Fall Out Boy Interview

This caused a bit of fuss.



Fall Out Boy Love Anal Sex

So I was feeling really sick and was laid up in bed with a fever and stuff and I got a call asking if I could go interview Fall Out Boy at their swanky Kensington Hotel. It seemed like too much fun too pass up. I got there at 9pm as appointed and was met by a really nice press officer in the reception where there were loads of tour lackey’s and hangers on loafing round and told we had the last interview slot of the day. It also became apparent that it would be singer/bassist Pete Wentz on his own as doing interviews with the whole band was “unwieldy”. OK. It was also made clear that Pete had had a long day. To this end I decided to go for a quick fire 20 questions approach to try and get some stuff the dude from MTV2 with the six strong entourage and video camera that had the slot before me probably wouldn’t. I had a Polaroid camera and a temperature.

Vice: Hey Pete, ready?
Pete: Sure.

Vice: On a scale of one to ten how much do you enjoy anal sex?
Pete: (without hesitating) Ten.

Vice: Staying with that what is your worst ever sexual experience?
Pete: When I was about 16 I had this girlfriend who wouldn’t let me get past like first base so I used to just dry hump her to try and get her into it but she wasn’t having it. I went at it so hard that I rubbed all the skin off my dick and balls. It was raw man…

Vice: Wow. What is your favourite Vice? Other than anal bashing and dry humping.
Pete: Sloth. Just lying around. Doing nothing.

Vice: Have you ever had a fight with your Mum?
Pete: A physical fight! Nah man! Well, she once ground me for all of Spring Break. That one almost came to blows I suppose.

Vice: Ever been in a fistfight?
Pete: Sure. I usually loose but the other night over in Europe somewhere this bouncer guy smacked one of our stage crew and I had at him man. I dropped him, it was cool.

Vice: Any other good tour stories?
Pete: Err; you know the usual, nakedness, beer.

Vice: Cam on you’ve sold like 36 million records. Specifics. Like you wanted your Coke died black or something.
Pete: Err, well the other night we got back to the hotel and I had a lady friend back with me.

Vice: Anal?
Pete: No no! I was a little drunk and had taken a few downers to get me to sleep and we’d ordered a load of room service that just didn’t turn up so I went down to the kitchen to try and see whet the deal was and got really lost. I made my way back to the room somehow and was knocking on the door but no one answered. I got kinda mad and started kicking the door down cos I thought the chick was like robbing me or something and all of a sudden her head pops out of the door opposite and she’s like freaking out going: ‘ah, you’ve just kicked down 602, we’re 603’.

Vice: I was gonna ask when you last disgraced yourself but that should cover it. Right, Frankenband?
Pete: Cool, err. Bonham on Drums, maybe me on bass and then Robert Smith and Morrisey on guitar and vocals, can you imagine that combo! It would totally implode!

Vice: Who is the most successful person you know.
Pete: Jay Z

Vice: You know Jay Z?
Pete: Sure, I mean we don’t go to sleepovers together but if we’re both in town we’ll catch dinner or something.

Vice: Cool, finally, over here Emo as a genre has come to be typified by yourselves and bands like My Chemical Romance. How do you feel about the tag. To me Emo is bands like Moss Icon, Heroin and Christie Front Drive.
Pete: Sure, exactly. I mean I grew up on Rites Of Spring, Cap N Jazz, all that. My first band just used to rip off Fugazi but now we do what we do and whatever the music press feels like calling it that’s up to them.

Vice: Thank you very much Pete, it’s been cool to hang out.

Michael Runion Biog

Does writing this make me an evil person? Probably.



Michael Runion’s career has been dedicated to making the music he believes in: heartfelt songs filled with truth and melody. As a constant figure in the bands that surround the Rilo Kiley collective including Jenny Lewis’s solo projects and Sub Pop signed indie power pop four-piece The Elected he has helped mine a vein of authentic American songwriting playing bass, steel guitar, guitar and supplying vocals.

His solo work seeks to display his own unique voice while remaining informed by the music and musicians that Michael has continued to surround himself with. The familiar Saddle Creek sound that lends an air of modernist melody and pop sensibility to classic song structure is present but in Runion’s delivery, turn of phrase and day to day observation there is more Willy Vaultin or Howe Gelb than Connor Oberest or Willy Mason while the echoes of Townes Van Zandt and The Band’s Levon Helm that he brazenly displays as influences on his Myspace page are clear.

While he continues to share stages with like-minded outfits such as friends Whispertown2000 across the USA this trip to the UK represents an opportunity to experience Runion at his intimate and most potent alone with his guitar.

Tracks from the self released ‘Early Grave’ EP as well as the video for the single ‘Drunk As I’ve Ever Been’ can be accessed on Michael’s Myspace page [www.myspace.com/michaelrunion] and he will be appearing at the following dates in London and the South East including a top secret House Show on March the second and a gig at legendry London folk venue the Troubadour:

23/02/07 Tapestry, London

24/02/07, The Strongrooms, London

25/02/07, The Old Blue Last, London

27/02/07, Bardens Boudoir, London

28/02/07, Cobra Club at The Sun Rooms, Southend

02/03/07, House Show, Secret Location, London

03/03/07, The Troubadour, London

04/03/07, The Social, London

PW Long Interview

Wow, an interview with someone I actually really genuinely respect and love!



P.W. Long has been defining his unique vision of bluesy, powerful rock and roll in bands like Wig and Reelfoot for longer than he'd care to remember. With his seminal early 90s trio Mule, Long pretty much wrote the book that people like Jack White and PJ Harvey have been studiously ripping off for the last few years...

