Live Review: Chase & Status @ O2 Academy Bournemouth, 10/10/11

The packed out O2 Academy is moist with anticipation of tonight’s showcase of the best in UK’s urban/electo talent. Dot Rotten a London MC and producer, gives a decent yet slightly monotonous performance. Another London rapper, Labrinth, provides something a little different. Although the artist who collaborated with Tinie Tempah on his smash hit ‘Pass Out’ does look and sound remarkably like his colleague, his tracks still manage to sound fresh and original. The supurb 'Express Yourself' - which samples the track from Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd St. Rhythm don't ya know - injects a bit of old school funk and soul into the evening and it's also refreshing to see and urban artist wielding a guitar on stage.

The audience start to get a little restless waiting for Chase & Status, but the duo are well worth the wait. They fire out hit after hit, accompanied by stunning visuals on the big screen behind them. An awe-inspiring light show  and astounding laser display help create a breathtakingly magical atmosphere, which sadly yhe mostly intoxicated  audience fail to appreciate. Although it's not really needed, MC Rage keeps the energy levels up and an appearance from Delilah on tracks 'Heartbeats' and 'Time' gives the boys a bit of eye candy. It's truely incredible just how many great songs Chase & Status have produced and although the crowd we're a little violent at times, they mostly stumbled from the venue feeling sweaty and euphoric.  

Interview: Bowling For Soup

You may only know them for one or two songs, but believe it or not, Bowling For Soup have been going for 17 years and have released a staggering 11 albums. I spoke to frontman Jared Reddick before their show at Bournemouth's O2 Academy about life in a middle-aged 'fart joke' band. 

You guys tour a heck of a lot. Do you ever get bored of it?

I mean you get homesick, and more often these days than in the past years because we’ve all grown up a little bit and got families. But now it’s more about just touring whenever it makes sense and not trying to stay on the road for twelve months a year, which in the past is something we we’ve been known for. Bands that we’ve known for years who tour a lot think were crazy because we tour a lot. So I think that says something about our work ethic. But we still enjoy being around each other, still enjoy playing the shows and doing our thing so hopefully we can continue for quite some time.

Are there fewer parties on your now that your older?

No, in fact I think that’s why people think were nuts. We tend to turn it up a little bit. When we get away from home we go a little crazy. You never know what to expect with us!

New single ‘Turbulance’ is one of you’re more serious heartfelt songs. Do you ever get tired of being known as a silly comedy band? 

I wouldn’t say I really get tired of us being known in any way, just because it’s kind of cool that people know who we are, whether they know us as the fart joke band or whether they know us from Phineas and Ferb. But its one of those things where sometimes people hear the song ‘Turbulance’ and they’re like ‘well this is very different from Bowling For Soup’, but its really now. I mean we’ve released eleven albums and on each of the albums there’s one or two ballad type songs. But I suppose in the past those aren’t the songs that have gotten the attention so I wouldn’t say that we take offence to it or anything like that because we do sort of act the way the more funny songs are. So I think it’s fine that that’s where people’s brains are. I mean as a songwriter it gets a little bit difficult because I’d like to, and I do, write all kinds of different music but I’m kind of forever known as the beer song fart joke guy. So its nice to have songs out there and actually hear people say ‘ok, well that’s quite a departure for him as a songwriter’, that feels good.

You’ve covered Fountains Of Wayne's Stacy’s Mom as the B-side, what made you choose that song to cover?

Well quite honestly, ever since that song came out a very large part of the population of the planet think that Bowling For Soup does that song. And it’s one of those things where we’ve been playing shows for years and years and people hold up signs that say ‘Stacy’s Mom’, and we’re like ‘we’re not the ‘Stacy’s Mom’ band we’re the ‘1985’ band’. And so I think we just got to the point where it was like if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So now if you’re like ‘My favourite song by Bowling For Soup is ‘Stacy’s Mom’’ then people won’t think you’re an idiot. They’ll go ‘oh, I like that one too’ or ‘that’s a really nice cover song’. Either way, you’re fine. So I’ve basically just taken care of a large part of the population that’s been wrong for years, and I’ve made them right.

