Interview: Urinary Tract Infection

U.T.I. is an acronym for URINARY TRACT INFECTION. U.T.I. are new hardcore band from Mississauga, which is a city that has grown out of the west end of Toronto. The have had a demo out for over a year and have been playing out quite a bit. They came in on EXD on Sunday June 22nd, 2008. Interview by Stephe and the proofreading was done by Leah.


Introduce yourselves and tell us what you do in the band ?
Leah (L): I’m Leah and I do the vocals. Screaming and whatnot.
Chad (C): I’m Chad and I hit the guitar and the pipe.
Jeff (J): I’m Jeff. I play bass.
Conrad (Cn): I’m Conrad and I drum.
How long has the band been together for ?
L: We recorded a song about two years ago, “Stavrogin”. A slower version of it, but really actively we have only been together for a little over a year.
And how did the band form ?
L: It is kind of a funny story. I’ve always been into punk and at the time I was living in the rehearsal factory on Geary. My husband Chad, the guitarist is a musician, which I am not. At the time we lived in a jam space where we could jam from noon until midnight and since I had to listen to everybody in the building making noise, I decided that I wouldn’t mind doing the same thing. So we got Conrad who lived downstairs from us and we wrote this one tune “Stavrogin”. Jammed a little bit and screamed a little bit. So that is basically how it started.
C: Yeah it came together real slowly. We had probably been jamming for almost a year just working on material and only took it so seriously. A lot of it was how Leah sounded. The kind of sound that came out of her, how could you not want to write something to the way she sang. We found Conrad dwelling in the basement of the Rehearsal factory one day and said ‘do you want to come up and play some loud drums with us?’
Cn: I live under the stairs.
L: Literally. He is the drummer that lives under the stairs. And Jeff is a friend of Chad’s from University. He was playing in an Elvis cover band but he was playing guitar.
That is crazy.
L: We are a weird kind of mix here. We sort of enlisted him.
It is such a cliché in some ways. Not for punk bands, but it is a b genre cliché.
C: There is still a big call for the Elvis in the Niagara Region.
J: Elvis is on tour duty in Switzerland right now. We are on hiatus.
L: He’s serious.
J: He’ll be back in two years.
Have you seen the movie “Bubba Ho-Tep”?
L: That’s a great movie.
What was the idea behind the URINARY TRACT INFECTION when you first started to form ? Was there a certain style you were trying to go for ?
L: Yeah. To be honest I have always liked the messier, louder punk music, a little disorganized kind of sounding, like CUT THE SHIT and really early NEGATIVE APPROACH kind of bands. But I have to be honest that when I first started singing I think I was really trying to imitate singers that I liked but I was losing my voice a lot. I was trying to sound like Damian from FUCKED UP or Justin from MIND ERASER and stuff like that because I love that really low stuff. And I do have a really low voice for a girl, but I kept losing my voice. So eventually I just sort of found a sound that I could make without totally turning my throat into hamburger.
Do you listen to the ACCUSED at all ?
L: Oh yeah for sure.
Because that’s who you remind me of more. You remind me of Blaine Cook a little bit more with that sort of .… I don’t know how else to describe other than the Tasmanian devil. You know the character where it sounds very crazy. Your vocals remind me a lot of Blaine’s.
L: I definitely take that as a compliment. That’s a great band.
That’s good because I mean it as that. But were they an influence at all ?
L: I wouldn’t say early on. Our writing process is a little bit funny because I have no musical talents, so I end up writing some ideas for lyrics and then I go to the band and they try to make it work. Our songs happen one of two ways: Either I write the lyrics first and they put something together, that generally tends to be our slower more metal sounding tunes because I am verbose, or there are the songs that these guys write first that are a little faster and I have to shut up and just pick one or two words.
Pair it down. Get to the point.
L: that works a little bit better because I can be overly verbose.
