Jamie Getz is something of a rarity in the hardcore scene. All the bravado and mucho posturing that the beat down scene can muster with thier empty ’hardcore for life’ sloganeering can not hold a torch to this man who has spent his entire teen and adult years in love and hate with the cause. Having played in the phenomenal Lickgoldensky and Versoma he now takes the lead in GODS & QUEENS and although he had just returned from a mammoth European Tour he managed to find some time to answer these quickfire questions.
– How’s this European tour been for you this time around? I caught you in Margate. What were the highlights and what were your impressions of Margate, even if they were somewhat brief?
this tour has been an exercise in patience, and not attempting to murder someone, a true test of being lied to, and attempting to remain calm about it. also, a really good way to hemorage every penny i made over the past year. i was real excited about that. band wise we got along great, most of the shows were decent, a few awful ones but thats bound to happen on any tour. highlights were london for sure at the crobar and lubjiabna slovenia was great. we also did an acoustic show in berlin, we have never attempted that ever but it turned out to be really fucking cool.
margate seemed to us to be like new jersey here in the states. asbury park to be exact. a dead summer beach town, that at one point probably was a real destination spot, where people came for awesome summer vacations, but now is reduced to a few stragglers on the boardwalk,and some cruddy beach patrons who throw garbage everywhere and dont care about the town. seems like it once was great, and now flounders in the winter months. most beach towns i assume are like that. BUT we had an awesome time at the show. very very good to be exact. margate was rad, and we all want to come back for sure. we had a good time.
– As a hardcore band your sound is pretty unique, i can hear elements of the British shoegaze music in some of your recordings for instance. Where do you think you fit into the scene?
fit in? ha i dont think we do. depends. our band sounds like washington d.c. circa 1995. not the most popular form of music to be playing these days. there are always gonna be people who like it and understand it but there will ALWAYS be more that cant stand it and dont want to hear it…unless their friend tells them first. but i also understand exactly what we sound like and exactly who we are. all in all our ethics keep us a punk band, and probably always will. weather or not people accept that or us, thatäs not up to me.
– You’ve been knee deep in hardcore for many, many years. What makes you stick with DIY, I like many others get so frustrated with flaky promoters and labels etc etc… Yet it seems no matter what gets thrown at you you stick with it?
this tour really has me questioning why i still to this on this level, and how we do things. i am also very stubborn, which leads me to tend to want to prove people wrong. like this tour our “booking agent” claimed he couldnt fill shows in…amazingly i just emailed people and seemed to fill in a lot of the dates. so i will say i stick with it on this level out of spite. thats the best answer i can give you. also, man, i dont give a fuck. thats the other thing. i play in a punk band. end of story you know?
– Why are Gods & Queens recordings all titled ‘Untitled’?
because that shit isnt important to me. i dont wanna come up with some clever song title, or some stupid one either. i know what songs we are playing, i dont need to have them worded or anything. although it makes putting a set list together interesting. “play the one that goes like this…dun dun dun dun duuuuuunnnnn. no no not that one the other one that goes like that.” ugh.
– How has Robotic Empire been with you and how have they compared with labels that you have been on in the past?
first and foremost andy and i are friends. thats the biggest thing. other than that another friend putting out a record for their friends band. pretty cut adn dry i wish there was more gossip or something jucy to tell but alas…pretty boring answer isnt it? ha.
– I always ask this question to anyone i interview. If you had to chose one. What is your favourite record of the 1980′s?
this is easy for me, circle jerks “group sex”.
You can read more about Gods & Geens by clicking on this link to the bands MYSPACE or even their WORDPRESS site. Finally here is a link to the pics I took the day they played my home town. PHOTOS.
I managed to grab a lift for this show but we missed the first band, Chronos. When I arrived THE MIRE were already on stage. They were very slow in places and very metal. They looked like an odd bunch, like they’d just met for the first time but it isn’t a fashion show and I have to admit I really enjoyed the onslaught of those pummelling riffs, a little Mastodon here and a little mid period Cave In there when the singer actually sung rather than growling his way through the pounding riffs. It was not what I expected when I turned up for this hardcore show and I was glad to have caught them for the first time. In fact tonight was the first time that I’d seen any of these bands.