He's just released a beautiful solo album called The Drunkard's Dog and he came over to London last week to promote it. We talked to him just before he ripped up the Old Blue Last with his balls-to-the-wall power-trio Young James Long.

Hey, Preston. So how’s the tour going?

OK I guess, touring is a process, it takes time. You get used to filling the time in ways appropriate to you. The amount of time that you spend on tour is completely reliant on your individual drug or alcohol consumption and the way you regulate it.

Any interesting tales from your time on tour then?

Hell no, it’s all just one thing you know. I mean there’s been times, like one time in Atlanta where we were sharing the changing rooms with some strippers but that was in a strip club so it was no surprise really. Oh, I suppose the band I was in before (Wig), the other guys got kind of jealous that all of a sudden I was playing guitar and wanting sing and write and stuff so they staged a fight. That was their way of kicking me out. We see each other around now, it’s all OK.

Why did you decided to take a few years off?

That was because the whole process bored me and I couldn’t focus on the thing anymore, you know, the thing that was making it worth it.

Didn’t you try some other work during that period? I heard you directed a video for Hank Williams III?

That didn’t come out the way I hoped. It was just this little thing I did. I moved around, tried out some different places, New Orleans for a minute there. I was doing some writing, I write some sports bits. I was always pitching ideas to the Editors but they were in a habit of taking some of my ideas a little too serious you know? Like a wrote some columns from weird viewpoints as a kind of satirical thing, they didn’t really get it. Like from the view of a blonde kind of white-trash woman.

Are you happy with the music you are playing now and being on the road again?

I guess. I like the LP, that came out good, But I had those songs down for about two years you know. It only just came out now. In the time off I was listening to just a bunch of old stuff, Miles Davis live records, Archie Shepp. Now I’m ready to put a few more down. The stuff I do in Young James Long is more of a live thing, powerful guitars. Kirkland James the other guitarist he writes a lot and we just get on going together up there and have a few drinks and see what happens.

Do you feel you are part of a legacy of Detroit artists?

What does that even mean? That is a question I don’t really get. I mean a lot of those bands you think of as Detroit bands aren’t even from Detroit. We played with Negative Approach in Chicago recently; maybe they are a Detroit band but a legacy of Detroit artists? No, nothing like that.

Theoretical Girl (part 2)

So I caught up with Amy Frolic again, this time for the Vice web blog. She is really cool and I hope some more people start listening to her. She also listened while I chatted codhsit about music to her for about two hours over Stella in the Good Mixer so she's a winner in my book.



Theoretical Girl Probably Hasn’t Heard Of Your Band

So we were down at The Old Blue at the last People Are Germs night and there was this really cute girl on stage all alone making a load of noise and singing songs that sounded like the ghost of Gram Parsons fronting DNA but coming out of a hot girls body. Added bonus eh? We caught up with Amy Frolic in Camden after she had finished work and she matched us pint for pint.

So what’s with the name? Are you big into Glenn Branca or something?

Not at all, so many people ask me that. I am not into the band Theoretical Girls. It was just a name that my friend gave me to play my first gig with and I’ve just never bothered coming up with anything else. I suppose it sort of refers to how I analyse everything. Also maybe my approach to how I make my music.

How does your live show work? It’s just you up on stage but there are loads of sounds.

I come up with bass lines and drum parts and any other noises and program them into an old 8-Track then burn them down onto CD and Polly my CD player plays them out for me. I sing and play guitar over them. I’m not really into technology, keeping it simple helps me focus on the song. Sometimes now I play with other people but it’s hard finding people that are happy to just do what I tell them. My CD player can’t argue with me.


You’ve appeared on hipster compilations like Alt Deletes Digital Penetration and Angular’s Future Love Songs but you don’t sound anything like any of the other dudes on them. How come?

Well I live alone, in a draughty loft apartment in Muswell Hill, It’s pretty desolate and I just write. I also haven’t really listened to any modern music in about a year and a half. Just my Mum’s old records, stark classical stuff like Bartok and Purcell with a bit of Joni and Neil Young thrown in to stop myself getting utterly depressed.

You’re no Beth Ditto, you look hot on stage. How do you think that figures in the way people react to your songs?

Err; I think I look like a twat. I just have a few glasses of wine and hopefully not get too nervous and just play. Some girls really milk the image thing but I’m totally not into that, it’s just no concern. They can do what they want but you know, whatever. It’s an interesting time for female solo artists though, look at the Brits, only one out and out pop act in Jamelia and a load of girls on their own doing interesting things like Winehouse and Lilly Allen. I’m not really into their music but I’d far prefer to tour with them than any fucking Shoreditch bands.

We got in trouble the other week for asking Fall Out Boy on a scale of 1 to 10 how into anal sex they were. Where do you stand on that issue?

I’m not going to answer that. My mum might be reading this.

Allah Doesn't Smile On Street Walking

Here is a piece I wrote based on research and a primary interview with a genuine Iraqi prostitute. It is written from her perspective. It may or may not be published in Vice's March Iraq Issue.

Allah doesn’t smile on street walking. Under the Baathist regime being a prostitute was a seriously risky business. If caught soliciting or even being suspected of plying your trade a hooker would face jail at best with death commonly used as a demonstrative tool. In 2000 Saddam ordered the public beheading of 200 women just in case anyone was getting mixed signals on the whole paying for sex thing.