Okay that is not a bad thing. You have something to say which is not always happening these days. So I think that is good. We have mentioned some of the early things on the band. Some of the things I saw on your myspace was ACID REFLUX, 9 SHOCKS TERROR, CAREER SUICIDE, POISON IDEA, FUCKED UP. If you had to limit your record collection to five releases as a band to five punk releases what would they be ? So you kind of got to come together on this one.
C: I would say that CUT THE SHIT takes a real big infl uence at least as far as my guitar playing goes. And same with 9 SHOCKS TERROR in terms of approach towards songs. So if I could take two out of those five which I just did, suckers, I would pick those two.
L: Well I have to say FUCKED UP has to be one of them because even though I have been in various punk scenes since I was fourteen or fifteen, that is a band that got me interested in the Toronto scene specifically after I moved here. They’re not really a sound influence, but “Hidden World” would be one of my desert island albums.
Cn: BLACK FLAG “Everything Goes Black”. Great, great album.
C: And as a fifth one I would have to pick the Elvis band because we basically listen to that and try and do everything that that band doesn’t do. If they do it, we know we shouldn’t do it. So everything is retroactive to Elvis. That is really it.
That works.
C: It’s a hard question to limit to five.
L: Yeah, we didn’t mention NEGATIVE APPROACH, but that is definitely a stylistic influence … I love the sound of that band and I think I try to push these guys to do that messier sort of looser kind of style.
I’m also glad that you mentioned BLACK FLAG because that song Mr. McGloob reminds me of BLACK FLAG. I think there is another song in there that I listened to that reminds me a bit more of MINUTEMEN. There is some guitar work.
C: That goes back to the days of high school when I was into geeky guitar stuff and nothing else. At the time I was growing up in Mississauga and basically there was only one scene when growing up in the suburbs. There was a scene and only so much of it was hardcore, but it was the only place that you could play so there was a real mix of styles. There were a few good bands that came out of it. A lot of them had the later Ian MacKaye influence on them. A lot of FUGAZI influence. Bands like BLAKE who were great. Anything Jim McIntyre would touch was fantastic, SHOTMAKER who came out of Ottawa, which Leah was into.
L: And DHAMER. I was definitely into DHAMER.
C: I didn’t personally like the GRADE scene too much and I didn’t like NEW DAY RISING so much or the MONTGOMERY 21 where that was infl uenced by it.
That was almost like an Oakville sound.
C: Yeah. Good point.
Because a lot of those bands played the Oakville Y and inspired each other to come up with that scream-o kind of sound.
C: Yeah and that only led to some really bad music today.
In some ways but I wouldn’t completely dismiss it. I agree with you in some ways but I also think that they inspired that crossover scene that took hold in Germany with bands like ACME and UNION OF URANUS picked up on that.
L: I was just going to say that. UNION OF URANUS were great.
C: As a guitar player it just wasn’t interesting enough for me. I could listen to the MINUTEMEN and see a guy as big as me and as interesting a guitar player as where I wanted to get to. That guitar just sounds offensive and so that is where I really wanted the guitar sound to come from. So sure enough every now and then that geek-dom comes through.
Have you seen “Econo Jam” ? It is a DVD on the MINUTEMEN.
C: No.
I recommend it. Leah do you write most of the lyrics ?
L: I do.
What are some of the things you sing about?
L: I definitely think feminism comes up a lot in the lyrics. I guess that is not really intentional, I mean I am a radical feminist, that is just who I am. So I think that comes up, but I don’t sit down intentionally to write a feminist song. “Limp Generation,” came out of a really lame party I went to with a buddy of ours, Dean. It was one of these parties where every time you turned around you were getting hit on by someone who was incredibly drunk, so I sort of made a joke about how when a dude is that drunk and he is hitting on you, if you were interested it’s not like he could ‘get it up’. So that was just a bit of a joke. But then, I started thinking of that situation as an analogy about our present-day lack of activism. I am frustrated that we’re from a generation that is really well educated, generally speaking, and fairly aware, but there are not many activists. It feels like we would rather pontificate, read Chomsky and have interesting conversations, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but we’d rather do that versus actually go out and do something. So that is where that came out of. We can’t “get it up” so to speak. But definitely feminism is a big part of it. But in a song like “Cunt,” for example, a lot of people just see the emphasis on the word. But, in fact the word cunt has a more neutral meaning to which I associate with more than vagina which comes from the meaning ‘a sheath for a sword’. So technically speaking a vagina does not exist without a dick, so I’d rather have a cunt.
