Alright then!

Understatement time. I thought it was about time I got back on here and started blogging again. To be fair, this spark of activity is coinciding with a general call to action in our lives as a band that's been going on over the last few weeks. Crucially, this has centered around formal discussions about writing new material and the whole host of intangibles, ideas and questions that throws up. To a certain extent, you put a record out and then go into a sense of creative stasis as you observe and absorb how that lovingly crafted slice of Rock n Roll has been received by the world. Now we're moving onto our last single from the album, it's about time to stop resting on the 'Sonic Boom Six' laurels and all the changes and developments that has entailed and creatively start to look forward.

That's not to say that the last few months haven't been welcome. We've played the odd festival, had some fun times and it's been cool to be at home to have a stable life and be able to eat right and exercise (the first things that fall by the wayside as soon as you jump into the Pirate Ship). But the last few weeks have been exciting with meetings, plans and talk of diversifying within, and beyond, the remit of the band. Specifically for me, that's gonna involve getting a proper start on DJing, (something I've really just played about with in the past) and making more of a go of things with my writing, a side-effect of which paying more attention to this blog is theoretically the start of.



We've also had some recent opportunities to use the band for a few more altruistic ventures. We played a great charity show in Leicester for Oxjam this weekend and spent last Wednesday lending ourselves to make a video with the people at OMG Cameras Everywhere, who provide kids with free resources, training and opportunity to direct, produce, shoot and edit music videos. A couple of weeks back we visited the Teenage Cancer Trust Unit in Birmingham to play a few acoustic songs and meet some of the guys in the unit. We've got some footage and interviews from that coming up for those interested. These experiences have been fulfilling and put us back in touch with why we started the band in the first place and provided us with a chance to keep those flames of idealism burning, albeit in a different time and context. This idea of reflecting and looking back on why we do this on the practical level has a direct synchronicity with our recent discussions on why we do what we do on a musical level. And so, to the main point of this blog... thinking about the future.

We've been for a few meetings to consider and discuss where our heads are at and figure out where to go from here musically. One of these meetings was with a very talented producer and song-writer with a proven track record who is interested in working with us and gave us the benefit of a very frank appraisal of where he thinks we are and where he thinks we could be. We don't want to sit there and have smoke blown up our arses, but this was pretty frank stuff, with some very robust, but valued, opinions being thrown about. Discussion centralised on the concept of truly getting in touch with who and what our band, or any band, is all about and writing songs that convey that. And the idea that writing music for a perceived audience, be they a room full of punks or listeners to daytime radio, is ultimately self-defeating. A band should write the music they want to make, and hear and strive to write the best songs possible from that base. It all sounds so simple. The difficult bit is then going out and doing it. The good news is that we're all a little more inspired and motivated to write. We're currently discussing hiring a cottage or holiday home for a week and spending some time together and having fun writing again. Writing music together, for fun, for us. The way it is when you start a band. Not thinking about audience one way or the other but creating an honest expression of what we want to play and want to hear. Maybe there's a way of getting that sense of adventure and fun, that mixtape vibe, that underpins our early stuff and have it exist in the present day with bigger songs and better performances. To hell with conventions and genres and the radio and all those considerations. That shouldn't matter at the writing stage. The art that rings the truest is that which is the honest expression. And if some of the rough corners we've been compelled to file off in the past sound good to us, then we should keep them. As I say, it's where to go from here that's the difficult question and all this pontificating about the macro doesn't actually create the micro. But it's all good dinner for the duchess as no one has said, ever.



All that's not to say that 'Sonic Boom Six' isn't still alive and kicking. We're currently sorting through lots of awesome treatments for the 'High Cost' video, some of which are great. I'm leaning towards the concept of making the video more velvet glove in terms of getting the message of the song across. The lyrics are explicit as it is, so we don't need to hammer the point home. I'm thinking a visual companion and counterpoint to the song will be better than something that goes to far in making a political statement. There's lots more on these subjects where that came from but I think I'd better save it for another day if I'm gonna be blogging once a week.

Last night we spent the evening doing the first, and only Suicide Bid rehearsal in preparation for our BoomTown Fair set. If the shows without rehearsal have set a precedent for being great, I can only imagine what the reaction's going to be now we've got our shit together, especially at a venue as up-for-it as Boomtown is.



