Interview: Incredible Weapons

Mr Danny G took the time to answer some questions about his bloody briliant breezy, summer-scented powerpop band Increadible Weapons. They're not super-famous yet but they ARE great, Indiepages.com decided to class the demo submitted by Danny for a review as a "proper" release cos it was just so darn good. You should do yrself a favour and get his tunes in yr ears by going right down to http://www.incredibleweapons.com/. If you ask nicely, Danny will send you a disc too, bless.
(Again, all linkies added by me, so if they're all to cock that's my fauly, not Mr Danny G's)

Bite Yr Lip: How long have you been making music as incredible weapons (and please tell us about what came before)?

Danny G: Well Incredible Weapons played one festival and made the EP last summer; since then we've played a couple more times with all new jams and I've done some acoustic shows too. Before wuz a pop group outta Winchester called the Go Waves followed by an excellent 'lost weekend' bringing us right back up to the Weaps.

BYL: Do you play live often? What’s Andover like for being pop performer?

DG: This year I've done two acoustic shows and two rock shows. Only this weekend my drummer was saying he wants to do at least a show a fortnight until our bass player moves to Austria in the summer. We've got literally nothing booked though... maybe I should get off my arse?

Andover's the new rock'n'roll

BYL: Do you record yrself at home? Do you play all of the instruments?

DG: Yes, recording and full-volume rehearsing happens at home. There's a lot of space out here.

I'm a hack on the traps and bass but I'll lay down guides if the band aren't about. Keys too. I love playing all of them but I'm kinda inconsistent... like I'll have a tidy little hip-hop groove going on the drums then have no idea where to put my hands for a fill so I just throw them at the drums and see what happens. This means playback with the band is often accompanied by a generous round of guffaws.

BYL: How did the EP come about and where’s it available, how do we get one?

DG: The EP is the first five songs I finished when I decided I could get back into finishing stuff off (see 'lost weekend') which is why it's a little all over the place. 'Asking For Trouble' is from the un-finished Appletown EP and 'Solipsister' is in it's second version . The first had completely different words & flow and the cutest BV's by my friend June from Tokyo. These are sadly missing from the EP versh. I want to record an orchestra on my four-track for a new 'Pure '82'.

BYL: The record as a whole could be described as power-pop, what stuff goes in yr ears to make that stuff come out?

DG: My alarm clock every day is an Abba mixtape.

BYL: Are you making more recordings/planning any other releases?

DG: I record all the time but that's cause I'm an ideas man. I always love the freshest brain-scrapings most. It's terrible really; I've so many half-baked recording that'll never see the light of day. BUT... there are plans - we're gonna try recording the live set at home and see if it's good enough for backing tracks for something. I'm also thinking super-limited tape and a 7" this year. I may also release a mixtape as I am deeply besotted with a number of tunes I've found this year.

BYL: What’s great pop music that we should check out sometime soon?

DG: Some pop songs (go on hypemachine then buy it when you love it!/have cash - delete as appropriate)

Wavves - So Bored
Sexy Kids - Sisters are Forever
Jane Woody - Tiny Ants (myspace only?)
Mazes - Bowie Knives
Anne Bacheley - Drive in the Dark (maybe email her?)
Jean on Jean - Tonight
The Oh Sees - Carol Ann
Young Governor - Virginia Creeper
Owen Tromans and the Elders - Crew of the Raven (from the forthcoming Fall of Acre LP)

Thanks Ray, peace out!

Paul Stapleton Interview

Do you like comics? I like comics. I still can't get into those super-hero ones that rule the roost and have hundreds of tons of crappy plastic models made in their honour, snapped up by goths, schoolkids and schoolkid-goths the world over. Anyway, Mr Paul Stapleton draws comics that are a reflection of the society we live in and the ingenious ways we devise to annoy and amuse one another. I suppose I like his stuff because I recognise what he writes/draws about from my own experience, and also cos he has a fun drawing style. He takes the piss out of everyone, including you, me, and him. Also, his band Anal Beard were responsible for “The worst record in the history of music" by Fracture zine. Aces!
(All links added by me.)

