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Music

We Saw This: Diamond Rugs

Diamond Rugs may or may not stand for "damn, I'm on drugs."

Don't call Diamond Rugs a supergroup. They're a god damn band, alright, if anything a '"stuporgroup," as suggested by Steve Berlin. Diamond Rugs is the joined forces of John McCauley (Deer Tick), Robbie Crowell (Deer Tick), Ian Saint Pé (The Black Lips), Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), Hardy Morris (Dead Confederate) Bryan Dufresne (Six Finger Satellite) and a handful of guest performers. Before they played Bell House Friday night I had the pleasure of hanging with them back stage. While I enjoyed their debut album, Diamond Rugs live is a different ball game. These guys were not meant to be constricted to one's head phones. Their rock and roll energy was so infectious that audience members initiated orgies while cell phones speed-dialed drug dealers.

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VICE: So John, this is sort of all your doing?

John: Yeah me and Bryan wanted to do some kind of project and then I called Ian to be a part of it and he said yeah. So we were like cool, we got a band, let's call it Stoner Drama. And it's going to be about what stoner roommates might argue about. So Bryan wrote a few song titles, they were like "You Ate All the Fucking Chips" and "When is Your Girlfriend Going to Start Paying Rent," stuff like that. But then I met Steve, he came into the fold, then we thought maybe we should take it a little more seriously. And then Rob and Hardy kind of came in last minute.

How are your pubes doing? I read you like to light them on fire on stage.

John: Well the last time I did it was in Aspen last year (with Deer Tick) and we dumped a hundred things of silly string into the audience and the crowd went fucking crazy and destroyed the place so I thought it would just be an appropriate time to drop my pants and light my pubes on fire. I haven't done that in a while though, not with Diamond Rugs. We keep it classy.

Hardy: Nah! You did it at Diamond Rugs' first show!

John: Well that's just once.

Is it painful? Does it cause damage?

John: No. Well once it gets down to the skin it just stops. It stinks though.

Robbie: Yes it does! Touring with John I think I see his penis more than I see my own.

John: Yeah, I get naked a lot.

Robbie: We have this thing called naked crowd surfing. We do it when we're in a van, limo, anything.

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Oh, so just like…naked crowd surfing amongst yourselves?

John: What I'll do is I'll undress in the back of the van or whatever, and then they will yell "NAKED CROWD SURF" and I'll jump on top of everybody.

Sounds like between John and the Black Lips influence you guys love to whip your dicks out.

Steve: Yeah, Los Lobos would do that on stage except no one would notice!

Tell me about the name, Diamond Rugs.

Ian: The whole general idea came from the floors that we slept on when we were trying to make it, and now the house that I bought has oriental carpets. It's a diamond rug!

Really, I read that it was supposed to be a sneaky way of saying "Damn, I am on drugs."

Ian: Well it does happen to spell out that way. Damn. I am on drugs. It's part of music! Nothing but a good time.

Can you guys tell me a joke?

John: Why do you wrap a chipmunk up in duck tape? So it doesn't explode when you fuck it.

So what's next for Diamond Rugs?

John: I haven't been thinking too much about the next record but I really want to do it. I already have a couple tracks written.

Ian: We're going to take this band on tour in October. But what's our future? Party. Have a good time.

Any last words?

Ian: Did you know we recorded the whole thing on analog tape? Oh and real quick, real quick! You know what's the worst thing about rock and roll? NOTHING!

Bonus points for the night: Ian Saint Pe's gold VICE ring

Points subtracted for the night: Some guys are making a documentary about the group so there were like three cameras in my face during the interview which was a little intimidating.

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@TheBowieCat

Photos by @timthegiraffe

Previously: We Saw This: Juiceboxxx

For more Diamond Rugs, we picked their album as the album of the month for June, and you can read the review HERE