movie stars?

JIMMY: Well, we were celebrities anyway (laughs)

BOBBY:  Another notch in our belt.

DOOM:  Jimmy, you’ve said that your only regret about making the movie is that  you didn’t get to kill anybody or be killed. Which would you have preferred?

JIMMY: Oh, killing.  But, actually, being killed would be pretty cool too … like my head exploding,…

DOOM: What would be your weapon of choice?  Would you be psycho guy or would you be supernatural?

JIMMY:  I guess the old shotgun would be nice.  A nice gory result, either way.

DOOM: Dave,…

DAVEY: uh oh, shit…

DOOM: You paint, right?  What media do you work in? Mostly acrylics?

BOBBY: Finger paints.

DAVEY:  It’s primarily acrylics.  I’ve dabbled in watercolor a little.

Calabrese @ OCtoberflame 2008 - ©2008 MiseryXchord All Rights Reserved

DOOM: You’ve said “music and art are an expression of one being …”

CALABRESE: (laughter)

DOOM: Did you mean , by that, the  fact of existence in general, like “we are” or the concept expressed, for instance, in AFI’s Strength Through Wounding:  “Through our bleeding, we are one?”

DAVEY: The first one.  It’s like I’ve said about music, it just … whhhhooooshhhhh!

DOOM: Jimmy, Bob … do you have other creative endeavors outside of the band?

JIMMY: We do the blogs, and the webisodes.

BOBBY: We’re trying to jump into acting; (sotto vocce) we’re going to Hollywood.

JIMMY: Yeah, write to Brian Pulido and tell him to use us more.

BOBBY: All the big stars today seem to be coming from YouTube. It’s really weird.  Shane Dawson, Justin Bieber.

JIMMY: I write fiction, too.  It’s on my blog.

DOOM:  And now you’re going to be featured in a Calabrese comic book!  You’re working with the guys from Modern Mythology Press, illustrator Dave Baker, and writer Eric M. Esquivel …

(happy jingly cell phone sound)

BOBBY: I’ve got to take this …

Calabrese Comics #1 coming soon from Modern Mythology Press

DOOM: How did you get together with Dave and Eric?

JIMMY: We played a show in Tucson, and then they came up and said they wanted to do something with us, they’re fans, and they showed us their portfolio, and really creeped us out.

BOBBY: Yeah, and they sent us a script, and it was kind of a different direction than we wanted to go, like with killing priests and sodomizing … and it was cool, but we didn’t want to go quite that hardcore.  And we told them that and they took it like “go fuck yourselves.”  And a year past, and then I saw them at Phoenix ComiCon, and we started talking again, and it we agreed it was a big misunderstanding.  We all laughed, had a big bro hug, and now it’s almost completed.

DOOM:  I heard that the color was done, and it’s heading in to lettering.

BOBBY: D.W. Frydendall did the color.

(ed. You can see previews of the Calabrese comic at www.modernmythologypress.com)

.

DOOM: A couple of quick questions, to wrap up.  How would you survive the zombie apocalypse?

JIMMY: Bob would be in the shower, crying.

DAVEY: Always!

BOBBY: No … think about this.  You have to hope you’re the first to know about it, so you can start raiding the gun shops.  But, you can’t assume that because as soon as you hit the gun shop, everyone else could be there and they’re trying to shoot you, and steal guns, and shooting zombies.  So you’ve just got to stay in one spot.  You’ve got to hide.   Hide for a long time until it’s all over and everyone’s shot all the zombies and each other.

JIMMY: Wal-Mart

BOBBY: But everyone’s gonna go for Wal-Mart.

DOOM: Davey, do you have a plan?

DAVEY: First, I’m going to Wal-Mart., because there’s guns, and food, and clothes there.  And when everything’s happening, when the zombies are there too, you kill everybody in there, close  Wal-Mart, and just chill.

DOOM: Jimmy, as the oldest, and presumably wisest, what is your strategy?

JIMMY:  Well, I’d just go into the underground bomb shelter I have, stay there, and wait it out with my MREs.  Wait til everyone kills each other.

BOBBY/DAVEY: Yeah…bomb shelter. Way to go.

DOOM: Thanks for your time, guys.  Now go on out and kick some Fright Night ass!

CALABRESE:  Thank you, we’re going to go out and do some kick ass ass kicking!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 25th, 2010 at 11:59 PM. It is filed under Blog, comics, Interviews, Libbi Rich, Music and tagged with Atomic Comics, Calabrese, Fright Night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.