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The last time I saw Caveman & the Banshee, the band was at the Biltmore, doing a trance-inducing, effects-laden, spacy variant on psych rock, with songs structured around the pounding basslines of the Caveman (aka Dave Read) while swirling electronics echoed and tweeted and shimmered. HJis partner, the elaborately-costumed Valentina “the Banshee” Cardinalli, sang, shrieked (like a banshee!), and engaged in compelling, oddball theatrics both on and off the stage.
Actually it wasn’t clear where the stage ended, with her; possibly nowhere?
I caught one number, “Zombie Disko”, on video, complete with an enthusiastic coterie of dancers and bits of a mini-low-budget monster skit acted out by the Banshee mid-song. (Cardinalli and Read use their self-appellations throughout the interview, so we’ll follow suit).
That song, the Banshee would explain later, isn’t so much about any of the lyrics contained therein.
“It’s about an unrelenting beat that makes titties bounce and asses wiggle,” she says. “It is also about our love for B-film horror movies. Think Roger Corman meets Rocky Horror meets The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
For the skit, she notes, “In the future I’d love it if we both stood behind black and white cut outs of a 1950s couple sort of like how Klaus Nomi did, but the life sized cut outs would have to fit in our van along with all the gear and all of my wardrobe.”
At more than one point during the night’s performance, the Banshee—who has a background in acting and is very aware of the theatricality of her presence and costume—invaded the audience. The house was pretty full, and I couldn’t always make out what she was doing on her journey; she tells stories from past shows of interfering with pool games and stealing darts from dartboards mid-game—but you could reliably find her in the crowd by the flashing lights in the giant plastic bow atop her head.
Crossing boundaries seems to be something she enjoys. At past gigs, I had also witnessed her rolling around on the floor below the stage (still singing, bling still flashing). I took out my phone to take a picture, and she noticed and crawled towards it.
Later at that same gig, she saw that I had retreated to the back of the venue to check my cellphone messages (which clearly one should not do at a show): so she came over and, still singing, sat on my lap for a time. She didn’t even know I was a writer!
The only other person to sit in my lap at a show has been David M. of NO FUN, and, like, he and I are actually friends. So that kind of behaviour has to count for something.
So at the Biltmore show, I bought one of Caveman & the Banshee’s records, 2025’s Born to Kill.
Turns out that as scene-stealing as his partner can be, Read—the Caveman—has an interesting musical history, which was also a factor in the purchase. I don’t know any of the prior bands he’s been in: Moths & Locusts, Anunnaki, the Fantastic Four, Carlito Verde, Substack, Sing Along With Tonto, and Death Militia.
But he’s on a Damo Suzuki record, for one thing—the one that was recorded live in Nanaimo and known as Seven Potatoes, which is a literal translation of what “Nanaimo” means in Japanese (“nana” is seven; “imo”, with an extended “o”, is potato).
And besides Suzuki, he worked with New York art-weirdos King Missile, of “Detachable Penis” fame, and recorded with psych-rock legend Twink, of the Pink Fairies and the Pretty Things. So sure, I’ll buy a Caveman & the Banshee record!
At the merch table, Caveman did a neat trick: to open the album, in order to sign it, he rubbed the edge back and forth against his jeans. There was no trying to find the groove with his thumbnail, no papercuts, no dented-cardboard corner: the album opened from the friction alone, and he slid the shrink off it, signed it, passed it to the Banshee, and when the ink had dried, slid the perfectly-preserved shrinkwrap back on.
It was impressive: I’ve tried to do the same thing, since, and had no luck.
“I learned that trick many moons ago working at a record distributor outside Toronto,” Caveman explains. “A decent pair of jeans works best. Just slide the opening back and forth with moderate pressure. There’s no warranty on damaged LPs!”
Video of Caveman & the Banshee do “Zombie Disko” live at the Biltmore, Vancouver, March 13, 2025
Speaking of jeans, the Banshee, his life partner as well as his musical co-conspirator, adds, “He has really only one pair of black jeans he wears until they can pretty much open records on their own. But there are many wonderful things that involve friction from within Caveman pants. Thirty-one years together and sparks still fly!”
