(from "Spunk" 3.0)

                     beat mistress - rhythm dominatress
                       interview by divinity fudge

Who is the Beat Mistress?

My real name is Linda LeSabre, but musically I am mostly known as the Beat
Mistress. My past goes back to having a psychedelic, industrial rock band
called Deathride 69. I started the band with a bass player and took it
through many different changes of band members, and turned it into a fun
band. Finally, we got tired of doing it after a number of times and a couple
of records.

What was the reason?

I had started my solo project and it was going so well, but my biggest
problem with Deathride, as with most bands, was that I was putting forth 95%
of the effort. I did all the bookings, the promotion, making tapes, flyers,
etc., etc. It was like being a mother with children. I realized, my god, if I
am going to put this much effort into something I might as well benefit from
it and not drag a bunch of dead weight with me. If I fuck up I have no one to
blame but myself. But if I get out there and kick some ass, I reap all the
benefits.

Where are you from?

I'm originally from Washington D.C...

Where did your fascination with drums come from?

It's one of those things where I think I was born knowing what I wanted to
do. I was one of those people who could never sit still and was perpetually
tapping on everything, beating on things. My earliset memory of truly
focusing on drums was in music class in second grade, where you had music
play-time twice a week. We would go into this room where there were
instruments like bongos, tambourines, triangles, drums - all this junk - and
I would literally fight to the death for the drum. If I didn't get the drum
on a given day that was alright, but I thought the drum was the coolest
instrument and it was what I wanted to play. I did all the band things
through high school - marching, symphonic. I also did a year or two of
playing in the orchestral band in college. After awhile, I really got tired
of playing other people's music, especially when most of it was over 100
years old.  They [the music teachers] are really good at teaching you how to
read music, but very rarely do music lessons teach you how to make your own
music.  Through all my music lessons and experiences, no one really taught me
the way to make my own music from scratch. So I decided to draw on what I
knew and put together some simple things, and I realized it was relatively
easy.

How do you feel about the music that is out right now? Could you see
something different out there?

This kind of ties into where I am now, as far as the tribal stuff goes, I
just love really stripped-down, drum-heavy music. It employs human voice,
drums and maybe a small amount of atmospheric something in the background or
some samples of nature sounds, or maybe an industrial sound. I go out to find
music like that and the selection is scarce. Some of it is way too abstract,
like Crash Worship. I like them, but their stuff doesn't groove - it's more
cerebral and controlled. In my music, I feel that for the drumming, I try to
pour a lot of energy into it to achieve a groove within the beat and a
melody on the drums, even if it's very, very simple, to create some kind of
recognizable beat/melody and a groove that just starts to carry you. My music
isn't laid back at all, it pushes forward, leans into the beat. I have too
much crazy manic energy mixed with chaos, so when I get on the drums I just
go nuts.

I have seen your live performances, you work the crowd into a frenzy...

Live shows are where I really get off - I do as much for my own getting off
as well as the crowd getting off. I take things and go with them. The songs
are pretty much an outline to what actually occurs. Sometimes I will start a
song too fast and it ends up mutating into some wicked thing or I slow it
down and achieve a deep, rich groove. I have this craving for big, loud, deep
drums with tons of energy in them. That is the basic formula for my own
favorite music. (Laughter)

What's your favorite drum sound?

I like the floor toms. When you hit it slightly slow, not too fast, you get a
very deep low bomb. The sound vibrates your stomach. When you hit them,
people just jerk involuntarily. There is no ignoring it.. it makes a major
impact, whereas the other drums add more of a melodic element to it all. I
like lower, deeper sounding drums. My ideal drum would be the Timpani drums.

You were known as the Exotic Drums of Linda LeSabre, then the Beat Mistress,
and now something new. Let's talk about that...