Alright then, I'll let you get on. Remember PLEASE to keep sending me questions, it really helps with the motivation to keep this blog happening.

Listening this week: Kanye West, Yeezus

First couple of listens left me marveling at the boldness of production but balking at the lyrics. By the third listen, I realised that only lyrics that insanely egotistical and cheeky could measure up to what's going on musically. Tremendous.

Watched this week: The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Micheal Winterbottom's stab at the classic crime novel eschews much of the novel's filthy visit into the mind of a psycho and boils the story down into a solidly-acted murder yarn. The male on female violence is for a strong stomach, but serves to underline the despicably psychotic character of the Casey Affleck character. I feel that the critic who infamously printed "I was so queasy, I had to go and stand outside. I thought I might actually faint" about the experience really needs to get her sense of perspective straight. Worth a watch.

Reading this week: Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens.

Being a huge Neil Gaiman fan but never anything remotely approaching fandom towards the work of Terry Pratchett, I've always been turned off by the smug Radio 4 tone of this book and have never made it past chapter 3. Like a mountain, this is there to be conquered, but I think I'll have to binge on some very violent, brainless comics afterwards to wash the twee out of my hair. We shall see.

Until The Sunlight Comes... Barney x

Karma is a Video

sonicboomsix

So, this weekend we worked on the video of 'Karma Is A Bitch' with the guys from Thirskploitation Films. We wanted the video to have the same kind of kinetic energy that's in the track, so I thought immediately of a horror video, with a slasher style. Maybe people being chased and having limbs hacked off shouting "she's gonna getcha!" So we got in touch with Paul Shrimpton whose work I was familiar with from his work with our mates The Autopsy Boys but also the great British horror film 'Inbred' that was filmed in Thirsk. Paul agreed that a horror vid would work great, but he came back with the suggestion of reflecting the 'Karma' theme with a Kung-Fu pastiche video. Being a big fan of Jackie Chan, Sonny Chiba and the Lone Wolf series of films, I could see right away in the synopsis that this was gonna work perfectly. Firstly, it would have the energy to rock alongside the music, and secondly it's a style that, with the right amount of effort and passion, could be brought in on a budget. All the old Kung-Fu films had to employ many techniques to work under time and money constraints so we just had to work cleverly enough that any limitations in our time and money end up looking like the tributes to the style of cinema that they are. And so, we spent three days filming our opus, with full make-up, special effects and stunt doubles. My double was an amazing martial artist, but that's not to say I'm not picking out the splinters from my arms and elbows today! I can't wait for you guys to see it. And, just to re-iterate from a concerned Facebook post, the vid is in no way meant to make fun of Hare Krishnas or have a religious axe to grind. One of our central points of reference was the film 'Mafia vs Ninja' and we simply represent the Hare Krishnas as a bad-ass gang that were all peace and love until they are crossed, and then they stop at nothing to get their revenge! It's done with tongue firmly in cheek, and I'm sure that everyone's going to see the cool intentions behind it. Seeing Laila's role in the video should be enough to make anyone laugh...

Cheers

Barney x

I wonder when I hear sonic boom six tracks whether the politics is a gimmick » divine-providence

This is a reblog of a Tumblr post.

Divine Providence: I wonder when I hear sonic boom six tracks whether the politics is a gimmick »

divine-providence:

Like there seems to be no thinking in it any more just the latest buzz words to resonate with people.
Also having followed them on twitter for a while there is no politics there either. People that actually believe in something campaign for it. I can’t help myself rebloging or talking about…

Thanks for writing the column. Someone DM’d me and asked for my reaction as it’s an open letter. I’ll try and I hope you take my points in the friendly, discussional spirit they are meant in. It’s kind of hard to know where to start.
The obvious one to me is what possible positive effect does having politics as a ‘gimmick’ have on our career? It’s the actually the exact opposite. ‘Virus’ was held off certain radio playlists for being too political. There is no gimmick or bandwagon to jump on, it’s simply something I’m compelled to do because the music that influences and stimulates me is music with a message.
I never said I was a politician, music is my primary influence. Maybe ‘being nicer to each other’ is the most important politics of all, and the only one I know for sure I support. Maybe the politics are vague, and aren’t partisan and because my politics are vague and aren’t militant. And lots of people feel that way too, and I hope that resonates with people. Heaven knows, there’s enough punk bands with big left-wing slogans out there to fill up that demand. What you find vague, I think some people find sincere.

