The Flytraps

The Flytraps will have you know that they have no feminist agenda. Oh, and their members can "out-drink any guy," says their bassist Kristin Cooper, on a warm Sunday afternoon in drummer Laura Kelsey's backyard.

The group members are prone to giggling and teasing each other in person. They've been together for about two years; two previous members left for school. "They weren't rock and roll types," Cooper says. The group members dressed up as dead Playboy bunnies last Halloween; a cheeky, playful approach is their style in concert. "It's all in good fun," says lead singer Marz Beeuwsaert. "The best part is when you get a positive reaction from the crowd. Seeing that people are into it and they are enjoying themselves. There's no other feeling like that."

Last month they played Cheetah's Hollywood, a gentleman's club that hosts bands frequently. A friend who'd played there previously invited them; they chose a dancer and performed on the runway at the same time. (The dancer they chose eventually tipped Beeuwsaert, who is only 17.). "It was awesome," Cooper says of the experience.

The mainly-male guests behaved respectfully to them during their short set. "They knew that we'd kick their ass if they tried anything," Beeuwsaert says.
But not everyone gives them that courtesy. Some ignore their talent and focus on their looks. For that reason, the band aims to show they are for real. "We're not a novelty. It's not really a gimmick," Cooper says. They've also become aware of potential managers looking to exploit them.

She is also wary of pay-to-play venues that exploit musicians. They cite the Redwood Bar as one of their favorite venues, mainly due to its management treating bands with integrity. "I guess, in a feminist sense, we're not gonna let some person, whether it be a man or a women, try to fucking take advantage of us," Cooper says.

"I guess, in a feminist way, we don't take people's shit."




- LA Weekly

photo history , flyers , + other stuff... - Tumblr

The Flytraps are an all-girl trashy surf-garage band who love hot tubs, the Mummies and Anton LaVey. The interview took place in Laura’s backyard which featured a large collection of disturbing statuary, including some cannibalistic french fries. More on that below. Other subjects covered include the perils of surfing, girl band geeks and Eurotrash pop. This interview by Janet Housden.

I was tragically unaware of your existence until yesterday, so I haven’t really done my homework. Just feel free to talk any shit you want—lies, slander, it’s all good. How long have you been together?
Kristin (bass/vocals): Probably almost a year?
Marz (rhythm guitar/vocals): I play rhythm guitar and I’m the lead singer. I’ve been in bands since I was 12, but it’s my second semi-serious band. And my favorite.
K: This is probably my most listenable band. I play bass, I sing sometimes … I was in a really shitty punk band before.
We’ve all been in shitty punk bands. The older you get, the more you fear Google. What were some of the bands that you’ve been in?
M: Mine was Marz and the Mess.
K: Mine was Dehumanized.
The trashy, surfy garage rock thing has been around for a long time, but somehow never gets old. What is it about it?
Laura (drums): The songs are usually short, it’s fun to listen to …
M: We’re not showing off. It might help that we do live in California and people do surf.
I think a lot of people in surf bands didn’t really surf.
M: The Beach Boys didn’t even surf! One of them drowned! How fucking ironic is that?!
It’s even more ironic than that—the one that drowned was the only one that surfed! So explain these creepy mannequins.
L: We moved in here almost two months ago, and when we came to look at this house it was the backyard that really sold me. It was just … I feel like we walked into somebody else’s dream. The landlord asked me if I wanted her to take all the statues away and I was like, ‘Please leave them.’ There’s a giant John Wayne in the corner, but my two favorite statues are the hot dog that’s pouring ketchup on itself, and this thing of french fries that’s eating itself, like, with crazy bug eyes. And I like to look directly into the woman right here, the butler woman’s eyes. She has the creepiest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.
Those are pretty demented—so there’s a butler and a maid and half of a slaughtered pig hanging upside down?
M: If you turn it around you can see its guts.
And there’s also a giant palm tree lamp and a Marilyn Monroe.
L: And there’s a little Elvis …
K: His guitar is backwards.
Dyslexic Elvis!
L: Everything you see, it came with the house. The first time we had a party here, we had a hot tub party, and there was a boom box already out here, and we turned the radio on and it immediately started playing the Eagles. It was perfect! We didn’t even change the station all night.
What kind of people owned this house?
M: People with John Wayne statues who liked to party!
L: How could you live here and not party? Look at this place! We had that one party and then the landlord emptied the hot tub the next day and told us we couldn’t use it anymore. … It was kind of a bummer, but we’re just gonna refill it.
Let the dog swim in it. Landlord revenge is an art. You have to be subtle and make it look like an accident.
L: She sold us on the hot tub, like, ‘This place has a hot tub! Don’t forget about the hot tub!’ Then we use it once … Apparently there was a cigarette butt in it. Like one cigarette butt. She told us that it broke the hot tub.
At least you got to have one California hot tub party.
L: That party was pretty epic.
Being an all-girl band, do you ever get, like, douchebag promoters going, ‘We’re gonna have all-girl night!’ and they try to lump you in with a bunch of bands you have nothing in common with?
Everyone: Oh yeah.
K: We got asked to play at a lesbian club at Que Sera once.
M: Everyone assumes we’re like, feminists. That’s cool, but they just come at us like ‘Sooooo … what do you think about feminist rights?’ Just because we’re all girls.
Yeah—I still see bands, mostly lame ones, trying to pull the whole ‘we’re blazing new trails for women in rock ‘n’ roll’ routine. They’ve been saying that for 40 years!
K: Yeah, I hate it. It’s been fucking done.
M: I can’t stand it.
Then why did you want to be all girls?
L: It just sort of happened like that.
K: We just wanna play music. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable around guys, but you can’t really have the same connection.
K: We can just go to practice and not give a fuck about anything. We do have that feminine bonding or whatever.
Back in the day, we used to have these guys called GBGs—Girl Band Geeks—and they were just like the creepiest dudes that would follow female musicians around.
K: That shit still happens!
M: It’s flattering, but we definitely know where you’re coming from with this question.
The hardcore GBGs were kind of scary. Some of them, you just knew they had severed ears - L.A. Record

