Mad Rad is one of Seattle's great wonders. They're lively and out for fun. Their songs and shows are parties unto themselves. P Smoov, performer/lyricist/beatmaker of Mad Rad talked with me in December 08 about the band's origins and foxy fan base - oh, and I found out he's also a talented visual artist. Read on.
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Q: You recently played in New York?

P Smoov: Yeah, we played the Knitting Factory, which is a legendary three story venue where a lot of amazing punk acts and pretty much every act that comes through there at some point or another. We played on the bottom floor – it was so chill [with] a really good turnout and kids know how to dance in New York City. It was so much fun.

Q: The tour reception was positive?

PS: Everyone was receiving us well and they all loved the tunes. It was just like, yo do you need a place to sleep, you can crash on our sofa. . . It was a very different scene and a different crowd from Seattle – or Portland even. But a cool scene.

Q: You guys dance around a lot in Mad Rad – how would you describe your dancing style?

PS: I personally think that I’m a horrible dancer. I think we just like our tunes and when we get onstage we can’t really help but to wild out. Buffalo [Madonna] is more of the dancing guy. He starts flipping out on the ground like a fish out of water.

Q: Yeah, he was pretty dirty after crawling around the floor of the Funhouse.

PS: That was nasty. I think Terry Radjaw is the best dancer out of all of us. Sometimes he just gets down and dances onstage for a couple of minutes without even doing any lyrics. It’s hilarious.

Q: What’s a typical Mad Rad show?

PS: A typical Mad Rad show starts about three hours before where we start drinking and smoking weed – just wilding out, practicing our lyrics. We get there and there’s a lot of scantily clad women with makeup on. I guess we just wild the hell out for as long as we’re onstage and try to do the best job as possible.

Q: The show at the Funhouse had a lot of pretty women there – that’s typical?

PS: I would say we definitely lucked out when it comes to our fan base. It’s largely female, which is great. [And] the girls bring the boys.


P Smoov @ the Funhouse, December 2008

Q: You played with 2 Live Crew at Nectar – what was that like?

PS: Oh, man – that was such an awesome night. It was such an honor to work with such legendary cats like that. We played with another band that we’re friends with, Champagne Champagne. It was cool – 2 Live Crew brought out a crowd that we probably never could have brought out ourselves. It was such a fun opportunity to perform in a setting with a band of that magnitude. That was the day before we left on tour so we left with such high spirits.

Q: How did the band get together?

PS: Buffalo and Radjaw were vibing out together before I met them. They were writing songs together and they didn’t have anyone making beats for them at the time. I saw Terry Radjaw doing a solo performance at Nectar and I approached him. Buffalo, at that time was just a backup dancer, he didn’t even have a mike. So they came through and we hit it off. All the tunes that we were making were some of my favorite tunes that I had made and their favorites tunes that they had been working on. We were just like, fuck it, let’s do this. Let’s go all out.

Q: That was this year?

PS: Our first show April 9th of 2008. We’ve been performing for less than a year.

Q: What’s Fresh Espresso?

PS: Fresh Espresso is my other band with the rapper Rik Rude. He’s a local legend – one of the illest mcs that Seattle has to offer. I’ve been working on Fresh Espresso for longer than I’ve been working on the Mad Rad shit. That album is coming out soon. I came to Seattle to start a studio, called the Robot Room, in Queen Anne. One of my main focuses is recording, engineering and mastering other bands. I’ve had a fucking great opportunity to work with a lot of different musicians.

Q: Where did you move here from?

PS: I moved here from Los Angeles. I was born in Michigan, moved to Orlando then to Los Angeles. I settled in the Northwest.

Q: You’re also an artist.

PS: Yeah, I do art under the name of Ten Hundred.

Q: The drawings and paintings are really, really good.

PS: Thank you. I have been going crazy for art lately ever since I got off tour. Being in that tour van . . . I’ve been painting nonstop. It’s such a relaxer for me.

Q: Do you ever think about having Mad Rad dancers?

PS: We’ve had impromptu dance competitions onstage, where we invite a couple of the ladies from the audience to compete with dance moves for a copy of our cd or for one of our t-shirts. These girls go all out – it’s such a show. It gives us a chance to catch our breath while they’re shaking their asses. Last night there was a row of ladies in front and I was just like, can you guys please just come onstage? And they flooded the stage. I don’t think we want people that we bring with us to dance onstage. We want the crowd to come up onstage.

Q: Who writes the lyrics?

PS: We all write the lyrics and write the hooks. It’s not ego-based. We just try to crack each other up and whatever makes us laugh the hardest is pretty much what we use in the songs. The beats . . . I do those and we also had a guy, Lou Pal, who contributed to the production of the record.

Q: I really loved the video for My Product – was that shot in South Seattle?

PS: Some of it was shot in Sodo and some of it was on Capitol Hill. That was directed by Dave Otte - from Brooklyn. He flew out and was kind enough to shoot a video for us. It was three days of so much fun. It was on a shoe string budget – I think we spent maybe 150 bucks for the whole video.

Q: I wanted to ask you about the song Electric Sheep. Who’s the science fiction fan/Blade Runner fan?

PS: I’m a science fiction fan. The electric sheep are from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Buffalo Madonna, at the time, was reading a lot of Philip K. Dick. I put together this tune and that was its central focus – I thought it was such an ill tagline. For me it wasn’t tied directly to Blade Runner or Philip K. Dick – it was just such an ill concept.

Q: Do you have many pairs of sunglasses?

PS: I lose a pair of sunglasses at every show. I’ve pretty much stopped wearing glasses unless I can borrow them or steal them from my friends. Then they’ll get lost and they’re kind of mad at me. They just fly off my face or kids grab them off my face. Terry Radjaw has an ill sunglass collection though.

Q: What do you think when people say Mad Rad’s lyrics might be sexist? Is it just good publicity?

PS: There’s a lot of negative stuff floating around on the internet about our band. The way I see it is if you don’t have haters then you’re not doing your job right.

Q: I think that’s true. When I listen to you guys I don’t think of it as mean-spirited.

PS: There’s this one site called 206proof.com [with threads] talking about how we’re racist and sexist and just horrible people. It’s such a laugh looking at that stuff. They can’t even spell.
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Check out the videos for Electric Sheep and Superdope
and I've also got more photos of them from the Funhouse here.

Mad Rad next plays Artifakt @ Lofi on January 16th plus a string of shows that month and February beginning with OBAMA RAMA!!on January 20th.