Bite Yr Lip: I first came across yr drawings on your band's (anal beard) record sleeves. Now you've got 6 books out, how did you get from there to here?

Paul Stapleton: I've been drawing comic strips in one form or another since 1992, although for years the only person that ever saw them was my friend Richard who I drew them with (often sitting on the roof of his parents' house on sunny evenings). Towards the end of the 90's I did a handful of zine comics, which I sold at gigs and a couple of comic shops. They were pretty rudimentary, and quite ugly in places, but it got the ball rolling.

By the time we were releasing Anal Beard records I felt confident enough to put something in a slightly more public place, and we all thought that photo sleeves were dull anyway, so there was that.

And a bit more recently, I was on a walk with my brother Matthew and we had for some reason decided to take pens and paper with us, so had a bit of a picnic and a drawing session. I did what became the first story in Divs and Defects and he suggested I did another full comic, so that baking hot July afternoon in Minehead turned out to be quite cataclysmic.

It's been loads of fun though, although I am sometimes aware of how much of a solitary exercise it all is! I went through a phase of going to a local cafe and drawing there while nursing one can of something grim, but felt like a bit of a blowhard. In Brighton, there's plenty of would-be artists sitting in a cafe with their pens and paper praying that someone will come and ask them what they're working on. So now I sit in the garden.

In the 6 years since Divs and Defects came out, there's been another five books. The most popular has been Chav, which is still selling like hotcakes but the most recent (Facebook - the Comicbook) is coming close. That was exciting in itself, as it was the first book to be printed in full colour.

And most recently of all (I think I'm answering far more than you asked here, but never mind!), I'm working on a set that doesn't have a name yet, but is aimed at being a newspaper strip. It's odd having to fit stories and gags into three panels instead of having an infinite amount of space at your disposal, but probably a good discipline to learn.

BYL: And am I right in thinking you are/are in Pog? What other musicy things do you do then?

PS: I am. Pog ran alongside Anal Beard for a couple of years, and was the kind of music that I tend to write when left to my own devices. For quite a while it was just me and an acoustic guitar sliming out punk folk, but now it’s grown to a very agreeable four piece. It takes up most of the evenings I'm not drawing, and I love it, although it also gives me plenty to moan and worry about.

BYL: Can you tell me about how you draw your comics? Am I right in thinking you hand draw and colour with some sort of alien robot technology?

PS: Spot on! As far as the drawing goes, it's as low-tech as you can possibly get - just a couple of art pens and a stack of whatever paper I can borrow (I always forget to stock up). Everything is drawn by hand, and recently I've been using watercolour, but colouring is nearly always done in Photoshop. That said, most of the comic strips are in black and white anyway.

BYL: Often people in the background or incidental characters are wearing shirts/badges by bands such as The Pastels and Talulah Gosh. Are you much of a pop fan then?

Oh god yes! When I'm stuck for a T Shirt, I just look at the CD shelf and take whatever I see first. And seeing as I'm a sucker for hairslide and lollipop indie pop, it tends to be something that was released on either Sarah, 53rd and 3rd or Rough Trade Records. Although another method which I really should start doing more is giving someone a T shirt sporting the name of a local band. Oily Rag bought five copies of Mr Bethnal and Mr Ongar between them when I did that! I'd like to think I was less cynically enterprising than that, but experience has proved otherwise.

BYL: Where's the best place to get your comics from then?

PS: Pog gigs, but they tend to be very closely guarded secrets. The website (http://www.worldofbeardandpog.co.uk/Scribbles/index.html) is a good place too, and you can read some pages from each book before you take the plunge. Otherwise, if you ever happen to be in Brighton, David's Comics or the Punker Bunker won't give you a blank look should you mention my name, but they might choke on their morning bagels and point you towards Bill Watterson instead.