I’ve had numerous fans complaining to me on Twitter when I have done political tweets (especially during the riots) because they didn’t want to hear it. So I shut up after the first day. We worked with the local groups with the clean up effort and took part in the concert afterwards and tried to DO things in that sense rather than rant on about it. Surely posting pictures about what demo you’ve been at or pushing your political opinions down people’s throats is more in danger of being a gimmick?

We have always striven to be a band that puts the message in the lyrics and keeps politics away from the live show in terms of talking about them between songs. We feel that velvet glove approach works. We respect bands that are more militant and we encourage activists to set up stalls on our merch from anything from hunt sabs to anti-facism and they have done in the past and will continue to do so. But we don’t do that ourselves so it’s natural that to reflect that we don’t do it as much on social networks.

A cursory look at our history will confirm that there are numerous causes and charity shows that fall fully in line with all our beliefs that we have supported, a lot, such as Love Music Hate Racism.

Maybe the real problem is that you expect our politics and political involvement to mirror yours. Sorry if they don’t. I’m assuming nothing about you but we’ve stated MANY times that we aren’t socialists, anarchists or even anti-capitalist in the full sense of the term. But we are socially conscious and I think that’s the same for a lot of kids out there and I feel that’s what makes our band interesting.

Thanks for writing the column, it was interesting to read, and I kind of see where you are hypothetically coming from, especially if your political involvement strongly eclipses mine. It might seem frustrating that we don’t do more. But for every one of you there’s gonna be a kid that gets turned off by us pushing the political thing harder, so I’m kind of sat in the position that I’m most comfortable in, which might be fence-sitting of me. I get that. But I frankly think your being unfair on us for the simple reason that the accusation of ‘bogus’ posturing rings hollow when confronted with the fact that there is no commercial or even artistic advantage drawn from writing the kind of lyrics I do in the current media climate. I do it because I’m compelled to it and because I know that there are people out there that dig hearing a point of view that mirrors their own and is unique.

Cheers mate

Barney :)

Tumblr Question Reblog: do you like horror films?! IF SO, which ones :3

Oooh good question!

I don’t just like them, I LOVE THEM. My favourite film of all time is the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But I can watch a rubbish horror much easier than I can any other film and even a crappy one (like Freddy vs Jason) I will thoroughly enjoy. I watch a couple of horror films a week at least when I’m at home.

My favourites are the usual suspects really, looking up on the shelf there I can see The Wicker Man, Halloween, The Exorcist, Hellraiser, Nightmare On Elm Street, Evil Dead 2, Suspiria, Night Of The Living Dead which we all know are classics so there’s no point in going on about them.
A couple of films people may not have seen then… a favourite of mine is ‘Witchfinder General’ which stars Vincent Price (the best to ever do it!) as a demented witch hunter in Cromwell’s Britain. It has a weird, tense atmosphere (lots of stories about the goings-on behind camera abound) and is wickedly dark.

Another film from that era (60s & early 70s British folk horror) that is a favourite is a film called ‘Blood On Satan’s Claw’ where a group of kids get seduced into devil worship. It’s actually on YouTube HERE so maybe that’s one to watch tonight if you haven’t already!!!

There are lots of decent horrors in the public domain speaking of watching online, including the awesome ‘Dementia 13’ and ‘The House On Haunted Hill’. There is a great List of them on Listverse HERE and a more exhaustive list HERE.
The best site for watching Public Domain horror is Horrorteque.com hands-down! Bookmark that shit!
Another film that is one of my favourites is Werner Herzog’s 1978 version of ‘Nosferatu The Vampire’, starring Klaus Kinski. It was filmed (in English & German!) in 9 days and is a beautiful film. Kinski’s Dracula is a thing to behold. I actually prefer the version where they talk in English because having everyone in their second language gives it an even stranger air than it already has. My girlfriend once hired out a little cinema and me and all my mates watched it projected! It was a great birthday and everyone loved the film.

