As I watched Sun Arise play on Thursday night when they were supposed to be opening for the Black Lips, I had already accepted failure. I leaned over to Jody, our photographer for the story, and told her in resignation, "I don't think is going to happen." We had already arrived and left from our scheduled 6:30 interview/shoot time expecting to return at 8:00 and carry out the interview then when the boys had finally cleared customs. Just before 8:00, however, I had called their tour manager Rob to make sure we were still on, only to find out that he, along with bassist Jared, hadn't been allowed through the border. "The rest of the guys are on their way, though. Do you have Joe's (Bradley, drummer) cell number? Call him."

On the phone to Joe things become more muddled. My introductory "How's it going, man?" is met with "Not good. Can whatever business I have with you wait? My phone's about to die." From what I can gather in the next ten seconds, they are trying to get on their way, but they're not going to be at venue for at least an hour, probably longer (if they show). I tell him I'm just going to be there around 9:00 and hopefully see him then. I call Jody and tell her to hold up, that I'll call her when I'm on my way down. Off the phone I throw on a coat and head to the beer store. This thing is giving me an edge that needs taking off.

I sit tight for an hour or so before calling Jody, getting back on my bike, and heading back down to Richard's. Outside 25 or 30 people are milling around, no one is being allowed in, and the bouncer shakes his head twice when I ask firstly if the band has shown up and secondly if they are going to show up. It seems like whatever debacle occurred down at the Peace Arch has fucked things up enough that even the seemingly unflappable Lips have had enough. At some point, though, the bouncers unhook the rope and start letting people inside and I, with the inkling that the rest of my beers have already been killed off by my friends back at the house, hope for the best and head in.

Sun Arise start playing, but people are still unsure of whether or not the Lips are actually going to show up. It dawns on me here that even if they do get in, it's already almost 10:00 and it seems hard to fathom that a band, having just spent six or more hours to make a three hour trip and arriving less than an hour before their slotted show time, will be interested in doing an interview for a no doubt unheard of publication instead of getting prepared to play a sold-out show with no bassist. Almost immediately after I tell Jody that I think we're busted, the Black Lips roll in and past us to the back room.

What to do. That last phone call to Joe went less than encouragingly, and I don't feel like just popping into the back holding onto a smile and a rolling tape recorder only to get asked to leave. I mean, I know this is the Black Lips and not Billy fucking Corgan, but shit happens. Holding out a little hope, I call Joe to feel out the possibilities: "Sorry about earlier man. Everything was all fucked up. Can you give us ten minutes?" What? It's on?

So ten minutes later it's into the back room, a scene of minor chaos, and an interview that, all things considered, goes better than I could have possibly conceived of. 60 minutes before going on stage to play the finest and funnest show I've seen in Vancouver in pretty much forever, Cole Alexander, Ian St. Pe, and Joe Bradley (when he wasn't giving bass lessons) took the time to break down for me the Black Lips Rough Guide to border hopping, Mid-East anti-politics, and when not to destroy a venue.

CU - "So, Canada..."

Cole - "We love it here, it's just, the border's hard."

Joe - "I just don't understand it. We can get into any other country in the world - I mean, except for Cuba, but...Israel was easier to get into than Canada."

Cole - "We can get into Cuba. We just go there. We have more trouble getting back, though."

CU - "Do they dig extra hard into you for being in a band? Like, when you're coming across, do you tell them you're going to go play a show?"

Cole - "Well, we used to not get work permits, but we got busted so many times coming in that we were like, 'Ok, let's get work permits' for the last few trips. And that was all good except for Jared has some DUI where it was like, he wouldn't get let in but he would always sneak in. That's been working out pretty well lately, but this time they just cracked him. Our plan is always to just get a mediator to drive him across, and the one guy we had here was like a teacher, so it was like, 'Oh, a Canadian teacher, let's go.' And then this time they caught them lying and threatened to arrest them, And then they shipped off our tour manager...I dunno if you want me to repeat it for that (he points at the tape recorder and I assure him it'll pick it up). Our tour manager got arrested when he was 17 for, like, burglary, but it wasn't [burglary].

