What about the band's
first gig?
"It was really good. It was at the then named Reading Alleycat.
It was there,
how we came to be named. We originally didn't have a name and
five minutes before we went on the girl was asking what she
was going to introduce us as.
At the time we all had pretty short hair, looked really stupid
and couldn't
really fit on the stage. We chose the name in like five minutes."
Was giving the band a name that problematic?
He laughs, "We had reams and reams of lists and we went
through them crossing out the ones that were shit and really
bad. Eventually Ben said,
"We'll go for this one for this gig." Then we got
in the paper and people
started coming down to more gigs so we thought fair enough.
Though we
have this picture and we look so bad."
Going back to the production do you think the sounds in your
head
have come out the way you wanted on the album?
"I really liked it. To me everything that we hoped to do
we got it in there, somewhere. That's why it's so eclectic,
there's a load of crazy stuff going on
in there. We tried to put in as much as we could and I'm really
happy with everything in the way it sounds, especially with
the drums. It's really good but then we had a top producer."
I ask about where the inspiration came for 'Devil Walks In The
Sand'. At that particular time all the band bar Ben Gautrey,
the song's lyricist, enters the room. Someone mentions that
the song came from a long jam, like most of their current songs,
with them taking all the best bits and in this case working
around that good guitar riff. Later Ben would admit to the presumed
Richard Stanley connection. That the song was partially influenced
by his movie 'Dust Devil' aptly released on an EP named after
another one of his films, 'Hardware'.
Though what were Jon's feelings towards the fact that it wasn't
as well received as the media would have us expect it to have
been, that it wasn't the indie anthem that became expected?
"The lyrics were very difficult on it but not very catchy."
Yes but the melody was. >>
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