Banshee further confides that the Caveman hates shopping for clothes. He might have a second pair folded somewhere for backup, but he dresses the same whether onstage or off, and when it comes to shopping, only really likes buying records. Sounds like my kind of guy!
The two are indispensable fixtures in the Nanaimo scene. Besides hosting Damo Suzuki, they’ve put the mysteriously-masked Bob Log III up when they toured together.
Banshee confesses that she was a bit apprehensive about the eccentric houseguest at first (“I realized I just might have brought a madman into my home”), but he soon won her over.
“Quite quickly I realized he’s just lovely as can be, lives in Australia but has a nice polite southern twang about him. He works hard and is super professional. He’s ‘the real deal’, just as we are.”
She describes having a “musical threesome” with Caveman and Bob Log III.
“I won’t say it was better than sex, but there certainly were orgasmic moments. Especially for the audience!”
And Damo Suzuki was “amazing”, Caveman reports. “We hosted him here twice; it was a major honour play with him”.
The former vocalist for Krautrock legends Can, Suzuki, who passed in 2024, would maintain a network of musicians around the world who were able to back him, people gifted in laying down extended, trippy jams over which he would improvise lyrics. The Seven Potatoes album, recorded with the Nanaimo chapter of his network, including Caveman on bass, is online here.
Nanaimo is an interesting little town if you’re a music lover. There are more record stores there than you’d expect, including one run by the Caveman clan, a punk/ metal shop called NoiseAgonyMayhem. There are also a host of unusual venues, some like the Vault with a direct historical connection to the Vancouver “Fake Jazz” scene of yore.
“We do love Nanaimo,” Caveman says. “There are tons of cool places to see music, get a meal/drink, and shop, but like everywhere in Canada these days, it’s a fight against gentrification. We’ve been here for 20 years after growing up in Toronto and spending a decade in Brooklyn before heading west.”
If I’ve got this right, they met in Toronto when the Banshee was a tender 19-year-old and Caveman was 27.
“The eight-year age difference raised some eyebrows, and it was funny because at the time when we met, I didn’t actually have any ID with me,” the Banshee says.
Dave had to ask his buddy, Terry Moore (who was also his bandmate in Sing Along With Tonto) if he thought Cardinalli was of age or not.
“Thank goodness he vouched that he thought I was telling the truth!”
Oddly enough, it wasn’t really music that brought them together, the Banshee explains.
“We met in a loud club and started talking over the music,” she shares. “I mentioned that my sister was deaf. He said, ‘I never told you my sister was deaf!’ I said ‘What?’, because the music was loud. He said ‘my sister is deaf.’ I said ‘No, MY sister is deaf.’ He said, ‘WHAT??!’”
It went on like that for awhile.
“Anyway, we figured out our sisters are both profoundly deaf,” the Banshee continues. “This is kind of a big thing, to not have to explain to someone the nuances and intricacies of what this means growing up. I felt I could save a lot of breath because he already understood me, and I him. I really was ready to meet my Caveman. He was smart and he just adored my wild side. He still does!”
It took awhile for the two of them to fully fall together as a couple, as they pursued their respective muses, acting and music (Cardinalli’s credits range from Road to Avonlea to a speaking part in the movie A Beautiful Mind: these are the most familiar of the titles on her IMDB page, but there’s more besides).
They eventually got married when the Banshee was 21 and Caveman was 29. At that time, the Banshee explains, “We still hadn’t played one lick of music or really collaborated on anything artistically.”
Moths & Locusts were the first band they were in together, and only on their later records, the Banshee explains.
“It was great when this band ‘hit’ because there were six members,” she says. “Sometimes it felt like flying”.
But playing in a six-piece band when COVID hit became untenable, hence the new duo incarnation, which kicked off in 2021: it’s just the two of them onstage, and Caveman’s ample supply of gear.
“Caveman is the whole band,” is how the Banshee puts it. “He is massive. I love him.”
I get Caveman to enumerate what he uses, for curious gear geeks out there.
