On a cold Sunday night in December, I found myself out back of a Southsea pub called The Alma Arms, watching bands soundcheck in The Raglan Rooms for one of the small-scale local gigs that keep the British music scene busily producing new bands.
I’m waiting to interview Not Advised, a Southampton pop-punk five-piece who represent the end result of local scene-work just like this. Young, full of energy and passion for their music, they’ve bootstrapped themselves up from support slots and local nights to touring with the big names of the genre – but they’ll still play anywhere that’ll have them, because playing live is what they love to do.
The lads lead me down a side-road and settle me down in their battered old van, its floor strewn with empty cider cans and bottle tops, and I try my best to get some sensible answers out five guys who seem to take absolutely nothing seriously … except their music.
TDP: How’s things been going then, guys?
Andy White [drums]: Great! Excellent, actually … we’ve had a bit of time off, so we’re all fresh and back to normal.
Jack Hairbrother [guitar]: It’s been a good year. We’ve played a lot of good shows.
TDP: How long have you had off?
Jim Thomas [vox]: Last show was a couple of days ago, but then we’ve got one more show this year. We’re planning to spend January just writing.
TDP: So how many shows have you played this year?
Jack: Probably about a hundred? Something like that … a fair few, anyway. We just finished our tour last month with Kill The Arcade and Jaimison, that was really cool … but I’d say, eighty-five?
Andy: I reckon a hundred and twenty.
[A short-lived debate begins; consensus suggests a hundred shows is the best guess.]
TDP: You guys are from Southampton, right? How are things down there for new bands just starting out?
Greg Day [bass]: Pretty good, actually. Three of us had been in bands before Not Advised, and then we all met through playing in various bands in Southampton … the Joiners is a really good venue for starting out, the Nexus used to be kinda cool-ish, they used have some good bands on there.
Andy: It was really good, because we started out playing at the Joiners when we were about fourteen years old. And since then, it’s been really good to see the progression from when you’re playing to a half-filled room to now, when you’re playing to places that are packed out.
Ash Oliver [guitar]: It seemed like back in the day, when we were just starting out, that there were a lot more bands about to play with, to build up a crowd with. Now it seems there’s not so many bands around, the scene isn’t so active any more. It’s harder for bands who are just starting out now, for them to find new crowds to play to.
Jack: We’re lucky in that we’ve already got a solid fanbase in Southampton, so we don’t have to bring in other bands to be sure of a decent crowd, we can pretty much hold our own.
TDP: What’s the worst thing about touring?
Jim: Getting ill! The tour we just finished, I got a cold in the last four days, and it was such a struggle … [laughs] but I powered through!
Andy: Because when one of us gets ill, we all get ill, because we’re with each other 24-7.
Ash: Still now, a week and a bit after we finished the tour, I’ve got to go to the doctors, I’m still ill …
Jack: The other bad thing about touring is coming home! Because you get into such a good routine, we really love touring … and you’ll get home, and it’s really nice to have a shower or whatever, but a day later you’re just like “well, what are we gonna do now then?” You just get a bit bored …
Andy: And when five o’clock rolls round and you’re sat at home, you’re thinking you should be doing something, like soundchecking … and then eight, nine o’clock rolls past and you think you should be doing something again, but there’s nothing to do.
TDP: So do you not work normal jobs in between tours?
Greg: Yeah, well I do – I literally got another job today, and I start tomorrow.
TDP: What are you doing – something really rock’n'roll?
Greg: Nah – just cooking other people’s food in a restaurant.
Jack: It’s cool that generally we can just get by by doing the band, now – it’s a business, it’s paying our way for most things, so we’re pretty self sufficient.
TDP: OK, flipside – what’s the best thing about touring?
Greg: Playing shows every day … you just have a laugh, really, you get to meet lots of cool people every day, you get to hang out, see new cities.
TDP: Do you have a favourite venue to play at?
Jim: Plymouth Hub! That’s a really nice venue … there’s cameras dotted all over the venue facing the stage, and they project it onto the back of the stage, so when you turn round you can just see yourself …
Ash: That’s vain, man, that’s vain … [laughter]
Jack: Portsmouth Pyramids is always great for us; we supported Goldfinger there, and it was our first time having a really big support slot …
Andy: Well, if you’re talking like that, Portsmouth Guildhall was pretty good as well!
TDP: Yeah, you guys played the Taste Of Chaos show there recently. You won a competition to do that, I believe?
Andy: Yeah, we won the Ernie Ball Battle Of The Bands. You had to upload tracks to the website, and it was all done on public votes, and then the top twenty from each region went through to judges … and for some reason we won it! So, yeah, it was a fully amazing experience.
TDP: There were some real big names on the bill for that show – who was the most interesting to hang out with?
Ash: We didn’t get to hang out with them that much, they were hanging in their tour buses.
Andy: Actually, The Blackout were really cool, they were wandering around, we know them from previous shows, so they hung out with us for a bit … but we did see The Used and Gallows kind of hanging around, and it was cool just to share the same stage, then go back into the crowd and watch the rest of the show knowing that we’d opened it.
Jack: I met Frank from Gallows – he seems like a bit of a nutcase on stage, but he was like the friendliest person I’ve ever met, he was really cool, willing to talk …
Andy: Oh, well done Jack – you’ve just totally shat on his image now, haven’t you! [laughter]
Jack: … er, yeah, but then he knifed me, he was really horrible, he beat me up …
TDP: So how would you guys define your musical style? What would be your one-sentence ‘elevator pitch’ to some big-shot A&R guy?
