Idared - Interview Hanzi / V.U. and Tina & Catalina / Idared
Crazy high - voltage electricians
A real interesting newcomer band from Frankfurt/ Main is IDARED. They have dedicated themselves to 60ies and 70ies Garage Rock. But they are sensitive enough to give a very own special touch to their songs. Despite the fact that listeners are confronted to quite simple structured compositions, the songs are transferred with such an emotional mood, that you take your time to realize, that this band is quite young and consists only of ladies. The energy that is spread by IDARED is not likely to be expected by a girlband. The more of a surprise it was for us to have the chance of admiring them in TV lately. This increased our interest in having a talk to IDARED enormously. Well, we like being surprised. Having heard of a video production and several live shows we had enough reasons to invite Tina & Catalina, two nice, talkative girls on our couch to have a talk to and get to know more about them...
-You are working with your current line up since 2002. Did you make music under the name of IDARED already before ore did you play in other bands as well?
Drummer Tina: „IDARED already existed before. In the beginning there were five of us and we had a constant drummer: Catalina, who is our organ player right now. Together with two other girls, Christina had another band called "Marian Park". But this broke up some time later. Our motivation to make music was not so big at that time and this led into splitting up. After that we started together as IDARED. At that time I was just singing and as we parted from our drummer in 2002, I took over drumming as well. Since that point we have been playing with this line up."
-What does the name IDARED mean?
Catalina: "It´ s the name of a sort of apples and eerm, I don´ t want to spread some bullshit now...The background is an old song of Chuck Berry. Later its name was changed from "Idared" to "Mabelline". Before it didn´ t get successful. But under the name of "Mabelline" it got very successful in the charts, though Berry didn´ t change anything in the musical way. At the same time this song is a quite old, American Country and Folk song. The name has been existing for ages right now. Its meaning "red glow" is the reason for that sort of apples being called so."
-You have a video, which you produced on your own and sent to MTV and VIVA TV recently, hoping they would take it into their program. I am very excited to see it. Is this your only video? Do you have more precise plans concerning a small tour within Germany? You surely have enough live experiences for that...
Catalina, the nice guitar player explains: "We have had quite some gigs in Germany. For example Hamburg or Cologne. Shortly we will play in Heidelberg and Münster/ Westfalen. And besides we have lots of gigs in the Rhein/ Main- area, we´ re already quite used to that. This video has been our only one up to now. But there is some live material. One of these videos has been broadcasted by HR3 TV and friends of ours have some live videos of ours as well."
-Your songs are quite simple structured, but you show, that it´ s not necessary to be a genius musician for being successful. Do you have a special way of song writing or how can you explain your remarkable success?
Catalina: "I think it´ s simply the energy, that you feel. Most bands try to write songs of complicated structure. We believe, that less can be more. The easiest way can be the best way often. It rocks a lot more than complicated structured songs."
Tina: "What thrills most people is the energy we present our songs with. We were quite nervous at our TV appearance, for it was absolutely new for us to play in front of cameras. Usually it´ s different at our gigs. We spread more power then."
-How do you deal with the time before a live appearance - are you nervous?
Tina: "Most of the times I do intuitively know before, if the gig will be good or not. But in spite of that we talk in a quite normal way before. Our organ player is quite excited before the shows, sometimes I take over this mood. But really nervous? No, I don´ t think we are nervous. Sometimes it depends on the audience: When I know that a good friend of mine will be there, I get a bit excited. We try to motivate each other to play well before a gig."
-What were your expectations when you started as IDARED? The fans´ feedback is quite impressive, your homepage is frequently visited...
Catalina: „I never expected to get where we are now. And I am enormously thankful for anything that has happened to our band. We started to make music, because we just wanted to play music. Finally we got the chance to play live and shortly after that we finished our first demo tape. That´ s absolutely crazy! A lot more than I have dreamed of up to now and it gets better every day! It´ s just so much fun!"
Tina: "This whole situation set us on fire. Sometimes we rehearse four or five times a week! We really believe in our music! Even in the beginning there were people who absolutely loved our style, which motivated us to go on. But in general you can say that people´ s reactions are really nice. We had never dared to dream about that, honestly."
-What are your topics in lyrics? Do you want to spread a certain message?
Catalina: "We deal with different things in every song, but basically we have the usual influences like every day life, personal experiences, grief, happiness, luck and - of course - love. Most of the songs have been written by me up to now. But Tina and Sabine have written some lyrics as well."
-How seriously do you take your music? Surely every one of you has every day duties....
Catalina: „Our organ player expressed that quite well recently: We don ´t do all of that for nothing. All of our life is dedicated to music and that´ s what all of us think. We live for IDARED."
Tina: "Totally!!! We are prepared to concentrate on the band completely. We like to give up things, because it´ s for the band!! Every time it´ s about music, we get enthusiastic. I focus all my life on music!"
Catalina: "Rehearsals and gigs always come at first place, no matter if there are any family duties or dates with friends. Music hast absolute priority and we all do think the same."
-Tina, you are the singer of IDARED and you play the drums - standing - as well. Is that the revolution in stage performance?