And finally, a guilty pleasure of mine has to be ‘Deranged’, a completely batshit crazy exploitation version of the Ed Gein story (which inspired Psycho, Texas Chainsaw and… Ed Gein!) starring the wonderfully-named Roberts Blossom as Ezra Cobb. It’s directed by horror make-up great Tom Savini (who also did the interesting Night Of The Living Dead remake). Here’s a wonderful trailer for it, if you like it, it’s actually on YouTube in several parts which are linked off the trailer.

Right then, hope that answers that! That was fun, I like talking about films, so ask away everbody!

Ta!

Barney x

Plastic Sheet Blues (or how I learnt to stop worrying and love the hair-straighteners).

Question from Brendy Robb on Tumblr. (Tumblr Reblog).

Hey guys, hope you’re having a nice long weekend.

Just listening to “back 2 skool” at work and realised that one of the lines is “who pissed on a girl on the back of the tour bus?”

What’s the story behind it?

This was sent via web form from your Bandzoogle site

Hey man!

A few years back there was a big did he / didn’t he kerfuffle about Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon and their crew ALLEGEDLY pissing on a girl in the tourbus and / or hitting her with a bottle. I think it turned out he didn’t actually do it at all. The whole story was doing the rounds on the internet and it became very tawdry. There were people who clearly had no idea what had happened weighing in and bitching about it. It was just very unseemly. On Punktastic.com in the forums and I remember at the time thinking that this was about as far removed from what attracted to me about punk as I’d ever witnessed. One example of these wonderful pieces of prose is HERE.

People have mentioned to me that they perceive this line as a ‘diss’ to BMTH. I’m sorry it seems like that because that band is very good and have done some great stuff for British heavy rock and also been instrumental in helping loads of bands. I have no problem with them, and I really enjoyed Suicide Season and it’s companion remix album. The line wasn’t about them, so much as the mentality of the tabloid-style speculation on ‘piss-gate’ and the whole circus around it. Back in 2007 things were happening in punk and rock in the UK that I was finding hard to accept; a move away from the lefty ideals I loved like equality, DIY and the punk gigs being ‘safe spaces’ to a vibe more reminiscent psuedo right-wing of ‘rock n roll’ of the 80s. I loved Gallows, but I hated the way the magazines portrayed them covered in fake blood, like that was what signified punk. Maybe I was sore because bands like Five Knuckle, Capdown, Freaks Union and the bands I loved from the years before basically didn’t look quite enough like what the music magazines wanted a punk band to look like. And I saw it happening and there was a clear shift in fanbase and the emergence of a new crowd of younger kids that really didn’t give two squirts of piss for the aspects of punk rock that I loved. To me punk rock was about not giving a shit about who was the prom queen, who was in FHM that month and who was the hardest lad like at school. Not repackaging it all with added tattoos and piercings. All the endearing things about the culture of punk rock to me had just been ignored. That’s what the song’s about and to me, it fitted in with the whole imagery of the album… city-centre rock clubs full of selfish, boorish, preening little peacocks who don’t care about anything but themselves.

I remember SB6 playing this party in London and backstage was this young hardcore ‘crew’ doing coke and calling each other ‘nigga’ and I was like ‘is this what this music has become?’ Us and YM@6 were kept very busy trying to avoid them and I said ‘it’s like being back at school’ and the idea for the song was born.
And, while writing the song, this little episode of people squabbling online about whether or not Oli had pissed on this girl (who ended up looking like a fool too when all the conjecture was over) was just another ‘what the fuck am I doing here?’ moments. What has this music turned into when we’re arguing about this?

I guess over the last few years I’ve come to accept that things move on and it’s all rock n roll at the end of the day. I’m probably not as precious as I was then. The good bands from that time are still together and doing great things and the UK’s rock scene has had a massive shot in the arm from the success of those bands. The lyrics to ‘Back 2 Skool’ still stand up though I think, you only have to go to one of the trendier rock festivals of the last few years to feel that ‘school’ vibe… the cocks of the walk with the prettiest girls on their arms sneering at everyone who hasn’t got the right trainers, the smell of greasy chips in the air and the dim threat of violence ready to go off at any given moment.

"Back 2 Skool"

Who is the kid with the coolest trainers on?
Who’s getting ripped cos they got the label wrong?
Who said that he said that she was a slag
because she kissed with the boy on the bike and tongues’ll wag?
Who’s keeping up with the kid that got the tag?