A combination of the general chaos and lawlessness Iraq has been thrown into combined with what has essentialy become a US judicial system espousing Western values the worst a prostitute can expect in 2007 is a slap on the wrist and maximum of 48 hours detention. With a high percentage of the Iraqi male population decimated by continuing conflict in many families the onus to provide has fallen upon women. If you can earn $5 a day sweeping up in a hairdressers that might be blown up at any minute or you can earn that in minutes on the job the decision is easily made for many of these girls.

The influx of American contractors and Military officials has bought the cash to allow scenes like the above in Karada Street to become a regular fixture of the visiting Westerners Baghdad experience. The Lebanese businessmen who run the compound started out as small time hustlers selling Viagra in Beirut but their entrepreneurial streak has led them east through Afgahnistan into Iraq. They have created a secure escape from the reality they continue to exploit filled with fine wines, Cohibas, swimming pools and whores. Shit you half expect Hugh to pop up at any minute.

The girls lure the western money in and it is swiftly relieved from uniformed pockets by obliging, nubile Iraqi girls as young as 14 who are more than happy to shut up, bend over and occasionally laugh sweetly. Repeat business is common and girls can earn anything up to $2,500 a month. While the growing practice is condemned by resurgent Islamic clerical elements it shows no sign of abating and is sure keeping these Lebanese fellas in funny smelling aftershave for the foreseeable future.

Dissident Rock

Here is something I wrote about the Czech band the Plastic People of the Universe for the Vice Blog.



Dissident Rock & Roll

Some people make a big deal about the fact that The Plastic People Of The Universe ‘are the history of the dissident Czech liberal struggle embodied in musical opposition’. In fact that is the entire premise and backdrop of Tom Stoppard’s latest play ‘Rock & Roll’. The thing is that unlike bands like the recently reformed Rage Against The Machine who exist to highlight issues and politicise society the Plastics simply wanted to play some tunes.

The band nicked their name from a Zappa song and formed in late 1968 soon after the Russians quashed Dubcek and the liberating elements of the Czech government that had allowed the Prague Spring. The Plastics were lead by their own Andy Warhol; an excitable dude named Ivan Jirous, and made a hodgepodge psychedelic sound that mixed the Velvets with the Fuggs and Pink Floyd. They soon had their professional licence revoked so they started throwing crazy happenings out in the countryside filled with freaky kids that looked like they’d just walked out of Haight Ashbury circa ‘68.

This didn’t sit to well with the Kremlin’s ‘normalisation’ process of Czech culture and shows were routinely shut down and fans jailed most notably in 1976 when 27 musicians were jailed and over 100 fans held for interrogation due to the ‘subversive’ nature of the Plastics music. Jirous was sentenced to 18 months and he hadn’t even played a note!

The diverse group of supporters that rallied round the imprisoned band included the future Czech president Alexander Havel but on their release the authorities continued to dog the band. Their recordings were only ever widely available in the West produced from tapes of the bands live shows illegally smuggled out of the country. Lou Reed was allegedly moved to tears on hearing Havel recount the Plastics tale during his visit to Prague in early 1990 soon after the wall had fallen and the band were finally free to play after over twenty years of doing nothing apart from refusing not to play.

Read their whole story here: http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/pulnoc.html

and have a look at them whigging out in New York last year here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPzO_pq_9g

Student Records

1. Bad
Jack Johnson
Brushfire Fairytales

This reeks of the three months that you just spent on the Koh San Road maxing out mummy and daddies credit card in order to ‘broaden your horizons’. Burn it now.

1. Good
Gary Higgins
Red Hash

This is an insane forgotten gem of a tripped out next level folk record that only got recovered because Ben Chasny put out a ‘Where Are You Now’ notice in the liner notes of a 6 Organs of Admittance album. Thankfully for us when the old hippy himself turned up at the Drag City offices they swiftly re-release this Incredible String Band on mescaline piece of genius.

2. Bad
The Pulp Fiction Soundtrack

How many times can a human being be forced to listen to the same series of songs in the same order? You weren’t even old enough to go and see the film in the cinema when it came out.

2. Good
The Wickerman Soundtrack

This has nothing to do with that constipated foetus joke of a re-make. The original Wickerman soundtrack was written by Paul Giovanni in which he infused traditional British song structures with Burns poetry and his own arrangements to create a haunting, timeless template without which people like Devandra Banhart wouldn’t have careers.

3. Good
Pink Floyd
Dark Side Of The Moon

Just because Q tells you an album is great, doesn’t mean it is. No matter how much weed you smoke or how many times you play it simultaneously with The Wizard of Oz this record will still be flaccid boring piece of crap your Dad listens to on the way to the South of France for your summer holiday.

3. Good
Popol Vuh
Herz Aus Glass

Not to be confused with the bible of the post-classical period Mayans, Popol Vuh is the collective name for the transcendent all-encompassing cosmic sound work of Florian Fricke. This recording is intended as an aural interpretation of the Werner Herzog film of the same name. Your Dad probably wouldn’t get it.

4. Bad
Mika
Grace Kelly

And so to the next in a long line of Tesco-friendly, sub-standard, hook heavy crap Chris Martin caused the majors to snap up and relentlessly push on the feeble minded record buying public since 2003. People are idiots.

4.Good
Skrewdriver
Hail The New Dawn

Ian Stuart would have eaten all these Morrisson/Blunt’s for breakfast then shat the out as little swastika shaped turds. Shame he’s rotting in Hell…

5. Bad
Air
Moon Safari

So when you head back to your digs after doing your first pill at some sweaty drum&bass rave (you need to stop going to those by the way, its all about Dubstep now) and you’re getting stoned someone is bound to put this on and say something like ‘yeah its just so chilled’. Ugh.