BYL: Who do you recommend we check out comics by then?

There are three comics that I would say were an influence, and they were all newspaper strips. The Perishers, a long-standing strip in the Daily Mirror, was still running when I was growing up, and Maurice Dodd's beautifully rendered London backdrops and the novel use of polyptychs (where a single background is split across panels which the characters walk across) always kept the strip a source of visual wonder. It’s not published anymore, but you can pick up the collections in charity shops and so on, and there are a few online to look at. The second was Dilbert, which by contrast was really primitive looking, but just so purely funny, insane and spot-on - I think it’s fallen into a bit of a white-collar rut now, but the first few collections are marvellous.

Out of all the daily strips though, nothing touches Calvin and Hobbes for sheer warmth, compassion and big-hearted laughs. Even more admirable is that Bill Watterson never allowed his creation to be merchandised, in the end killing off the strip, rather than taking the Garfield route and making a lot of money in the process.

I guess as I was growing up the only place to really find comics were in the daily papers. As I discovered the weird and expansive world of graphic novels though, I realised how boundless the format was. So if you're ever in a comic store, I'd recommend the Preacher books, Hell Blazer, the Walking Dead, anything by Peter Bagge or Max Cannon, and most of all A Complete Lowlife, which was by Ed Brubaker who is best known for his Batman strips.

Most of what I like are about alienated geeks who work in book shops, but more recently I came across The Tale of One Bad Rat, which is achingly good. And last weekend I finally got round to reading the Watchmen, which is every bit as epic as I was told it would be.

BYL: According to yr website, although you're willing to consider commissions for non-profit organisations etc you'll not deal with organisations that use animal experiments. I like this! So only to take this on a slight tangent, what's good in our sandwiches?

PS: Yeah - the way I put that it makes it sound as if I'm fighting off commissions like they were being gatling cannoned into my inbox. The truth is though that such offers are few and far between. However, I think it’s important to distinguish between different types of charity, although I suppose it’s all down to personal polemic and experience. I find it distasteful that the British Heart Foundation have a roughly 10% stake in vivisection, but then I've never relied on heart surgery or associated technology to save my life. It seems churlish to complain about Cancer Research to someone who's just lost a family member to cancer, but suffice to say, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing anything for those organisations.

BYL: And what's the best thing to do with tofu?

PS: The best thing for me to do with tofu is leave it in the hands of someone who might know a collander from a wok.

BYL: And finally, did your cat really manage to delete the layout for "I must rise above these divs and defects" by trampling over your keyboard? That's terrible luck!

PS: Not quite! But there were times it seemed dangerously close. I'm sure the keys CTRL ALT and DELETE have magnetic qualities. She once managed to rip the power plug out the wall while I was mid-save, which did something very nasty to the file, amounting to about fifteen hours work going down the shitter, and a much-maligned cat coming very close to being donated to the British Heart Foundation.

I think I'm now about 4 months away from forgiving her.

BYL: Thankyou mr paul!

PS: You're very welcome! Thankyou too - it’s always nice to be asked to bang on about oneself after all.


BYL Addendum: This interview was done AGES back. Since then it seems that Paul has started (and abandoned?) an online daily comic strip called Latchkey.

Claire's Cake Recipe

Okay. So Claire from ATTA girl was kind enough to donate a recipe to go in the zine. This is not a real zine, boo hoo etc. The recipe is still here though. Enjoy, people.
(click on the pic to enlarge, init.)

The Carrots

[Okay, so this is obviously OLD.. and the photo is properly thieved from here.]

The Carrots are a super-ace band from Austin, Texas in the U!S!of!A! They are made up of girls and boys and they play brilliant 60's-style motown-y type stuff. Perhaps unsurprisingly they put out records on the ultra-cool label and sponsors of this year's Indietracks festival, Elefant Records.

