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Pretty Girls Make Graves are, like, tailor-made for Halloween.
In addition to the macabre name (a nod to both The Smiths and Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums), there's also the punk influences, the creepy videos and the little matter of the music-loving ghost who lives in their haunted house.
We caught up to bassist Derek Fudesco in their home base of Seattle and hit him with a few Halloween-related queries.
What are you the most afraid of? And we're looking for two answers -- a cerebral response, like "failure" or "dying alone," and something more tangible, like "spiders" or "stingrays."
I think I'm most afraid of sickness ... it's the thing that I'm most afraid of because you can't do anything about it. Failure you can fix, loneliness you can fix. There's a lot of things people are afraid of that you can fix, but with sickness you're just kind of assed out. And something that grosses me out -- I really don't like shots. I have a real problem with them. Even just the thought of getting a shot.
What's the scariest movie you've ever seen?
I would have to say the movie that scared me the most would be The Exorcist, and I saw it when I was way too young to be watching it. I saw it with my brother, I think I was maybe 12. It really, really messed me up.
Is there pressure on rock stars to look good on Halloween?
Ever since we started up, like for the last five years, we've been on tour and we always dress up, but it is mind-blowing how many bands we've played with that don't even care. It's just another day, and they're just playing their f--ing show. Come on. It's Halloween. It's exciting.
Got any good ghost stories?
We have a ghost in our basement, so sometimes we have creepy band practices. Andrea (bandmate Zollo) and I live in a 100-year-old home that our landlord was born in. Her father was a vocal coach who coached Heart. He also had a record label and cut records with jazz artists travelling through town in the 1940s. Our landlord's uncle, a big music fan, apparently haunts this house. When we moved in we were warned about it, like, don't be freaked out if you see some weird stuff or hear voices or it sounds like someone's home.
Have you ever seen him?
There was one time when our landlord ... had been working on her garage, so she had been in and out all week. We were in the basement preparing for a show or something. So she would walk through the corner of the room while waiting to use the bathroom and stop and say hello or whatever. We were practising all weekend and all of a sudden I saw her walk into the corner of the room and just stood there. It was weird 'cause it looked like she was wearing all brown. As soon as we finished the song I looked up to say something to her, but she wasn't there. I looked around the corner, and the door had been bolted. Then I went outside, and she hadn't even been there, she didn't work at all that day. The next time I saw her I told her about it, and she said, "Oh my uncle wears a brown suit. If you see him, he'll be wearing a brown suit." So that was kind of spooky.
Tickets to the Pretty Girls' show at the Albert are $16 at Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.ca or 780-3333) and Into the Music.