BY GREGG KIRK
Big Shout Magazine, September 1994

Imagine L7 without drug problems and bad attitudes and you’ve got Zuzu’s Petals. With their name lifted from a line in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and with an on-show appearance on Beverly Hills 90210 under their belts, you know they’re cool, but you probably want to know more. Forget about it. If you’re interested in their brand of stripped-down guitar rock, go see this Minneapolis-bred trio at the Khyber Pass on Sept. 26 in Philly. Since this is our food issue and all… we were more interested in the band’s eating habits. So we chewed the fat with bassist Coleen Elwood in a phone interview last month before she headed our way to push the band’s latest LP, The Music of Your Life. Chew on this…

Big Shout: Does anyone in the band cook?

Coleen Elwood: We all cook. We’re all really fabulous cooks!

BS: What’s your specialty dish?

CE: Well, I’m pretty good with the pastas. A favorite of pasta dish of mine is pasta with yellow peppers, asparagus, and mushrooms — and olive oil and a little bit of garlic, of course.

BS: How about anyone else in the band?

CE: Well Laurie (Lundeen, the guitarist) gave me a fabulous recipe for lemon chicken — a little bit of mayo (or yogurt) and lemon and then bread crumbs. You roll the chicken in the bread crumbs, bake it up, and it’s fabulous.

BS: How about Linda (Pitmon, the drummer)?

CE: Linda brought back the beauty of the pancake to me (laughs). She’s really good with the pancake.

Zuzu’s Petals: (left to right) Coleen Elwood, Laurie Lundeen, and Linda Pitmon.

BS: What does she do with a pancake?

CE: Well, she buys the good nutra-grain pancake mix, and then puts yogurt and fruit on them. It’s quite tasty.

BS: I’m getting the feeling you guys are into health food a little bit…

CE: Sometimes we have a cooler and we bring fruits and turkey & Swiss sandwiches or something. We’ve made it a habit to locate good place to eat in every city we’ve been to so we usually do pretty well. I really like eating somewhere on a coast where we can get really good seafood. We don’t have really good seafood here (Minneapolis).

BS: What are some of the restaurant highlights of the bigger cities you’ve been to?

CE: In Newport, VA — by this club called the Insect Club — right across the way is a seafood restaurant that they take you to, and the last time, I think, we had blackened tuna and veggies. Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the club, which is also a restaurant, has really good food. And that’s always nice, when the club itself has the good restaurant. Let’s see… there’s a million restaurants in Chicago for Mexican.

BS: Have you been to Philly before?

EL: We’ve been to Philly about five times. We like that town, actually. It’s got the best carrot cake in the nation! We get it at the Carrot Cake Man or something… I don’t know where it is — our soundman knows. He kept talking about it, and sure enough, he was right!

BS: Is there anything you won’t eat?

EL: I will not eat green peppers. I will eat every other color of pepper. I think I can safely say that nobody in the band will eat green peppers.

BS: Yeah, they have a way of ruining a pizza. They kind of take over…

EL: Exactly, it’s not a food that can sit there on its own; it’s gotta spread its flavor throughout whatever it’s in.