The Flytraps have a contingency plan for just about anything, it seems. If someone were to end up in an insane asylum, for instance, the band would have no problem rehearsing there. "It'd be just like band practice, but we couldn't get out," says singer/guitarist Marz. Not that that's a possibility, but if you've heard the tapes, you'll understand. Especially if you hear the songs on which they scream.
When they started a year and a half ago, they had more cops coming to see them than actual garage- and rock & roll-lovers, thanks to constant practice in bassist Kristin Cooper's San Clemente garage. The neighbors thought they were great, says Marz—"They were our first fans!" The police didn't like them, however, and gave them the usual "If I ever catch you again!" warning. Luckily, they never saw the same officer twice, not even when the Flytraps practiced every day to get ready for their first show at Laguna's Trash Pretty, which they'd booked before even becoming a band.
"The Flytraps were already an idea," says Marz. "Kristin saw me playing, and over coffee and cigarettes, she was like, 'Wanna start an all-girl band?' And I was all about that."

"I knew I wanted it [to be] like . . . old-school garage rock," Cooper says. But the only band all the future Flytraps ended up truly having in common were, of course, the Cramps. (To this day, Cooper regrets not securing a ride to the Cramps' last local show before Lux Interior died—too young to drive, she was stuck at home.) And there's plenty of inspiration evident in the Flytraps even now, from lead guitarist Elizabeth Boyd's note-by-savage-note guitar leads to Cooper's often-deployed horror-movie scream, used to great effect on songs such as "Victim" and "I Wanna Party." ("You just breathe in and let it out and not care how fucked-up your face looks," Cooper explains. "Every picture from every show has me making some weird, distorted face, with my nostrils all flared and my mouth open and my eyes all squinty and red!")
"What's NOT to love about the Cramps?" asks Marz. "They were fucking WEIRD—it's amazing."

Cooper adds, "They were the embodiment of primitive rock & roll."

After a lineup change that placed Boyd and Laura Kelsey on lead and drums, respectively, the fresh Flytraps put out 25 copies of a cassette—there would have been more, but they got too lazy, explains Cooper—and presented to the world a set of songs that was definitely primitive, the kind of thing Bomp! magazine called "hardcore punk" in 1974. The band used both terms with as much ferocity as they could handle; songs such as "Get Outta Town" and "The Hunter" are the same kind of blown-apart rock & roll the most committed of weirdos were making in the mid-'60s after they'd seen the Beatles on TV and thought, "Really?"
The legendary Norton Records specializes in compilations full of this stuff, issued under titles such as She Was So Bad! And I've Had Enough. Within, you will find horror-movie screams and guitars processed through barrels of swamp water by people who were primitive and damn proud of it. It's the same with the Flytraps: "Raw," said one showgoer last time they played Detroit Bar. Admiringly, we should add.

Naturally, this needs to be on vinyl, so it can hang out between 45s by the Pleasure Seekers and the Gories and the Pandoras and the Rip-Offs. That's coming up soon, thanks to a fruitful Flytraps relationship with the people at LA's Redwood Bar and Grill, noted downtown home of rock & roll admired for its rawness. (The Flytraps will be playing with the Blasters there soon, by the way.) Cooper says the band have enough songs for a few future 45s, with Marz adding there are two more as yet unrecorded and unassigned.

Once they've got vinyl, they hope to fund a tour in something better than Kelsey's battle-damaged sedan, which has only one working window and delivered them after five hours driving on the 5 in summer to a Bay Area show feeling as though they were boiled lobsters. (They came up with a plan to fix that later, too—hitting up Facebook friends and fans for a van to borrow.)
But that kind of thing dissolves when they're playing, says Marz; that's when being the Flytraps is easy. "So fucking easy!"

"If I could choose to hang with anyone," says Cooper, "it'd be the girls in my band."
"Yeah," says Marz. "They're the only friends I have!"






- OC Weekly