Both members of the King Khan & BBQ Show have been in innumerable influential bands, but they’re probably best known
for this collaboration -- and for good reason. We spoke with
them after their set at this year’s Austin Psych Fest.
--Tabitha Wexler
This is Rubberneck, and we’re at Psych Fest.
Mark Sultan: We are the King Khan & BBQ Show and we’re
sponsored by Rush the band.
King Khan: No we’re not!
Mark Sultan: No we’re not. You told me we were.
King Khan: We’re sponsored by the sound of psychedelia.
Mark Sultan: If you vomit on it and put diarrhea on it.
Do you guys think that you’re a psych band?
King Khan: We are psych in our hearts and our souls. We don’t
need the music to tell us…
Mark Sultan: We grew up doing so much LSD.
King Khan: I eat rice, it’s psychedelic, you know what I mean?
It doesn’t fucking matter to me.
Mark Sultan: No, but we’re psychedelic adventurers, since we
were like teenagers. Every punk band that we played in was
all based around LSD, mushrooms, and, uh, and the Mohawk
Indians, and…
King Khan: We were sponsored by microdots before…
Mark Sultan: Microdots, before anybody gave a shit about
microdots they sponsored us.
King Khan: We’re of the generation that believe in blotters.
Mark Sultan: Oh my god, there’s this episode of The
Incredible Hulk where he trips out on microdots, orange
sunshine, ‘cause he’s a roadie in a band-King Khan: Bruce Banner?
Mark Sultan: Yeah! It’s fucking amazing!
King Khan: I cried when he fell out of the helicopter-Mark Sultan: Was that the movie or the show?
King Khan: The show! (sings) Bah-bahhh-nah-nah!
Mark Sultan: That’s MASH!
King Khan: (laughs) Sorry, wrong movie.
Mark Sultan: That’s the show!
King Khan: No, the MASH movie’s with Alan Arkin-Mark Sultan: Alan Alda! Alan Arkin?!
Alan Alda’s in the show, though.
King Khan: Yeah yeah. But Alan Arkin was in Slaughterhouse
-- what’s that movie? Alan-Mark Sultan: Question. How are you? How is everybody?
Everybody okay?
King Khan: Tiger tiger, burning bright, where will you sleep
tonight?
This interview is getting pretty psychedelic.
King Khan: No honestly, like, when we played in the
Spaceshits, we were sponsored by LSD at that time, and like,
and to be honest, Easter Everywhere and the first 13th Floor
Elevators album was one of the constant things we would put
on, and we would just sit there and trip and be amazed at
how much psychedelic -- I mean, to be honest, of all the
music that was done in that time, I think Roky Erickson,
Tommy Hall, that combination, like, when they were
teenagers they were actually given the gate -- the key, you
know, to total, blissful illumination.
Mark Sultan: I honestly believe those recordings are an
artifact of how you can achieve a psychedelic feeling without
getting into the studio and doing crazy stuff. You can actually
get the feeling that they’re fucked up in a very positive way
and achieving something that transcends anything -- it’s
very spiritual. And that’s like, what, ‘65, ‘66, and all these
other bands come out with like, whatever, and it doesn’t
fucking matter. If it’s in your heart. That’s why -- you asked,
maybe facetiously, if we’re psychedelic. We are, only because
we don’t care what label means. We’re psychedelic people.
King Khan: We live in a time of our own. All these songs were,
like, basically gospel of psychedelia. And, to be honest, it )