GRACE US ALL WITH THE BEST INTERVIEW EVER!!!...
1. HEY GUYS, HOW ARE YOU ALL - AND WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO?
We're all well, thankyou, if a little tired and subject to fits of caffeine-related jitters. We've variously been playing as many gigs as possible, hurling demos into the void that is the world of reviewers, practising till we bleed, obstructing the highway, failing to be industrious at college, attending orgies, missing orgies, having our trousers eaten by swans and playing more gigs. Including a Love Music, Hate Racism benefit with Miss Black America and The Dawn Parade, which was ACE.
2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE 'WE CAN BUILD YOU' SOUND? 'Twisted Rock', which is a term we made up and which means nothing to anyone else. So that's very helpful, then... We don't really sound like much else and we keep getting classified as something we aren't and disappointing the Hardcore fans who send off for a theoretically punk demo on the basis of reviews and then end up with Weird Shit instead. The music feeds off the lyrics and it's very emotionally charged, sometimes in a rather frightening way. Weirdness with substance. Bitter, angry, direct, edgy, acidic. Horrified and horrifying.
3. WHAT IS THE MUSIC SCENE LIKE WHERE YOU ARE FROM?
Cambridge isn't bad in that we've got promoters who're prepared to put on new music and venues to actually put the gigs on in. But it does tend to be rather insular, and there's an excess of boring pub-rock shite and heap-of-steaming-muso-wank bands. I guess the best stuff comes from having promoters like R*E*P*E*A*T who put on decent bands from outside the area - the likes of We Start Fires and Sufferkiss - alongside local bands to pull crowds/mix audiences. Wombat wombat does the same for Norwich. And there's Bury, which was bursting at the seams with promise and where I spent some very good nights watching and jumping around to astounding bands. One thing that really bites is the way that local bands hardly ever get a chance at support slots in their town's bigger venues. I found out recently that that's often down to the headliners not wanting to be upstaged by local bands or not wanting to forego having an up-and-coming band pay for the support slot to give locals a chance, and that's rather sickening.
4. WHAT CAN YOU BUILD US? A dancing pope made entirely of matchsticks.
5. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO MAKE THE TYPE OF MUSIC THAT YOU ARE DOING, AND DOING SO WELL? Flatterer. Well, we wanted to make the kind of thing we'd like to listen to if it was out there. Part of it's the influences, obviously - we listen to a wide variety of stuff between us and when you shake it all up together you get... us. The words are a large part of it as well, they kinda dictate a dark disturbing mood and plus they won't work with conventionally structured music 'cause I just don't write like that. I'm an awkward little shit in that respect: try fitting stuff like This Town Killed Us to music/vocals, and then send Richy and Ebony sympathy money... Plus Richy only has to look at a guitar and it starts making obscene noises the like of which have never been heard before outside the nightmares of the strait-jacketed.
6. WHO ARE YOUR HEROES? Heroes... I'm not sure we really have them. But anyway: Velvet Underground/Lou Reed, Holy Bible era Manics, The Pixies, PJ Harvey, The Smiths, Nirvana In Utero, Flaming Lips, Joy Division... and more individually, those're just the ones I'm pretty certain I can put down without anyone disclaiming them too violently afterwards. Authors: Jostein Gardner, Naomi Klein, Sartre, Quentin Crisp, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, William Burroughs, J.T.Leroy, Marya Hornbacher, Hunter S. Thompson, Mervyn Peake, Jack Kerouac... There are a lot more which I could add here, but I'm not sure that turning this into a reading list is the Point. If it is, please feel free to correct me and I'll send you a never-ending rant on Stuff Which Is Good. And Famous Stuff aside there're all the people round these parts who just do things as best they can and wouldn't listen if you tried telling them how astounding that is. Which would sound like very little written down, but which gets me out of my head and into a larger world when Big Ideas seem too far removed from reality to remind you of why it's worth staying in it.
7. DO YOU THINK THE WORLD NEEDED TO GO TO WAR AGAIN? Not this war. The thing is that there could have been A war against Saddam Hussein which I could have supported. Because the man is clearly a monster, and despite the deep forebodings I have about what's going to happen next I'm glad that he's gone, and once war started it was hardly possible to hope for anyone but the USA/UK to win. But still, I wish the war hadn't happened. I don't think we're going to find any WOMD, or much in the way of deadly chemicals, because anyone as insane as Saddam Hussein who was backed into a corner like that would have used them. He's done it before, after all, only we ignored it that time 'cause he was on our side. So the USA's grand Moral Excuse will be weakened, and I'm not sure they ever believed he had WOMD anyway. I rather suspect them of lying and of only listening to one side of the evidence. And of course they'll say that they did it for the Iraqi people anyway, so the WOMD are irrelevant. The same set of Iraqi people we've been draining the life out of with sanctions since the last Gulf war? The hypocrisy sickens me. People are only worth getting Moral about when it fits with what you want to do anyway, and up till then no one gives a shit about them. Odd coincidence, isn't it, that both major military campaigns of Bush's administration have been against countries which he'd decided to invade even before he got elected on account of wanting to consolidate American influence in the Middle East? No one who cares as little and selectively about humanity as Bush has shown himself to has the right to set himself up as saviour. And the horrible thing is that I think there is a level on which Bush thinks he is a grand crusader on the side of Jesus, morality, mum's apple pie and the right to own a Big Car and a Gun, and I'm sure Blair does. And it's frightening, that display of self-delusion and a very conscious selective blindness about how things are - these people are effectively running the WORLD, for chrissakes. And though I've no doubt Saddam is a liar, using that against him when they themselves have lied and doubled back and plagiarised from someone's university dissertion(and an out-of-date one, at that) and "accidentally" used blatantly forged documents to attempt to corroborate the mound of ferret dung they've tried to pass off as evidence, well the whole thing sticks in the craw really. So yeah... this war should not have happened. And I have a horrible feeling that this isn't the end of America's war against terrorism, and that things are going to get a lot worse. The potential for utter chaos and hideous happenings in the Middle East is so huge and staggering that I can't get my mind round how volatile it is and how horrific it could be, and the way we're approaching it at the moment is akin to standing under a big tree on a tall hill in a thunderstorm wearing chainmail and a hat with a big metal spike on it. People disagree with us and might one day be persuaded to join terrorist organisations against us? BOMB THEM! That'll solve the problem! How is it possible to think like that? It's a delicate situation full of tripwires and wild cards, you morons, not a target range... OK, enough.
8. HAVE YOU ANY NICE PLUGS YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE?... Well, there's the website at http://www.angelfire.com/band2/wecanbuildyou And we're playing a Club Motherfucker night Upstairs at the Garage in London on May 16th, which people could come along to and applaud politely. And we've an hour's showcase gig thingy at the Norwich King Edward VII which you can get into for free if you live in that area, or are inclined to travel up there. And everyone should buy the next issue of R*E*P*E*A*T fanzine, 'cause we're in it. And 'cause it's good. http://www.angelfire.com/band2/wecanbuildyou