C: I’d rather have a cunt over a vagina.
L: As a band we sat down and made that decision (laughter). I think sometimes people do misinterpret the lyrics. I have definitely had people come up and wonder if it is antimale. But the song “Cunt” is really saying that people should have the right to make a decision on behalf of their own body. I am vehemently pro-choice and really believe that government or politics shouldn’t affect your dominion over your actual body. It could just as easily have been a song that says “I don’t care what you say, what you think either way, you don’t have a dick” because if you have a dick you shouldn’t be taking someone’s cunt for word. I guess it goes both ways, but generally speaking, cunt policy makers are dick-owners.
The song “Bull Tits” ?
L: “Bull Tits” is just about the idea of being useless and being frustrated with your life. The expression “Useless as Tits on a Bull” is where the idea comes from. It’s about a lot of people my age. We’re told to go and get an education and that educated people have jobs. I have a graduate degree and I still don’t do anything useful. My life didn’t turn out at all the way I expected, I’m completely useless.
I wanted to ask you about … we were talking earlier about something that happened to you at a HOMOSTUPIDS show. Someone accused you of perpetuating a female stereotype in hardcore. Does that happen often to you ?
L: I defi nitely get some odd comments. It’s funny because one of the compliments that people usually give me is ‘Hey I really like your vocals. I hate bands that are lead by chicks because it is so screechy and annoying so it is cool that you sound like a guy. I love that you can’t tell if it is a guy or a girl.’ It kind of makes me laugh because how do you sound like a girl? So, at the HOMOSTUPIDS show we played, this guy came up to me and in the same vein said ‘Don’t you think that you are perpetuating the stereotype that only men can do hardcore by trying to sound like a man?’ which is really funny because it is like this binary thing. Either you sound like a man or …
It is either one or the other….
L: Yeah..and nothing in between. I mean you hear me sing with the voice that I’ve got and maybe that, in and of itself, should challenge the idea that all women are going to sound a certain way.
Cn: I play drums like a girl.
C: Yeah a really hot Latina. I have always found that Conrad.
Cn: That’s how I picture myself.
L: Being a female fronted band you do get some weirdness. I know that when we play basement shows or shows where I am on the same level with the audience they don’t want to get anywhere near me. I don’t know if it’s that they’re afraid of hurting me because I’m a girl or there might be a size thing too, I am pretty small. But I get in pits all the time, I broke my jaw in a FUCKED UP pit. I am not afraid of them but there is definitely that sort of drift away from the singer.
So it’s kind of weird.
L: Yeah it is kind of weird.
C: Well it is also weird because you don’t see a painting and say it looks like they paint like a man. It doesn’t apply. And she has been doing this for the last few years singing whatever she thinks sounds good in the end and that’s the way it turns out. Most of the albums she listens to are guys singing but they don’t all sound the same, the reality is that it is not gender based.
L: It is cool though that there are some female fronted bands that are coming out of Toronto. Like DISGUSTING BODY, I am such a huge fan of Gena’s voice. I love it. We have their tape and I have seen them live and it has a completely different style. She has a different speaking voice so, you know, she obviously sounds different when she sings.
C: SHIT REIGN are awesome too, she is a great singer too.
L: Yeah, so there is a few of us out there. There is an insurgence of women grabbing the mic too and figuring ‘I go to shows, I love the sound of this music, I might as well just jump in there’.
Cn: I think the important thing is that Leah’s voice really matches the energy. It is a good fit.
