HI guys, I've just got "Diamond Skin", would you like telling us something to promote it?
Laur: Hello there... Well, you'll find 7 songs on this brand new colourful CD including an acoustic version of power pop hit “Trust in Dust” and a DEAD BOYS cover. The perfect soundtrack for your lonely glittery days or debauchery nights!

Why have you chosen "I Won't Look Back" as a cover song?
Laur: We actually recorded this song for a Stiv Bators tribute CD that should have been out on an Italian label but since we never heard about it more than one year after we sent it, we thought that it could be cool to include it on our CD as well in case this tribute CD was never released. Originally, we thought this song could be cool as a SPARKLING BOMBS cover because of its pop feel, something that you can't find in all DEAD BOYS songs.

I really like both your booklets and artwork. Who’s dealing with that?
Laur: Stéphane Perger made this new one. He also made the “Dead Dreams From The Silver Gutter” cover and booklet but since he's a cartoon artist, we thought that it would be nice to have a cartoon style cover this time. We gave him all the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do and it came out great. Different and not as common for a band like us.

How important is the look for you?
Laur: Well we've always thought that it's a big part of the band. We've been both loved and hated for that like most bands with a strong image. Of course music comes first but we won't lie, yes we like to dress up, yes we like make-up and yes we love to be the prettiest dolls of the party!

The Italian glam “scene” is mostly made up of musicians and there’s no much audience. What about the French one? What about venues, bands, labels, fanzines, and so on?
Laur: There are good venues in France even though it's usually difficult to get gigs, there's never been any glam audience but we get more and more people at our shows, maybe because bands who wear make-up are more popular these days.There's not enough fanzines and record labels for bands like us though. But , the music industry is dying like everywhere else in the world, well maybe not dying but mutating into a strange monster... people unfortunately buy less and less records and just download and listen to stupid MP3s! So no wonder why people are afraid to start record labels! Even if that's not politically correct to say, music is not for free, why should it be? Are books, clothes and cinema tickets free? It's expensive to record songs, release them and go on tour, someone has to pay in the end and now bands are the only ones to pay for everything because they can't really make money anymore except when they're huge... Oh well... Bands in France? hm... if you're talking about glam related bands, I guess you can count them on one hand (Undercover Slut, Tracy Gang Pussy, Highschool Motherfuckers...) so we're lucky they're usually not the only persons in the audience! Haha...

Is there any kind of rivalry among the bands in your country? You can use the following lines to discredit some bands if you like…
Laur: Oh well, I guess there's always a bit of rivalry between bands but, nothing too bad, not in a AXL/Vince kind of way yet haha...
As I said before, we're just a few bands with glam influences in France so we all know each other and get along quite well...I guess that we all want to do something different from what you can see and hear here in our own special ways.
I personally hate most French bands, they're usually just pale copies of US bands except that they don't play as well and dress even worse!
You know, when I see those bands with black hair who now wear a bit of eyeliner while they were wearing baggy pants and caps just 3 years ago and were laughing at us, I can't help but see them as a big joke! Can't wait to see them back to their stupid caps and beards in one or two years... wearing black and eyeliner doesn't necessarily makes you look cool when you don't have a clue about what style is!...
There's been another thing in France lately, a trend especially in Paris: 16 year old kids dressed up by their parents who play bad garage rock. That's quite popular, I guess it's better than if they were playing nu-metal or emo crap and at least they get interested in rock culture and history but, it still looks like a joke to me!

Any good French band to recommend to the Italian fans?
Laur: They should dig into the past and look for demos of this great glam punk band from Paris called TEASIN' BABES. Actually, Shotgun Generation records is going to release these demos on CD, so don't miss that!

Veglam is the most important French glam site. How did it came out and who is running it?
Laur: I do, I always enjoyed fanzines and when I started to use the Internet, I noticed that there wasn't that many glam websites so I just decided to start one. And even though I'd be too lazy to start one again, I miss paper zines!