"And then me, I don't know why they let me in, but they said that - like, yeah, I was caught shoplifting, but they said that they'd let me in, just next time I've gotta get papers. I actually have a bunch of things, but I've always got lucky and gotten expunged. One time I plead Youth Defender, so it was off my record. One time I got busted for drugs, but they just gave me a ticket and said I had to go to court. I had like mushrooms and Xanax and I just went to court but I didn't go to jail so I was like, 'Yeah, but I didn't get arrested.' And the third thing was stealing, and that's what they were pulling up, all of a sudden. It usually says I have no record, but they pulled it up somehow, saying I had stolen stuff. So then I was busted for lying and now I have to get all this paperwork done for next time. I don't know why they let me in."

CU - "So what are you going to do tonight? Just play as three?"

Cole - "Yeah, I think we're just going to play as a three piece, and maybe teach kids some bass lines. Ian's teaching some kids some bass lines right now, from Vancouver."

(A rouge-lipped blond wanders in and starts asking questions. I wait. Joe reenters the room.)

CU - So what was it like playing (The Late Show With) Conan O'Brien?

Cole - "It was cool. He signed Jared's laptop. He was really nice. He said when a lot of the bands play he doesn't like 'em, but he liked us..."

Joe - "He was like, 'We get a lot of poseurs up here'..."

Cole - "Yeah, 'We get a lot of poseurs on this stage, but you guys are the real deal' and I was like 'Hell yeah.' And I think he really did like us, because he came over and talked to us and stuff, and I've heard from other bands that he didn't even say hello to them. Like, he seemed to genuinely like us, which made me happy. So I think we'll get to go back and play there again."

(At this point Ian returns to the already cramped room with the local kid Clint he's been teaching the bass lines, and the guys give the kid a mellow grilling on what songs he can play. "I know most of the songs, I'm not that amateur, hopefully" Clint says in defense. "Nerd," someone yells at him. General hubbub follows.)

CU - "It's cool you guys still came up, rather than saying 'Fuck it' and going back to Seattle, because this is your only Canadian show on this tour, right?"

Joe - "Yeah. Sorry, I'm stressing right now...we gotta make sure our bass player learns the songs."

(With that Joe grabs a piece of sushi and focuses his attention back on Clint. Ian sidles over.)

CU - "What was it like playing Israel and Palestine?"

Ian - "All I have to do is plug the VBS.tv. Have you watched those? It's a five part series..."

CU - "A bit of it."

Ian - "Well you tell those people to watch that. But, I mean, it was crazy though. It was just something that I thought I would never ever do, you know? Christianity runs rampant everywhere, especially America, and you always hear about the Dead Sea, Sea Of Galilee, Jerusalem, Bethlehem...we got to go to all those places. And just hearing about all these places growing up, it was wild to check 'em out. As far as what did the people think? Like, what was the interaction between us and the crowds? They loved it. They loved it. Music is such an international thing - as shitty as that sounds, it's true though."

CU - "But did you have any particular reason to go play there? Were you like, 'We need to do this'?"

Ian - "Well, we pretty much want to play anywhere and everywhere that we can. And when we got asked to do it - a guy asked us to do it so that's all we needed. All we need is somebody to be like 'Hey, do you want to do this?' and if it sounds fun, we'll do it. You can't just say like 'Hey, do you want to play a house party?' 'cause we've done that a thousand times. That doesn't mean we won't do it, but if you say 'Do you want to go play Palestine, and the West Bank, and Jerusalem?' we're pretty much going to be like 'OK, let's try that. We haven't done that yet.'"

CU - "So it's not like any broad political statement, it's just like..."

Ian - "No, no. None. It was just to do it, that's what it came down to. Just have a good time and do it."

