Guanabee Talks To Mr. Furia Of The Pinker Tones And Then His Cell Phone Dies

Spain’s electro wonders, The Pinker Tones, have been unleashed on America this summer for an entire Warped Tour of fun that coincides with the release of their brand new album, Wild Animals. Recently Guanabee Editor Cindy Casares spoke to one half of the band, Mr. Furia (aka Salvador Ray), just before the guys headed Stateside. He told her about his new glasses, his new album and the reason his band are the real wild animals of the music industry. Read along after the jump, won’t you?

Guanabee: Hi, Mr Furia. Can I call you Salva?

Mr. Furia: You can call me Mr. Furia.

Guanabee: Alright then! Where exactly am I calling you?

Mr. Furia: I’m in Pinkerland. Where we invent the Pink Universe. A bit outside the city in the woods very near Barcelona.

Guanabee: I can hear the birds singing.

Mr. Furia: Oh that’s a noisy neighbor.

Guanabee: In New York we call those pigeons. So, what’s up with all the pink, Mr. Furia? It’s like you’re a debutante or a stomach ache remedy.

Mr. Furia: The pink in our name refers to the Pink Panther because we admire the magnificent team that Henry Mancini and Blake Edwards were in the 1960’s. We like the sense of humor of this era. Elegance. Self-refrence. Irony. We don’t like anyone who takes themselves too seriously so what better way to start than with your name?

Guanabee: I have no idea what you’re talking about. But speaking of Henry Mancini, The Pinker Tones come from a soundtrack background, don’t they?

Mr. Furia: Yes, The Pinker Tones first began by doing a soundtrack for the series Once Upon A Time in Europe. I was working as a screenwriter for that series, and I had been working in bands and the producers let me write something for it. I had this conversation with the producers after having run into Professor Manso [aka, Alex Llovet, the other half of The Pinker Tones] three days in a row and I felt like it was destiny that we work together. So I called him and he said yes and that was the beginning of The Pinker Tones.

We also have a preoccupation with The Pinkerton Detective Agency from 1950’s and 60’s films. They’re often called The Pinkertons. We liked the idea of a cool singing detective. So, The Pinkertons became The Pinkertones.

Guanabee: You have very strange artistic influences. Who made you this way?

Mr. Furia: My dad traveled a lot in the 60’s and 70’s and had quite an updated record collection. He had the first copy of Jimi Hendrix’s Electricladyland in Barcelona because he was in London when it came out and his friend said he must be mad.

Guanabee: My dad listened to Neil Diamond when Neil Diamond was so not cool.

Mr. Furia: I also listened to The Beach Boys, The Beatles, the records of my parents. When I was 12 or 13, I saw Jimi Hendrix on the Monterey Pop documentary and I was like, wow. What is he doing with his guitar? I saved money for a year and bought a crap guitar and started playing weird electronic noises.

Guanabee: Not much has changed.

Mr. Furia: I also went to a German school and this art teacher thought I was a very bad classic artist so he very kindly suggested I study music instead. And then I started to play in bands when I was twelve or thirteen. Here and there learning and making mistakes and finally finding Professor Manso and making The Pinker Tones.

Guanabee: Thank God you sucked! As an artist, I mean. So, you and the Professor met in college, right?

Mr. Furia: Yes.We did a demo together in college for a band Professor Manso was in, but only that one project until The Pinker Tones many years later.

Guanabee: What about DJ Niño? When did he join you and what is his role in the Tones? (See how I gave you a cute nickname?)

Mr. Furia: DJ Niño is an old time collaborator from the beginning. Actually, he’s my brother.

Guanabee: Ah, nepotism…

Mr. Furia: He’s got a great singing voice and is a very good guitarist. So he has the right to have an opinion. He has always been a third ear and he was also the first one to do remixes of our stuff.

Guanabee: Speaking of playing guitar and singing, what kind of music do you and Professor Manso bring to the band? Is it all knob twisting?

Mr. Furia: There’s a bit of knob twisting, but also synths, guitar and bass on this new tour. Electronic drums, too. The live show is very electronic based, but the album is more analog than most people would think. In the studio we play cut and paste. We sample ourselves.

Guanabee: This would be a good time to bring up the new album. You’ve moved from the city to the country and your new album is called Wild Animals. What’s up with the rural theme?

Mr. Furia: The title is a metaphor. The traditional rock ‘n’ roll animal stays up all night taking drugs and gets up after noon. But we like to work from nine in the morning. We like daylight. We take our work very seriously. Even if our work is to laugh about things. We choose to call ourselves Wild Animals because actual wild animals work very hard so they can stay autonomous. And by working hard, we’ve been able to stay away from big labels and keep control of our music. The classic rock ‘n’ roll wild animal is a very dependent being. He wouldn’t survive out there in the independent world.