The questions preceded by "PAG" were donated by Peter who co-hosts the Atta Girl all female-vocals clubnight (http://www.attagrrl.co.uk/)

These questions were kindly answered via the profoundly passé yet ultimately usefull medium of MySpace by The Carrots' Bass player, one Christopher Lyons, thanks Chris!

Bite Yr Lip: I NEED to know, how many of you are really really in the band? and is it the same number of people that are usually on stage?

Chris: Oh, brother! Currently there are only four people who are really, really in the band: Veronica, Shelley, Chef and Chris. We have a “band friend” who has been playing guitar with us on all of our latest recordings but probably wouldn’t consider himself to be really in the band. His name is Jason and he wrote “I Tried to Call You” which we have covered for a long time. The original line-up was Veronica, Chef, Chris, Stephanie, Erin and Jennifer. Erin left last summer to concentrate on her other bands. Stephanie moved to Los Angeles but still went on tour with us last year. Jennifer just quit because she is moving to New York and is also going to concentrate on her other band. We picked up Shelley to replace Erin and we also temporarily had a girl named Lace replacing Stephanie, but she has also moved on. It is so confusing. On stage there has been almost every combination of the above people.

BYL: From seeing the tour documentary on myspace/vimeo it looks like you got to play some unusual places with different styled bands. Are gigs on the US DIY scene usually eclectic? How were you received by crowds when playing after noisy punk bands?

C: Yeah, since we are pretty much unknown our shows turned out to be pretty strange at times. We played with all kinds of bands. Surprisingly, the more punk or hardcore the show the more people liked us. The crusty punks are skeptical of us at first but by the third song they are dancing. I think it’s just the novelty of it that is appealing. When we play with bands that are more similar to us the reaction is usually less positive. That can happen in bigger U.S. cities. People are less jaded at weird shows in small towns.

BYL: How is it being based in Austin? I mean, it's famous for music but does that make it harder to do stuff with all the other try-hards and industry people clambering about the place, or is it actually quite nice?

C: Austin is a great town, overall. There are aspects to it like you described but the alternative is to not have a thriving music scene and not have any opportunities whatsoever. I lived here when this town was like that. It was impossible to get a show at a club and there were no labels or places to record or anything at all for a young band. Now that stuff exists, which is great. Of course, there are also thousands of shitty bands now. Maybe there were always this many bad bands but I feel like when it was harder to be a band in town only the better quality bands persevered. Austin used to be completely isolated. Bands hardly toured here because it was so out of the way. That and the lack of internet back in the day produced a unique mutant strain of music with a lot of regional character. Now bands here sound just like bands everywhere else. Including us! Ack.

BYL: Are you excited about coming to the uk? It usually rains but that’s not allowed at indietracks so dress appropriately! have any of you been? are you planning to be proper tourists and get yr photo taken with a bobby?

C: We are excited about coming to the UK but we aren’t coming this summer! As I mentioned before, our keyboard player Jennifer has just left the band and we are not going to be able to tour without her just yet. We are instead just trying to finish up a record instead. Veronica will be in the UK this summer along with former members Erin and Stephanie in their other band, Finally Punk. Look out for them and go to their shows. Give them small paintings and poems of your own creation to bring back to us.

BYL: Are you planning to play anywhere else in the UK?

C: We would like to play Nottingham Forest, Buckingham Palace, Stonehenge, The White Cliffs of Dover, London Bridge (if it hasn’t fallen down) and a Moor.

BYL: What’s on yr little root veg stereos right about now?

C: I like the Strange Boys (also from Austin) and the Vivian Girls.

PAG: Where did the name come from?

