Punk Lives!

“Their tour is cancelled, the cops are after them, and their label has no clue where they are. But it sounds like they had fun!” - Black Lips' Manager.

To say that Atlanta’s psychedelic punk band Black Lips’ tour of India was wild and unpredictable would truly be an understatement. When these garage rockers smash beer bottles over their guitars or piss in their own mouths onstage in the U.S., the worst that usually happens is that they get banned from another venue. But when they brought that anarchy to their tour of India, they but naturally incurred the wrath of all sorts of authority figures.

Notorious for their on stage antics, the self described ‘Flower Punk’ band has made a reputation of playing shows where few bands have played before. So when they decided to bring their brand of unruly drug induced punk to this conservative country where few have even heard their music, they were just asking for trouble. The tour was going off smoothly with respectable shows in Delhi and Mumbai until the band reached the college town of Pune, where they were scheduled to headline the Battle of the Bands show. After being subjected to 6 hours of head banging metal bands, the audience did not take kindly to Black Lips’ three chord danceable punk and pelted them with bottles for the entirety of their set.

When it came time for their show at the annual Campus Rock Idols in Chennai, the positive reception the band received there made them a little feisty. That evidently was not a good thing as the band performed one of the most chaotic sets in the country’s history. According to audience members present at the gig, guitarist Cole Alexander proceeded to make out with fellow band mates mid set before stripping down and attempting to play the guitar with his exposed man parts. Although this enthralled the Chennai crowd, it did not sit well with the promoters of the show who soon kicked the band off the bill leading to the rest of the tour being cancelled. The promoters also filed charges against the band citing ‘indecent exposure’ and ‘homosexual acts’ causing the band to flee the country to escape arrest.The band issued the following statement,

Dear fans,

Unfortunately, we have had to flee the country of India due to having our whole tour canceled and having to escape being held by police for indecent exposure during our most ruckus set in Chennai at the Campus Rock Idol showcase.After the fiasco, which the kids seemed to like, the financial backers of the event were furious and threw us off the tour. They tried to get security to restrain us until the Tamil police arrived. We
locked the door while they were kicking and banging on it. Meanwhile, we slipped out the other emergency exit. When we got to the hotel our tour guide informed us that the Campus Rock Idols sponsors were pressing charges and that the police would make their arrest. At that point our tour driver informed us we would have to drive six hours to get to the next town and cross state lines where we would be out of the Tamil authorities’ jurisdiction, because apparently the jail in Chennai is no joke. Word on the street said that it was teeming with tuberculosis, violence and live maggots so instead of risking going there we fled the scene. The drive ended up taking 10 hours because of a horrific accident on the road. We were also informed that all of the shows on our tour had been canceled effectively fucking all funds for the trip.When we got to the next hotel a mysterious man and someone who worked for our Indian booking agency tried to run off with our passports they got to the car when we caught them. We surrounded them until they gave back our passports. After that we booked the first flight to Berlin. We would like Rana Ghose for helping us get through these enormous trials and tribulations, and for future reference we really enjoyed the people of India and we hope western rock bands will be able to tour there in the future.- The Black Lips

The weird thing is that the Chennai show was fairly low-key as far as Black Lips shows go. Some called it a clash of cultures, some called it a mess....in the good old days they just called it rock n’ roll.

(Check out the band's adventures in the controversial videos titled 'Black Lips in India' at http://www.punknews.org/article/32653)