Yeah I don’t fi nd that it stands out. You are not an anomaly. You do have a sound and it all works.
L: Sometimes I am a bit loud mind you.
That’s okay. Singers are supposed to be loud especially in punk.
Cn: Loud is good.
It is about the message. You do a song with a German title. What is the song about ?
L: “Schadenfreude”
And why did you do a song in German ?
J: We should do a song in German.
L: We should do a song in German, if I could speak German I would. I am a bit of a language geek and I love that in other languages there are these words that describe very specifi c terms that don’t exist in the English language. This particular song was written about people who take pleasure in other people’s misfortunes. You see a lot of that nowadays. The reason why reality TV is so popular is because people like to watch people screw up and make an ass of themselves.
It probably makes them feel better about themselves.
L: That’s it.
Well misery loves company.
L: And I think society is changing because of it too. Like, I am a clutz so stupid things happen to me, I will trip and fall often and I have noticed that things have changed from people going ‘are you okay ?’ to just laughing at me because I think they’ve become so used to seeing people trip and fall on T.V. literally and figuratively, that now they think it is socially acceptable to laugh. And they have a word for that specifi cally in German, Schadenfreude: People that take pleasure in other people’s misfortune.
Do you think that there is any coincidence to having freude in the word?
J: Yeah, it’s a Freudian term.
L: And I have some issues with Freud. I definitely call Freud out a little bit. You know, partly you write a punk song about him ‘cause it is probably something he wouldn’t have liked. The same reason I have these little ‘fuck you Barbara Kay’ inserts in our demo tapes. She is a writer in the Globe that I can’t stand. Sometimes you just want to be a little bit disrespectful.
Who is Mr. McGloob ?
L: You know that is the ten point question. It is funny that you mentioned that it reminded you of BLACK FLAG, because when Chad first played me the guitar riff I thought it kind of sounded like the RAMONES. “Rock n Roll High School” is one of my favourite b-movies and we saw one of these RAMONES documentaries and they were talking about the fact that Joey had obsessive compulsive disorder ...
Was that “End of the Century” ?
Yeah, that’s it. And because of it, apparently if he said something wrong, he had a lot of trouble fixing it. It is one of these things where you tend to repeat language patterns. His one little bit in that movie where he talks is when Riff Randle comes back stage to give them her songs and he says: “If we like it, we’ll come and pay you and Mr. McGloob a visit.” The character’s name was, in fact, Mr McGree but, apparently, no matter how many times they shot it he kept saying Mr. McGloob instead. The song title is in reference to the guitar riff whereas the words of the song are about my frustration with the expectation for women to be incredibly thin. I do contemporary dance and what is considered thin has gotten ridiculous in that fi eld. The song title is in reference to the music but not the words. But hey Joey was thin so maybe somehow you can make the connection.
What is your favourite URINARY TRACT INFECTION song from a lyrical standpoint and why?
L: I would say “Mr. Mc Gloob” because it most honestly expresses the suffering in my own life. I think that punk sounds best when it is very genuine. I don’t try and write a song that sounds punk, I try and write a song that sounds like me. Being a professional dancer from the time that I was really little there is a lot of pressure to be extremely thin. I have been very sick in the past because of it and I have known people that have died because of it. I think that all this bullshit of airbrushing pictures of women that are already dangerously thin really fucks people up. That whole song is about starving yourself to death and how that is somehow seen as virtuous. It’s about how we as a society see virtue in starving yourself to death while we look down on people that are fat as though it’s a character defect. It’s fucked. In the song I say ‘Tertullian bullshit’ because in my mind, this shit goes all the way back to the idea that women should suffer because Eve ate the apple. It’s about women being dismissed, voiceless. I think that song is the closest to my heart.
J: Yeah, that’s real ‘Schadenfreude.’
What about the rest of you. Do you have a favourite song from a lyrical standpoint ?