C: We had a vote. Originally we just informally called ourselves “girl-group.” As in, hey do you want to be in a girl-group band with me? What time are we having girl-group practice? This went on for a long time until we realized that was an impractical name and we had to actually think of one. I think we all wrote potential band names on a sheet of paper until we had like 50 or so and then just started passing it around crossing names off. When it got down to around ten we voted. I remember one candidate that just lost was “Snow Girls.” I’ve forgotten the rest. The Carrots just seemed like a cute word when written and it fit in with other girl-group type names like “The Cookies” or “The Chiffons.” C’s are big.

PAG: You're obviously influenced by many a 60s girl group. me and my friend are always arguing about who the greatest 60s girl group were, what do you think?

C: I’d say the big three for us are the Shangri-La’s, the Ronettes and the Crystals. We started out covering all of those bands. Who’s your favorite?

PAG: It's a bit obvious, but I would say the Shangri-Las, I've always loved a bit of melodrama.

PAG: how did the deal with elefant come about? as far as i know there are currently no other american acts on the label.

C: Just like this interview, actually, from a Myspace message. They just wrote us out of the blue and we had nothing else going on so we took them up on their offer. They have been pretty great to us in terms of just letting us do our thing but it is also difficult due to the language barrier and the distance. It can take a long time to communicate.

PAG: Do you know of any other 60s girl group influenced bands about at the moment? i just discovered the pepper pots, a spanish girl group playing 60s inspired ska, they're a bit special.

C: I’d like to hear them because I love old ska. That sounds great. Unfortunately, I think there is a girl-group revival of sorts happening . I only say unfortunately because they are probably all better than us! I don’t even think we sound like a girl-group anymore. More like some dreadful indie-pop nightmare. I don’t think anyone in the band even likes how we sound but that is just the sound that comes out when we all get together. I would much rather sound like “Skinhead Moonstomp” or something. Oh, well.


If you find yrself on the interwebs, lost at a crossroads, i can highly recomend heading towards the Carrots' tour diary on Vimeo.com.

Ask a stupid question

I think that maybe I included this in a perzine I did a little while ago -Optical Devices #1- but as I don't have have a copy myself, I see no harm in reproducing it here....

I do these stupid surveys online. They’re generally based around consumer products, but sometimes they’re about party politics. I generally just wade through zombie-like to pick up my 50p at the end. I’ve got over a tenner in the account now. Anyway, the majority of the questions are multiple choice, but the other day one asking about how often and how I buy music ended with..

“finally, what does music mean to you?”

I answered quickly and copied and pasted it onto my desktop. It’s a bit daft and unfocussed and contradictory. But I think I sort of got a bit of my point across, if only in a way I understand.

“Enjoyment of anything is essentially radical in and of itself. To know that the world is being destroyed by power-crazed politicians, cancerous corporations, and the militantly ignorant majority of the populace; to know that people will gladly kick away a ladder once they’ve reached the top and then shit on those struggling behind. To be aware of these things and be happy in SPITE of the facts is revolutionary.

Independent music strives to break chinks into walls of mundanity and the cynical world of corporately engineered (or influenced) entertainment.

A world filled with people who create, share, and enjoy. A world without rules, a world that exists purely for love and fun. A beautiful escape from skin creams and shiny cars, real-estate, foreign policy, hierarchy and competition for the sake of it.

This is for fun, and that’s really all anything should be for.”
Pop music strikes chinks into the wall and I bask in the light.

Interview: The Icicles

The Icicles are four girls and a boy hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan. they make sugary, sunshine indiepop which has been released on various labels including Microindie, Drive-in, and Total Gaylord. They've also played with all yr favourite pop bands such as The Lucksmiths, The Salteens, The Aislers Set, Bunnygrunt, and The Smittens! They headlined the first ever Indietacks Christmas Twee show AND the 2nd ever offical indiepop gig at the Island bar, Birmingham*.

That photo up there is by Karen Dee Organ and is totally stolen from here.

I stumbled across them one day a few years back when I browsing Indiepages.com when I probably should have been writing essays or something. It was definitely productice procrastination.