Greg: I’d say we’re a fresh new energetic British pop-punk band – emphasis on British pop-punk, not a British band trying to be American …
Andy: That’s the best answer Greg’s given to anything in his entire life!
Ash: Hooks you could land a shark with!
[ooohs and aaahs of appreciation]
Jim: That was on a flyer once, wasn’t it? [laughter]
Andy: Maybe we could go bigger than a shark? Blue whale? Giant squid?
TDP: OK, so it’s British pop-punk – that’s a pretty saturated market right there. What is it that puts you guys out in front?
Ash: That fact that we are doing it British, we’re not imitating the American style of pop-punk.
Andy: I’d say as well that there’s a lot of bands in this genre because it’s really popular at the moment, but we have been doing it for a long time now, and I think we’ve developed our sound over the years.
And there is a twist to it, we do take a lot of influences from a lot of different music – like eighties music, dance music, drum and bass – and we try to incorporate a bit of everything into what we do. And to go back to the British thing, because we think for a band like us to get really big in such an American genre, it’d be a really good thing for British music in general.
TDP: You’ve got some releases in the pipeline, yes?
Andy: Yeah, the single ["You're The Designers, We're The Deciders”] is due out in February … but we’ve got some downtime now, so I think we’re going to concentrate on writing, make the best songs we can, so that when it’s time to go into the studio we can just blitz out the best album we possibly can.
Jim: We’re planning to release a couple of singles before we go to record an album, just to see how things go.
Jack: We’ve been around for a while now, and we’ve got a fair old back catalogue of songs – it’d be easy enough to go into a studio and nail ten of them down, put that out as an album … but I think we’re set on doing, y’know, it’s going to be the first thing anyone hears from us, and we want to make sure it’s right. So we’re going to be really strict and harsh, just write loads and see what’s best … try to write it as an album, rather than stick a bunch of stuff together.
Jim: Yeah, make it themed. Not a concept album, though … [laughter] nah, but it needs to have a flow about it.
TDP: So you don’t write new material while you’re on the road?
Andy: Well, if we could fit an electric drumkit in here, maybe …
Ash: Every so often I’ll just sit in here and play my acoustic, which is stashed up there [gestures at dark and murky upper regions of van] … that’s about as far as writing on the road goes, really.
Jim: We do bring acoustics on the road, but it usually just ends up as Andy playing Hanson!
TDP: So who were the influences that got you into the idea of being musicians yourselves?
Ash: The thing that made me start playing guitar actually was Hanson, to be honest. I listened to them playing “Mmm-Bop” and I was just like “I wanna learn how to play guitar!” Well, really it was more like “I wanna learn to play drums but my mum won’t let me have drums, so I’ll have a guitar instead …”
Jim: My favourite band of all time are Goldfinger, and we got to support them so that was really cool for me. But then there’s like the classic pop-punk bands like New Found Glory, Blink-182 … so many bands, really.
Andy: The band that got me into this type of music and the way that we write stuff was Blink-182 …
[At this point there is no small amount of confusion, as the central locking system in the very battered old high-top van we're sat in decides to go haywire and make strange mechanical noises for a few minutes, much to the bafflement and amusement of everyone present. Eventually, the mechanical demons calm down, and the interview carries on.]
Greg: As most bass players are, I’m a failed guitarist. I got a guitar for Christmas … everyone else was playing guitar, so I just copied them! But probably Sum 41 were the big influence for me.
Jack: I’ll have to go with Oasis … I used to love Oasis when I was younger.
Andy: You still do!
TDP: So what do listen to when you’re on the road in this thing … you know, to cover up the noise from the locks?
Andy: Well, on the way here we had a bit of Michael Jackson … sometimes a bit of Phil Collins. That’s the eighties vibe we like to rock …
Jim: The New Found Glory covers album, we listen to that a lot. “King Of Wishful Thinking” by Go West!
Andy: We had the new All Time Low album on repeat for quite a while at one point. It really varies, depending on the mood we’re in. If we’re all well up for it, we’ll just crack on the happiest thing ever.
Greg: But if it gets to the point where we’re on the way home and I’m up in the front and everyone’s asleep, I get to put on dance music, because no one else likes it …
Jim: We have arguments about music … but pretty much whoever’s got hold of the iPod at the time can put on whatever they want, within reason.
TDP: OK, to finish with: let’s say whichever god or deity you believe in informs you that you have to die a rock’n'roll death, but you can choose the way you get to go. What’s it gonna be?
Jack: I’ll be throwing a TV out of a hotel window, but then the plug will get caught on me as it goes through, and I’ll get pulled out after it …
Andy: I’ll be having sex with a million strippers [laughter]… nah, make it two million strippers, drinking Jack Daniels through my eyeball. And then someone comes to call me out on stage, I go out on stage drunk, fall through the drumkit, get electrocuted, and then chopped up by a falling lighting rig.
Jim: I’d buy a hotel, go out to the pool and drain it, fill the pool with alcohol of every type, and get utterly f*cked … and then I’ll try to swim, and I’ll just drown.
Ash: I’d probably go with the Dimebag Darrell death, to be honest – shot on stage, doing what you love most.
Greg: I’d just get really drunk, do loads of drugs, do a Kurt Cobain and shoot myself … write a big poem, all of that stuff.
Ash: Yeah, having a conspiracy about your death would be pretty cool.
Andy: JFK style …
Jim: Yeah, but my conspiracy would be awesome. Why DID he drown in that swimming pool full of alcohol? [laughter]
[Check out TDP's review of Not Advised's live set at The Alma Arms.]
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Posted in Interviews | 1 Comment »
June 6th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I love Andy