I’m waiting for the bell again.
Well but you’re not it, yeah but you want it, tick and you got it.
Running to keep up again.
Well but you’re not it, yeah but you want it, tick and you got it.
Catch them once.

Now I’m singing the sound of all these songs upon the radio,
and now I’m laughing aloud at how the kids can be so cruel
and now I’m stifling down my screams
and shattered dreams to make the team,
I guess I’m back at school.

Who read the part of the picture book
where they swear they don’t care what you wear or how you look?
Down in the playground they’re dressed like lady muck.
Who pissed on the girl in the back of the tour bus?
Back in the disco they sing to the chorus!

It’s gonna be a party, what you gonna wear?
Everyone’ll be there, life just isn’t fair.

Sent out with the boys and the girls in the big wide world
and well I took a look and found my way underground.
And soon I knew you never leave the playground.
Catch them once. Catch them twice.
Catch them three times. Never gonna get them in the end.

Sell-out, with me oh yeah.

Alright then!

A couple of rate interesting and timely little questions here…

Katy asks "1. What are your thoughts about playing some gigs recently 'for / to impress the industry' and having to plead with fans to come along and support you? Especially gigs when you clearly wern't over enthusiastic about having to drive alllll the way down to London to be there, (ie Barfly), but have to put on a great show to impress certain people..."

NOTE: If people are wondering what (we) are talking about, it’s no secret that for one reason and another we’ve been working hard to get our next record out on a label. The reasons for doing so and the differences between self-releasing and all that are all very interesting but that’s another discussion. Let’s just put it out there that our last few London shows have had some people from different labels and other industry people coming down and checking us out. At the end of the day, a show is still a show, so we’re giving everyone a proper go of it (so it shouldn’t really matter at all to someone in the crowd) but that’s one reason why we’ve been so adamant about people coming and showing support at the last few.

Well, first of all, we are always enthusiastic to do a gig and we enjoyed that gig and pretty much find a way to enjoy all the gigs we do one way or another. There was a lot of trouble with the PA at the particular gig you are talking about so maybe some of that came across but I thought everybody had a great time. Playing those kinds of things is actually really fun and different. We like a challenge. I was probably kidding to be honest!

My approach to this kind of stuff is really the same as it's always been in that 'it is what it is' is my general philosophy. As well as being a shallow hellhole full of crashing bores and egotistical bellhops, the music industry is a business with people in there that are doing a good job. There are certain hoops you've got to jump through and brass rings you have to grab if you want to have someone come and risk spending lots of money on promoting you. That’s the end of it. You don’t go to someone-else's house for dinner and tell them they have to take their shoes off because you do in yours. It doesn't work that way round. We've kept the whole thing relatively quiet but anyone that follows us closely could probably figure out what was going on with us over the last couple of months. If that can push people into caring about us and thinking further than their own concerns about us that's great, but they don’t have to. I never liked those bands that acted like the audience owes them something because they've got on a stage and played a gig. So we're going to try to get people attuned and into the idea that we're trying to find a new home for our record and consider where things are going without banging everybody over the head with it. We don't want to take anyone's support for granted and we don't think anyone owes us anything. The reason it’s taken a while is that we need it to be right and we thank everyone for being patient. But if you DO care then it's a cool time to sit up and get behind us at the moment, because we're really THAT CLOSE to make this thing happen.

Ahem… Get your tickets HERE ladies and gentlemen.



2. How sucsessful would you like to be? I went to see Frank Turner at the Hammersmith Apollo a few months back. I remeber seing him years ago, on his own, on a barstool, with an accoustic guitar and an audience of about 40. This was a seated, over 5,000 capacity venue, with chilren, families and middle-aged women screaming 'we love you', but a sea of blank faces when Against Me opened the show. It was weird. Would playing sell out arena shows make you guys happy?

I too have seen Frank Turner sat on a barstool in front of next to no one and have seen him at Reading Festival where you can't get in the tent. We've had You Me At Six play before us and have a nightmare gig where their guitar broke and now they're HUGE. You've got to look at that and be inspired, not envious. It's cool to see.

“Would playing sell-out arena shows make you guys happy?” This question is a bit like at the end of Spinal Tap and Marty Di Bergi asks Nigel Tufnell if he could be a shoe salesman. The answer; “I dunno, what are the hours?”