5. Good
Autechre
Amber

This is like a beautiful clean natural mountain spring bathing your naked body in some mountain in heaven while God goes ‘hmm, some of this electronic stuff aint half bad’.

Student Films

1.Bad
Garden State

By the time you get to University this will be ‘seminal’. It is a weak, plotless meander through various insecurities about life and growing up that thinks it is dealing with way more than it does. Oh, and it has The Shins in the soundtrack. So minus the Shins it is essentially my thought process as I’m taking a crap in the morning.

1. Good
Kes

Now here’s a film about life and growing up you can get behind. A boy and his bird. Admit it, you choked up when Jud killed the kestrel. This is a harrowing, bleak depiction of the inevitability and drudgery of the northern working classes. It is also brilliantly acted and shot which sort of makes it the opposite of the guy from Scrubs moaning about being on too many anti-depressants.

2. Bad
Buffalo 66

Right, here’s how it is: if you are guy you have to hate Gallo. He makes his own films, releases records on Warp, has curated his own fucking ATP (wtf?!) and your girlfriend loves him. One day she will bring this innocent looking but shockingly bad drudge through more insecurities around to your room and spend the whole hour and a half going on about how ‘convincing’ and ‘intense’ Vincent is. He just shouts a lot and does crazy eyes. Least convincing badass ex-con on the run with his girl ever.

2. Good
Bonnie & Clyde

Much more like it. These two just don’t give a shit. It’s the depression but damned if they aint gonna have some fun. Watch as Beatty’s funny face breaks into a maniacal laugh as he shoots people. The ending is awesome and Faye Dunaway is like Eve on a spring day but permanently.

3. Bad
Kill Bill

Students love to bang on about Tarantino the auteur. Sorry but am I the only one who thinks he lost it after Reservoir Dogs? I get the whole pastiche/self referntialism thing but the problem is that it works in True Romance perfectly because the dialogue and acting are incredible. This bloated parody however is what happens when you let a total movie-buff geek go wild like a paedo at break time and he makes an awful version of something he loves simply by trying too damn hard. Like those adults dedicated to making perfect replica railways. They look sort of cool going round and round but the whole thing just ends up looking fake and a bit creepy on closer inspection.

3. Good
Oldboy

Now here’s the flick Quentin should have made. Park Chan Wook is the master of the revenge film. This is part of a trilogy whose uniting factor is that someone has been wronged and they will crack skulls till they feel better about the whole thing. You will never look at a hammer in the same way. Paranoia followed by unrelenting brutality, perfect.

4. Bad
Human Traffic

At University lots of people start taking pills for the first time. For someone who has just taken their first E and lived on a farm in Hertfordshire until they left boarding school this film probably seems really edgy and ready to confront real life issues. To everyone else it is about as interesting as crabs.

4. Good
Adam & Paul

Although you are far less likely to develop a skag addiction in Halls this is one of the only films about drugs that is actually worth watching. No glamour, no girls, no Stooges. Just pissing, shitting, puking and trying to survive. All in the course of a day. The only problem with watching it with students is that they will probably try and compare it to Beckett. Just tell them to die.

5. Bad
Withnail and I

This is probably the most watched student film of all time. Generations of loan-fed twats have justified their terrible standards of living and alcoholism with misquotes about bohemianism and Camberwell Carrots thanks to this George Harrison funded oddity. What is their deal anyway? They clearly finished University years ago. Richard E Grant is already going bald.

5. Good
Withnail and I

The only problem is that it also happens to be one of the funniest, most re-watchable and insane British films ever. It’s far more like a Hunter S Thompson novel than the any of the actual films of his novels and watching a guy rub Deep Heat all over himself just to stay warm while gargling lighter fluid to stay pepped up never gets old. Maybe I should go back to being a student?

Student Books

These '5 Good' vs '5 Bad' lists were published in the Vice 2007 Student Guide. Obviously I don't really hate all of the novels/records/films that I slate. It's just to make a point: you don't have to digest the same shit as everyone else. Look around you.

1. Bad
Ulysses
James Joyce

Have any of you ever actually tried reading this? Nope, sorry, you’re lying. Dubliners is great, there’s like a dude who’s pants fall down and stuff and A Portrait Of The Artist… is cool in a kind of car crash way but the only reason this novel has made the cannon is because all of your professor’s don’t understand it. This piece of work single-handedly created ‘critical analysis’ and ‘meta-textuality’ because the only way you could write a paper about it was by referring to how different it is to other novels. Of course its different, it makes no fucking sense…

1. Good
Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

Yes that’s right, this is where the Klaxons came up with the name for the song. Say what you will about them as a band but Simon Taylor has read more books than all of you put together. I used to work in a call centre with him and it was like he used to ingest them through his eyeballs. This novel is like your first acid trip where everything makes perfect sense and all the strands of life are sewn seamlessly together. Then the fear kicks in….

2. Bad
Crime & Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

‘Wow, yeah it’s like a total examination of the insecurities of the human psyche’. No its not. He kill’s someone and then frets his ass off. It’s like an 18 rated Laurel & Hardy. The only reason you name drop it is because it is written by a Russian whose name is hard to spell.

2. Good
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

Now this is what you’re really after. An edge of you’re seat, white knuckle, wisecracking noir thriller that not only defined a literary genre but a cinematic movement. Without this you don’t Chinatown and some guy called Tarantino is still working at Blockbuster and masturbating to foreign Kung Fu imports instead of making good shit like True Romance and Pulp Fiction.

