Interviewed by Absalao Da Silva (Criss)
Date: August 2011

Criss: Hello Taime.

Taime: Hello Criss.

Criss: How can you compare the early days of FASTER PUSSYCAT to what FASTER PUSSYCAT is now?

Taime: Well, it’s just a different band almost 25 years later, so it’s like, it’s not gonna be the same, everybody grows, and it’s kind of just I don’t know, nowadays, the band we are now we’ve been together for 10 years, so maybe a little longer now.

Criss: What can you say about the evolution throughout the albums? I mean the first record is completely different from the second one, which is different from the third one, then there’s the new FASTER PUSSYCAT … What can you say about that?

Taime: Well, it’s just pretty much the same as the other question, in terms of I don’t wanna keep on repeating myself over and over again. I’m not gonna do the same record, I’m not gonna do exactly the first record, every time I do a record it’s gonna be a little different no matter what. Because once we’ve had that stuff recorded it’s there, and it’ll always be there. It’s gonna be there as long as I’ll be around, it’s like obvious. I just put together tuff that I like so, you know…

Criss: Which is your favorite album ever that FASTER PUSSYCAT has ever done?

Taime: I don’t have one. I don’t have a favorite.

Criss: Do you have a favorite track?

Taime: No, I don’t, I like different stuff at different times. I don’t have a favorite… I’ve just never had.… I like them all and it’s written about different things at different times of my life, you know what I mean? It covers a long period half of my life.

Criss: You said you don’t wanna repeat yourself, right? So, what can you say about the old influences and the new musical influences you have when making a record?

Taime: Well when I’m making a record, I’m not really influenced by anybody. I’ll listen to shit, but I’m not gonna go "Oh, I’ll go and write a song like that!". It’s when you’re just starting out you haven’t written a record, you know what I mean? If you don’t know if you have more of your own influences when you’re doing your first record, you know what I mean? You’re starting out, you’re new, you’re just young, you’re still learning how to play, and you’re doing that, but as you grow older and record stuff. I just write stuff that I like. So, I don’t really use anybody who’s ever influenced me on my music. There’s other shit that comes into play, whether it’s music, or just life. Different stuff… we’re in a room and we’re just banging out stuff, and who knows how it’s gonna turn ou. You learn to play with more instruments, you work with computers, and drum loops, and distortion on bass and vocals, just shit you didn’t learn as you grow up and you let it go along, you just go trying out new shit seeing what works and what doesn’t in the studio and who knows what we’ll do on the next record I have no clue… All I know we’ve got a bunch of stuff already recorded but, it’s not done, so, who knows what’s gonna end up on it. You just don’t know. I don’t really follow any influences, it’s like and we kind of influence each other doing shit. Just like, Danny and I wrote the new shit.

Criss: Is there any special reason for not playing popular songs back then like "Little Dove" and "Poison Ivy", which was a single?

Taime: We just play songs we’d like to play! So, I think these songs are fun, but it’s like, can’t play all the songs. We’d play a little bit from this, a little bit from that… so, you just never know what we’re gonna break out, sometimes we’ll just pull off a little stuff… so, there’s no reason. We just play what I like to play and having fun playing. When people dig it, cool!

Criss: It’s been a while since nobody has listened to anything from "Whipped". Why? I mean, is there any reason for that?

Taime: Well, we’ve played "Nonstop To Nowhere". We played it for the last two tours. We’ve done "Out With A Bang", we’ve done a couple of other songs too. We haven’t been here, so we haven’t played any of that stuff.

Criss: What can you say about the band members?

Taime: So fucking crazy, fucking knuckleheads! I love them to death, they are my family! We’ve been together through a lot of shit over the last 10 years. They’re just great people! Me and Danny write, we wrote the last last studio record we did.

He came in with me when we were in THE NEWLYDEADS, the same with Xristian and Chad, so... Ace, the new kid, we’ll see how it works now, but he’s been doing pretty good…

Criss: Do you still have any contact with the old FASTER PUSSYCAT members?

Taime: Not really.. There’s no bad will. We just live different lives. Greg doesn’t even play, I don’t know where Eric is, and I don’t care… Brent’s in Vegas, he’s got a cover band out there, he does pretty good, he’s married now with kids.

