On Friday March 2nd, Cameras’ Blackdoor in Passau opened again and you could dance to tunes from The Loranes, The Howling Muffs and Parasol Caravan. I took the opportunity and did my first interviews. In addition, I had a chat with Felix from the band Cone, who is one of the founding members of Blackdoor Events and told me interesting stuff about the whole thing.
quick links :
All pictures by Keks Fotografien
The Loranes
In the afternoon I spilled some beer with The Loranes (sorry for that!) and talked to Pat, the guitarist and singer.
Mrs. Dopey: What do you miss on tour?
Pat: Definitely not my bed.
Mrs. Dopey: Who came up with the idea for your last video?
Pat: The idea for our video Wildebeest came from our drummer Elias.
Mrs. Dopey: With whom would you like to drink a beer? It doesn’t matter whether the person is still alive.
Pat: Obviously a guitarist or singer. Hendrix, Page – someone like that.
Mrs. Dopey: What’s your favourite album of all times?
Pat: There are too many on my list. Probably something from Pearl Jam.
Mrs. Dopey: Is there something you really hate?
Pat: A lot.
Mrs. Dopey: What was your best gig?
Pat: One of our best gigs was at Void Fest on tent stage, which was one of our early ones by the way.
Mrs. Dopey: What’s your favourite drink?
Pat: Beer.
Mrs. Dopey: What do you think of reviews about The Loranes?
Pat: Sure I’m interested in what magazines and people think about our music. Everybody compares it to something else, that’s the way it is.
Mrs. Dopey: Do you have a message?
Pat: Yeah sure. Buy our new record and come see us play. I think we are pretty good right now.
The Howling Muffs
Next I had a beer with Lukas (guitarist, singer), the other Lukas (‘Luki’, drummer) and Valentin (bassist, singer) from The Howling Muffs before they hit the so-called stage.
Mrs. Dopey: When was the last time you were hungover?
Lukas: The problem is we are constantly hungover.
Mrs. Dopey: What was the first music you listened to?
Valentin: Dazed and Confused from Led Zeppelin.
Luki: Linkin Park.
Lukas: My mother is a huge fan of Dieter Bohlen. So I think it’s Modern Talking with Cherry Fucking Lady.
Mrs. Dopey: What was the funniest moment with the band?
Lukas: laughs I don’t think we can mention that…
Valentin: drinks water… everyone else except him starts laughing… he drinks water.
Lukas: There is sex involved. There is alcohol involved. Ton of drugs, few other bands… It’s dirty, it’s filthy and it’s ridiculously awkward. So let’s keep it a secret.
Mrs. Dopey: What are you addicted to?
Lukas: Drugs.
Mrs. Dopey: How long do you need to blow dry your hair?
Lukas: I do not – I repeat – I do not blow dry my hair, because it’s not good for them. I wash my hair. Then I just do a quick scrub and let them air-dry since I want ‘em curls.
Valentin: shows his shaved head with a hat-move like this:
Mrs. Dopey: The best lyrics you wrote?
Valentin: My favorite one is ‘Demon’ – the outro from our new single, coming out on March 30th.
Lukas: The lyrics are how to cope with your demons and yourself. We call it innerer Schweinehund. You can be a huge setback for your own motivation and goals. It is just important to be good to yourself. Then you are able to be good to other people.
Mrs. Dopey: With which musicians would you like to hang out?
Lukas: Mother’s Cake!
Luki: Red Hot Chili Peppers from the times of ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’.
Mrs. Dopey: Take a look at your bandmates. To which TV-casting show you would send them?
Lukas: I think I would send Vali to ‘Das Jungelcamp – Holt mich hier raus!‘, because there is a lot of blood and violence involved, as soon as Vali would enter the camp. I would love to see the escalation. And Luki belongs to… hm, I would join ‘Joko & Klaas‘ with him. There is this show ‘Mein bester Feind‘ – you nominate your best friend and do shit with him. And I would definitely nominate Luki and do shit with him.