3. Bad
On The Road
Jack Kerouac

This should probably have been number one actually. Every twat under the age of 23 who has picked up a book is suddenly an acolyte at the altar of Saint Jack the emancipator of intellectual thought. ‘His prose style like totally represents freedom dude’. No it doesn’t, he only had one roll of typewriter paper so he couldn’t go back and correct the cock-ups. He’s a drunk jock who only got in on the beat scene cos Burroughs and Ginsberg probably fancied a bit of rough. He spent his latter days at the bottom of a bottle in fag denial.

3. Good
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Now this is the prose that beats the tick of time, the strange heartbeat of an American West long forgotten that somehow reflects today. Brutality, sweat, death and truth drip off of every page. It is subtitled ‘An Evening Of Redness In The West’ and inspired Earth’s recent return to form record Hex. Go read it now.

4. Bad
The Outsider
Albert Camus

This one is pretty much the like a combination of Crime & Punishment and On The Road. Every fucker has read this and suddenly starts wondering round smoking clove cigarettes and reading ridiculous Sartre plays that make no sense while trying to woo girls in the Library coffee bar with their new found appreciation of the self and existentialism. Inside they really want to head back to their hall room, build a zoot and watch Takeshi’s Castle.

4. Good
The Man Who Was Thursday
G.K. Chesterton

I almost didn’t want to mention this because it is my all time favourite book ever and I like to hold onto it like a beautiful un-spoilt little nest egg. Just thinking about it made makes me smile and want to laugh out loud. It is an insane crazed work of genius by the dude who wrote the Father Brown mysteries and involves anarchists and hot air balloons. Thursday… is so off the hook that explanation is rendered redundant. Go.

5. Bad
Blankets
Craig Thompson

This is a the sort of wet Wednesday graphic novel that kids that know nothing about comics buy from Waterstone’s cos it’s been highlighted in the recommended zone. They read it and it’s all this heart on sleeve indie shit that probably appeals to people who know all of the Beat Happening’s lyrics by heart and then they realise it’s hidden power and give it to susceptible girls to demonstrate their ‘sensitive’ side. How does ‘sensitive’ and ‘I want to fuck you’ ever equate by the way?

5. Good
Cerebus
David Simm

Hahahahaha! This is it! An incredible odyssey through every possible facet of human interaction as experienced by a Viking aardvark based on Conan. In about 100 years time there will be modules taught on this piece of work. Simm is a genius and we should all do the ‘we’re not worthy’ thing from Wayne’s World whenever he is mentioned.

Late Of The Pier

Here is an interview I did with Late Of The Peir a young band from north of Nottingham. This was published in the Vice 2007 Student Guide.

Late Of The Pier
make musical Ventolin

Okay okay, this whole New Rave thing has been played out already. Wait a minute though…For all its faults as a catch-all term New Rave captured something that was happening simultaneously all round the country last year: an unbridled enthusiasm to create and make music fun again. This energy and inventiveness is embodied by Late Of The Pier, They make the music they want to make and have a great time doing it thanks. Alongside bands like The Video Nasties and Fear of Flying these four kids from Castle Donnington have become staples of the pioneering underage Way Out West night in London and despite looking about the same age as their audiences have a single out next month on WOW Recordings entitled Space And The Woods. It sounds a bit like Dat Politics buggering Whirlwind Heat.

Vice: Hi, coming from Castle Donnington were you often bullied by Iron Maiden fans at school?

Faley: No, no one does anything up there. It’s so boring, just painful. There was no one to bully us; we had to resort to bullying each other and just generally free falling.
Sam: We never learned anything of any use at school. Maybe how to roll a good spliff. That was why we started sneaking down to Liars Club in Nottingham when we were like 15.

Vice: Did you learn more from Liars Club than you did at School?

Sam: Definitely. We were pretty young and Ricky, the guy that runs it, used to smuggle us in and feed us things.
Faley: It was amazing to be exposed to this weird mix of people and music. It would be Gravy Train naked on stage one minute then DJ Hell and Errol Alkan playing these insane electro records for hours the next but it all worked really well together.

Vice: Have you ever got naked on stage at a Way Out West night? That might get you into trouble…

Potter: Ha, no not really. Those shows are wicked to play though. All the kids just fully don’t give a shit and go mental and that makes you really give it on stage, make music to have asthma to. I have so much more fun doing a Way Out West show than say at The Barfly where we played last week.
Sam: Yeah that was excruciating, like sleeping on a bed of nails.
Faley: The kids at the underage shows are really easy to push over as well.

Vice: OK. You are all too young to even go to University yet but what would you like to study if you end up going there?

Potter: I’d like to do glass blowing so that I could build a glass casing for a synthesizer.
Sam: I suppose maybe something visual. What we do with the band, I don’t see it ending with the music you know? The visual side is just an extension of it all. I really like Dali, maybe something like that.

www.myspace.com/lateofthepier

Powermetal!

Here is a piece I wrote on Powermetal for the blog on www.viceland.com I was mortified when Dom cut my top 10 from the blog post as I had spent ages thinking about it. Here is the original piece in all of its pagan glory.

Through the Fire & The Flames We Shall Survive!
Dragonforce are here to slay false metal.

Imagine going to a show where the crowd are dressed like Viking warriors replete with horned helmets and broadswords. A crowd that chant as one, fist in air, sword waving, to the smoke filled stage. The band emerge to blinding lights and riffs quicker than you’ve ever heard. Hold on, there are three guitarists. No, two guitarists and a keyboard player who looks like he’s playing a spaceship. And they’ve each got their own podium. And they have beer bongs strapped to their mike stands so they can chug while they tap solos that would make Van Halen pass an enema. Welcome to a Dragonforce show.

