The Mailing List Magazine

Interview by Chris Glenn (Vocal/Guitar from L.A. band, Pothole)

March 1995

Don’t ever lend your Lava Diva tape out. You’ll never get it back. Lava Diva is mandatory listening.

Dynamic, Complex, and Powerful, they pull you into a world of weightlessness. They tease you with hypnotic melodies and percussion, then explode into monster riffs and intricate time changes. Very few bands have developed a chemistry this believable. Their recipe? Good songs, and a love for what they’re doing. Lava Diva is one of my favorite bands and if you haven’t seen them, you will soon. We talked at Johnny and Greg’s house on Wednesday.

Chris: Let’s start out with an easy one. Where are you guys from?

Everybody: California

Greg: We’re all basically native Californians.

Chris: So this is home base for you guys?

Greg: Yeah, until the big quake comes and breaks the tubes in our amps.

Chris: Lava Diva’s music is trippy and unpredictable…

Greg: I thought you were gong to say unprofessional (everyone laughs.)

Chris: I wanted to know who you’re biggest influences were?

Johnny: I really liked Led Zeppelin. Growing up I liked hardcore and rap. I like a lot of melodic stuff nowadays too.

Greg: I had every Kiss record…

Chris: So did I!!

Johnny: They’re bonding!!

Greg: Except I didn’t have the platinum one.

Dawn: Carpenters, Beach Boys or anything I could sing harmonies to.

Chris: You guys have played with so many different types of bands. Even when you play to hardcore crowds you seem to win them over.

Dawn: I like diversity. We’ve played with some really hard bands in the past. If they hadn’t come up to us and said, "‘We really like you guys’ I’d swear they’d kick our asses!!

Chris: You guys played with Rage Against the Machine at the Whisky a while back.

Johnny: Rage was one band I didn’t think we would be compatible with. Our styles are different. If I went to see a rap show I don’t know what I would think if I saw a band like us. I would probably be like ‘fuck this!!’

Dawn: That show was packed full of kids that were waiting to stage dive and it just wasn’t going to happen in our set. They were just staring. They were very quiet and attentive. I looked down and they all looked so soft, these tough guys.

Chris: That’s what happens when you have really good songs.

Chris: You recently had some equipment stolen. That sucks!

Johnny: Whaa!

Dawn: I went to unload my truck and decided to go around the corner and get a bite to eat for thirty minutes. When I got back my truck was gone with most of my equipment in it. Even now when I come home, I open the door real slowly and say ‘Please just let my stuff be here.’

Chris: How did you replace it?

Dawn: I’m still borrowing. Fortunately, my cabinet wasn’t in the truck.

Chris: On the bright side of things, you recently bought a van.

Johnny: Yeahh!

Chris: Any big tours on the horizon?

Johnny: Not really. We just want to sleep in it.

Dawn: Before we used to have to take two trucks. Too much gas money.

Johnny: It was lonely ‘cause you’d be the one person in the other car. The lonely driver.

Chris: You three get along so well. That’s a unique quality in a band. What’s the secret?

Johnny: In one word?

Everybody: Love.

Johnny: No, that’s not it.

Greg: Food

Johnny: No. It’s the “C” word. Communication.

Chris: Moving on. I noticed sometimes you guys play shows fairly early, like nine-thirty or ten o’clock and you still have a lot of people show up.

Dawn: There’s so many people who are supportive. People come out in the rain and they drove from like fucking Cypress. When they say things like, ‘You guys really impressed me’ I’m like, ‘You impressed me, you came out in the rain.’

Chris: I bet a lot of people ask you where you got your name?

Johnny: It means enema.

Dawn: (From the kitchen yells) No it does not!

Johnny: My friends’ grandmother is from Mexico and has all these traditional remedies for when you are sick. She would give her grand kids enemas to keep them well. They hated them of course and would run away screaming ‘lava-tiva, lava-tiva.’

Greg: We’ve asked people who speak Spanish and they’ve never heard of it. Lava does mean to wash.

Chris: That is correct for ten points. Speaking of enemas, how do you guys feel about the music industry in L.A.?

Dawn: I don’t think that it’s one big entity. You have to treat everyone as individuals.

Johnny: One negative aspect to me is that there are so many good bands, and I wonder why they’re not signed. It’s because everyone is afraid that their position is going to be at stake. To me that’s chicken-shit!

Dawn: (yells) That’s why corporate rock still sucks (Flashing the metal hand signs).