Issue 43 - University of Surrey's Student Union

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28 MUSIC The Stag | 6 th March 2012 music@thestagsurrey.co.uk Music Kaiser Chiefs take G Live by storm! By Sophia Field, Music Editor Kaiser Chiefs’ performance at Guildford’s very own G Live well and truly proved that even after four albums, their fans still love them and they have certainly still got it. The boys set a high standard being the first big music concert G Live has held by enthralling the crowd with songs from their newest album ‘The Future is Medieval’ as well as playing the old classics which everyone was waiting eagerly to hear. Front man Ricky was full of energy and the band really proved that they are not going anywhere yet. Before the gig I was lucky enough to talk to Keyboard player Nick Baines, or as he is more commonly known, Peanut. The Stag: How has the tour been going so far? Peanut: Yeah, all great. We’ve done three days, North Wales, Reading and Southend, so quite varied places. TS: Do you miss the home comforts when you’re on tour? P: Erm, you get quite a lot of home comforts on tour really. Yeah, I mean you miss home, but I wouldn’t rather be at home. TS: Tell us about the way you released your album last year. P: Well, we didn’t have any press or publicity about this album, we didn’t want to have to do the world tour of what is coming up on the record… we were bored of sitting in a room talking about and describing everything, we wanted people to hear it without all that. So basically, we made a unique system online where we let our fans make their own records out of twenty songs. We knew it would be twenty so that gave us a big writing target, self-imposed pressure to write twenty brilliant songs. There was no room for end of album tracks/b sides, we wanted them all to stand up on their own. TS: Would you say it was successful? P: Yeah, we spent nearly a year planning it, working it out and trying to keep it a secret. It was hard but nobody knew what was coming. We had a couple of deals with newspapers and that so they would do an article on it that morning. Went really well I think and was really good for us as a band. TS: You have established your own record label. What prompted that? P: It’s nothing quite so glamorous. It operates out of a studio in a basement. The management office where Nick has his studio is also Chewing Gum Records. Basically we wanted to be able to see a band we like, who aren’t signed and put out their record. Chewing Gum Records’ third release is actually going to be sold on our tour, we got all the songs involved in The Future is Medieval and a couple of others and we’ve made a double vinyl. Four sides of vinyl and 23 songs, looks really good. Vinyl has come back in a retro and collectable way. So we’ve made only 500 of these records and labelled each one. It’s quite cool to do little things like that when you’re established. TS: What is the first thing you guys do when you get back from a gig? P: If I’m going home after tour, I usually steal some milk and bread from the tour bus, because I know I’ll have nothing to eat. When we come offstage, we just end up sitting in a room chatting. Probably eating a ham and cheese sandwich. Cup of tea. Rock and Roll. Haha! TS: Do you guys still get nervous? P: I suppose a nervous anxiety and excitement… more at festivals, because it’s light and you can see everyone. You don’t feel any less capable; it’s just a desire to not fail the audience. The gigs after all they are not just for the bands, they are for the punters. We don’t want the fans to ever be disappointed. TS: As a band that have worked your way up, what do you think of shows like The X Factor? P: Nothing to do with us. It’s showbiz and it’s steered in a certain direction. I don’t mind it being on TV, I just hope the kids picking up drums and guitar and piano don’t genuinely think that is the way to be successful. It’s selling false dreams. They go up there on a public platform and get laughed up and that’s what I don’t like. TS: What about the people who win? Is there room for them in the industry? P: Problem is, the public like to see people who have earned their success. It’s all misguided. Send them round the country on a tour in a transit van and see how many of them last… TS: What new artists are you a fan of? P: A band called White Denim, they sound quite old though, like keyboards and guitars and synth solos and stuff. . . I mostly end up buying old stuff to be honest. TS: Who inspires you? P: I think if you listen to our songs, you know they are pop songs, I mean we play them in a rock and roll way but they are pop. They are catchy brilliant songs. It’s hard not to be inspired by a band like Queen. If you look at their songs they are whacky and diverse but they are all these diverse amazing songs that are played all around the world. Their music managed to progress whilst still keeping that appeal. The Beach Boys too, the detail in the music, the songs are beautiful obviously but the way they’re put together, you couldn’t get a better pairing between the songs and the style. TS: What do you think has been the biggest moment of your career so far? P: Things like… playing at Elland Road. It was a big thing because nobody had really played gigs there; we had to battle quite hard to make it work. Having a number one album and single was pretty amazing too, it will be historical thing, people remember that stuff. Kaiser Trivia! Out of the band, who is the… …Best cook? Not Nick. Ricky probably thinks he is… it would have to be between Ricky and Whitey I’d say. …Most athletic? Well Ricky does a lot of running, he’s got fit lately, but I reckon Nick would still give him a run for his money, fancies himself as a bit of a football. ...The laziest? I reckon that is between me and whitey. In terms of sleeping in, that is me, hands down. I can lose a whole day nearly. “There is two kinds of music, the good and bad. I play the good kind.” – Louis Armstrong