Bowling For Soup have done quite a few covers over the years, is there one that’s your particular favourite?

I still really like the ‘Summer Of 69’ cover, which was one of the first ones we ever recorded. And live we do Cheap Trick’s song ‘Surrender’, which I really like. But it’s always nice to take somebody else’s song and put your own little spin on it. Except for when we did the song ‘Ghostbusters’, they really wanted us to stick to the script. But for the most part on all the others we’ve been allowed to put our own little twist on it and that’s always good fun.

You’ve been together 17 years now, what has been the highlight of your career?

It’s really hard to say. I mean to be honest if you know anything about our band, we’re definitely not that band that rocketed to the top and we didn’t get recognised overnight so we’ve had a lot of experiences and had a lot of really nice things that have happened to us. A lot of highs and not really a lot of lows to be honest, which I think comes from not getting out there too fast. Because then you don’t really come down quite as fast. So for us I think there’s just too many to name. We’ve seen the world multiple times, we’ve met a lot of people and done a lot of amazing things. So to tie it down to one of them would be impossible for me.

Is there anything left to do that you havn’t done yet?

I think its just matter of taking it as it comes. Continuing to enjoy it and as it becomes less fun, maybe do it a little bit less. But right now it’s still a lot of fun and we’re all doing other things musically. As side projects come along and family things come along, it makes Bowling For Soup more exciting to come back to. So we’re just going to forge ahead and take it as it comes.

You split from Jive Records in 2009, who are you with now and how is it going?

We’re on our own label now called Que-So Records and its going great. We’re allowed to do things now that we couldn’t do in the past. 'Fishing For Woos' came out in April and it’s done great, especially considering that we did everything on our own. Were able to go into the studio and do things like ‘I’ve Never Done Anything Like This’ which is or new single Then we went in and re-did ‘The Bitch Song’ and we did the cover of ‘Stacey’s Mom’ and we can just go in and do it and release it and there’s not somebody there telling us we can’t. We’ve got a new Christmas album coming out soon and we’re re-releasing our first three albums so it’s really nice, just content-wide to have nobody blocking you. We just decide we’re going to something and we do it. That’s probably been the biggest change for us and definitely the biggest benefit.

You’ve made quite a name for yourselves in the world of TV and movie soundtracks. What has been you’re favourite project of that nature to do?

Those are all a blast. I mean anytime you’re associated with a television show or movie it’s awesome because it’s just cool to be in a whole other world but still be in your element musically. But I’ve got to say the biggest one for us, and the most fun still, is Phineas and Ferb. It’s great that we’re the theme for that and they’ve animated us in the show and we get to go and write songs with those guys all the time. Also, in the show, I play a character called Danny who sings for the band Love Handle. It’s just been a blessing for me and for the rest of the guys for sure.

Is the Bowling For Soup documentary still going ahead?

I think we will eventually do it. What happened was, it became a time thing. We split from Jive Records about the same time that we had thought about doing this and so it became more about just regrouping and getting new music out and getting back on the road than it did about doing the documentary. I think we will do it eventually, the shooting of it would only take about two days. So I think it might be something that we do next year or the year after. 

You and Erik have an acoustic side-project and have toured the UK the last couple of years. How is that going?

I mean that’s not really as much of a side-project as it is an extension of Bowling For Soup, it’s a different way to present the songs and a little bit more of an up close and personal show to present to the fans. It’s something that Erik and I have been doing for years and years in the States and just tried it a couple of years ago in the UK and it went great. It’s not something that were just excluding the other guys from, or that they feel excluded from. It’s just another thing that Bowling For Soup does. It’s enjoyable because we can play pretty much play any song. In Bowling For Soup when you have to do it as a whole band it takes a little bit of preparation at least. We’ll hopefully be back in April again. 

Was it strange to perform without the rest of the band?

No it feels natural because we’ve been doing the acoustic thing almost as long as we’ve been doing the full band thing so. Bowling For Soup has been together since 1994 and I think Erik and I started doing the acoustic thing in 1996. It’s two different things but at the same time it’s the same songs just presented in a different way. But it’s the same sort of vibe as the other shows so I think the transition works pretty well.