Criss: A couple of years ago I remember seeing this picture of all the original members of FASTER PUSSYCAT with another singer and…

Taime: Oh, it’s not, it was Brent, Eric and Brett, they tried to do that but I ended that real quickly. FASTER PUSSYCAT is my band. I formed it, I started it, I wrote the fucking songs. So I put an end at that with attorneys.

Criss: Nobody has ever heard anything about it again, right?

Taime: No, they can’t! They can, but I’ll take its fucking life! Not it’s physical life, but I’d sue them and get them for sure. They won’t, we’ve got it all settled out already.

Criss: Here’s a very curious question. Everybody who’s a fan or has been a fan of the old FASTER PUSSYCAT, would ask – why was the change so drastic between the old FASTER PUSSYCAT and what you did with THE NEWLYDEADS?

Taime: Well, it was a different band! We’d still rock ‘n’ roll. Listen to the THE NEWLYDEADS shit… still fucking 4 – 4 beat, some other loops, fucking songs are catchy, hooky, rock ‘n’ roll… just different. I wouldn’t do the same fucking thing. It was a different band, all of it was different shit, I created it, I wrote the shit I just wanted… it wasn’t FASTER PUSSYCAT. I needed a change, I needed a break, I needed some fresh air, you know, I wanted to create something different. I didn’t want to spend my whole life just doing exactly the same thing. It wasn’t that drastic, it was just me writing different shit. Doing shit the way I kinda wanted to do it, you know what I mean? I like to grow, I don’t like to sit there and stay in the same fucking thing.

Criss: Is there any new project for THE NEWLYDEADS for right now?

Taime: Well, not really, we’re just kind of fucking working on the release of some of the NEWLYDEADS shit that was never released. We’d gotta transfer all the stuff on it. I’ve done it on ADATS and we gotta transfer all the ADAT stuff into digital, and while it’s digitally gotten, we can transfer it into files, so there was a bunch of stuff that wasn’t finished, and there’s a couple of things that were close to finishing that just weren’t mixed and pick what we were gonna put on the record and weren’t done yet, and there’s a couple of others that won’t take that much to finish them. Been working on the FASTER stuff too for the last one and a half years, and we’ll keep touring., so it’s getting back and getting a listen to what we left off. we’ll start working on more shit and then we’ll have a bunch of shit, that is not done but, you know, when we come back home, we’ll go "Oh, I can write about that, I need a chorus for a song or something. But it’s a bunch of shit we’ve been working on, since we’re getting back from this, before we go to Europe, we’ll try to get some more stuff done.

Criss: Will it be something new from THE NEWLYDEADS or FASTER PUSSYCAT?

Taime: Both. You know, THE NEWLYDEADS shit is gonna be unreleased stuff, that was tracked a long time ago, just fix and mix it, and the new FASTER PUSSYCAT stuff we wanna put out before February, so we’ll track it out in January.

Criss: Is there any relation to what you did on the last CD?

Taime: Well we won’t know till we fucking finish it up, you know what I mean? Like I said, keep going through shit it’s just gonna be this fucking rocking shit, you know. I don’t plan on doing "it’s like this, or it’s like that", we just do what we do. I don’t think about what it’s gonna be like or plan what’s it gonna sound like, we just track, and do it. What comes out, comes out, you know what I mean? There’s no planning of nothing. We just write the shit, you like it, cool, if you don’t, fuck it, we’re not rocking at times. Grab a fucking guitar, make a beat, fucking write another riff, you know what I mean, until we get one that sticks.

Criss: How did you find the new guy, Ace?

Taime: I have no clue! I may have met him at a bar or it’s L.A a place for fucking musicians who come from all over the fucking world. We came to use this young kid, he’s like in his early twenties… he’s a good kid though!

Criss: So, any final words?

Taime: Just, ah, fuck, I don’t know… I’m so fucking excited to be here in fucking South America for the first time, its fucking 24 years since we came out, and now… it took a long time to get down here, and I’m here! So fucking looking forward to only coming back again too, hopefully.

Criss: Is it the last leg of the tour?

Taime: Oh, I wish so, we gotta go to Europe.

Criss: Do you know when?

Taime: I don’t know exactly the timing, we’re leaving in October and I think we’re gonna be strung out from two trips too, so we’ll just do some of it, it’s gonna be a classic shot for it right now, and I think there’s some other things, we’ll fly out on some U.S.

dates, I don’t even remember that shit that I got the gig for here, I might go "what the hell is this?", I didn’t know about that, no one told me, you know? I don’t know! I know it’s gonna be in Europe in October, I don’t know exactly when then we’ll do this cruise thing in February and probably go back on tour in the States after that, and there’s also talk about me coming back here, after March, April, I don’t know, spring of our time, I don’t know maybe fall of your time, whatever… and the States again, and hope we’re working on a new record by then, that’s gonna be cool.

