Bling Kong - By Bryan Bruchman
Bling Kong is playing at my house

Bling Kong was not a band I wanted to like. I’d heard a few people talking about them - before their first show, mind you - and the descriptions were way too absurd to fall in line with my snobbish indie-rock taste. Three drummers? Four cheerleaders? Their own clothing line? A “video ninja?” Please.

As luck would have it, they wound up on the same bill with a band I really wanted to see. Without giving too much away, let me just say that I don’t even remember who it was I’d actually gone for - Bling Kong stole the show. From the handouts containing lyrics and games to the energetic coed cheerleaders to the music that made my jaded self want to (gasp!) dance, well, I was converted.

A year later they’ve played plenty more shows, toured a bit, and started work on a new album. I’ve come to accept the fact that I love Bling Kong for their playfulness and infectious rock; maybe they’re just what a city full of jaded music snobs needs.

With a new ep on the way and plans in the works for their second full length (referred to simply as Bling Kong 2 for now), I invited members of Bling Kong over to my house for a little BBQ and a little Q&A. Getting them all to sit down and pay attention wasn’t easy - as guitarist Brad says, “we’re like herding cats!”

With so many band members, how do you get everyone to practice?

Danarchy: Sometimes we'll have a practice where it's just like the band, then the cheerleaders will go do their own thing too, like they’ll work on choreography and new cheers and then we'll work out some basic parts of songs or teach each other songs and then we'll all get together...

Brad: When we write we get together in smaller sub-groups.

Princess: With 11 of us it's hard to get in one place at one time, that's why we also stagger our shows because we want to make the most impact and have everyone's schedule fit, we try not to play down a member though that has had to happen once or twice.

Shredder: We're self-contained, like everybody has little jobs they contribute… we don't have a manager, we all just have our little committees.

Jonathan: The first show we played we had the clothing line ready there, and we had our cd recorded... the idea was just to come out and have it be this huge thing from the get-go.

Shredder: And our first show sold out.

Do you have Bling Kong imitators yet?

Shredder: I've tried to pick fights with some bands that I thought had certain parallels but none of them ever took off... I just wanted to have a rival band because I thought it would be fun, like in hip hop, group rivalries breed a lot of press. We do a lot of things that I think we steal from the hip hop world, like we started our own clothing line, trying to build this whole brand identity, more than rock bands, and lyrically we reference a lot of hip hop.

Cocksucker: Rappers act so big and larger than life and for so long rock has had a history, rap and hip hop didn't have a history so they needed to begin to make things larger than life in order to have something that was deep rooted and would make an impact in the world today because everything happens so fast.

Jonathan: It's all about how awesome we are, which is totally hip hop... ctually, on the first record every song had Bling Kong in the name of the song somewhere.

What part do the videos that you project during the live show play in the world of Bling Kong?

Danarchy: It's very important. he's [Brandon] a big part of it, like the 11th performer onstage with us. we always want that to be happening.

Cocksucker: The thing that really works about us as well is that when people come to see us there are so many things to capture and watch: the movement from the cheerleaders, there's the band playing in the background, and there's the video. so you're never going to be able to capture all of them in one show, so it's a good opportunity for them to come back numerous times and really have the great experience of watching us entertain them, and you can just see it by the look on their face, they're just like in awe, like 'what in the fuck am I watching?'

Jonathan: When we launch Bling Kong 2 we're hoping to have entirely stuff that we create ourselves [in the videos], so that's another big aspect of the whole thing: we're hoping to put that as part of the ep that we're releasing this fall. We want the images on there - because you can listen to it but if you can actually see... it'll be enhanced.

Princess: But in typical Bling Kong fashion ...

Danarchy: …we want everything to come out as a big package and when we do everything we don't do it half-assed. it's like it's gonna be the same thing with Bling Kong 2, we want to wait until everything's ready then..

Cocksucker: and then LOOK OUT!

What can you tell us about the new EP?

Brad: It's on Redder Records.

Cocksucker: It'sl a recap of Bling Kong 1 and an intro to Bling Kong 2.

Danarchy: Plus another bonus song.

Have you written the songs for Bling Kong 2 and will the release of that record change your live show much?

Brad: This whole bling kong 2 thing, the final version will be about 13 songs, we've written about half of them.

Danarchy: It'll be drastically different because we won't play the songs that we play now and we'll play all the new ones. and it'll be a totally new format too.

Cocksucker: well like new costumes..

Princess: some things added to make it special

Tell us a story from the road.

Jonathan: At Lowell we actually rocked half the crowd's pants off. After the second song one guy dropped his drawers like "you guys... rocked my pants off." Some other kids was like "hey me too". All the boys in the audience took their pants off.

Princess: They asked us for an encore so they were all dancing in their underwear.

Danarchy: We were like “that was really great, thanks for taking your pants off,” and they were like "well we didn't have a choice."

Anything else you want to say?

Cocksucker: I just have to give a special shoutout to my boyfriend Kasey in boston.

Jonathan: I'd like to go on the record saying "OOOOAAAAUUUWWWWOOOAAHH!" Do you know how to spell that?

For an idea of what to expect from Bling Kong in the coming months, check out the track “I Want More” on their website, www.blingkong.com.

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