Next up were END REIGN who were the band I was most looking forward to tonight, they played to the largest crowd as well and I would say they thoroughly deserved it. Friends have told me they were ‘ones to watch’ sorta thing but no one told me just how insanely tight they are which is essential when playing this slamming style of hardcore. Singer Geoff Cairns looks so young as well, until of course the very moment he first roared into the microphone. For photos of END REIGN’s set click here.
Margate’s own ALASKA followed and the crowd lapped them up, lots of mosh parts and breakdowns throughout their set led to the only bout of aggro dancing of the night. I’ve listened to the bands demo a ton of times but I have to admit I wanted more from them, maybe if they were in a smaller venue that was rammed they would really come alive but as it stands they were simply a cool warm up for the incredible BASTIONS.
The main focus of the band is singer Jamie Burne, that’s not to say the band themselves are a plethora of sleeper bloke no hopers, they play as furious and as precise as say the Gallows backline or putting it another way think of your favourite hardcore band and I guarantee these guys can equal if not better the sheer onslaught in your mind. Daniel Garrod on the drums in particular is frightening when he really pounds those tubs and yet it is Jamie that the audience focus’ on tonight. I guess you could say he is like marmite in the way that you either love or hate what he brings to BASTIONS. In a way it reminded me of when I saw Catharsis back in the day, the way the singer would speak to and confront the audience on and off microphone, except Jamie was pretty non-confrontational whereas when you saw catharsis you were hoping you wouldn’t have your skull bashed in. He sung, screamed and shouted his way through the set until his voice had pretty much left him altogether. A worry when the band was only half way through the tour. It’s so refreshing to see a band that actually means it instead of re-treading other group’s styles, ideas and fashions. Don’t get me wrong, BASTIONS are not reinventing the wheel, but they are giving the wheel a damn slick set of rims. I get the album next week and I cannot wait to hear it. I was truly impressed. For photo’s of the performance click here.
In the depths of Margate lies Bo’s Practice Rooms, a block consisting of 3 practice rooms, a recording studio and a Grand Theft Auto style gym. Tonight it is home to yet another fine DIY hardcore punk show. The great thing about it is even with only 20 people watching the place feels busy, of course over 30 and the place is rammed.
First band up tonight is (UNNAMAED) although the flyer said they were called (UNAMED) but that just doesn’t make sense. And these guys made total sense to me. They played incredibly hard and fast and reminded me a of a serious ASSHOLE PARADE with a sense of humour during the in-between song banter. The drummer/singer combo I normally detest but it works just fine here with the tight riffs relentlessly pummelling the audience. Things fell apart somewhat during the final CHARLES BRONSON cover but it’s a minor gripe. Taking to the floor shortly after were Margate scene vet’s new bass bothering crew MUMDEAD. Now these guys played a set that was either the very worse thing I had ever seen or the most brilliant, a day later and I’m still not sure. They were terribly unrehearsed and the sound was far too tepid for a unit that consists of no guitars and one bass. MUMDEAD should never play with just one cab. Make it two or three. Up full, I want to feel my bowels empty into my pant’s next time chaps.
Once MAN HANDS cranked it up for me it was all over. These guys seriously did some damage. They delivered a full on hardcore assault with absolutely no let up. I was truly impressed. The thing with our local scene is that I never know how long a band will last. It’s all to common for a band to get their shit together and then promptly split up before they take things to the next level. For me Man Hands are already there. Just don’t split up. I want 7”’s and albums ASAP. They are dynamic enough to keep you interested and each song has a hook or two in those solids riffs that after their all to brief 20 minute set I felt short changed. I wanted more.
After a 7.15 show in London, Philadelphia’s God’s And Queens pelted it down to the Margate coast to wrap up tonight’s proceedings. Two shows in 3 hours is pretty impressive but to also deliver a stand up routine was totally unexpected. Singer Jamie Getz was full of beans and loving his time in England, comparing war stories with the crowd and concluding that his hood is deadlier than ours. As for his bands music. Well, it was pretty damn impressive. Gods And Queens play a hypnotic blend of early JESUS AND MARY CHAIN noise and bombastic rock with sung vocals of all things. Imagine… at a hardcore show, sung vocals. Whatever next. I only have the bands first record but it’s apparent that two releases down the line a few things have changed. Even though they play far from slick there is no denying that some of that guitar work was J MASCIS infused, that six string action left my ears ringing all night. The bastards.