Guanabee: That’s, like, so deep. We better talk about fashion. Tell me about your glasses. You are rarely photographed without them. Especially those big, white, framed ones.

Mr. Furia: The white glasses were so badly damaged, I had to put them in a glass case for all eternity. They were from the last album.

Guanabee: I bet there are so many great Ebay items in your house. So are you wearing glasses right now?

Mr. Furia: I’m wearing Georgio Moroder glasses right now.

Guanabee: Sweet. Do you have the mustache, too?

Mr. Furia: I could work on the mustache… no. I think you have to be Italian to wear that mustache.

Guanabee: You are wise.

Mr. Furia: A lot of very good musical careers have come to a bad end because of a bad image. People not only come to hear your music, they come to see you as well and there has to be something interesting happening on stage. We are very involved in our look and choose everything ourselves, we’ve never used a stylist.

Guanabee: So how will you be styling yourself on the Vans Warped Tour if not with the Moroder porn ‘stache?

Mr. Furia: If you look at our promotional material, the new look is very futuristic, yet we’re standing in the woods. Nature vs. culture. Like the song “Happy Everywhere,” from the album. It’s about the dilemma of the post modern man. You can’t live in the woods because you miss everything the city has to offer, but the city stresses you out.

Guanabee: Ain’t it the truth? I’m digging the black pants you guys are rocking.

Mr. Furia: Black pants are part of the old punk rock tradition. We’d like to credit the direct inventors of those pants: The Ramones. And the glasses and silver part are an attempt to be really spacey.

Guanabee: Mission accomplished, Major Tom.

Mr. Furia: We wanted to wear something that had the punk rock feel and the electronic part. We are big fans of The Ramones.

Guanabee: Who else do you guys love?

Mr. Furia: If you looked into any of our iPods or record collections you would think we are mental.

Guanabee: Oh I don’t have to look there.

Mr. Furia: We have Motorhead next to Felix Prado. According to Duke Ellington there are only two kinds of music. Good and bad. We like to listen to good music of every kind.

At this point, Mr. Furia’s cell phone dies and I spend the next hour crying. Finally, we reconnect.

Mr. Furia: Sorry about that. My battery died.

Guanabee: Guess there are no outlets in Pinkerland.

Mr. Furia: Actually, I was on the train. I’m in Barcelona now.

Guanabee: Wow, you’re quite the vagabond. Speaking of, you guys are playing the Vans Warped Tour this summer, which is usually filled with 14 year-old skater boys who smell. How or why did you and the powers that be think this was a good idea?

Mr. Furia: We think the skater kids are also part of the iPod generation. They probably listen to electronica as well as punk. They’ve also grown up with mashup culture.

Guanabee: True. Plus they’ll all be stoned. So what is a live show with The Pinker Tones like?

Mr. Furia: In the live shows, we’ve developed a concept to present a Pinker Tones musical universe. We create internal bootlegs. We sing new vocal tracks from one song on top of the bass drum of something else. We also use things that influenced us while we were recording.

Guanabee: Are a lot of your fans Latino or just a mixed crowd? Are you thought of as a Latino band?

Mr. Furia: It’s a very mixed audience in the U.S. Depending on the part of America. For instance, in LA, it’s a lot of Latinos, but there are Anglo Saxons too, Chicago had a lot of Latinos, but in NY it was basically an Anglo audience.

Guanabee: What is your favorite American city to play?

Mr. Furia: The one we’ve played most for many different reasons, including it’s where our label is based, and therefore the one that we played 5 times last time and had a fantastic time is LA. We know lots of people in LA , so there is somebody you can call on a Sunday afternoon to go watch futbol. We also had fantastic experiences in Chicago, Austin, & NY. There are probably other cities I am leaving out.

Guanabee: What about Barcelona? What’s the music scene like there?

Mr. Furia: There is a big, new, world music scene here. What they call mestizo, which is like beats and electronica mixed with rumbo and flamenco. It’s commercially and artistically very popular.

Guanabee: Who are your favorite bands?

Mr. Furia: Muchachito Bombo Infierno are like Gogol Bordello if they played rumba with a huge brass section.

Guanabee: You just described a dream I had once after eating a bad clam.

Mr. Furia: It’s great to interact with musicians here in Barcelona. The vibe in Barcelona is very open. It’s like, well you play football and I play tennis, but maybe together we can play ping pong and it will be fun.

Guanabee: Especially if there are cups of beer in the shape of a triangle on the table. Well thanks for talking to me, Mr. F.

Mr. Furia: You’re welcome. Sorry my cellphone died.

Guanabee: Sorry you’re not rocking the Moroder mustache.

Mr. Furia, Professor Manso and DJ Niño comprise The Pinker Tones and are on the Vans Warped Tour all over America right now and all summer. Their new album, Wild Animals, is on sale now.

The Pinker Tones [MySpace]