C: I would have to say “A. Fish”. It is a bit of a love-hate relationship. At the end, Leah does this conversation between Albert Fish, the serial killer, and the little girl that he is about to murder. But it’s love hate because the music goes in so many different directions in that song. I just like the part where she goes ‘I wanna go home.’
L: Excellent. You are going to do that part from now on.
C: It really blows my mind when you hear this little girl begging for her life. It is a side of my wife I have never seen before.
J: I like “Stavrogin”. Doestoevsky. You can’t go wrong.
L: He should have written punk lyrics for sure. Doestyevsky would have written some excellent punk tunes.
J: We have the “Crime and Punishment” concept album coming out.
Wasn’t “Crime and Punishment” Foucault.
J: No Foucault analyzed the punishment systems. “Civilization and Incarceration” or something like that.
Yeah the panotpicon which reminds me of Vari Hall up at York.
L: Oh my god. I never thought of that. That is scary.
It is exactly the panopticon.
Cn: My favourite song is “Cunt” and my favourite lyric in there is “Fuck You” especially when she repeats it so many times. It is like ‘okay I got it the first time but now I am really feeling it.’ People used to come into our jams every time we practiced that song. People used to think it was a domestic assault or something.
L: I have to say that living in the rehearsal factory on Geary was a weird experience. There are some amazing bands and then there were some bands that were so incredibly bad. The bad ones would rehearse at 11:00pm and they all did ‘Tied to the Whipping Post’. You would be trying to go to sleep and all you would hear is some guy who can’t sing “Tied to the Whipping Post” over and over again.
Cn: You just want to go up there with a whipping post.
L: You do in fact.
What are your thoughts on the Toronto scene at the moment ?
L: I think the Toronto scene is defi nitely on one of its’ upswings. There have been so many new bands in the last little while and so many different people putting on shows. BAD SKIN and EATING GLASS and RAH and HAZARDOUS WASTE and I was just completely gutted that LIVING DARKNESS broke up, they were amazing. And there are all these other bands that have been around for awhile but are just so good like REPROBATES and ENDLESS BLOCKADE and what not. In May we decided to just throw together a show with a bunch of bands that we liked but didn’t necessarily know personally. It was HAZARDOUS WASTE and RAH and we asked THE G-MEN to headline. Which was crazy, it was these really noisy bands and then THE G-MEN have this totally different kinda retro style.
And those bands might not have played normally. So it’s kind of like bring different scenes together.
L: I think that is defi nitely happening. Greg from Stuck In the City is doing all these great shows and High Art for the Low Down with Matt and those guys bringing different bands together.
And in our show listings there is something happening all the time at 15 Lower Sherbourne.
C: I think the scene is growing right now, especially in terms of people putting shows together.
L: That’s very true. I mean, the fi rst time that we played a Pesci show wasn’t until the HOMOSTUPIDS show at the beginning of June and, I mean, it seemed for awhile there like that guy was carrying the whole Toronto scene on his back because he had the pressure of him and Ewan putting on every show. So I think it’s really good for the scene in Toronto that there are more people just throwing stuff together.
And he is going to school full time and trying to work. It’s kind of nuts.
L: Woah, I didn’t know that. Crazy. Yeah, I don’t know him personally at all, but for awhile there it really seemed, just speaking as somebody who went to shows, that it was only him and Ewan putting stuff on.
Yeah for sure. But Pesci was doing a lot of things so it is good it spread out.
L: Yeah exactly. And just outside of Toronto too there are people putting on house shows, in Burlington and whatnot with EATING GLASS and those guys. BAD SKIN is also doing shows at their house now. The BAD SKIN house is actually my favourite place to play, it’s a small space but it has a really warm sound.
Cn: It is a really warm room.
C: We played the fi rst show there so we feel like we helped inaugurate the place. There was something amazing about watching Jay run down the stairs with a hammer in his hand during SHITREIGN to knock out the little shelves he’d build because people were running into them. I just saw him running by with his hammer. I wasn’t too sure what was going to happen at fi rst. (laughing) Somebody else got their ass shaved at that show I think.