Canterbury are a band on the up. They have recently been getting positive press across the board with their poppy brand of post hardcore modern day emo style rock (a description I‘m sure they won‘t thank me for but it does ring true). I met up with the two front men an hour or so before they took the stage at their recent show at the Westcoast Bar in Margate.
PW: So can you introduce yourselves?
L: I’m Luke and I sing and play the keyboards in Canterbury
M: And I am Mike and I sing and I play the guitars in Canterbury, well, just one of the guitars. The other is played by James.
LIR: Fist off and a most obvious question really. Why name yourselves Canterbury? Have you links to the City?
L: We knew we would be asked this question here of all places being so close to Canterbury. We haven’t ever played in Canterbury and this is the closest we’ve come.
M: We are saving playing in Canterbury for a better time I think.
L: We’re going to say for now that the reason is that we checked an online census and the City in England with the most Luke’s, Mike’s, James’, Scott’s and Bens is Canterbury. That’s the one we are going to give to Margate today.
LIR: That’s the thing before I heard your music with a name such as yours I imagines either a progggy 70’s influenced sound or a straight up hardcore din? I didn’t expect at all what came out of the speakers. Canterbury is an odd choice of moniker don’t you think?
M: It’s largely to do with being just a pleasing word, when it’s written down, when it’s spoken.
LIR: What about on a Google search, that’s got to be a tricky one?
M: We’ve only just got on there, if you type Canterbury now I think our YouTube video for Set You Right or our MySpace is the fourth entry that comes up now. We’ve beaten the City… almost (Laughs).
L: It’s working towards a sponsorship deal with Cathedral City Cheese
M: And the rugby team deal.
L: They can make us a nice kit. An away kit sponsored by Canterbury.
LIR: You’ve been together since school and being so young in age have you found it difficult being taken seriously and because you are still a tight unit a few years down the line do you see peoples perceived opinions about you have changed?
L: I think that depends on the way you act. We’ve now had four years experience and we do get taken a bit more seriously than we used to and of course it depends on how the music comes across as well for instance when you show up to a gig and people are like ‘Who are these little kids?’ but whoever your playing in front of are the important ones. I think now that we have been around for a while and people know of us now I’d hate to think that we are not taken seriously. You can always trump a sound guy by beating them to questions before they ask you and you have a little fun with it that way. We have accepted that sometimes we do get treated like morons but then there are as many times when we get treated seriously as well.
LIR: Some of this may stem from the press that you have received in the past. A lot of articles pick up on the fact that when you started out you were not allowed to play live because of school. What is the truth behind that?
L: Well, four of us were in boarding school in Hampshire. It wasn’t that we weren’t allowed to play live but it got in the way, a lot.
M: We had school on Saturday afternoons.
L: Playing gig’s were not the easiest things to do. When you’re boarding you can’t say like, ‘Can I Go and play a show tonight?’ Playing a gig on a Wednesday night and having school at 8.30 in the morning…
LIR: Could you still pull it together at all for weekend shows?
M: Every now and then we would play a weekend show and in the holidays we would try and play as much as possible but we never played that much.
L: Instead we just wrote an album, we felt we had one year left of school so we took it semi-seriously and got ourselves a bit of education. We sat back and wrote an album so at least when it was time to play loads of shows we didn’t have just the three songs.
M: We really did just focus on the writing because it wasn’t really an option to be on the live scene at that stage.
LIR: So you wrote this album during down time at school and after all the work you guys had put into the process you decided to record it in someone’s living room. It seems an odd and risky choice, how did that come about?
M: Yeah, Scott’s living room. We had the album planned out and we practiced the album and only that, rather than have 20 songs and picking 11 or whatever we had what we knew would work. There were a couple that did get taken out and replaced but we always had that (core). We had to record on a budget and we found this Pete Miles guy who at the time who was freelance. He was mobile and had a van full of gear and can literally make you sound so good.
L: Wherever you are.
LIR: That is a good point. From the first listen the album sounds like money as if a huge budget has been blown on the thing.