What’s next for Bowling For Soup?

Well after this tour my new band People On Vacation, which I’ve been doing on the side, will release our first EP. And then Erik will have a solo album come out. Probably the next thing for Bowling For Soup will be the acoustic tour in the UK in April and then the full band will kind of get back to work next summer, whether it’s some summer touring or starting to work on new material. I’m not really sure yet how that’s gonna go. Really we’ve been hitting it pretty hard since Fishing For Woos came out, so we’re gonna finish the tour, take a nap and then get together and regroup.   

Interview: Everything Everything - so good they named them twice

Rising stars Everything Everything have been travelling across the UK with The Vaccines, Magnetic Man and Crystal Castles as part of the NME Awards Tour 2011. I briefly infiltrated their weird and wonderful world at Bournemouth’s O2 Academy to talk ‘Bizarre ‘n’ B’, sand sculptures and Dave Grohl.


How has the NME Awards Tour been going so far?

Jeremy Pritchard (bass, vocals): We’re on the homeward stretch now.
Jonathan Higgs (vocals, keyboards): It’s been really good. As far as I know, they’ve all been sold out. Except for maybe tonight actually. But it probably will be later, it’s very cold so people will come here for shelter. But it’s been amazing. There have been big venues and big crowds. They’ve been up-for-it young crowds as well so they keep you on your toes. You’ve got to keep them happy.
JP: All the bands are learning from each other as well. Nobody is really doing the same thing as everybody else, everybody occupies their own area.

Have you had much chance for any fun and games with the other bands on the tour?


JP: We have played pool with most of them. We went out with Magnetic Man a couple of times. Jon was out with The Vaccines last night. We’re only ever within 40 yards of each other at any one point. We all travel in convoy.
JH: The buses are all in a line so we sleep right next to each other as well.
JP: You can’t help but exchange information in such close quarters.

Any gossip to share then?

JP: Erm well… all of The Vaccines are women it turns out. Nah not really.
JH: We can’t really think of any.
JP: Because there isn’t any.

You guys are from all over the UK - Manchester, Newcastle and Kent - so where do you consider to be home?

JP: Well the band is from Manchester and then we’re all kind of spread around the country in terms of origin. But we met there and formed there and we live there now.
JH: It’s definitely home for the band, I don’t know if its home for each of us individually. But certainly it’s our musical base.
JP: It’s home for everyone except for Alex (Robertshaw – guitar) I suppose. Alex lives in London and the rest of us are in Manchester.

Where is your favourite place to play out of the three?

JH: Manchester probably. Kent is sadly bereft of any good venues.
JP: We have played my little home town venue a few times now and that’s been great but playing in Manchester is really good for us now. When you play in London there is an inevitable sort of media spotlight. And when your label’s there and your management’s there and everyone is going ‘this is gonna be good’, even if it is good then its slightly tainted.
JH: Newcastle is sort of up and down. It hasn’t really got that many great venues. It needs some better ones.
JP: It needs some good midsized venues and a stronger musical allegiance
JH: It needs a football-music crossover at some point

The band is notoriously hard to pin to any particular genre. So if you could invent a new genre to label yourselves with, what would you call it?

JH: We’ve come up with a couple before. We’ve had ‘Bizarre ‘n’ B’ and ‘Haunted House’.
JP: ‘Haunted House’ is particularly irrelevant.
JH: ‘Bizarre ‘n’ B’ is the best we’ve come up with. The funniest anyway.
JP: It’s not very accurate, like any tags really. People see us as an indie band and that’s fine. We call ourselves a pop band in the broadest possible sense because we’re somewhere in the cannon of popular music of the last 60 years I think.
JH: We’re in there somewhere.

What are your main influences as a band?