Criss: Any plans of ever releasing a solo album?

Taime: That’s kind of what THE NEWLYDEADS shit was. It was like my shit! I put the band together, I played mostly everything.

Criss: Yeah, you never know…

Taime: That’s right, you never know! Right now I just have plans for another fucking FASTER record, Me and Danny have been working on shit and even more shit and a bunch of ideas and stuff, and I’ve got a bunch of demo tracks when we go home… so, constantly busy… but it’s good, it’s good to be busy!

Criss: It’s good to be busy and it’s good to see FASTER PUSSYCAT around!

Taime: The deal is fucking come out and playing shows and play places we’ve never been to…

Criss: Ok, cool, thank you very much!

Taime: Bye bye!

FASTER PUSSYCAT arrived at Animal Records, Sao Paulo downtown, at 5 p.m. and, although there weren’t so many people there for the meet & greet experience, the ones who were there were more than happy meeting the band.

They all took lots of pictures and signed FASTER PUSSYCAT items for more than an hour. They had about four or five different T-shirt models available for sale. Some hours after that, there was the sound check for the show. It took them about two hours to get the right sound – all they wanted was to put on a great show, since it was their first time ever performing in Brazil. Right after that, Taime Downe himself organized the merchandise stand, and then I could see then what they had really brought for sale, for really fair prices – T-shirts, FASTER PUSSYCAT CDs, THE NEWLYDEADS CDs, MOTORCHRISTS CDs (three different ones – this is bass player Danny Nordahl and drummer Chat Stewart’s own project), the funny FASTER PUSSYCAT “Pussy Power” panties, stickers, promo glossies and even this cool FASTER PUSSYCAT bracelet.

Inferno Club was once again the venue, having FASTER PUSSYCAT as the main attraction of one of their Glamnation Party event, which happens every two weeks. Thanks again to Joe, Angélica and all the staff there for their priceless support. It was open at around midnight, and I honestly didn’t think there would be a huge audience showing up, but I was glad when people started showing up.

The opening act, the Brazilian band PINK DOLLS played a short but efficient set which included songs from their self-released album as well as cover versions of bands such as POISON and CRASHDIET. Good musicians, but for some odd reason, Caio Gaona (the same guy who had played with the band TUFF, two weeks before) filled in for their drummer. I had never seen a PINK DOLLS gig before but I could see they’re a good band with potential. The thing is that they sounded too “happy punk rock” (Sounding a lot like the bands PEPPERMINT CREEPS and FOXY ROXY to me.) They need to find their own style and maintain the “sleaze feel” and maybe be a little heavier. Also it seems the band and the singer has different attitudes on stage which is not that good. Shane is a good singer with good looks and the rest of the band didn’t match his style. What they could do is trying to find a balance in terms of image so that they could look as if they are in the same band.

FASTER PUSSYCAT was supposed to go onstage at 2:00 a.m. and after a short delay and some minor technical problems they arrived! They started their set with a pre-recorded intro which surprisingly broke into “Jack The Bastard” (from their 1992 “Whipped” album). Singer Taime Downe’s performance is really quite unique – he is dark, funny, sleazy and definitely an 80’s rock star with an alternative attitude, boy, that was weird! But weird in a good sense for I really think it’s his idea after all these years of FASTER PUSSYCAT (and his own other project, THE NEWLYDEADS) not really wanting to be just another 80’s hair band anymore.

The “new band” (at least for the Brazilian fans) itself was also a good surprise – after being told they basically sucked live, all I could see was the opposite! Chad Stewart (Drums) had already been to Brazil a couple of other times with the Tracii Guns’ version of L.A. GUNS and he just kicked ass just like he had done with his other band, though I personally think he rocked even harder with FASTER PUSSYCAT; Bass player Danny Nordahl looked dark, serious and at the same time had the attitude of a real rock star also proving to be a good bass player. Xristian Simon (Rhythm Guitar) did what he was supposed to do – he just rocked! It’s worth mentioning that these three guys have been playing with Taime for more than ten years ever since he put his other THE NEWLYDEADS project together. Let me talk a little about the new guy in the band, lead guitar player Ace Von Johnson. If Taime hadn’t been the main focus of the crowd attending the gig (for obvious reasons), Ace would have been the center of everyone’s attention. Even being much younger than the other band members, he’s an incredible guitar player and was able to reproduce FASTER PUSSYCAT old and new material as if he had been there since the band’s beginning – which doesn’t mean that he didn’t input some of his own guitar playing style on the songs. This young kid has a brilliant musical future ahead and he’s a great guitar player indeed.