L: It took 3 weeks and £3,000. There are some records that I wont in any way mention but you hear how much money they spend and how shit it sounds as compared not in such to our record but the quality of the production of our record. Cheekily we did it. Why would anyone want to fly to America to record an album? I just don’t know. It’s not a scrappy album and I don’t think we expected it to come out as it did If I am being honest because all we had were these songs that we had been practicing in a village hall before we ever played live and then all of a sudden when we come to record them they sound way more in time than we do, not that we synthesized any of it artificially but because Pete Miles was so on the ball and he knew exactly how to capture everything we wanted to do. It just came out sounding better than we were. So for the next 6 months we basically had to learn our own record. And live we are sort of developing the songs our selves. Now we are 2 ½ years down the line and that’s where we are at now.
LIR: So it’s been an age since you completed the recording then? Do you get bored of playing these songs now?
L: I wouldn’t say bored of the songs. We started writing the record between the ages of 16 to 18 and we waited until we were 20 and 21 to release it. Opinions do change but we didn’t grow out of it but we almost forgot it was our record and did other things.
M: we’ve only been playing maybe 5 of these tracks since we’ve been playing around and it does get a little degrading. On the flip side as soon as it was released and you see people knowing the songs that only you used to know.
L: It completely re sparked our love for it.
M: It gives the whole thing a new lease of life and there is not a song on that album now that I don’t enjoy playing live.
LIR: I imagine you are tired of talking about it by now but the whole free download thing in hindsight for a new band is such a masterstroke.
M: For the first 2 years after we finished it we did knuckle down and try and get it released and then we thought about paying for a 1000 copies and just giving it out to people in our local scene because that’s how new bands do it. Then our manager found us and luckily we got a booking agent as well and it was they who convinced us to keep it under wraps to see what our options were.
L: A lot of people were thinking where has this band come from? They have this album that sonically sounds like a second or a third album but we basically could not play live.
M: We couldn’t play the record as people knew it; we scared quite a lot of people off.
L: Because we hadn’t been on the live circuit we had no one to release it to. I mean locally we were known and people from our school knew us but we had to wait for a platform in order for us to release it. We didn’t want 20 fans around the country and the record drips on for a few years and you get a miniscule fanbase so we toured for 2 years, built a fanbase of thousands rather than tens and then we released something to them that they could all get at the same time. Our manager was quite reluctant at first about the free download.
M: We didn’t have enough fans to physically release an album to.
L: For me it should be the done thing with a new band, how else can you get as many fans as possible? We can’t charge £10 for a CD when nobody knows who the band is. You can’t expect them to buy it. Saying that we now have released that album for free and we don’t know whether we are expected to release free records for the rest of our lives. There are so many people out there that want an actual CD though, to be able to read the lyrics. I would not want to ever do a release without having a physical copy as well.
M: Films, fair enough. People can pay £500,000,000 for a film to be made. We paid £3,000 to make our record. We paid for it and I would like that money back but we are alright without it. We have an amazing album that we are so proud of out of it.
LIR: (As the doors open and a huge throng of people pile into the venue). Well I can tell you that in Margate you would not have a crowd of this size unless you had done the free download.
M: If we had have charged we would have sold maybe 1000 copies by now. That’s great, we would have grossed a bit of income to put towards a new van or fixing the van or fucking petrol. Doing it this way we had 10,000 downloads in two months, released it in the end of October and by Christmas had 10,000 copies out there. Of course if we had sold 10,000 units labels would be snapping us up. I’m not sure of the final figure but it is somewhere between 15 and 20,000 thousand now (05/03/10). We have had this donation scheme as well and people have been coming back and giving a bit of money, £3 here and £4 there. Some have just given a tenner and said fuck it it’s a good album or whatever.
L: The day we put it up we were in Birmingham on the Billy Talent tour and my phone was going crazy with all the people commenting on twitter and facebook. It was so exciting after waiting 2 years for people to have it.
LIR: And why the title Thank You?
L: It was always the title; it was the title before we had the songs. I’m not really sure why. I think it was a case of ‘that would be a cool name for an album’.
LIR: So what’s with the medical theme, Diver, Accident, Ambulance, Hospital all appear to follow a narrative path?
