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Les Georges Leningrad

Les Georges Leningrad

By Sarah Cordingley

Wednesday November 15, 2006

Half cat, half bat, all Canadian Tire dollars

An interview with Les Georges’ Pony P. is like a maple syrup-filled snowball in the ear: very sweet, very French-Canadian, and kind of weird. LGL come from a magical city where rent is cheap and people like your art. Pony says that Montreal is “really imbreeded” and that everyone is in ten bands. She also says that drummer Bobo Boutin lives in a bachelor that smells like dirty cock, and guitar player Mingo L’Indien has a turtle scale cat. That one took me a while.

ONLY: Where do Les Georges Leningrad come from?

Pony P: They were born in a… They’ve existed for six years, but it was a bit accidental. Like finding a baby that was in a basket on a river. His name was George. It was written on a little piece of paper. And we found him in Leningrad, so we called him George Leningrad. So now the kid is about seven years old. The band is this idea. We don’t know where he comes from. It was really accidental; the circumstances of why we were making music and how we met were really strange. That was the idea that made us do this band.

ONLY: How did you meet?

PP: Bobo and Mingo were what we call “beer brawlers,” so they were drinking a lot of beer often. They met for the first time and there was me, Pony, at the bar. They were beating each other up because both of them wanted to get me. But at the very end I ended up with the two boys and we’ve lived for six years together.

ONLY: Do they still fight over you?

PP: Oh, yeah! Because they are little boys and they want attention. So they do attention fights over who is getting more love.

ONLY: Do you fight with them?

PP: Yeah, I can be sometimes a bit of a bitch–it’s the same word in French. Sometimes I’m a little bit too much of a princess, so they beat me up a little bit so I stay quiet for a few hours.

ONLY: Do you have to take care of them? Are you the mother?

PP: Oh, yeah! I’m like the mother and the hooker. There’s a bit of sensuality and a bit of love. In Quebec it’s very matriarchal; the woman leads the couple. So in my band I’m the president. I need to take care of both. But they offer me unconditional protection.

ONLY: What kind of music do you play?

PP: We play what we call “petrochemical rock.” Because it’s hard to put things in a box, everybody wants to put a label. Like, what would we be? Rock-electro-disco-punk-rock… It would have no end. So we invented petrochemical because there’s a dangerous twist to it. It sounds like not safe–it could just explode at any time. And rock is just rock. It’s classic. Whatever kind of rock you do, it rocks.

ONLY: Is there a lot of money in petrochemical rock?

PP: [Laughs] Uh…There’s Canadian Tire Dollars. It’s more like fake money. But who knows? When there’s no more oil they’ll go to the Petrochemical George Oil. We can talk to George a little bit–the southern George–and maybe we can do some business.

ONLY: Do you take any medication?

PP: No, we are very healthy.

ONLY: You don’t have any sleep disorders or STDs?

PP: Oh, no. We don’t sleep with everybody on tour. We are punk rock. We’re pretty normal. We’re like beavers.

ONLY: You’re normal?

PP: What is normal? What is being a grown-up?

ONLY: I don’t know.

Les Georges Leningrad play at the Media Club on Nov 29,2006