L: That band makes no sense, they defy logic. I have to joke because they are the absolute nicest dudes, but they are really, really good drinkers. Before that fi rst night at their house, I’d heard a song from BAD SKIN’s demo and was really psyched to hear them play, but when they went up to play they were so drunk that Todd could barely walk a straight line. Being a non-drinker I’m being all snotty thinking ‘oh crap, they won’t sound as good, they’re too drunk to play’ and then they go and play the tightest, fastest most amazing fucking set. It was incredible, they’re such a good band, I love the way they sound and they’re all such nice guys, but I don’t know how it’s physically possible to sound that unbelievably good when you’re that drunk.
C: They are absolutely amazing. That whole night was amazing.
L: There was a lot of blood. They pretty much said no more bottles after that show. The first show there was a lot of glass and blood everywhere. Jay was in the pit just bleeding all over the place and then some poor guy got hit in the face with a mic stand during the BAD SKIN set and split his lip completely open. Everyone was getting red as the night went on, I was just covered in other people’s blood when I left. Now that’s a good show.
Cn: A lot of beer cans went past my head.
It kind of reminds me of when the DEAD KENNEDYS played Texas and the stories they told of playing cowboy bars and breaking into a rendition of “Rawhide” and then got completely showered in beer cans. That’s where the “Rawhide” cover comes from.
L: Oh like in the Blues Brothers.
Partly that but that did happen. That happened to BLACK FLAG as well.
L: Let’s tour down south.
I think it was because they were getting booked into these old man bars because there was no punk clubs to speak of at the time. This is down south where there wasn’t much of a scene but all these great bands grew out of that like in Texas with DRI and the BUTTHOLE SURFERS and MDC came from that and then moved to San Francisco. So when they toured they got booked in these old man bars.
C: It’s probably still a common thing. Even when I was younger out in the suburbs there were only so many places to play. The kids were mostly doing shows at the Masonic Temples and the Kinsmen Halls.
That was in Stixville wasn’t it.
C: Streetsville. It is amazing that there are a lot of groups that have come out of that scene in Mississauga. It is huge now. It was big then but now it is way bigger but there’s still really nowhere for these guys to play out there, just the house shows or old man bars. Same thing in Burlington and near Niagara, the best shows are always house shows.
I wanted to ask you about the demo. Is that the only recording you have? I think that I have the sense that maybe you have done another recording.
L: It is really the only recording we’ve done so far. We did a recording of Stavrogin at the Rehearsal Factory a long time ago but I don’t know if it exists anymore. Schizophrenic Records is going to release some of our songs on a new comp.
Oh on the “Toronto City Omnibus” comp.
L: Yeah the demo is basically our only recording and it was done live off the fl oor. I am pretty happy with it, all things considered.
Is there a song that is going to appear on the “Toronto City Omnibus” or is it songs off the demo?
C: Those songs will be off the demo. But the plan is definitely to get into the studio again in the fall and do some more stuff. The guy who produced our demo, Sam Cave plays guitar with us now sometimes and we’re hoping to have the money to take some more time, as opposed to 8 songs in one day.
Who is he?
L: He was in this great hardcore band out of
Boston called THE EXPLOSION that was around in the early 2000s. But he is just an incredibly modest person despite being so talented. I have some friends who are tongue tied around him, because they were such huge fans of his band, but he is the coolest most easy-going dude.
And he is living here now.
L: He is living here now doing some sound production, some fi lm stuff, and working as a bus boy. I know he was trying to get his working papers and I believe he’s gotten them at this point. He recorded HAZARDOUS WASTE if I am not mistaken. So he is defi nitely in the scene.
And around so if anyone is looking for someone to record with they should contact him or contact you to get in touch with him.
C: Absolutely. Sam was great, had lots of ideas to try with the demo, despite only having one day to do it.
How long ago was this recorded ?
C: It was in the fall of 2007 at John Crictchley at Green Door Studios. Out in Parkdale. Great little studio. He has completely converted his garage into a studio and he recorded the 8 songs in an afternoon.