It really is too hard a question to answer. Without hesitation I would say that if pretty much any band acquired that amount of success to headline that kind of show it would be a cool experience, obviously. But it's the other things that would come with getting your music out there to so many people that would be most rewarding I reckon. Having that many people singing that they're proud to be living in a land where we have the right to be who we are would be amazing.

Even if you look at interviews with me from 2006 I've always said that we are not a band that would be against being huge as a concept but I didn't realistically think that what we were doing was all that marketable because it was too crazy by design. That wasn't what we were trying to create. As time's gone on, we've evolved as a band and people and over the last few years we’ve had to think about where we’re going with this. Now I see the band differently than I did a few years ago in this regard. The new album is, in my opinion, heavier and more powerful than the old stuff but I also think it’s also hopefully more accessible. There's no shame in that, there's a skill in that kind of writing. But of course, you can’t always please everyone and even now I’ve noticed mixed reactions online to the new stuff from old fans. But we've always had that. Reactions have been very positive by and large. It's always difficult judging off a single before you hear an album anyway. It’s funny to me because I’ve seen kids citing ‘Piggy In the Middle’ as a classic dissing ‘Kids’ for instance but, to me, the riff and middle 8 on kids is heavier than any jog on the spot saxophone ska-core thing could ever be. It’s a different kind of energy and I love that youthful ska-punk madness but to be a big stage to see people bouncing to a rock riff is a different rush. That groove is completely different to our old stuff and, to me, way more 'heavy'. I read a Tumblr review the other day of us live when someone who was doubtful said he really 'got' Kids when he saw it live. If anyone’s got the impression we’ve tried to go pop, well, wait for the album. The raw and raucous energy of 'Ruff Guide' is another man's crazy mess. It's subjective at the end of the day!

Thinking about the old fans watching from the arena and losing that connection, it's weird. A lot of the times over the last five years, I've felt like our real fans have stood by us but we've, at times, felt like battered wives to the punk scene because it was so good to us as people and a band growing up. After people complaining 'Arcade Perfect' was too poppy we made (and wanted to make!) 'City Of Thieves' which was our love-letter to punk and in my opinion, our best album. But the best, punkiest moments of that album were ignored by our fans and largely not appreciated by the punk scene. In fact, all the kids that had loved Ruff Guide as teenagers and then got older didn't like 'City Of Thieves' but I have no idea what they were expected because if we'd have dropped an album with 'All In' on it in 2009 they'd have hated it. So, with that album, I realised that we were never going to please everyone. So we should please ourselves first and foremost and be what we set out to be when we started.

Sometimes you feel a huge sense of closeness and love for your fanbase and then sometimes you read some fan, or ex-fan or whatever, saying some stuff on the internet that blows your mind and you think ‘ah well, bugger what they think’. We literally have had messages telling us that our last few singles have got people back into us after not liking us for 5 years and then you get kids that used to love us talking about how we should have quit after Ben left. It’s all very hard to get to grips. It's impossible, you just try your best. With every person there are opinions about music that take in so many personal outlooks from their social circle and their age and fashion that change across time. Your band just slots into that. What represents heavy and underground and cool to a teenager in 2006 isn't going to appeal to them in the same way 6 years later if it's repeated, but the memory of it doing so the first time around will always remain like that. You just have to look to the fans you trust and believe in and take that with a pinch of salt. And remember to appreciate the good times that it does bring you!

Put it this way. I'd like to think that if a fan has ever enjoyed our music and what we've created at any point and saw us on stage now and we looked like we were genuinely having a good time and we were happy in what we were doing, whether or not they 'prefer the old stuff', I'd hope they could be happy for us. Call me an idealist but there we have it!

Happy talky talky happy talk. Talk about the things you like to do.

If you don’t have a dream. If you don’t have a dream.

How you gonna make a dream come true?

Tumblr Question Reblog: Between your samples and Horrotheque (thanks for that find) you seem to know a lot of public domain shit, how can I get more free shit? Do you take inspiration from the White Stripes with the colour schemes, particularly the original red black and white combos, and why do you do it?

Oi oi!