The set continued with “Cathouse” (from their 87’s first album) and one of the live favorites “Slip Of The Tongue” (from their second album, 89’s “Wake Me When It’s Over”), which unfortunately missed the energy of the two first songs on the set. This track should have been played as it was recorded with guts and balls but they played a slower version. Nothing could stop the fans from singing along with. Two songs from their latest studio album, “Power And The Glory Hole”, came next. “Number One With A Bullet” and “Sex, Drugs And Rock ’N’ Roll”. Even being cool good rock and roll songs, it was clear that everyone was more interested in listening to the vintage FASTER PUSSYCAT stuff other than their new material which were impressively well performed.

“House of Pain”, one of their biggest MTV hits and most famous songs was one of the night’s highlights without a doubt. Taime sat down by the stage greeting the crowd, giving them autographs still while performing it. He even “lost” his microphone for some minutes when somebody grabbed it from him but gave it given back some moments later. “House of Pain” is really one of the greatest hair band ballads of all times. Another surprise followed playing “Nonstop To Nowhere” another great track from their 1992 “Whipped” album. This heavier version was sung along by everyone – what proves that FASTER PUSSYCAT was one of the most under-rated bands of their era.

Their latest studio album was once again represented by the song “Disintegrate” which could have been substituted by some old classic FASTER PUSSYCAT hit or even maybe the album’s title track which wasn’t unfortunately performed. What came next was the song “In Denial”, by Taime’s side project THE NEWLYDEADS – once again, one more track that could be easily replaced by another one of their classic hits since it was their first time ever in Brazil. “Porn Star” also from the latest studio album “Power And The Glory Hole” came next and it was better received by the crowd maybe because it’s a catchy song sounding a little more similar to the old FASTER PUSSYCAT material.

At the very first drum beats of “Bathroom Wall” (also off their first album, and another one of their biggest songs and MTV hits), Taime and the boys had all the crowd going wild. It’s such a perfect crowd pleaser and a sure live favorite considering that the Brazilian fans of the band had been waiting to hear this track live for at least, 23 years! Taime introduced the band then having Danny Nordahl take over on lead vocals on a piece which I believed is called “Pretty Fuck Up” (I had never heard it before – maybe it’s a track off one of his MOTORCHRIST CDs – and it was just a great party, rock ‘n’ roll song!). Back to “Bathroom Wall” and having it played till the end made the audience receive “Shut up And Fuck” more than warmly! One of the best tracks of their latest album for sure. It wasn’t a very long show since the band started playing the first notes of their classic song “Babylon”. As most of the FASTER PUSSYCAT diehard fans might know it’s usually the last song on their set. And it just rocked the house down! Taime is smart enough to know that it’s definitely the perfect closer to a FASTER PUSSYCAT gig.

The band left the stage but guitar player Xristian Simon left his guitar amp on and it seemed that the band would come back for an encore that never happened. Instead Chad and Danny came over to the microphones and said they’d be taking pictures and signing stuff in a few minutes – once again they’d be available for anyone who wanted to approach the band. It’s great to see that a band that has been around for so many years has this attitude towards its fans.

FASTER PUSSYCAT performed a good gig after all showing clear musical evolution compared to the latest live videos available to be seen on YouTube. Not to mention that Taime Downe alone is a show apart. As I told him myself after the show he was simply “super cool”.

The low point was the absence of some classic FASTER PUSSYCAT material, which was being insistently requested by the audience along the show. Tracks like “Poison Ivy”, “Don’t Change That Song”, “You’re So Vain” and even the classic show opener “Where There’s a Whip There’s A Way” weren’t played and they were deeply missed on the set. I just wish Taime stopped being “super cool” and started being “mega super cool”, including songs like these next time they come down to Brazil. I’m pretty sure that FASTER PUSSYCAT will not only keep on making new fans but they’ll also be pleasing the old ones who are really into their old, classic hit songs.