Music Editor: Sophia Field | Copy Editor: Megan Barnacle The Stag | 6 th March 2012 MUSIC 29 The BRITs 2012 The Best of British Music? By Elliot Tyers, Music Team Back in 2011 the BRITs was revamped, moving to a new location at the O2 Arena and so on – so I tuned in, and I was pleasantly surprised to see acknowledgements of the growing Folk scene with awards to Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons, as well as nominations for more risky acts than the usual pop dross you’d expect in the form of The XX, Biffy Clyro, Gorillaz and Plan B. There were some low points, for example Take That winning Best British Group, and Justin Bieber winning Best International Newcomer, although I noticed two of the other nominees were the Glee Cast and Bruno Mars, so I assumed that somehow the organisers had horribly misspelled the Crimes Against Music category. And, it had that performance by Adele of Someone Like You that launched her into deserved levels of megastardom, so I looked forwards to this year... Cut to twelve months later – and the only moment of note is Adele raising one finger against the ‘suits’ who forced her acceptance speech to cut short to make time for Blur. I think the BRITs producers moving on one of the biggest talents this country has ever produced for a group of aging men who last produced an album nearly ten years ago is a fitting image that sums up everything wrong with the BRITs. Whereas 2011 showed promise that they could actually become a respected measure of critical success, instead they wasted the time of everyone watching. Blur’s Outstanding Contribution to Music was an award, that although I believe they’ve done enough to earn, probably had more to do with the fact that they could use the promotion, with a headliner of Hyde Park later this year and an announcement of a new album in the future, than anything musical. And that’s just the problem with the BRITs, rather than take any interesting decisions or risks; everything was just as bland and unoriginal as a Coldplay album. Are we really going to look back on the awards and think – ‘yeah Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran were real cultural milestones for us as a people’? The former is a puffed up lounge singer whose idea of romance is some strange situation where the object of his affection is constantly having grenades, bullets, trains and blades flung at her, and the latter… Well, Ed Sheeran had so much potential, his work-ethic was exceptional, coupled with a raw, intelligent talent as evidenced in his early SBTV appearances – and when he announced in an interview early last year he wanted a ‘lo-fi feel’ I was looking forwards to his debut album. Instead of lo-fi subtlety it was over-produced and gimmicky (Rupert Grint in the video to Lego House? Really?). To see how far Sheeran’s star fell contrast the SBTV and Album versions of You Need Me, I Don’t Need You. Tragic. The entire dull affair is made all the worse by the occasional nods to the wider musical landscape – nominations for James Blake and The Vaccines are steps in the right direction, but shouldn’t more attention to be paid to these kinds of acts, James Blake is representative of the UK-led Dubstep scene which is spreading like wildfire – and The Vaccines are one of the most exhilarating acts in recent memory – they should be shoo in winners, not just pandering to alternative genres. Indeed it just makes the absence of other ‘out-there’ acts all the more conspicuous such as Radiohead, or the likes of Katy B and Wretch 32, I’m not a massive fan but it’s hard to argue that urban music hasn’t dominated the last twelve months, and moreso, it’s uniquely British. Maybe that’s where the problem is, the BRITs doesn’t feel like a celebration of British music, it feels like it’s trying to be the Grammys, and failing. At the Grammys the Foo Fighters won 5 awards and each time bounded onto the stage, with Dave Grohl delivering a speech about playing with passion – at the BRITs Grohl couldn’t even be bothered to be there in person, instead leaving the video acceptance to a man we were told was one of the other members… probably… At the Grammys the Whitney Houston tribute was a heartbreaking rendition of I Will Always Love You by Jennifer Hudson; at the BRITs, James Corden introduced a 30-second video montage more befitting someone being voted off the X Factor than a tribute to a dead icon. I hate to sound so bitter and cynical, but the BRITs shouldn’t be a poor imitation of the Grammys, it should be as individualistic as the music it supposedly represents. When you think that the BRITs could be the kind of platform to show the beautiful variety of music we have in this country you can’t help but get angry at what we have instead. I can only hope 2013 will be a better year. Brit Babe Does Women Proud By Rebecca Worley, Music Team On the 21 st of February, the Brit awards stormed onto our screens, offering up the best of British music. Winners on the night included: Ed Sheeran for best British Male Solo Artist and Breakthrough Act, Coldplay for Best British Band and One Direction – What Makes You Beautiful for Best British Single. Doing it for the women, Adele won Best British Female Solo Artist and MasterCard British Album of the Year for 21. However, the media attention focused mainly on her acceptance speech at the end of the show. With time quickly running out, Adele was rudely cut off as she launched into her acceptance speech. Causing a flurry of media excitement, she proceeded to flip the middle finger. In a later statement, Adele claimed that she was sorry for offending anyone: ‘that finger was to the suits at the Brit awards, not to my fans.’ Aside from this controversy, Adele clearly dominated 2011 with her beautiful, soulful voice and emotive lyrics. She is one of the few female singers of our generation who doesn’t rely on sexualising herself to achieve attention and success: Adele has made it on pure talent. For this reason I still believe Adele is an incredible role model to young women out there, despite the Brit fiasco. She writes songs with real meaning and her voice can fill the Albert Hall with its power and passion. Adele reinvents the classy, female singer and doesn’t depend on raunchy lyrics and gyrating dancers in skimpy outfits, which is frankly starting to get a bit old.
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Page 31 and 32: Music Editor: Sophia Field | Copy E
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Issue 43 - University of Surrey's Student Union

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