The Public Domain stuff has all been something that kind of fell together from researching for the Boom records. I guess I probably err on the side of caution more than I need to but if you know it’s PD you can really go to town on it like at the beginning of ‘Strange Transformations’ which was pieced together by me from stuff across the whole broadcast (rather than being one continuous bit of prose). It’s funny because on tons of dubstep records they used big chunks of film quotes without apparently invoking the wrath of film companies so I reckon you can actually get away with a lot. I often wonder did GZA have to pay the makers of Shogun Assassin anything for the repeated use of those samples on the ‘Liquid Swords’ album (one of my favourite albums of all time, hence the little Shogun Assassin nods at the beginning of ‘Danger! Danger!’ and ‘Ya Basta!’). Because that’s the dubbed version of the film, I wonder if the fact that it’s dubbed has something to do with everyone’s ability to sample it? Probably not but it’s interesting because it’s so sampled in hip-hop.

Anyway, here’s the list of sites I use to come up with the sampling stuff. The best site on the net for PD stuff is Archive.org. For City Of Thieves, and loads of other stuff, this was absolutely vital as all the public info films were from the Prelinger Archives on here which has a cool search facility.

http://www.archive.org/
Another thing I will do is find films that are public domain and then check them out on IMDB and check the Quotes page. If you read through the quotes and find one you like, it’s then a case of having to watch the film. Which is a good excuse for work! When we were recording City Of Thieves I was basically watching two or three old films a day.
This is a great site for all films.
http://www.openflix.com/
This is a great list of horrors.
http://steve-calvert.co.uk/pub-dom/pub-dom.htm
And this is a decent list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States
The main thing though is to check through a lot of different sites because there are lots of films that were never famous enough to go on all the lists.

Of course, there is horror radio too, which is where I got the Vincent Price stuff from!

http://www.steve-calvert.co.uk/old-time-radio/horror.htm


In terms of the matching colour schemes, no it was absolutely nothing to do with The White Stripes! Not a band I’ve ever really listened to but I know they’re good.

When we started the band, one of the ideas was to capture that element of bands like The Specials and The Ramones that seemed like a gang, so being colour-co-ordinated was one way of doing it. Another element was that we aren’t one of those bands like The Lost Prophets or Young Guns who are five lads of the same age who are all very handsome and dress similarly. Put us together, and we didn’t really look like a band and we knew that and that wasn’t really a good thing. Like eating food, a lot of appreciation for a band comes through the eyes, conciously or not. That’s not to say that a band has to look amazing, simply that the way they look needs to reflect the music they make. Those disparate influences were part of our music so it was fine that they were there but we wanted a way to be able to wear clothes we were comfortable in (which would be very different from person to person) but still looked ‘together’ as a package. And we still do that, but change the colour schemes around now and then. My favourite ever was the black with camoflague I think, which you can see in the ‘Sound of a Revolution’ video.

It’s funny because there was a point where we dropped doing it for a while because it got stale and Ben got really sick of it but now looking back they’re the worst photos of us live. We all look like we’re in different bands, even though we all thought individually we looked alright. So we went back to the colour scheme things, but just tried to keep it more subtle. It’s just another little gimmick of getting out there and performing as a band, just another small way to make it more interesting than stepping out of the crowd in what we would wear to the shops and going through the motions. It’s just an effort to do something.



Old school!

Ta! Great questions. Keep them coming in people and I’ll keep on blogging!

Barney :)

Tumblr Question Reblog: Who writes most of the lyrics in the band? Do each of you contribute your own sections to each of the songs, or is it generally one person writing the whole lyric, and then sharing the sections out in the studio? Also, as we're on the subject, who wrote the line "I'm scared of you, but that don't mean a thing, you know I'm scared of dogs too"? By far my favourite lyric in the 10 years of Sonic Boom Six.

I write all the lyrics now. Nearly all the lyrics on the early stuff are mine but across the first few albums Ben started writing more stuff that we used. Yeah, I work closely with Laila and a lot of tunes we kind of write together so I’ll get a demo of a song with her singing dummy lyrics and write to those. There’s a lot of printing out and practising and going back and changing stuff as we go along.

