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 Stendal Blast interview: Thanx so much to Kaaja Hoyda for taking the time to do this interview!! This was a live interview before their show in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 2005. It was conducted by Erin Donovan (that's her w/ the band in the pic) who has a foreign music college radio show called Radio Achtung! that can be heard on Friday nights from 8-10pm EST at http://walfradio.org/. Excerpts of this interview will be played there soon so go check it out!!! Thanx also to Arndt Peltner from Radio Goethe for letting us use his recording device & also for getting the band here in the first place, w00t Arndt!! Stendal Blast was great!!!! I transcribed this as well as I could but listen to the interview itself, it's much more fun :) & thanx again to everyone!! It was alot of fun!!! :) -Mikki 11/05
Kaaja: Our songs are the result of watching around in the world, in my world, you know. It can be in the supermarket somewhere, a child and the mother talking or something like that. Maybe there's more conversations I hear between people or of course there's alot of political questions in texts of Stendal Blast and that's a resource of my texts & the ideas & the music we create together. Mostly there's first an idea of the lyric and then we create the music together. That's it. I think I have a good view for my surroundings. You know, a song like, I will give you an example, a song like "My Private Poof". This is a song, I lived in Hamburg, in a small flat, and on the street there was a red light district and it was very horrible to live there but it gave me a big inspiration as an artist, and that's where we create our ideas from. Erin: What have been your best and worst experiences while playing with the band? Kaaja: The best experience is when a concert runs well. I think one of the best moments was, you know, in Germany there's a big festival every year, the Wave Gothik Meeting in Leipzig. There are 25,000 wave fans & when we play there, there are more than 3 or 4 thousand people in the audience and 2000 of them can sing our songs and that is of course a fantastic moment for an artist because you don't know the people who buy your CD's and suddenly they are there and you can see them. You can see them and you can say hello and they can say hello and then you stand there and you sing the first word of a song and suddenly there's a choir out of the audience and they sing your songs. And the worst is when that doesn't function. We had some concerts which were very... sad *laughs*. Because you know, there was a gig in the Netherlands and you are there and there are 2 or 3 people in the audience and you think, "Oh God" You know, Stendal Blast lives from the audience, we need the audience, there's a dialect between Stendal Blast and the audience that makes the gig tonight very interesting because my English isn't so good and people will not understand us and that is why we're a little bit nervous. So, I think the best and the worst moments have to do with concerts because that is high noon for a band. Erin: What's happening with your radio show? We haven't heard anything from you guys in awhile. Kaaja: *chuckles* Yeah, it's a problem. I lived with Valek together in Hamburg and we made the show together but I decided to go back to Nordrhein-Westfalen and now between my hometown and Hamburg there are more than 300 kilometers away and we made the show, also there is this difference this way, we made the show some months together but it's very complicated for me to drive once in a month to Hamburg and so we decided to make a cut but we will come back with a new show and a new concept and then let's see, I have to discuss some things with Arndt. We didn't do it yet but we will and then we will be back with a new show I think. You know, we did it 3 years and I think more than 36 shows and the idea of the show was, there are 2 crazy Germans talking bullshit and we talked alot of bullshit and in a very bad English and we thought that it's very charming. I think it's charming but... that was the idea of the show but after 36 shows you have to change over to another concept and the next show will be more crazy than the old Kaaja and Valek Radio Show, I think. Erin: So, you guys seem really funny and friendly, especially on your radio show but sometimes your music can be kind of dark. Where does that come from? Kaaja: Yeah, it's because we, in the band, are not structured in one way. We love to love, we love to be sad, we love to discuss topics of politics or society and we always try to show that in our music. So, we can make a funny song, we can make very sad songs about death and disasters or the problems in relationships between man and woman or so. I think life is not one colored and that's the idea of Stendal Blast but you must know that is today a big problem for a band because when you hear CD's today they're only in one way. You know, there are 14 songs and 14 songs are all, it's always the same. There you can make money with it, yeah? When you find one way like Rammstein, when you find one way the people like then you always do the same and we don't want to do it and that's a reason why we need so much time to grow bigger with a band. Because alot of people want to know what they buy when they buy a CD and when you buy a Stendal Blast CD you must know that there maybe 4 or 5 songs you don't like but there are 5 songs you like, ok, and you must know that, if you buy a Stendal Blast CD, but so we sell less than Rammstein *laughs* Erin: Who has been your favorite artist to work together with? Kaaja: We did two singles together with other artists. The first was with Veljanov, singer of Deine Lakaien, and that was a great corroboration, I like him very much, he likes me, I know that, and that was a dream for me because he has a very, very good voice, he's so nice and beautiful and the other one was with Blutengel which is a big contrast to Veljanov. But there was an idea, you know Blutengel, they sell alot of CD's in Germany. They're very popular and alot of people say they only want to make money with their style, it's like children gothic, you know? Gothic for children, but Chris Pohl, who is the former of this band, is a very nice guy and he loves making music like me and Stendal Blast is a band with a, they say we are very intelligent and very strange and very special and Blutengel is not very special and not strange and so easy and so we decided to make something together to show it is ok to do it. You can do something together also there are differences. And the next project I think we will do together with Kiev... I don't know if you know, do you know Kiev? You don't like them? Yeah, you like them... it will be, I think, with Kiev and I like they go a straight way in their music and I think I can give them good lyrics and they will make a very hard song and we want to enter the clubs again with it, let's see. Erin: What are your favorite Stendal Blast songs and why? Kaaja: I like the calm ones. There are a few songs that are very important for the band and for me, it's "Adieu" from "Fette Beute"and there is "Der Fährmann" from "Schmützige Hände". I mostly like the calmer ones, you know. Our big hits are "Der spanische Mond", "Neuer Mensch", et alle, the club hits in Germany but I like that one you can think about... Erin: What are your plans for the future? What are you working on right now? Kaaja: First we want to come home without a plane crash *group laughter*. That's our first idea. No, we are working on the new album and I think the name will be "Borderline Express" and we've created now 9 new songs and I think it will be finished in February. So, that's the next project and between the recordings with Stendal Blast I make some other things for other bands, I produce another band and there's something to do but the next big thing is the next album, number six. Erin: How do you think American audiences will react to your German only songs? Kaaja: I don't know. We will see... Ask the question in 3 hours again, I don't know. That is what makes me nervous at the moment. I don't know, I have no idea. I've never seen a Rammstein concert in Los Angeles, I don't know. I think the problem is, the people don't understand the texts and so we can only hope that the hard music that we make tonight will push them but I've no idea what will happen later. Erin: Because I have a radio show at a college, I have a couple of really silly questions for you. What CD are you most embarrassed that you own? Kaaja: *German discussion* I think... it's, uh... you know, I have 1,000 CD's *more German* I think it's uh... my friends say it's my CD's from Bruce Springsteen *laughter* but I don't think so but sometimes I think they're right but I like Bruce Springsteen very much. Erin: Ok, this one is for my friend Michelle. If you were a drag queen, what would your drag queen name be? Kaaja: Drag queen name?? Something stupid like Angelina or... Ohh, Angelina would be nice, I think, I can imagine to be Angelina... Erin: & that's it, thank you very much!
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