I started with the Exotic Drums of Linda LeSabre because people knew Linda
LeSabre form Deathride 69, and I thought that if I go out and do shows with
this new thing, I didn't want to start from scratch. I wanted there to be
some recognition without always having to put in parenthesis the drummer from
Deathride 69. So hence, The Exotic Drums of Linda LeSabre. It started as a
fun idea - I had no clue if it was going to work or not. My first shows out,
I was scared stiff because I thought "what the hell am I doing standing up
here with these drums and everyone is staring at me." I didn't think people
would like it. I truly thought that I was a little crazy or self-indulgent to
think that people would get into listening to a half-hour of just drums and
my voice. So I called up a [few] friends to dance as a diversion in case
people didn't like the music. They could watch my friends dance. I was very
shocked that people liked it. One of my biggest supporters was Miguel from
Club FUCK! So the next time I was at FUCK!, he approached me and said "you
have to play the club in two weeks." I did the show to my ideal crowd,
surrounded by my friends and people into the primal rhythm shit. It just kept
going from there. The Club FUCK! family was so supportive, they kept booking
me and their support gave me the courage to go on. That's where I met Stephan
Santoro and learned of his passion for drums. We got together with some
friends for an impromptu jam session and had a great time. From there I sort
of worked him into the act because it was fun to have someone else on stage
so that everyone wasn't just staring at me.

So Beat Mistress...

I decided that The Exotic Drums of Linda LeSabre was too long, and if Stephan
was going to be part of the group, I didn't want the group to be just me.  To
make it a little more ambiguous I came up with the name Beat Mistress which
could include the dancers or guest performers - and I like the way the name
sounded. With the addition of Stephan, he brings the high and melodic drum
flavor which works well with the low end drums that I play and it is very
refresing to have someone else on stage with me.

Any other musical passions...

Yeah, my other favorite music is electronic dance music, going from
industrial to rave, techno, trance shit. Stephan and I thought it would be
really cool to do a Beat Mistress album with one side of pure tribal stuff
and on the other side we could do techno, tribal electronic weird versions,
like dance re-mixes. I ran in to this guy named Page at Club FUCK! who has a
techno band called Smashing Atoms. He has the full techno set up. We were
sitting around bitchin' and moanin' about how there isn't really any real
tribal techno house music. With that he invited me over to his place to try
to put together a compilation of dance music from LA called LA Hardcore. We
finally finished up the song and it sounded killer, so he said that he would
put it on the compilation. To make a long story short, they ended up using my
song as the single to promote the CD out of 16 songs, which blew me away
because the whole making of the song was for fun and to see what would
happen. So the next thing I know they are farming out remixes to different
remixers in LA and they put out a 12-inch single. It was released February
1st and made the March Billboard Dance remix chart. Something that I was
really interested in turned out to be a reality. The song is being played at
Sin-A-Matic and Vice and various other clubs. The single is also going to
show up on a remix CD put out by MoonShine Records.

And the name of the single is...

Dominate the Rhythm. And now I am faced with the dilemma of what to call the
tribal portion of my music since I use Beat Mistress as the name for the
techno stuff. I think we are going to call the tribal end of the group Beat
Mistress BC. Stephan and I have been working on tapes of tribal music.  We
put together a package and sent it out to some record labels. But we've run
into some problems because no one knows how to categorize our music.  The
irony of it all is that the project I did on a fluke is doing well and the
music I want to really get out there is having a hard time being accepted by
various alternative labels. I will always continue to do the tribal drumming
and heavy, intense shows with a lot of the weird underground elements in it.
I am hoping that I can use some leverage from the dance stuff to push the
tribal stuff into being. It's very frustrating that the labels don't quite
know what do to with our music.

If there is one thing you would like people to know about the Beat Mistress
experience, what would it be?

Beat Mistress BC came out of the early Club FUCK! days and we carry a lot of
that spirit with us. Using the body as a tool for entertainment,
self-discovery, ecstasy, trance is very important. At shows, I really try to
change people's reality quickly. I try to bring them to a different world
through nudity and unexpected acts. We lure them in with an opening sort of a
get-ready moment and then we just stick it in and try to bring them to an
imaginary, tranced-out place stirring up ancient memory and primal feelings.
It is extremely peasurable, almost like having a full body orgasm when you're
truly grooving into a song and everyone around you has their eyes rolled back
in their heads... bodies undulating wildly into one big throbbing mass of
flesh. I like to get people into a blissed-out state. I feel that I
offer more than just entertainment. I try to give them an almost shamanic
experience where they get in touch with all those primal urges.