(As Joe is teaching Clint songs off to one side, Ian takes a minute to talk things over with Cole.)

Ian - "I'm going to see if I can get a piece of paper write 'em all down."

Cole - "All the chords to the songs?"

Ian - "No, all the songs he knows."

Cole - "What does he know?"

Ian - "A lot."

(I'm caught up in the moment at this point, the idea of being backstage with one of the planet's most exciting bands as the drummer sings and strums an unplugged electric guitar in a frantic effort to teach a local kid more or less pulled from the crowd how to play a setlist's worth of songs 40 minutes before the show. A video camera is rolling, Jody is taking photos, beers, smokes, and sushi are being sucked back, Joe's voice chanting "Buried Alive" is rising above the chatter of the seven other people in the tiny room, and when Ian bounces back smiling and asks "What's another question?" I've pretty much lost my handle on any idea of what I'm supposed to be doing. I try and pull my shit together.)

CU - "I wanted to ask you what it's like being able to go and do something like Conan, or, I saw you on MTV Canada the other week..."

Cole - "Oh that was fun."

CU - "Yeah, but that's like a whole different, you know, nationally or internationally broadcast thing, with all of it's sort of restrictions and procedures to go through; what's it like doing that for you guys who are sort of notoriously, fucking, loose?"

Cole - "Yeah...yeah, that's a good question, I think we kind of go with the flow, a little bit. We could've just like, fucked the whole shit up, like, destroyed their stage, but I kinda figure we'll get our foot in the door first, and then people will start to trust us. And then we can start fucking TV sets up like the Who did and stuff."

Ian - "You pretty much don't shit where you eat. If a club treats us like shit, we're gonna fuck it up."

Cole - "That's usually what we do. If people, like, treat us wrong."

Ian - "Yeah, if something goes wrong, we're gonna let them know it."

CU - "Yeah, because there was a part in the MTV Canada interview where Damien from Fucked Up was like 'We caused $2000 worth of damage, what are you guys gonna do?"

Ian - "Right, and I didn't want to tell him - I love Damien, I love Fucked Up, but, we don't just do it to do it. We do it - two reasons: If we're provoked by the club; or if the crowd just goes so fucking insane we lose our minds. So in a situation where we did the MTV Canada thing, they were really nice to us, so we're not going to fuck it up for that reason. And the studio audience is so small, so...you know what I mean? We're not puppets. We're not just going to do it to do it. So, because it was so small, the interaction wasn't even really there."

(Ian stops to quietly scream and flash his fronts for Jody's camera. "I always have to make it open so people know I have bottoms, too," he says.)

CU - "That's what I've kind of gathered, just from reading interviews, is that everyone's still trying to tag you as the, whatever, breaking bottles and cutting yourselves band..."

(Ian interrupts to show me one of his hands, which looked like it had been torn into and then stitched up by a medium-sized fox.)

Ian - "That's the worst one right there. That was in Belgium. I was high on Absinthe and the crowd was mental and I just smashed a bottle. It looked real good though."

(An interlude. Ian goes to talk to Clint, returns.)

Ian - "Any more?"

CU - "Yeah, last one. What do you think of "Bad Kids" as the new "My Generation"?"

Ian - "OK...what do I think about that? Well, it's just truthful, you know? I did finish high school, but half the band didn't finish high school. We were just bad kids growing up."

CU - "Because I hear that song, and I hear all this stuff about you guys, but I'm just like, 'that's me and my friends,' you know?"

Ian - "I think that's one of the reasons our songs translate so well to people, is just that, they're real. We're not trying to be childish, we're just trying to be real, you know? We're not trying to be pretentious, at all. It's just good songs. "Working," you know, the song "Working" is about working, "Fairy Stories" is about dreams, "Not A Problem" is about shit happens, you know? It's a problem to someone but it's not a problem to me."

Amen.

<p>By Chad Buchholz</p> <p>Photos by <a href="http://www.jodyrogac.com">Jody Rogac</a></p>