I know you were supposed to release a split CD with Landslide Ladies, but it all came to nothing. Why? What happened?
Laur: Well, that's a real pity this split CD never got released... We had songs to appear on this (that are now on “Diamond Skin”) but as time went on, we weren't realy happy about one of them so we decided not to use it. Unfortunately that also meant that we didn't have enough songs to use for this split CD anymore and since the whole thing was taking too long and would have taken even longer if we had to record new songs for this split CD, we came to the conclusion that it was better for both bands to give up... we just recorded 3 new songs a few months later that we added to the 3 songs we kept and released “Diamond Skin”. Hope Le$ter and the other LANDSLIDE LADIES are not too angry about it. Hope we'll rock together in a way or another soon!

I think I’ve met Laur and Alyss at the 2003 Slam! summer party in Venice, what are your memories of that night?
Laur: That was a really cool night! A few days before, we saw online that this event was happening, that was a boring summer so we just decided that it would be fun to go. We took a few clothes and make-up and headed down to beautiful Italy. The whole atmosphere was a bit surreal to us you know, an all-night long glam boat... But lots of fun! That was nice to see that some people there knew us and the ROBIN BLACK guys were fun. One of our goals on that trip was to eat a pizza in Venice but we didn't get the chance to... loser a day, loser for life!... Anyway, yeah that was awesome, please make us play on that crazy boat! We still need to make our Italy debut, we have played in France, Germany, Belgium, England, Switzerland so it's high time to take over Italy!

Let’s turn back time for a sec. How and when were you born? What has changed from “From Bubblegum Fun To Glittered Depression” to nowadays?
Laur: We started in 2001, Joker and Matt started to play together and called me since I played with Joker in the past. We tried a few lead guitar players and singers but it all really started when Lady Bittersweet joined us and when Alyss saw an ad saying that we were looking for a glam singer, something quite rare at that time! We recorded “From Bubblegum Fun To Glittered Depression” a few months after Alyss joined us so you can feel we were a young band on it. We're a tighter band now, we still have this kind of dark glamour spirit but our music naturally evolved and will again...

How has the public welcomed your full-length debut “Dead Dreams From The Silver Gutter” (2004)?
Laur: Not too bad, but even if it was distributed in shops here, we sold more copies online and at our shows 'cause we still haven't found any decent record label/distributor to work with. We haven't been satisfied on this level yet so we're still doing pretty much everything by ourselves.

You have played with New York Dolls, Nashville Pussy, American Heartbreak, Peter Pan Speedrock, Trashcan Darlings, Teenage Casket Company, Lords of The New Church, what are the best and the worst memories of those experiences?
Laur: All these experiences have been good, from eating and having drinks with Sylvain Sylvain and Sam Yaffa to late night parties in Paris with the PETER PAN guys, this was all good. We still talk to most of them, for instance, we stayed at Steves (LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH drummer) when we played in Brighton, UK.
We also played with the FUZZTONES a few months ago, which was nice too. One of the first things Rudi said was “I met the NEW YORK DOLLS last week and they told us about SPARKLING BOMBS!”... This kind of things is always more than heart warming.

Always talking of “bad memories”, did you watch the final match of the world championship Italy vs France? What do you, as French people, think of Zidane banging Materazzi?
Matt: I’m the only member of SB really interested in football so I guess this one’s for me. Well, whatever Materazzi has said, it was a very stupid move from Zidane. I guess it was Italy’s turn after 1998 and 2000.
The funny thing is that I visited my friend Cecilia in Piacenza one week after the worldcup final, at that time I felt pretty lucky Italy was champion, hehe. We went to a Razzle Dazzle gig near Milano and between 2 songs the singer started to sing “la mama de Zidane”… but it was only a joke, and I really enjoyed their show.
It’s good for Italy to have won the world cup after all that happened last season in the Italian championship. Still I think it’s a scandal that European journalists have elected as “ballon d’or” a guy who played for a team that bought the “scudetto”.