Interview with Shady Acres, Guitar/Vocals with D.ead F.riends F.orever and Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
SA: Before I came back from the dead (I’m a zombie by the way) I always make fun of artists, bands, singers and their antics, their laughable attempt at attention whoring, their nauseating take on love and life, heck! Singing any songs the 
wrong way (read: butchering the lyrics) just to amuse myself was one of my favorite pastimes, heheh! Then one day, karma backhanded me in the face and, here I am! I became the one thing I sought to destroy (which is music), heheh! So when we came back from the dead, I said the other guys, hey, let’s make a band, shall we? Hence D.ead F.riends F.orever came into being: five dead end (and recently exhumed) dudes with absolutely no musical background came together and make music just for the heck of it.
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
SA: I was born in the southern state somewhere in the Malaysian Peninsula, spent my childhood in a “cesspool of hypocrisy” small town called Muar and I have a college diploma in broadcasting. Other than that, I’m an introvert, women avoided me like the plague (which gets worse once you became a zombie I can tell you that much) and all I wanna do is to live out my fantasies in my parents basement. Then I moved to an even stinkier cesspool called Kuala Lumpur, met four more like minded dudes and the rest is history. Oh, and I picked up the guitar after finding out that my highschool certificate is “nothing to shoot your neighbor for” and began to sing my heart out despite realizing that my vocal range is all over the place but hey, I make up all that by dreaming of having all the success in the world. (Dreaming and fantasizing through life is such an addictive drug…you should try it).
PD: Who and what inspires you to make music, both in terms of musical and other influences? What do you like to write about in your songs?
SA: I credited these songs as what inspired me to get involved in music: “Music Box Dancer” (aka ice cream van music)
(forgot which artist), “Eyes That See In The Dark” by Kenny Rogers (nice rotisserie chicken by the way), “I Feel Like Buddy Holly” (forgot which artist), “Spanish Fly” (forgot which artist), “The Pianist” (I think) by Scott Joplin and “Reimei” by Kitaro. Being an introvert, I’d like to (musically) whine about how the world treats me everyday and also whatever it is that’s trending in the internet at any given time (zoomers are quite a whiny lot, don’t you think? Heheh!) Oh, and ABBA! I grew up obsessed with ABBA so there were times I’d try to put their musical influence into my music (and with disastrous results heheh).
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
SA: Though this may sound outdated but I grew up reading about bands that tour the world for up to six months after releasing an album, go home for a month then go back into the studio for three months, release another album and then repeat the whole pattern over again and said, hey cool! I wanna do whatever they’re doing as well! Though nowadays, with the advent of free (read: online) music people can unknowingly live and die in poverty either in their parents basement or under someone else’s staircase despite having their music played millions of time worldwide and personally, that’s not very cool man! Bring back the good old ways, now!
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
SA: Managing to produce my band’s first album back in 2019 without having an inkling of what music production supposed to be, heheh.
PD: Promoting one’s music is such a challenge these days, especially with so many new artists emerging from bedrooms in the day of the home studio. How is that going?
SA: Like I said bring back the good old days man! Where record label reps still roam the streets hunting for fresh meat and stuff! Music promotion sucks if you came from a small country like mine, where the government controls what the people can follow or appreciate (to prevent rebellion of any kind) and watching asian femboys strutting onstage singing in a tongue twisting language is all the rage.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
SA: For now we’d be lucky if we don’t fall apart until we can get fresh limb replacement, much less booking for performance or shows heheh! I mean who would want to watch a bunch of talentless zombies (with a seriously bad singer some more heheh) making a fool out themselves onstage every weekend, right? Right?
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
SA: Unless you are the lucky ones who happens to write music that is relevant to the current generation (the femboys strutting, alien singing kind), you’re better off dead. Or like people sarcastically remarked (after listening to my music once) “Don’t quit your day job!”
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
SA: I wish I was there in the US when Green Day first started because I like their kind of music (any songs from their first three albums “Smoothed Out Slappy Hours”, “Kerplunk!” and “Dookie”) and I very much wanted to join them. (Not gonna lie I did spend my entire adolescent dreaming to be their fourth member just like everyone else, heheh)
PD: Is there anything you don’t like about the music industry, which you would change if you could?
SA: Gatekeeping, meaning the existence of an “elite” group of people deciding what is good for our ears and what is not. I’d like to intravenously give all of them AIDS/EBOLA/COVID-19/all three viruses so they’d die off quickly and leave us to 
decide for ourselves what we want to hear.
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
SA: Trying to procure fresh body parts to replace our constantly rotting ones–preferably without any viruses in them this time! Contrary to popular beliefs we zombies are quite picky when it comes to “personal hygiene” so there!
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
SA: Erm, we can’t afford to produce physical albums (buying cadavers everyday for our spares are expensive) so find our music in any of these platforms (Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Itunes). You can also sniff out our undead presence on YouTube for our lyrics videos and FB and Twitter for some retch inducing banter (I personally like to hang out on Twitter because I love the stench it emits heheh!)
D.ead F.riends F.orever links:
Band/Artist location – Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Facebook – You Tube – Bandcamp –
Twitter – Apple – Spotify – Amazon – Deezer –
Check our page for D.ead F,riends F.orever