Dragonforce represent everything that is great about Power metal. A total escape from reality. Driven by blastbeats and riffs like lightning you’re off into a world of warriors, dragons, elves, valour, battle and heroism. It’s over the top showmanship to the power of googolplex. It’s totally fucking ridiculous, like playing Grand Theft Auto but inside of a Dungeons and Dragons game. And it rules.

Dragonforce are something of an anomaly. Britain just doesn’t really churn out riff slaying Power metal like the Europeans or the Yanks. It must be something in the water; we just aren’t cut out for the spandex showboating required in Power metal stagecraft 101. Sure Britain produced the bands that formed the nucleus of the NWOBHM but Maiden were always sort of like some dudes down the pub that went a bit crazy on stage for an hour and even the high camp of Priest still had that city of steel working class edge to it.

This country has never churned out Stratovarius’s, Manowar’s or Helloween’s. Hands up who remembers Blitzkrieg, Holosade or Tyrant? Didn’t think so… With the exception of maybe Marshall Law the US and the Europeans owned Power metal throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Even today, and despite Herman Li probably being the best metal guitarist in the world, Dragonforce can pop over to Germany and play a bunch of open air festivals to like 100,000 leather clad nutbags and get back to London and be lucky to fill the Astoria. Weird. The only place all the Brit Powermetalers get to hang out together and wear their Viking hats is at the annual Bloodstock festival in Derby. Hardly Wacken….

Funny really because it was a British band that probably lit the touch paper on the whole thing. Remember when Ozzy lost his marbles a bit more than before in ’78 and Geezer and Iommi finally gave him the shove? OK, remember that mad little hopping midget guy with the pipes called Ronnie James Dio who came in and helped make Heaven & Hell the best thing they did since Vol.4 (Ozzy apologists can suck my dick, Heaven and Hell rules, what you gonna do? Spring Never Say Die! on me?). Well Dio was in this mad visionary band called Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore who wrote all those Deep Purple riffs middle-aged guys hum in the shower. Rainbow record sleeves look like fragments of a shining, future Avalon thanks to Ken Kelly (nephew of the legendry Frank Frazetta, look it up) and they pretty much started the whole thing.

Here are 10 great Power metal records to shake your fist too:

1) Rainbow, Rainbow Rising (1976)
2) Manowar, Battle Hymns (1982)
3) Cirith Ungol, King Of The Dead (1984)
4) Omen, Battle Cry (1984)
5) Helloween, Keeper Of The Seven Keys I (1987) and II (1988)
6) Blind Gaurdian, Tales From The Twilight World (1990)
7) Gamma Ray, Land Of The Free (1995)
8) Stratovarius, Visions (1997)
9) Primal Fear, Jaws Of Death (1999)
10) Dragonforce, Valley Of The Damned (2003)

www.dragonforce.com
www.bloodstock.uk.com

Natloz Zenitherion

Anti-Social Entertainment

Here is an interview I did with Heny G, one of the main players in West London's Anti Social Entertainment Crew who make Grime and Dubstep music. This was one of the most interesting interviews I have done so far and I wish I could have transcribed the whole tape but he talked at me for about an hour! All fascinating stuff though...This was originally intended for the Vice 2007 Student Guide but Heny never got me a photo in time. We are hollerin at him to set us a photo so we can run it in the main magazine.

Anti Social Entertainment

While Grime was busy putting out impossible amounts of mixtapes and calling people out on Rinse, Dubstep crept through the back door last year. While much of the media attention has made it seem like this all exploded in South London overnight like a some mushrooms in the dark it’s been building for over five years. Anti Social know this. Silkie, Harry Craze and Heny G have been at it in West London since day. Silkie remixed Gemma Fox back in 2002 as well as crafting the ‘04 killer ‘No Help No Handouts’ while Heny has been on pirates such as Lush since he was 10. It was at Henys’ own React FM that Jay 5ive , Quest and Razor Rector came into the picture and big tracks like ‘Strawberries’ began to get the gang noticed. Last year tunes like Quest’s ‘Hardfood’ and Silkie’s ‘Drugs’ were all over dances and radio with their uniquely musical take on Dubsteps halfstep wobble while Heny’s been DJing out at FWD and DMZ as well as holding down his own show on Rinse. We caught up with Heny in his Hammersmith studio.

Vice: A lot of the Anti Social stuff sounds really interesting and musical. Did you learn any musical instruments at school?

Heny G: Me personally, no. Silkie and Quest both went college and did music tech. That helps them with the production side you know? The musical side just comes natural, Quest’s dad used to DJ on Choice FM way back when and my dad was a singer and guitarist. Every Saturday my old man would wake up, have a full English and put on records: Barrington Levy, Teddy Pendergrass, lots of stuff, dub, reggae, soul. That is all with me now, I can play guitar, sing, do the piano. All that helps bring something to the sound. To be honest I wasn’t really at school after the age of 15.

Vice: What were you up to?

Heny: In and out of record shops all day, hunting down Dubs. That’s how I first met Skream and Benga: hollerin’ at Hatcha down Big Apple for plates. They couldn’t believe anyone outside South was building beats on Fruity Loops like they were but we were all at it. We been friends since, Skream plays Anti Social beats on his Rinse show, it all helps. Same with Mala, I met him when I was working in Uptown and no one else would stock his dubs. I’ve worked in all the Soho shops man: Uptown, Release The Pressure, Black Market. That’s my education right there.

Vice: You all come from a fairly Grime steeped background how come you are pushing the Dubstep sound?