“My magical pedalboard contains our trusted drum machine which we have named Amber Sand, as well as a couple loopers (one to loop the bass via MIDI to the drum machine, the other for ‘spacy’ loops). I also use a Death By Audio Apocalypse Fuzz pedal, a boost pedal, a MIDI-synced digital delay, a pitch shifter, and occasionally another goodie or two.”
There are special guests on Born to Kill, including Stephen Hamm on Theremin, Liam Murphy on sax, and Lori Goldson on cello. Other than the Cavemen and the Banshee have created and played all the music on both their albums to date, with no other outside artists involved.
“I think Caveman & the Banshee is the best artistic project I’ve ever been involved in,” Banshee confides. “I don’t look back very often.”
Video of Caveman & The Banshee (Live @ Time & Space Continuum)
She and the Caveman share all their influences.
“Caveman understands what I mean when I say things that the rest of the world probably wouldn’t get. There are key artistic reference points we both know.”
Take, for example, the song “The Cage”, off Born to Kill. The lyrics and title were inspired by the first Star Trek episode, the 1965 series’ pilot that starred Jeffrey Hunter as ship’s captain Christopher Pike.
“We both know this episode really well,” the Banshee says. “I pretended I was one of the aliens affectionately referred to by fans as a ‘bum head’ and the thing just wrote itself, except I change it from being a female who gets put back together by aliens to a male instead. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe because it suited the song more? It was really quickly written once the inspiration hit. Another line in this song is ‘your dreams are being recorded’ and that was partially from Star Trek but I wouldn’t have said it so succinctly if it weren’t for an anime movie called Paprika.”
It takes some chutzpah, I observe, to name an album Born to Kill, when there’s a well-known song by the Damned of that title (which is itself cribbed from a classic Laurence Tierney noir). But Caveman says the title sums up their manifesto as a band perfectly.
“Caveman said to me once”, the Banshee notes, “that every time he plays he wants to ‘kill’, meaning he isn’t going to let anyone or anything stand in his way from doing his very best. He’s sick of being told to turn it down or be lesser.”
This sort of thing has happened in the past, of course.
“He’s adamant it will not happen again.”
She also notes that the title Born to Kill was less inspired by the Damned than it is biker movies like Easy Rider or Psychomania (“a more esoteric motorcycle movie involving vampires and really cool helmets”).
Another set highlight was “Melanie”, which Caveman notes was inspired by the song “In the City” by ’60s folk artist Melanie. It had the vocal performance of the night: the Banshee hit operatic new-wavy notes that reminded me both of Nina Hagen and a vocalist from the vintage Vancouver scene, the late Elizabeth Fischer. So are their vocalists she takes after? Has she had voice training?
“I’m an actor!” shes says. “It’s all theatre. I love Nina Hagen and I don’t know Elizabeth Fischer. I am always flattered by comparisons made, but its also a bit weird because I’m NOT a singer. I will never think of myself as a singer. I think I’m a vocalist, which is really just acting. I like being different characters and I’m completely unconcerned about having to be ‘pretty’ all the time. I think it limits rage if you only allow yourself to make ‘nice’ sounds”.
Her costuming also has a story. “The beads are from Joplin, the ears are from Forbidden Dimension, the long fingered glove is inspired by Kinski and the tights are just easy to move around in, but they have to be bright and colorfully patterned”. She got her first pair from a used Halloween costume for an ’80s-style punk rocker, the Banshee says with a grin.
“Really, I am just dressing the way I want to dress,” she continues. “My everyday clothing has also gotten more exciting from being in this band. All of my clothing is thrifted or handmade. My makeup is both sparkling and bright and a bit sinister on purpose. It does do the trick of altering me into a character, or persona. That’s the point of it”.
They’re a pretty cute couple, really. And whether you dig their music or not, you’ll be entertained by the theatre of it. It’s impossible not to be.
“The audience didn’t show up NOT to be entertained”, the Banshee observes. “They want SOMETHING for their money, and I intend to give it to them. It may not be what they expect!”
Caveman & the Banshee play Red Gat with Rong and Stephen Hamm Theremin Man tonight March 21. Go here for tickets.