M: We don’t like to go too far into it because we don’t want to come across and this profound or annoyingly arrogant band but we did write a little story.
L: It was meant to be more fun than say an album that is just a collection of songs. We had those three songs Accident, Ambulance and Hospital which followed the narrative of a person in these situations. So we had these words as titles and when it came to writing the songs we fit the words to each song which is why it flows like it does. It’s there as a clue but fit’s as to what they are about. We came out with this because you asked about it. We haven’t gone around saying ‘We have this debut concept album’
LIR: But it is always mentioned in reviews.
L: A lot of people have picked it up. And we wanted to create that (buzz) as well. I can’t ever imagine releasing music that is simply a collection of songs. It means a lot more this way for us playing it and a lot more for listeners working it out. The best albums always have some journey through them.
LIR: So now you have reached the next level from local band to getting write ups in the national press and playing on big tours, how has playing with the likes of Cancer Bats, Hundred Reasons and Billy Talent in the larger venues affected your attitudes.
M: We had a period during the summer before the Billy talent tour where we did absolutely nothing and we were feeling like we may never play to anyone new ever again. Then in quick succession we had the Billy talent tour, then the Hundred Reasons tour and then we went out on our own. Our first ever headline tour and I was blown away everyday by the turnouts. Even in a place like Stoke, 100 people showed up and there were people singing along to every song. It was what we had been waiting for all that time.
L: It was an amazing step down though; we had just come from being first on a proper big tour, these little boys in these huge rooms. It was a steep learning curve. Those huge shows were really pressurised. If you fucked up, you fucked up in front of thousands rather than dozens. It was an interesting time last year getting a sneak peek of every aspect of success for a touring band.
LIR: Stepping out in front of a huge audience for the first time must have been nerve wracking?
L: We’d played with Enter Shikari and You Me At Six a couple of times so we sort of had been there before.
M: Yet at Brixton Academy when we walked into the backstage area we turned into tourists. Everybody had their phones out. The balconies that never have anyone in them, I’d never seen them from that side of the venue.
L: And there is an evil security woman that’s always there and you could just flash her a pass and you were inside a room where only rock stars go. It sounds really corny but it was an absolute dream come true.
M: It was weird to go to the merch stand and see your t-shirts for sale, 100% dream come true. A massive live box was ticked. At the same time though it kinda feels like we earned it. It felt like we had been working towards that and we weren’t thrown in at the deep end. And of course playing venues that size you can grab yourself an instant fan base. And it was the middle of that tour that the record went active online.
LIR: So what about the future, has a label picked you up or do you want to continue down the online route?
M: It’s only our friend really who put out the physical copy. He does work on an A&R desk at Atlantic records but he runs the Friends Vs Records label. It does have Universals distribution so we kind of have a foot in the door but it was nothing like ’Here is a load of money guys, I’ll put this out”. He is a really cool and hard working guy but it’s not like it’s label backing really.
LIR: So you really are in the same sort of boat as you were previously in the fact that you don’t know how the next record is going to come out?
L: Definitely, yeah. We have this single, Gloria coming out on April 5th which is going to be a free download as well. We have been plugging this away to get on music TV and it’s on a couple of channels already. This should take us up to the summer time. I would like to be able to do a DVD of our story, it’s a fun tale.
M: As for being picked up, there are certain things a label can do for you. One of which is to be played everywhere which is the side of a record label that we really want. But they will pay for billboards and advertising in return for people paying full price for your album but what we could really do with is money to keep us afloat.
L: If I didn’t have to work a job I would be able to focus 100% on the band. After every tour I have to walk back into Tesco’s and it is the most depressing 9 hours of anyone’s life. So for that reason and I will completely unashamedly say it. I would love to get signed.
After the interview the band proceeded to rock the house. Mark in particular was completely chuffed with the turnout and reaction of the Margate crowd proclaiming the gig as his favourite ever show to the young sweaty throngs piled in front of him. I personally was on the fence with them, they are great at what they do but what they do isn’t really what I like. Saying that though, the guys managed to win me over. The song Eleven Twelve in particular is still stuck in my head today. What was most surprising was to find after an absence of Margate gigs for 4 years now there is still a crowd out there, hungry for live music. The future looks very, very bright indeed.
lostinrock 