The David James Motorcycle

The ’75 Cheerleader Orgy Revisited

"So you read all that French Symbolist poetry? You can’t even get it on the fucking BBC"- The Cult

"History will prove us right." —Sigue Sigue Sputnik

Noise: Dave, when you’re on stage and you’re doing you’re little rap between songs…do you know what you’re talking about?

Dave: Well, sometimes I listen to myself on an answering machine or something, and I listen to it, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.

Irina: I’ve got a collection of his phone messages, they’re hilarious.

Dave: It’s like I forget the words or something.

I had that dream again last night. The one where I’m lying in an endless field of sunflowers, with cherry cola streams and hazy purple skies, where nymphs in sheer white dresses with curly blonde hair and shotguns wait in line to meet Jim Carroll, where everybody’s in love with something, even if it’s only revenge. And just at the part where the psychotronic love commandoes drop the peace bombs onto the villages of the greedheads, and 13 is declared the luckiest number of all, the alarm clock spurts into life, the static roar of Godsmack dragging me screaming into the mundane reality of right here, circa now, where my Harley boots have soles full of holes, where the day job blackmails me into submission, where rocknroll radio bleeds itself dry, where sometimes, it snows in April.

But, brothers and sisters, all is not lost. Because I believe in liberation. I believe in kissing the sandaled foot, diving for holy pearls, I believe in the fizzing rocket ships manned by rock and roll stars with backstage passes to the electric circus on the dark side of the moon. And so does the David James Motorcycle. And they’ve got the scars, cheekbones, and record collections to prove it. Rising from the ashes of powerglam kingpins Honeyglazed’s firestorm of self-immolation, the Kuland brothers have quickly regrouped, with the help of new, more extravagant sinners, to topple the tyranny of the Boston Rock Mafia and usher in a new era of glittery bliss rock with guitars and stripes, weird scenes with fanciful conclusions, and tangerine colored tambourines that laugh when you shake them.

Joining the brothers Kulund in the Dynamite Jet Saloon are couple of veteran show stealers from far reaching corners of the Boston music scene. Blooze dealer, part time astrologist and full time heartbreak machine, Irina Yalkowsky throws down some rattlesnake mean slide guitar when not wielding a Theremin like some spookshow enchantress. And Jim Zavadosky? Well, we all know that cat from his hip shaking work in the Motown damaged , ground zero rock and soul outfit, the Damn Personals. With Dave howling at the moon and Nicky pounding on the skins, the fantastic four revive the dream, and The Rock is saved from ruin for another day.

I sat by the fire in the Casa De Kulund with the velvet soulmine known as the DJM on the eve of a blinding snowstorm. Over snifters of Brandy and black market cigars, we discussed dying young, living forever, and the future of rock and roll. Which is, of course, the very recherche David James Motorcycle.

Noise: Who’s escort services were you asking about, for your jive cotillion?

Nicky: there’s a lot of history going on here...where’s my pointer?

Dave: I hope you read the book.

Irina: We used to all live together, and Nicky and I used to go out together.

Dave: And I was what you’d call ‘the third wheel’. And we all played together in a band called Shake 747…this was back in the late 90’s…

Irina: I don’t know if you were around way back then (laughs)

Nicky: We met Irina because she was doing these blues jams all around town, and I’d sit in on drums, so she brought a lot of the blues sound, and Dave and I threw Bowie and the Stones into the mix.

Irina: So, when I went to see these guys where they lived…I felt sorry for them. (laughs) It was this really small place. So I asked them if they wanted to move in to my place, and for a year, it was just living together, being friends, but I secretly wanted to be in a band with them .

Dave: Plus, you know, we didn’t really do anything else. Our rent was only like, 500 bucks between the three of us.

Irina: Dave was in his room writing songs, I was in mine, then we’d be in the same room working on them together.

Dave: I think all the great bands have been like that.

Noise: What was the Shake sound like?

Dave: It was pretty similar to us now, more so than Honeyglazed was.

Irina: It was more Bowie-ish, I think.

Dave: It was a cool band. It was more, uh…spastic. So we were playing around town, and then, right around the time we were gonna do something with Curve records, we broke up.

Noise: You broke up.

Irina: Me and Nicky broke up.

Dave: Yeh, and then we broke up.

Nicky: So then Tim was putting Honeyglazed together, and he wanted Dave to sing, so Dave was going in that direction, and I was like, "Hey man, I’ve been playing with this guy for 15 years!",so when their first drummer left, I joined up.

Dave: Honeyglazed were a cool band, and really fun to be with, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t the kind of band I could really hang my hat on for years.

Nicky: Because we had no guitars.

Dave: Yeh, and after the first record was done, we started to write new songs, but we had this one sound in that and, you know, and we couldn’t do much more with it. So I wanted to move on to something else.

Noise: So then everybody layed low for awhile.

Dave: No. Just me.

Nicky: I was real busy playing in this band Star Hustler. And then I joined Bloodshot. Dave was taking time off to write and play guitar.