JP: There’s all the sort of ‘heart bands’ that you’ll never let go of from your teenage years, like The Beatles.
JH: ‘Heart bands’?
JP: That didn’t come out very well did it?
JH: Bands you love?
JP: Bands you love! Exactly. In an irrational way. Which is a good thing I think. Like Radiohead for all of us. And Michael Jackson and stuff that comes from before a time that you understood what music was or how it was made. It has a sort of magic to it.
JH: Magic music.
JP: Exaclty. So there is all those and then there is lots of other artists that we listened too whilst we were growing up. Post-rock and post-hardcore stuff, math-rock and then all the American R’n’B stuff and jazz and hip hop. We like music!
JH: But at the end of the day, it’s probably Radiohead that we’re always coming back to.
JP: And The Beatles as well.

You write and choreograph your own music videos. Where do you get your inspiration from?

JH: Well we always start with the song. We listen to it and think, visually, what would it need? What could you bring to it that’s not there, or how could you accentuate something that is there. But we’ve actually been lucky with the first two or three videos. For one of them there was certainly a very strong visual idea within the song already so it was just a question of trying to make that happen on the page. The other ones, it just really depends on what it needs. The Schoolin’ video wasn’t quite ready for the public.
JP: HA! This is a good one. We spent quite a lot of money on blowing up a sand sculpture on a beach somewhere around here actually, while we were touring in Europe.
JH: It was a sculpture of a big mammoth in the sand and we blew it up with dynamite. But they only blew its head off because they didn’t put enough dynamite in it.
JP: So they had to build it again and then blew it up more successfully. But then the results were actually incredibly boring. And I’ve never seen the video.
JH: Yea we had to make an animation for that as quickly as we could which was a bit of a close one.
JP: A guy called Nicolas made this really amazing animation for it, which is good because we quite often end up at certain places by accident and we would never normally have commissioned an animator to animate abstract images for a video. But because we ended up in the awkward corner we got a video that we would never normally have commissioned or tried to make ourselves. We’re glad to have our hand forced occasionally, all be it in an expensive way.

You were shortlisted for the BBC Sound of 2010 last year. Do you think it has helped to get your music noticed?

JH: Absolutely. We noticed it the most when we went abroad. Certainly to Europe and even further afield. We didn’t expect that. We didn’t get that with any other accolade. People might know some of our songs but they all know about the BBC list, which is amazing really. It just shows you how far it spreads and really gets your name out there. People respect the BBC a lot and so they see this list every year and track down the people on it, which is great.
JP: We couldn’t believe the clout it holds when you go abroad. We treat it with a bit of healthy cynicism in England. Sort of pretend that you’re not really please about it but then we went abroad and everyone wanted to talk about it.

The Brit Awards took place recently, have you got any favourite British acts out there at the moment?

JP: In the Brit world, not a great deal. It’s not what we involve ourselves with. But we like Take That and we like Muse a bit. We like a lot of pop music but I think it’s unlikely that we’ll ever be welcomed into that world. That’s the true unit shifting pop stars area, and we’re not like that. We’re not good looking enough. Take That are very handsome.

You are nominated for Best New Band at the NME Awards, are you excited for the ceremony?

JP: No, because we’re not going to win. We’re gonna go along and not win. Just drink the free booze and have a nice time and see some people we know and meet some people we don’t know yet. It’s a night out.

Anyone in particular that you’re looking forward to meeting?

JP: Dave Grohl maybe? I think he might be on the list of people that you can’t meet because it would just ruin it. We have a list of people that we really want to meet and a list of people that we really want to meet but can’t. And I think Dave Grohl might be on it.

You played Reading & Leeds Festival last year, have you got any more festivals lined up for this year?

JP: They’re starting to come through now but we can’t really say anything about it yet.
JH: But we will be playing lots and lots of festivals in the sunshine across Europe and the UK.

And have you got any other plans for 2011?

JH: We’re going to Europe almost immediately and then we’re working on new material. And we’re probably going to do some surprise things later in the year that we’re not allowed to say. But our focus is on new material.
JP: …and more touring and festivals. So we’re going to be doing both of those things at once. Which is always a challenge.