Cn: Great vibe.
C: And very good prices if you are looking to put something together.
I did not know that. There is an interesting history with punk studios in garages. The YOUNG LIONS fi rst started off in a garage and they called it the garage and they were from that area. I wanted to ask you have you written any new stuff since the demo ?
L: Yeah. We have a bunch of new ones. We wrote another Dostoyevsky song based on Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, about how a single action can create a guilt that separates us from humanity. Then there’s “Dumb, then dead” that we played tonight that hasn’t been recorded. There is also a song we’ve written called “Klabautermanniken” There you go, a little more German for you.
A Klabautermanniken is the spirit that sailors used to believe lived in the fi gureheads of ships. So it is about viewing women as beautiful, useless objects and how this deforms them. A lot of new songs to lay down in the next couple of months.
The Frankfurt School means a lot to you.
C: And Elvis. Lets not forget Elvis. Or fake Elvis.
So do you have plans to record and tour anytime soon?
L: We would like to record in the fall and the plan is to put out a 7” ourselves. Also, we’re talking to SHIT REIGN and PICKED ON, we’ve been in touch with Alain from the BLACK SPOKES, he started PICKED ON about doing a mini tour that starts in Peterborough and goes to Kingston then Ottawa and maybe Montreal in September.
The Toronto – Montreal corridor.
L: Yeah, exactly. We would love to tour more but that just hasn’t been in the cards this summer. We all have nine to fi ve jobs but in the fall we’re going to get out of Toronto more.
Cn: We’re playing a comic book party in Montreal in October.
L: Yeah, That will be interesting. My cousin Krista and her partner did our demo cover and our logo. I wanted an updated gross Pushead kinda style which they do really well. She’s having us come down and play for the opening of More Than A Friend’s comic book.
Where is she?
L: She lives in Verdun, just on the outskirts of Montreal. They wrote this bizarre-o comic book about Verdun , it’s a sort of scary, sketchy blue collar place outside of downtown Montreal that has a lot of 50’s style fast food places.
C: It’s the French Parkdale I think.
L: That is a great way of putting it. Except there is way more cat shit in Verdun. See, there are a lot of stray cats in that area so Krista decided to use it as a fun installation project. She made little heart signs with toothpicks that say “I Love Verdun” on them and she sticks them in all the little piles of cat shit that she comes across.
Have you seen “Prete a Porte” ? “Ready to Wear”. An Altman fi lm. About Paris and dog shit.
L: (laughing) Amazing, you are like our friend Dean who has seen absolutely everything and remembers it for the perfect reference. Awesome movie.
Perhaps Verdun is ready for a fi lm. Aside from touring and recording does the band have any other plans coming up?
L; Touring and recording are the main things.
Cn: We are working on some merch.
L: Our our own line of footwear
C: And scented candles. They smell like cat shit.
L: The URINARY TRACT INFECTION push up bra.
J: Bull Tits bras.
Where does the name URINARY TRACT INFECTION come from ?
L: That’s kind of a funny story. Calling our band UTI is making fun of ourselves. The idea is we’re not as hardcore as really good bands like BLACK LUNG or RINGWORM or any of these diseases that could actually kill you, we just make it hurt a bit when you pee. But, the other reason I wanted to go with UTI is because when you tell a room full of people at a show that your band is called ‘UTI’ all the women in the room get it right away and laugh. It’s just more common for Women to get UTI’s, we’ve all had one. Mostly the guys will be looking around going ‘what’s that mean, why is that funny?’ So it is my way of making the women the insiders and the guys the outsiders by having that inside joke with them.
It’s a good turn of the tables. How can people get in touch with you ?
L: We have a myspace site which is www.myspace.com/urinarytract and then we also have a hotmail which is urinary.tract.infection@hotmail.com. Easy ways to get in touch. We are always looking to play shows. We are always happy to show up and scream for a bit.