Dave: When you’re in a band, you don’t have too much time to focus on yourself, so I needed a break to get better at some things, do some writing…but I didn’t mean to take that much time off…it was like a year later, and I decided that I needed to put together another band.

Noise: Jim, where did you come in?

Jim: Well, they were looking for a bass player, and I was like, let me sit in and hear your stuff, maybe I know somebody. And then, after a few beers, I said, ‘wait a minute, I am the guy’.

Noise: So, are any of the DJM songs from your old bands?

Dave: Not really. I pretty much wrote them right around the time we put the band together.

Noise: I think some of the songs are like, 10 minutes long.

Dave: Yeh, they’re pretty long. Of course, if I played them on an acoustic, they’d be three minutes long. But then these guys show up…

Jim: I like it though. In the Damn Personals, there’s a lot of stops and starts, but with this band I get some breathers. Enough time to sip my beer.

Dave: In Honeyglazed, every song was like 2 minutes, in and out, so it’s cool to have this new band where we have songs that are long enough to really feel them out.

Jim: And feel each other out. Musically, I mean…

Dave: When you play it that loose, you can really work the dynamics in the band.

Jim: One of the dangers is that you could become like one of those bands that play the Middle East downstairs, you know, "Gamelan Presents". I went to one for the first time, and this was this funk band playing, because I used to listen to a lot of bad music, and they were playing this jazz-funk exploration thing…

Irina: We’re not gonna end up like that.

Jim: Well, that’s the thing, we don’t stroke each other off, I think we’d know if it got excessive. But I don’t think it does, anyway. It’s just a chance to try new stuff. I play the tambourine in the Damn Personals, but in this band I got to try playing the tambourine on the bass. I did it to see how it sounded, not to look cool. Because obviously, it doesn’t look cool.

Dave: For years, indie rock bands have avoided that like the plague, getting too jammy, but I think it’s healthy. We’re too young to think about making hit singles for the radio.

Jim: It’s not really planned out, it just happens. We have no plan to go’ verse, chorus, long jam session’, we just like to play a song until it feels right. It’s not like we’re gonna take you to Mars, it’s more like we’re gonna take you…30 miles out of town.

Groin Religion...

Dave: The lyrics are pretty spiritual. When I put this band together, I wanted it to be…real, y’know? With a lot of soul. It came out sorta gospel, sorta Velvet-sy, sorta "exile on Main Street"…

Noise: I think ‘Motorcycle To Heaven’ might be the greatest song title ever.

Jim: Not to inflate Dave’s ego, but I think that’s what great lyrics do…they connect everything together, so that it’s not just a song, it has some life, some longevity after it’s over.

Dave: It seems like most lyrics these days have to be like, in jokes, ironic…like our generation doesn’t want to take itself seriously. And I’m tired of all that. I wanted something that was more...significant.

Noise: How’d it feel knowing there was already buzz on the band before you played? Was there more pressure?

Nicky: We definitely felt some of that, you know, what are the guys from Honeyglazed gonna do now?

Dave: It’s like the Stones trying out new songs. The fans get a little nostalgic. Although I think people dig that band more now than when we were together.

Jim: The Stones?

Dave: No, Honeyglazed.

Nicky: You can worry about all of that, but it comes down to having confidence. Me and Dave worked out the tunes, and we spent a year listening to and studying a lot of great music….people are always saying, when’s real rock and roll coming back?, and that’s why I’m happy to be playing in this band and in Bloodshot, because it’s true, honest rock music, and that’s what I’m all about, so I’m proud to be playing it.

Dave: That’s what I’ve learned since being here, coming from the south and being hit with this Boston music scene, where everybody was a lot more hard and cynical, just to have the confidence to do what you want. I kinda thought with this band that people wanted to see something freaky, so it’s cool that people dig it. You look at the music industry out there and you say,’ how the fuck is this going to work?’ And you don’t even want it to work, really, because there isn’t one cool band on the radio. But you want to be successful, and you say, ‘how are you gonna be successful when every band on the radio sucks?’ You either worry about that, or you don’t. I don’t… When we talk about being rock and roll, and we use terms like ‘retro’, so many bands that are retro are so lame, and cliched, and so tired, and that’s what we’re doing differently, we’ve got soul…

Irina: We’re groovy…

Dave: And we’re definitely not tame, you know, when we play, we’re still gonna spit it out, cut throats, kick it, but within that form, not in this silly, slick…

Irina: Vinyl pants.

Dave: Yeh, and make-up monster masks, contact lenses, silly shit.

Noise: So I’m guessing this summer you cats are going into the studio to record….

Dave: Some singles. Yeh, people want you to do a whole record, but they take forever to come out, and with a single, you could just…

James: Do it in an afternoon. And it’s cheaper.

Dave: Because vinyl’s coming back anyway.

Irina: No, it’s not.

Dave: Not with the regular people. It’s coming back with the DJs. And the DJs will spin the singles. Definitely.

You can bet on that action. Catch the ‘Cycle before they go supernova. For show dates, further pearls of extravagance, and a smattering of tasteful semi-nudes, check out their website: