On Sunday 10th June, Cargo hosted the Semi Final of the Emergenza battle of the bands; LoveGirls were there to show their support to Voodoo Hussy and what a night it turned out to be!

Formed in late 2006, members Shabby (Lead Vocals), Liz (Guitar) Lea (Drums) and Naj (Bass Guitar) let their competition know they were performing with the sole purpose of kicking some ass and no one can deny that Voodoo Hussy gave it to them with both barrels blazing.

Their enthusiasm showed how hungry they are for success and once these girls hit the stage their sheer presence ensured the high-energy audience was left panting for more. With vibrant and memorable songs that demanded to be enjoyed winning the Semi Finals is surely just the beginning for these girls!

LoveGirls: Congratulations on getting into the Finals! For those who haven’t yet heard your music how would you describe it?

Shabby: Well we call ourselves Cabaret Punk, its kind of difficult to explain. I mean a lot of bands say we’ve got our own sound but we didn’t really want to get into saying that although we do get a lot of industry people saying we have a niche of our own. Sex Pistols meets Moulin Rouge apparently which is pretty dam good! It’s kind of obnoxious and in your face but deep and meaningful at the same time.

Lea: It’s got the energy of a mad punk show but the songs are more towards the chart acceptance rather than just a noisy wall of sound.

LoveGirls: What did you think of the other bands you were competing against?

Naj: I really like IMMA the first band that was on.

Shabby: Great female lead, great voice, great presence they had a good set of songs. We also liked a band Sketchbeat. They were more on our wavelength of it being a show rather than just getting up and playing music. It has to be so much more than that, they had a great image, great songs and again great presence.

Imma and Sketchbeat were our top 2, we were surprised Imma didn’t go through to be honest; they really deserved to be at the finals.

Naj: Less competition for us I guess.

Shabby: Less competition for us but we don’t really play these kinds of games where we want to slaughter all the other good bands. If the finals are going to be this big competition then let’s have it. Let’s have a proper competition. 10 fan-fucking-tastic bands and if we win then it would mean so much more!

LoveGirls: What other bands went through?

Naj: Krunk came third, they went through with 60 points, Sketchbeat went through with 80 points and we went through with 140 points.

Shabby: I was looking earlier at some of the biggest scores from last year and were up there with some of the biggest scores in Europe and that’s at the semi finals. That’s pretty exciting for us.

LoveGirls: When you entered the competition did you think you would get this far?

Shabby: We didn’t know because this was the first real competition we were in. We did get to the semi finals of the Jack Daniels Battle of the Bands but we were disqualified for breaching health and safety. [laughter]

That was me, sliding down from the stage they had this big tin thing which I can only describe as a slide. So before we went on they said “I saw you testing that out please don’t slide down that”. First song I did a running leap all slid all the way down to the dance floor and then climbed back up it again so we were disqualified from that.

Also we had Global Battle of the Bands last Wednesday. They made a big thing of bringing all your fans so we thought right, let’s test out how far we can get in this competition if we don’t bring any fans with us, how far we can get on merit alone. And we got through! Basically we walked on and everyone just wanted to hear us. You could see it in their eyes, most of them had come to support one band but in the end loads of them ended up voting for us so we went through.

Lea: There was like a string of 15 - 17 year old girls and they just went crazy.

Naj: We only played 2 songs, 12 bands each with 2 songs each. So it was like that [clicks fingers] one band on, one band off.

Shabby: We literally had to hype ourselves up before we went on because usually you use the first 2 songs to kind of get into it. We were like “we need to be pumped up before we go on” so we went really crazy, I bounced my head of Lea's cymbal and I’ve now chipped my nose bone. Also I thought that when I jumped off the stage they would catch me but they were all little 15 year old girls and it was like the red sea parting! [laughter]

LoveGirls: When is the final and what is the prize for the winners of Emergenza?

Shabby: The final is coming up in about a month’s time, whoever wins that will basically have won the British Leg so they will be going to Germany to perform at the Tigtail festival in front of 50,000 people where Pink and Mika are headlining, so they will be semi supporting them.

Then there’s a competition to win the global Emergenza. If you win globally you get 10 days on a tour, production deals, equipment, money, it's pretty big prizes.

LoveGirls: So right now your competing to support Pink and Mika?

Naj: Yes, that’s what we want, that’s what we are aiming for.

Shabby: At the moment we'd really just like to support Pink, to say we had supported Pink after only 8 months of being together would be just insane!

Naj: Oi Pink! We'll rock it!

LoveGirls: Who in the band writes the songs?

Shabby: I write the lyrics and the vocal melodies, Liz writes the guitar parts and Lea and Naj add there own bits to it. The way it works is we get in the rehearsal room, either I'll sing a line to Liz that I've thought of or she'll play a rift and we just start jamming. I don’t sit down and write lyrics first we just jam playing the same thing over and over again and the lyrics just start coming out. The next time we come back into the studio we'll finalise the song. So it's very much a group effort, we all do our parts.

LoveGirls: Who are your musical inspirations?

Shabby: We all have very different musical influences I’m into the whole cabaret thing, I also really like American Skate Punk and Pop Punk. Liz the guitarist is into really heavy metal, things that I personally wouldn’t listen to. When it comes to us writing songs together though she keeps it cool and I keep it melodic. Lea loves Queen.

Lea: Yes they are the best band in the world. [laughter] I don’t mind some of the chart stuff, I think these days it seems there are less bands around to actually get into, I find you just like this song or that song you just don’t get into a band.

Naj: I personally don’t have a favourite band, like Lea said I like songs from different bands.

LoveGirls: How do you feel about the Astoria being turned into shops and offices?

Lea: Angry!

Shabby: Okay well before we even get started on that just so everybody knows there is a petition online that you can sign, a save the Astoria petition. Although these things sadly don’t normally work I want people to know how much the Astoria means. Its one of the last “sticky underground punk venues” left. The sound there is amazing. Everyone I love has played there, Nirvana played there.

To think it's going to be shut down without the new generation of bands ever having a chance to play there, it makes me fucking angry man. They are taking away all the old school venues leaving us with bollocks all really. So yes angry!

Naj: What I get upset about is because Soho is such a historic area you cant change the face of a building, you cant paint it pink you cant do this, you cant do that but yet its okay to shut down such a historical venue like the Astoria. Is just doesn’t make any sense you know?

Shabby: The Astoria means so many things to so many different people its part of our musical heritage in London. You have things like the national trust to keep open a garden but what about our music venues? What about the history that’s going to go with the Astoria?

LoveGirls: It’s been great to chat to you all, do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Naj: We also want to say thanks to everyone, we love your support. We’ve gotten so much support from the girls. We do want to hit the market as a Punk or Cabaret Punk band. Not a lesbian band.

Shabby: Basically we want to be a good band who happen to be lesbians, rather than a band that are famous for being lesbians. We will never and have never denied what we are, were playing London Pride, were happy to be what we are and we want to be an inspiration to young girls who are coming out. To let them know you don’t have to worry about it the world will accept you if you accept yourself kind of thing.

For more information on Voodoo Hussy including their upcoming gigs check out the Voodoo Hussy MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/voodoohussy.

Photography by Kerry Pringle