Valentin: Lukas belongs to DSDS (=‘Deutschland sucht den Superstar‘). laughter
Luki: No, to ‘Germany’s next Topmodel‘! more laughter
Lukas: Aw that’s cute. But the makeover… I would cry a lot I guess hahah.
Luki: Yeaah when they cut your hair.
Lukas: Absolutely! And color ‘em blonde I would just be like: holy shit! I knew this would happen!
Luki: And then they will shave your eyebrows and tattoo small lines instead.
Lukas: Yeeees oh noooooooooo fuuuuuuuck.
Mrs. Dopey: What do your parents think of your music?
Lukas: That’s difficult. My parents are like: we love you and we’ll always support you.
Luki: My parents are like: you’re fucking up your life.
Valentin: Since I was young my dream was to make music and play in a band. My mother always was behind me.
Mrs. Dopey: What are you really proud of?
Lukas: The biggest achievement is that we found ourselves. We got to know a lot of great people. We have David, who makes our videos and our management Paris – they are our best friends. The biggest achievement is my second family, which is The Howling Muffs. I love them, I love making music and it’s the biggest present I ever received.
Parasol Caravan
I met Richard, Bertram (both guitar) and Vincent (drums) after their gig. Even though the guys did not read my message I wrote them and me being hella unprepared (I had one question lol) we somehow managed to do this.
Mrs. Dopey: How was the gig today?
Richard: I really like the stage. You see all this pipes around you and you never know: Is this a mirror? Is it not? The audience is just directly in front of you – that is quite a thing.
Vincent: Yeah absolutely, the venue is really interesting. The audience was energized, which was really cool. I got a lot of power back from them. So it was really nice to play here.
Bertram: The organizer was so into it and gave us the best time possible and the crowd was also really great. The only thing I didn’t like today: I bought guitar strings for 30 Euro. The package guaranteed unbreakable guitar strings. I proved them wrong. I played like 15 minutes and they broke. So please Earnie Ball – give us some strings for free.
Mrs. Dopey: How did you get to music?
Bertram: The moment when I decided to make music was when I saw the movie Back To The Future. I was about 10 years old back then. I saw Marty McFly playing the Chuck Berry cover ‘Johnny B. Good‘. I was like: Oh my god, I want to do that, too. So this was why I started with the guitar.
Vincent: I started with music quite early. It was not decided all by myself and more or less by my parents. My brother played in a band. I saw them live when I was about 13. Then I thought: Oh my god it is so cool to be in a band. Especially the drummer left an impression – so that’s why I started learning the drums.
Richard: I was quite bad at music in primary school. So my parents decided that I had to play recorder. Next I had to play the saxophone. I thought of playing the electric guitar. But really starting it was not quite my decision anyway. My father is the biggest Deep Purple Fan ever known. So he was proud of me when I said I wanted to learn the electric guitar and he directly bought me one.
Mrs. Dopey: What do you think of social media?
Bertram: A necessary evil tool (V starts laughing in the background) that we all use in our daily lives. I guess today you can’t live without it.
Vincent: I mean as a band, especially if you want to reach younger people I think it is totally necessary to be somehow a part of the social media system. I also don’t think it is bad by itself. It’s just quite hard how you reach people in the end. Because there is so much going on there and it’s so short-living. Therefore you have to be quite inventive to reach a bigger crowd.
Richard: I just can agree. I don’t take part that much as a private person. But as a band you got to be present and somehow advertise.
Bertram: It’s also an opportunity. Not that it’s only totally bad or so. It’s just not that easy how things are running there.
Mrs. Dopey: Beer or wine?
Bertram: Beer.
Vincent: Beer.
Richard: Beer.
Mrs. Dopey: Which band do you think is underrated?
Richard: The Boy That Got Away, I discovered them on Spotify. I really dig them. I don’t know if the band knows that people in Austria are listening to them.
Vincent: There’s a band called Torso from Austria. They are just amazing, I love listening to their music.
