Bonde do Rolê started in 2005 as a bunch of rambunctious kids from a small town in Brazil messing with throbbing funk carioca favela beats. On their new album Tropicalbanal (hard copies are out this month on Diplo's Mad Decent label), Rodrigo Gorky, Pedro D'Eyrot, and Laura Taylor move in a different direction, maintaining a funk element only in the vocals and incorporating elements of 60s psychedelia and traditional Brazilian music. I caught up with the hysterical trio just before they headed to Austin for SXSW, and I even got them to goof off in a little game of Photo Booth improv, based on prompts we made up. So, who has the best smize? You tell us.
Sofia Cavallo: Let's start off with a meet-and-greet. Can each of you state your name and one fun fact about yourself?
Pedro D'Eyrot: Hi, my name's Pedro and I'm still obsessed with Carly Rae Jepsen.
Rodrigo Gorky: Hi, I'm Gorky and I used to practice fencing when I was a teenager.
Laura Taylor: I'm Laura Taylor. I grew up on an island in New Zealand with no electricity, and my after-school chore was to bury the the bucket of poo from the long drop/dunnie.
Sofia: I read that you held an ANTM-like reality show on MTV Brazil to choose Laura as your lead singer. What were some of the challenges you threw at the contestants?
Pedro: Well, since our live performances are really energetic, we had to evaluate the contestants both physically and mentally, so one of the challenges was to chase and catch a "pig" in a muddy pond. The pigs were Gorky and me dressed up in those cheap piggy costumes. Anyway, the costumes got drenched in mud and became really heavy, making it really hard for us to run away from the contestants.
Gorky: If the contestants were Daniel Son from Karate Kid, we were their Mr. Miyagi.
Laura: It was traumatic for me. I have to do therapy to be able to talk about it.
Sofia: Any advice for aspiring reality TV stars?
Pedro: I'd give a very interesting quote, freely translated by me, that very much applies to the era of reality television, "Why be annoying when, with just a little bit more effort, you can be unbearable?"
Sofia: You guys were quite a riot at the Mad Decent block parties this past summer in New York and LA. Tell me about your choice to hydrate onstage with a gallon of milk in Los Angeles. Do you always have dairy on-hand at your shows?
Pedro: Well, we have this dildo squirt gun, and for obvious reasons, milk was a great choice to shoot from it. But we grew up in South America with Catholic moms telling us to never waste food, so we decided to put the leftover milk to good use. Milk has been a moisturizer even before the Ancient Egypt, so we moisturized. And we in Bonde do Rolê care for our the quality of our fans' skin. The only downside is that milk creates a heavy layer on your eyes, and for a minute you see the world through a white filter. But then your corneas are silky smooth, so it's worth it.
Gorky: We are doing something different in our Brazilian shows––we're donating the milk and loading the gun with alcohol instead, trying to be good guys by making people drunker while also feeding needy children.
Laura: My dad wrote me an angry e-mail after seeing a YouTube video of me squirting water out of a penis at the New York show. I wrote back, "Dad it wasn't water, it was milk."
SC: What are your top five necessities when you're on the road (not cou
Sofia Cavallo: Let's start off with a meet-and-greet. Can each of you state your name and one fun fact about yourself?
Pedro D'Eyrot: Hi, my name's Pedro and I'm still obsessed with Carly Rae Jepsen.
Rodrigo Gorky: Hi, I'm Gorky and I used to practice fencing when I was a teenager.
Laura Taylor: I'm Laura Taylor. I grew up on an island in New Zealand with no electricity, and my after-school chore was to bury the the bucket of poo from the long drop/dunnie.
Sofia: I read that you held an ANTM-like reality show on MTV Brazil to choose Laura as your lead singer. What were some of the challenges you threw at the contestants?
Pedro: Well, since our live performances are really energetic, we had to evaluate the contestants both physically and mentally, so one of the challenges was to chase and catch a "pig" in a muddy pond. The pigs were Gorky and me dressed up in those cheap piggy costumes. Anyway, the costumes got drenched in mud and became really heavy, making it really hard for us to run away from the contestants.
Gorky: If the contestants were Daniel Son from Karate Kid, we were their Mr. Miyagi.
Laura: It was traumatic for me. I have to do therapy to be able to talk about it.
Sofia: Any advice for aspiring reality TV stars?
Pedro: I'd give a very interesting quote, freely translated by me, that very much applies to the era of reality television, "Why be annoying when, with just a little bit more effort, you can be unbearable?"
Sofia: You guys were quite a riot at the Mad Decent block parties this past summer in New York and LA. Tell me about your choice to hydrate onstage with a gallon of milk in Los Angeles. Do you always have dairy on-hand at your shows?
Pedro: Well, we have this dildo squirt gun, and for obvious reasons, milk was a great choice to shoot from it. But we grew up in South America with Catholic moms telling us to never waste food, so we decided to put the leftover milk to good use. Milk has been a moisturizer even before the Ancient Egypt, so we moisturized. And we in Bonde do Rolê care for our the quality of our fans' skin. The only downside is that milk creates a heavy layer on your eyes, and for a minute you see the world through a white filter. But then your corneas are silky smooth, so it's worth it.
Gorky: We are doing something different in our Brazilian shows––we're donating the milk and loading the gun with alcohol instead, trying to be good guys by making people drunker while also feeding needy children.
Laura: My dad wrote me an angry e-mail after seeing a YouTube video of me squirting water out of a penis at the New York show. I wrote back, "Dad it wasn't water, it was milk."
SC: What are your top five necessities when you're on the road (not cou