Heny: To me it’s all one you know, look at how tunes like Request Line can cross over. On my Rinse show I’ll play a Grime beat or a Dubstep beat, same with Jay on his Rinse show. Anti Social is all about every side of the music. You can hear it in Quest and Silkie’s production, they are very specific as producers, they won’t just put out any old beat, it has to be up to standard, have that variety. Just bringing something different all the time, I’ve got my Gansta Boogie imprint, Silkie does stuff under Pharmacology and Quest runs under Conquest but it’s all part of the Anti Social family. We bringin it together and people are finally taking notice, I’m getting Myspace messages from people in the US and Japan askin about it tunes. It’s crazy. This year gonna be big for Anti Social, truss.

www.myspace .com/antisocialentertainment

Febuary Reviews

Here are some reviews that I wrote for music and DVD's and stuff in the month of Febuary. As with most stuff so far they were written for submission to Vice. Some will be published some won't.

RECORDS:

Comanechi
My Pussy/2 T Bags 7”
White Heat Records

8 You can’t not like Akiko, she turned up at our office this morning bouncing around like a 7 year old who’d just been told that Jim was gonna fix it for her and yelling: Listen! My Pussy! Ok Akiko but we don’t have a record player. Not a problem, she produces a crazy Japanese mini portable battery powered 7” player and insists we have a ‘listening’ party. So we did. This one is a bit dirgier than the previous singles and even has a chanted chorus, it’s about Akiko’s “one true love” a Pussy (as in cat) she had when she was two but ran away. Ah… It has a cool little book inside the sleeve so that you can read along to the lyrics while you listen. Neat.

Cut City
Exit Decades
GSL

5 Interpol sure do take ages to get a record together eh? If you are really bored of waiting and want to listen to some of that glacial, detached post-punk stuff with chiming guitar bits and a singer who sounds like he really isn’t that bothered I suppose you could do worse than check this out. Did you know that Interpol’s original drummer used to play in Saetia? True story.

Blonde Redhead
23
4AD

5 These guys are like the ultimate confidence tricksters. Young impressionable kids will be fooled into thinking the twin guitars/drums thing is really out there and old Uncut readers will buy it because its on 4AD and they can pretend they still know what’s up. Have any of you actually listened to the record? It’s like something half of Sonic Youth would make if they were really bored one afternoon. If you go seem 'em live it’s really freaky because the two guys are identical twins and they both just stare like the Children Of The Corn at the cute Japanese girl singing up front.


Tall Firs
s/t
Ecstatic Peace!

9 Wow, this is really nice. Like waking up with someone whispering in your ear. Not in a stalkery Elliot Smith way but in a kind of subtle major-key, good morning aint it great to be alive way. It’s a record that’s like one of those guys you meet for the first time one night and it feels like you’ve known him your whole life and you stay up all night drinking and then think shit, who did I hang out with before I knew this guy?

Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid
Tongues
Domino

8 Yay, that guy with the Afro that used to be in Fridge has made another record with that old guy guy that plays the drums. OK, aside from the fact that Steve Reid has played with more gifted musicians than just about any other living human being the two Exchange Sessions volumes so far had an air of muso indulgence. You could just feel em getting moist over at The Wire. The great news is that this is like the good bits of those two recordings slimmed down and pumped full of wonderous melody, great!

Death Sentence: PANDA!
Festival Of Ghosts/R’out 4,002
Upset The Rhythm

8 This sounds like a woman who has just drunkenly sprayed herself in the eyes with her own mase and and keeps running round the bar screaming in fits of agony and then calming herself down and methodically trying to sort the problem out. But then going back to the mental fit bit. Either that or the spazzy bits of Magick Markers with added clarinet.

No Age
Get Hurt
Upset The Rhythm

8 Wives were awesome. They played arty noise-rock without any pretension and absolutely slayed live, anyone that saw them on their final UK tour where they were basically fighting at all points they weren’t on stage will attest to that. Here are two thirds of Wives stripping it back to guitar and drums and doing a quiet loud thing that’s filled with atmospheric melodic build ups and crashing noisy as fuck break downs. Equally awesome.

Khan
Who Never Rests
Tomlab

8 Tomlab tend to deal in pleasant, quiet laptopy affairs that probably get played at architecture student’s after-parties. Although this Khan guy uses a laptop he would eat them all for breakfast. He appears to be the Mr Lover Lover dude from those old Levi’s adverts with the voice of Dave Wyndorf, Funkadelic’s bass lines and Beefheart’s guitar licks. It makes you feel a bit filthy just listening to it and is almost totally rubbish but somehow great.

Trash Money
Trash Money
Tragic Records

4 Is there something going here that I don’t understand? This is like some horrible Scissor Sisters/Har Mar orgy inside a hermetically sealed 80’s glam disco club from hell where everyone took so much coke they were convinced that singing a four minute song about some speakers was a good idea. And that’s just the first song. If this came on when you were in the car with your parents they would probably be fairly sure they used to ‘step out’ to tunes like this when they were ‘courting’.

Andy Stott
Handle With Care/See In Me
Modern Love 10”

10 Villalobos has been dropping Dubstep in his Minimal sets since the tail end of ’95 so I suppose the crossover that looks to be coming over the hill was an inevitability. Skream’s remix of Leeds techno bod Mark Ashken’s ‘Roots Died Dark’ is an awesome study in the two beasts meeting well while Shackleton’s forthcoming reworking of Villalobos’s own ‘Blood On My Hands’ sure looks a sexy prospect. Here’s an example of what all that stuff will sound like that is so perfect that it’s almost like cyborg version of the best Rhythm & Sound tune you’ve never heard that’s come back from the future to make sure these young whippersnappers get the right idea.