Bertram: For me Mother’s Cake is still an underrated band. I mean they’re playing their asses off for five years now, all around Europe, more than a hundred shows every year and they still didn’t get recognized by a big audience. They really deserve to get on the top of rock’n’roll.
Mrs. Dopey: You played a gig at ORF Radiokulturhaus. How was it like to play at this venue?
Bertram: Yeah it’s a very untypical place to play a concert for a rock band. It’s a really impressive, big hall with a huge organ in there. Actually it is made for classical music. It was quite challenging for us. Everybody sat in leather chairs. But we really enjoyed it, it was a great experience for us and really cool to play there.
Vincent: I mean yeah it absolutely was. When I saw it for the first time I just thought: How should you play rock music in there? As you said it is seated and the people usually just sit there for a classical concert, listening carefully, relaxed and not in the mood for rock music. Especially in the end you could somehow really feel that the people were as well into the music like we were.
Bertram: Maybe they were even more feeling the music, because they listened more carefully and were even more focused on the concert.
Richard: This was the challenging part. Playing in a venue that was built for classical music with a big organ in the background and seats that are for listening and not partying. Even though some people tried to party in their seats. But they were kinda challenged by this like us.
Bertram: Maybe we can add that it wasn’t allowed to drink beer in the concert hall or to smoke.
Mrs. Dopey: Where would you like to play a gig?
Vincent: For me it’s probably the Red Rocks in California.
Richard: Thinking of the prestige and how rock music got founded it would actually be the Wembley-Stadion.
Bertram: For me it would be the amphitheatre where Pink Floyed recorded ‘Live in Pompeij‘.
Mrs. Dopey: What would you do as a woman?
Bertram: I would buy some merch from Parasol Caravan for ladies. And touch my breasts all day long.
Vincent: Go to BIPA (an Austrian drugstore) and try all the different kinds of eyeshadows.
Richard: I’d look for some motivated girls and start a girl band.
Mrs. Dopey: With which band would you like to play a gig?
They count to three and say Tool at the same time.
Mrs. Dopey: Looking back, would you do something different?
Richard: We played our first two years with another drummer – a very nice guy, I like him a lot. But if I look back we should have started with the drummer we have now.
Vincent: Yes… Totally agree. laughs
Bertram: I’m really satisfied with our situation right now. You know, the main goal of the band was always just to have fun and see wherever it will take us. We’ve been to so many different places and played all over Europe. If I look back, we started about 7 years ago, I could have never imagined to play a show in England…
Richard: … and to take a plane to the show!
Bertram: Yes! It’s just a great experience to travel with your friends and play music at the same time. I hope that this journey continues, that we play more shows and never get tired or fed up with writing the songs and seeing each other.
Felix, organiser of BlackDoor Events
Mrs. Dopey: Who are you?
Felix: Hey! My name is Felix and besides being deeply into the lovely heavy rock music I love playing this style with my Bavarian band Cone as well. Fortunately, this is the reason why we met today in the Camera Passau.
Mrs. Dopey: How did you all come up with the idea for Blackdoor Events?
Felix: Sadly our wonderful city Passau did not have any music-events or even a noteworthy scene for heavy-rock-music lovers, so we simply decided to organize those events ourselves. Over the last three years us from Cone put all our passion and lifeblood into creating something special for heavy-music lovers and finally we just thought: ‘Why don’t we just create our own, small music festival and see if it works out’. Luckily until now we got some awesome feedback for this.
Mrs. Dopey: What was the most challenging thing?
Felix: Holding on. It’s a lot of work to create something special instead of only some other music event. We always wanted to provide an outstanding atmosphere and wanted to make the people experience live music as a feeling of life again. Of course this is a complex and enduring task, but as said, we put a lot of passion into it and we just love to see people being happy with our events. This has always been our incentive. What do you attach importance to? Good quality bands, a special atmosphere with nice visuals and the most important thing: Everybody should have the best evening possible and just feel good the whole night. This means we as organizers, the bands themselves and of course the people coming to our event should be able to forget everything else and feel as likebig family.
Big thanks to y’all! 
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