"Yes, sure! (laughs). In the beginning we weren´ t sure about that, especially on stage. But it developed that way and we really like the way it is now. The audience thinks positive about it as well. Maybe because not every band plays that way. 90% of the people think it´ s good and we don ´t even think about changing. In that way we would have to search for a singer or a drummer. I like doing both and right now I can´ t imagine integrating someone new within the band. It might get interesting to take another guitar. In studio Catalina played the second one and this sounds really good. But we are happy with the present situation and don ´t want to change anything right now.
Catalina: "That´ s the main point about our music: Every member of IDARED has fun with what she´ s doing and that´ s how it is going to stay. Every one should be happy about it. That´ s the only way to get successful together."
-Who "discovered" you and how?
Catalina: "Luckily we got the chance to play live quite early, especially over here in Frankfurt. This might have been one of the most important points for our development. Several friends suggested us to radio and TV stations., which helped a lot. That´ s why we could get known in and around Frankfurt."
-What about groupies? Do you have any experiences concerning that point?
Tina: "Especially after concerts we often get to hear comments like "cool show". We get involved to conversations with people that way. This is absolutely okay for us. Many even come directly to us and say things like: "Catalina is the best, her style of playing the guitar is unique and she looks great." Of course we like to hear things like that. As well as we like the positive feedback on our homepage. On the other hand there are negative experiences as well. In recent time I received some strange letters without a name or anything. This is quite spooky even to me.
Catalina: "We don ´t have any groupies and we don ´t want to change that. And besides: That ´s quite much: We are just supported by our friends, that´ s all. After all we are not "the darkness", who receive threats of murder."
-Up to now you have played your gigs mainly here around Frankfurt, surely your audience is biggest here. How are the people´ s reactions when you play farer away?
Catalina: "It´ s cool. It´ s always amazing. Recently we played together with an American band in Cologne and received real good feedback, that people really liked us. That was a big compliment to us. At another gig in Hamburg it was even better. There were people who wanted to take us on tour and organize more concerts for us. Now we will play in Münster/ Westfalen with a band from Hamburg. Last weekend we had a gig in Aschaffenburg, where the audience´ s reaction was overwhelming as well. It ´s really amazing, as I already said!!!"
-Do you want to develop musically? Have you thought about working with session- musicians?
Catalina: "I think, this would happen automatically. It ´s a logical consequence, which comes sometime, sooner or later, when you really work hard on yourself. Up to now we have 15 songs, which differ a lot from each other. Each one of them shows another side, showing our diverse musical influences. A song´ s structure depends on the feeling you have, when you put the single parts of a song together. There are so many styles for us: Metal, Pop, Rock and Calypso. Session musicians would likely to play so loud, that our listeners would´ nt hear us anymore.
Tina: "At live gigs we sometimes take friends of ours up on stage. They take over Percussion or stuff like that. But besides that we do everything on our own."
-Do you have any dreams, you would like to realize? Or are you satisfied with the present situation?
Tina: "My dream has been fulfilled already. I am happy with making music and that we harmonize so well. A release would be, what we hope for. Our biggest dream would surely be to get a deal at a record company, that would be great."
Catalina: "Yeah, that would be the hammer, to get a deal and the chance to release an album. It´ s impossible to finance such a production on your own today. Maybe we could finance a single CD, but anything more would be impossible. When we produced our video, I could luckily organize some people to help us. I study at the school for arts in Offenbach. I know lots of people there. So I could find two camera - guys and a girl to cut the tape. We did everything else on our own. But we are really grateful for the support they gave to us."
-Every one of you has her own characteristics. Please describe the girls of IDARED.......
Tina: "We all love life. Every one of us is quite powerful. Catalina for example is busy all day. Her art - projects take a lot of time. In addition to that she rehearses with us. She´ s simply very active and creative, always full of ideas. I have always admired her for that. Every one is really nice, none of us is strange in any way. Sabine, our bass player is more the reluctant and shy type. But she is really, really nice."
Catalina: "She works as a painter in theatre and is very creative as well. Some time ago she was named in a newspaper article, honoured for her abilities in art."
Tina: "Sabine is just a really warm person. She has respect for everybody. She has no prejudices at all, is always fair to everybody. When anybody has a problem, she is the one to listen to him or her and give a good advice. Christina is likely to be the craziest of us. She can be insane, does something strange and people who don ´t know her get really shocked, ha- ha."
Catalina: "But she´ s really cool - simply the best organ player in Frankfurt!!! Tina is just always full of energy. Just watch her on stage. Simply the fact that she sings and plays the drums spreads such an energy. She´ s a very positive - thinking person, simply a great girl."
We think that IDARED really rock and besides got to know them as nice talking partners. Soon we will check out their live qualities. The only thing we can do is recommend them to everybody. A review of their recently published demo - CD can be found on this site very soon, too. Everyone, who got interested now, can maybe be helped with giving him or her their homepage address with further information on forthcoming gigs: www.idared.de GET YOUR TASTE OF ENERGY !!!!!
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