[Also is it me or are 10”s easily the best format ever? Apart from a 13” my friend Luke once found Berlin. But that record was kind of showing off a bit too much. A bit like the guy with the massive cock who always gets it out at parties. Yeah yeah we get it, you’re hung like whaleman which is awesome but you know, put it away.]

Bass Clef
A Smile Is A Curve That Straightens Most Things
Blank Tapes

8 Check this chief out. He’s spent a while chilling in Bristol soaking up all that dub and soundsystem culture and now he’s come to London to have a bash at Dubstep. He’s obviously been paying attention down in the basement of Plastic People but he also seems to be into stuff like early Aphex and Reinforced era Jungle. And the Trombone. Interesting. File next Boxcutter and Burial in the Dubstep that isn’t all that bothered about being Dubstep and is all the better for it corner.

∅ (Mika Vainio)
Olento
Sahko Recordings

10 Is there anybody out there that still actually buys records? I do. I’m not exactly proud of it. Especially when the sheer act of having to give up hard earned salary in return for music should come with some kind of intrinsic discretion and all I end up with are all these ambient clicks and glitches CD’s from Boomkat. Sure they are lovely to own and everything but nine out of ten of them sound pretty similar and I’ll only ever end up listening to most of them twice at best. Every once in while though one like this comes along and transforms you into a slack-jawed believer in the point of it all again. This is half of Panasonic making sounds that I imagine they play to people in those pods in the Matrix to keep them in a sedate state of sheer, perfect bliss.

Autokat
Late Night Shopping
Akoustic Anarchy

6 Ok, I initially wrote a three-word review of this but decided to give it another go. Still coming up blank. Apparently the ‘London Indie Media’ are busting a nut over these guys and it’s OK in a middle of the road ‘hey we listen to My Bloody Valentine but are also into angular post punk and our music really reflects our diverse and experimental taste’ kind of way but if these guys were on stage I would definitely sit it out for the bar. Remember how much hype the NME gave Nine Black Alps? What happened to them eh? Or The Longcut…

INFEST DISCOGRAPHY CDR

10 If you hop on e-bay and type in ‘Infest discography’ you will be presented by this peach. Yup, every song by the greatest band ever on one CD for just £5.99. Shit like this is what Tidbits exists for. Okay, okay so it’s not the same as owning the records (I’m still after the split 8” with Pissed Happy Children on Slap A Ham by the way) but then again what did Poison Idea tell us about record collectors?


DVDS:

The Wire
Season 3 DVD

10 This is the best drama on television right now. It may be the best drama that’s ever been on television. That’s because it is nothing like television is supposed to be. For a start who are the bad guys? The kids out on the Baltimore corners hustling 24/7 for coke and dope who’ll just as happily cap you as say hello or the cops policing this impossible situation who seem to rack up just as many bodies? Or why doesn’t it have an answer by the end of each episode like CS fucking I? Shit, this is the third season now and stuff from episode one could pop up at any minute. Everything about this show is so perfect that I wish it could go on forever and in ten years time I guarantee people will start talking about it like they are beginning to talk about Oz.

Desperate Man Blues: Discovering The Roots Of American Music
Dust To Digital
DVD

8 You remember when you were younger and you swore that you’d only ever want to listen to pop punk and rock out and all of that Jazz and Blues stuff seemed like algerbra? Well now you’re a bit older and sure The Descendents still rule but all those wizened old blind guys should be beginning to make sense. There is a reason people still listen to them. While some great music will forever be lost this DVD shows how important it is to hang on to music that actually deserves to be heard by everyone forever. It focuses on a weird guy called Joe Bussard, who’s a sort of modern day Alan Lomax or Harry Smith, and his constant quest to add to his collection of over 25,000 78’s which takes him into all sorts of weird shacks and Southern backwaters. The timeless tunes and tales of men like Blind Willie McTell, Charley Patton and Robert Johnson end up telling the story as much as Joe who frankly is a bit weird.


BOOKS:

Babylon’s Burning: From Punk To Grunge
Clinton Heylin
Penguin

5 Right, let’s clear this up straight off the bat: this book is quite interesting and if you are into egotistical authors with God-complexes it’s pretty well written. But, and this is a big fucking but, correct me if I’m wrong but that subtitle up there promises “from Punk to Grunge”. We get 537 pages on punk and post-punk through to ’83 then about a hundred sides to bring us up to the miserable guys in Seattle. Huh? Thurston Moore once said in an interview something along the lines of: there was the pre-punk Velvets and Stooges stuff, then the Ramones, the Pistols and ‘punk’ and then ‘post-punk’ and then it all went quiet until Nirvana came along. Uncle Thurston was of course being just a little sarcastic: a whole shitload went down in the ‘lost decade’ but Heylin obviously didn’t feel it necessary to spend his fat Penguin advance writing about it. Instead we get a re-hash of a book he’s done already (From the Velvets to the Voidoids) followed by three of Clinton’s homespun musical maxims: 1) I’m from Manchester: Manchester is amazing and bands from Manchester like the Buzzcock’s are better than bands from London like the Pistols. 2) I’m working class: posh bands are shit so the Clash are shit. 3) Bootlegs are more important than released records: if you don’t own obscure studio sessions of early X Ray Spex you don’t know what you are talking about. Although the chapter on Radio Birdman was great you may as well swap this doorstop of dead rainforest in for Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life if you are really a person who digs reading about music more than listening to music and you really want to know what happened in the mid 80’s.