Gretchen , who guitars and sings with The icicles, was kind enough to answer some questions.

Bir Yr Lip: So far as I can tell, you always wear matching clothes for yr gigs. Who’s in charge of the styling? Who makes the garments?

Gretchen: Joleen is our fashionista. We all (mostly) try to sew, and thankfully Joleen is here to help us when we really f**k it up. She is a brilliant designer. Check out her clothing line at www.flutterfashion.com.

BYL: Back in 2007 you came over to the uk, but so far as I’m aware yr records have never officially been available over here. How did the tour come about and how were the turn outs compared to what you expected?

G: Stuart from Indietracks invited us to play the festival. We thought playing on a train platform would be amazing - which it totally was! That's really how the tour came together. We figured since we were going to be in England, we might as well play Scandinavia (it seemed like a good idea at the time). It was a fantastic adventure!

We were very amazed by the turnout. It was top ace! People knew our music and even sang the words (in several clubs).

BYL: It’s been a while since you came over, and a while since you put out a record, how much longer do you think the people of these lands will have to wait for more icicles action?

G: We're working on a new album at present. We would love, love, love to venture back across the pond. Hopefully in the near future.

BYL: I know you’ve got some veggies/vegans in the band, what was touring Europe like for those guys? I remember reading that The Wailers had a nightmare and cancelled their tour, I hope things have improved for visitors since the 60’s..

G: It was easier than being a veggie on tour in US of A. We ate alot of Marks & Spencer sandwiches (which were quite delicious). The food was fantastico.

BYL: When you played Christmas twee in 2007 someone came onstage to chat up Joleen mid-song. Do these sorts of things happen often- stage invasions from suitors? Stalkers? Crazy rock n roll tour madness?

G: We've had a fair share of stalkers, Russian kissers, folks with boundary issues and middle age trade show bump & grinders. But overall, the audiences have been wonderful.

BYL: How do you manage yr day jobs with all your pop commitments?

G: 6 hours of sleep a night.

BYL: What’s Grand Rapids like to live in, how’s the pop music over there?

G: G-Raps is a growing, hopeful metropolis. There isn't a big pop scene here yet, but a few great bands do come through. People like Creed.

BYL: I heard one of the icicles is less of a pop fan and more of a “rocker” (Grand Valley Magazine 2008). I’d love to hear more about this background of ROCK!

G: Rebecca is our rocker. She's got a Black Sabbathesque band. She always really loved and played rock n roll. Pop music is a new musical genre that she is learning to appreciate (with twists of rock added where ever possible).

BYL: Lastly, the first thing I heard by you guys was the Lovescopes Theme somewhere on the internets, could you please tell me where that comes from? Have I got myself all in a twist on this one?

G: The Lovescopes were a band that never was. They had lyrics, merchandise, and a fanzine but they never really played (so the legend goes). We never heard any of their songs and never saw them perform. But they are big legends here in G-Raps. There was some sort of bad break up (so the legend goes). It's all very mysterious.

> rock on,
> gretchen
>
> www.theicicles.com

*This is a stupid insider thing but I'll share. I booked a gig for The Icicles back in 2007 upstiars at The Island bar, which at the time was shiny and new and exciting. As there seemed to be very few venues suitable for indiepop gigs I was dead excited that I'd managed to get a good line-up (icicles/validators/winston echo) at a new venue. the Dunc from The Autumn Store booked a gig AFTER I did but for a date BEFORE mine, which I think I'm right in saying featured The Loves, The School, and Richard Burke. So his was the OFFICIALLY the first. the big bumhead.

Intro/Contents

Hey!

Well, the zine was all written and just waiting to be printed up. I can;t get my shit together well enough to get it printed, so I've decided to start this blog and put up a diferent article each week or so.

Interview: The Icicles
Ask A Stupid Question
Interview: The Carrots
Claire's cake recipe
Interview: Paul Stapleton
Interview: Incredible Weapons