There are songs on the first three albums where Ben wrote lots of lyrics, especially Arcade Perfect. He’d often start a song off about one thing and I’d give it a twist and take it somewhere more political and less personal which was a fun way of doing things… ‘While You Were Sleeping’, ‘September To May’, ‘Floating Away’, ‘Through The Eyes Of A Child’ and ‘Welcome To The City Of Thieves’ were all totally like that… basically songs Ben had written on his own and we added to lyrically to make the message of them relate to the rest of the Boom content. That was a really cool way of doings things and I miss it! It would be too simple to say Ben wrote the ‘song’ and chorus’ and I wrote the verses but that’s not far off. Ben wrote all the lyrics to ‘Northern Skies’ and ‘Face Forward’ and I just added the raps and he wrote ‘Flower’ and ‘Passing Through’, ‘Sister’ and ‘Not Yet’ on the BabyBoom EP which are great. On all the more rap stuff Ben wrote his own verses. There’s definitely other songs of mine where he added stuff but I can’t remember off the top of my head!

I really loved Ben’s ability to make a big chorus line in a song stick in your head and the way he crafted proper songs, he’s a very good songwriter. He was massively influential on me. He believed that you shouldn’t, if possible, write music then write lyrics over it… you should come up with the chorus, beat, vibe whatever with the chorus of the song so the song is there before you write the lyrics. That means the song’s lyrics and music are married together. For instance, if you think of something you want to write about (say kids involved so heavily in the punk scene squabbles that they miss what’s happening in the world that’s important) and then come up with a phrase to describe it, you should have the phrase on the tip of your tongue and then pick up the guitar and marry it to music. ‘Meanwhile, Back In The Real World’ was me trying to write a song with that concept. It was a song that sounded like Mouthwash but with a concept of song and strength of chorus that was like a Ben song and what he’d been pushing me to do.

I wrote the dog line. ‘Rum Little Skallywag’ just started off as a song I wrote myself on an acoustic guitar so it was quite personal but it fit on the album. That’s a funny lyric to pick up on! I think most people like ‘Knob Head’ on ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’ (not a line I ever thought people would pick up on) and people like ‘getting on together like chips and samosas’ from what I’ve heard.

Without starting to sound like Paul Simon on Classic Albums(!) or something, I think my favourite lyrics by us are ‘September To May’. That started as a song by Ben about people moving from Manchester and getting jobs in the city and I added the whole extra layer of fairweather student political activity which, for me, made it one of our best songs because it’s not something I recall ever hearing another song about. It’s an attempt of that marriage of the personal and the political that makes bands like The Clash get their message through on some songs like ‘Stay Free’. Not that ‘September To May’ is on that level but lyrically that’s a song I’m very proud of us for. I’m also very proud of the lyrics to ‘Jericho’ which are mine… ‘You seem surprised our race survived, you’d almost call us civilised’. Knowing I liked that line my girlfriend got an artist to put them in a framed picture for me. But I’ve only ever met one fan that liked that song!

On the new album I aimed to get rid of writing for a ‘target audience’ (i.e. like on ‘Meanwhile’ and ‘Bigger Than Punk Rock’ which are basically about the punk scene) and tried to write for everyday people. I wanted to stop second guessing what people were like who were listening to it. There is a song called ‘Gary Got A Gun’ that is going to really challenge people I think. I’m proud of that one too but that might be famous last words. We’ll wait and see...

September To May

Walking down Oxford road,
It seems that nothings changed,
Why does it leave me cold?
Must be more than Manchester rain,
Great place to piss a loan away,
But god forbid you’d ever stay.

Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You used to be a friend of mine)
Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You left that life behind)
Have you really changed so much since then,
Has it really been that long?
One minute you’re here and then you’re gone.

Oh when the locals quaint?
Oh weren’t the protests fun?
Second you graduate,
Join daddy’s firm in London,
Last seasons look inside the halls,
Was having Che Guevara hanging from your wall,
Three foot tall!
I guess those lies were just your size,
While you were dreaming of the money and sunny skies.

Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You used to be a friend of mine)
Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You left that life behind)
I thought that we were gunna smash that system,
Sing along to the Billy Bragg song,
One minute you’re here now you’re gone.

Took a little time to find out,
Took a little time to find out.
Took a little time to find out,
Took a little time to find out.

REVOLUTION EVERY SEPTEMBER TO MAY
I GUESS THE SYSTEM’S HERE TO STAY!

See you Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You used to be a friend of mine)
Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You left that life behind)
Have I really changed so much since then,
Has it really been that long?
One minute you’re here and now you’re gone.