Live Review: Blondie call in on Bournemouth

With bands such as AC/DC and Aerosmith returning to headline Download Festival last weekend and shoulder pads and denim back in the shops it seems that the 80s will always be in fashion. And tonight’s crowd at the O2 Academy couldn’t be more thrilled. Although there are a few bright young things present the majority are Blondie fans from the first time around, ready to get in touch with their youth.

Up first is Little Fish from Oxford. Although the set has its moments, the tracks mostly just blur into one and fail to win much reaction from the crowd. Vocalist Juju’s powerful voice and over enthusiastic stare are a little off putting and when she begins to have what appears to be psychotic breakdown during the aptly named ‘I’m Crazy’, the audience begin to scan the room for the nearest exit. However, the 80s feel of their music and the disco lighting help to set the mood for Debbie Harry and co.

Unsurprisingly, Miss Harry looks remarkable for a woman eligible for a free bus pass but tonight chooses to complete her look with sunglasses and a blonde wig. The band open with an unspectacular track taken from the new album and it isn’t until Harry utters “Hello Bournemouth, this is Blondie calling” and ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ kicks in that the room really comes to life. It’s crystal clear that most have turned up to hear the classics and so the first half of the set, although still full of Blondie magic, doesn’t really grab the crowd’s attention. And with Harry drinking a cup of tea and doing some slightly cringe-worthy dancing on stage, the whole thing gets off to a disappointing start.

However that is all blown out of the water once Harry removes her sunglasses and ‘Atomic’ comes crashing in. They begin to fire out hit after hit and each member of the band gets their moment to shine, with incredible guitar, bass, drum and keyboard solos littered throughout the set. 65 year old Harry still manages to pull off the ‘hip-hop’ element of Rapture, and ‘You’re Too Hot’ proves that she still oozes sex appeal. By the time ‘One Way Or Another’ comes around, she no longer needs to sing, with the crowd taking over vocalist duties for the chorus. A three song encore is the perfect end to the evening. ‘Picture This’ is followed by an impressive cover of Taio Cruz’s ‘Break You’re Heart’ which surprisingly, tonight’s middle aged crowd know all the words to. After hit single ‘Heart Of Glass’ Blondie leave the crowd with some of that late 70s/ early 80s nostalgia and hopefully both hips intact.

Live Review: Europe Invade Bournemouth

Long Hair? Check. Leather Jacket? Check. It’s the final countdown…

It seems to be a case of quality, not quantity, in regards to the crowd who have turned out to see Swedish metal band Europe. Although not very impressive in number, the fans certainly look the part, and walking into Bournemouth’s O2 Academy is like travelling back to the 80’s - and there isn’t a flux capacitor in sight.

Support act Diamond Head provide an impressive opening to the show, proving just why metal Gods Metallica count them as one of their influences. The band, who supported the likes of Iron Maiden and AC/DC back in the day, play to arena standard with their Bon Jovi-esque glam metal. Front man Nick Tart, is definitely a housewives favourite. Kitted out in his tight t-shirt and jeans he manages to get the small percentage of females in the audience moving with an erotically-charged cover of Fever. He has the Steve Tyler strut down to a fine art and, despite his slightly cringe-worthy ‘dad-at-a-wedding’ air guitar, manages to leave the crowd chanting for more. It’s hard to see why this band hasn’t been more successful.

Europe’s set also showcases some of that good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll with tracks from their surprisingly extensive back-catalogue. Considered by many to be a ‘one-hit wonder’, the band has in fact released eight studio albums, with the most recent - Last Look At Eden - hitting the shops in September last year. The band are clearly very experienced and put on a polished performance, enjoying every minute of their return to the spotlight. Lead singer, Joey Tempest’s enthusiasm appears to rub off on the audience, sparking mass swaying and a sing-a-long to classic power ballad ‘Carrie’. But of course, it is that iconic synth intro that the majority of the crowd have been waiting for. The huge international success of The Final Countdown has been both a blessing and a curse for the band, but they appear to appreciate its reception in the encore all the same.

Unfortunately Europe’s retro 80’s sound only seems to appeal to a niche market and their failure to attract younger fans means that the band is unlikely to relive their past success. But if some classic, and slightly cheesy, metal is what you’re after, then this is the show for you.