At least as freaky is ‘Creepy Crawlers’, a raging song in which the mostoutrageous conspiracies come along. ‘They’re putting in little microchips inthe vaccines. Little creepy crawlers with tiny little legs. They creep aroundyour body, collecting information’. Muphy spits it into the microphone,completely in the skin of the paranoid conspiracy theorist. “I even havefriends who believe that kind of craziness,” says Murphy. ‘They are oftencomplex answers to questions where the answer is so simple that people simplycannot accept it. I find it interesting how one thing leads to another, howpeople become increasingly entangled in a web of stories. What do you basethat on, I ask. I have read an article about it, is often the answer. Butentire websites are being written by lunatics and creeps.’
The most fascinating thing about caveworld actually that the album doesn’tunequivocally feel like an attack on the wappies. Yes, well, they are notportrayed nicely and the record ends with a battle between savages, butsomewhere you see Sebastian Murphy and his gang in between. You tastesomething of kinship and sympathy for the wandering souls. Remember: loes. “Iknow how easy it is to end up in such a tunnel of misinformation,” agreesSebastian Murphy. “I was a conspiracy theorist myself for a while. I’mcertainly not a perfect person.’
We go back in time a few years and ended up in Murphy’s ‘ayahuasca phase’, thepsychoactive substance that people use to gain insights about themselves andthe world through a deep trip. ‘I used a lot of ayahuasca for a while, alongwith a few older people who believed in all sorts of things. They wereconvinced that the US government could influence the weather with someingenious system. And we watched a documentary about an ex-CIA agent whorevealed how the government controlled the food chain. When you go throughsuch an ‘out of body experience’ you have the idea that you see everythingvery clearly. At a certain point I stopped doing that again, because I sawaround me that people were telling themselves with ayahuasca that their lifewas great, while in reality they did nothing about their problems. If youhandle that stuff well it can help you cope with loss or grief, if you do itwrong you will go from rain to drip.’
The psychedelic drug scene likes to teeter on the edge of society, and thatalso applies to the musician world. A band like Viagra Boys is constantlytraveling the world, and that naturally produces an outsider perspective. Therock ‘n roll world offers room for all kinds of misfits, and we can speak ofthat at Viagra Boys. It’s also a destructive scene. You know that when you seethe band play, when Sebastian Murphy rolls around on the floor, whether or nottheatrically magnified. We also know that core member and guitarist BenjaminVallé was killed a year ago. He passed away in October 2021. The band itselfannounced his death and said it was very sad, but did not say how exactly the47-year-old musician died.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” says Sebastian Murphy. “It’s a long story andit has to do with mental health. Out of respect for him I’d like to leave itat that, but I can tell you that at the time of his death he was definitelystill part of the band.’ That means he could still be heard on Wellfare Jazz, the second album to be released in lockdown. The third album caveworld wasrecorded without ‘Benis’. “It was strange working on new music without him,but we honored him the best we could.”
Viagra Boys plays Friday 9 December in Paradiso and Saturday 10 December inTivoliVredenburg.