Hi Katy,I have one for John...John, When I met you after winning the Bebo backstage pass in Melbourne last week, you asked me what I had to do to win the competition. I told you I had to post a question I would like to ask the band if I was interviewing you all. I would still love to ask the question, so here goes..
"Do you think a lot of "younger" bands lack the passion of the "older" bands because there is very little experimenting to be done, like there was in the 70's mainly, especially with fashion and make up??? I have been reading Pete Burns' book, and it made me realise the most passionate and creative ppl from that era are the ones who went through the "trauma" of experimenting and being ridiculed because everyone else couldn't understand them..Does this make you more determined to experiment more?"
Thanks, and it was utterly awesome to meet you all!! Kim from Melbourne
"hello Kim! This is one of those 'relativity' questions.. .Let's see; there's no doubt about it, the end of the seventies + the early eighties was a great time to be into music, to wanna play and express yourself in music and fashion. For kids like Nick, Simon, Roger and I, I cannot imagine a better time to come of age. But each moment in time, each era, brings its own significances. Make no mistake about it, for kids out there today, the kids for whom music is a potent and exhilarating brew, to quote Charlie Parker, 'NOW IS THE TIME'...
When we are asked to discuss music today I want to laugh, because inevitably what they mean is 'chart music'. Who cares about that? Very little in the way of progress gets made by music that is being consciously created to sell to the most amount of people. Never has and never will. The R & B world is and always has been an exception to that rule. If you are looking for music being made by skinny white guys (male or female), that is interesting and has vitality, there is lots of it, but it isn't going to come under the radar of forty-somethings like you or I unless we go looking for it. I always find pitchforkmedia.com a good resource with quality writing. For me it comes the closest to the New Musical Express of the seventies.
The intersection of music and fashion has a different relevance today than it did then. Times have changed. Cool is global awareness, not divine decadence. Nowt wrong with that, it's just evolution. If I was a skinny kid coming out of Birmingham today, very unlikely I would want to express myself or my band's 'look' in the way that we did back then. 1980 came after glam, (sex, satin, kimonos, platforms) and punk (sex, leather, bandages, swastikas) and clothes were considered a highly important element of creating an identity. Now... wow.. what have we got? It's all over the map. Check out Vampire Weekend!
I'm rambling.. you caught me as I got my morning coffee! Australia was amazing!!! Thanks for being a part of it... x JT"