Steve x from Songs From The Shows

1. How did you come up with the name Songs From The Shows?

Normally you'd get a stupid answer to that question, but I'm on a train that's running to time, and the sun is out, I'm not hungover, and I'm in a less-sarcastic mood than normal, so I'll try and give you sensible answers to all these questions.

To be honest, I didn't come up with the name. None of us did. About 3 years ago, I was talking to my friend Zoë, who's a hotshot TV director, about band names. She suggested that "Songs From The Shows" would be the best band name ever because of the confusion it would cause. Next time some newspaper for Tory idiots like the Mail on Sunday comes with a free CD of dreck from West End musicals, it'll hopefully be called "Songs From The Shows" too. I promised her that the next band I was involved with would use the name. So, here we are.

We have t-shirts that read "I only listen to Songs From The Shows", and I've already had a fantastically-beautiful girl start a conversation with me based on my favourite show tune. It really pained me to tell her that I can't stand musicals, and that the T-shirt is a pisstake. She wouldn't talk to me anymore after that. Bloody band name.

2. What’s the best way to describe what the band's about?

Songs From The Shows is about getting rid of the traditional guitarist, with his personality disorders, egomania and preening self-obsession, from rock. We don't have one person writing the songs and treating the rest of the band as unpaid session musicians; We all contribute equally. We don't have anyone demanding a solo. Ever. We don't have anyone doing the traditional guitarist thing of going "Look at me! Look at me!" and then doing something shit. Instead we have two bass players, alternately holding the tunes together and ripping them apart, Ania teasing and caressing the drums, and Ben playing baritone guitar. Ben's a very special guitarist – he wrings some incredible sounds out of his gear, and he doesn't have any of the neediness of a traditional guitarist. He's like a good bass player or drummer, in that he does what's right for the song, rather than what's right for his own ego.

Any guitarists, who are reading this and getting angry, go and take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror. Any metal guitarists reading this and getting angry, would you like me to explain it again in shorter words?

3. What are your main influences?

We're all quite different, musically. There's stuff in there from bands like Slint, Joy Division, Rollins Band, QOTSA, Mogwai, Sonic Youth and The Cure. I also have to tip my cap to the great 2-bass bands, and especially Cop Shoot Cop who are obviously a big influence. We're trying to live up to the legacy of people like Disco Inferno in terms of the name and some of the conceptual thinking behind the music, too.

Personally the thing that affects how I go about making music, why I make it, and what it sounds like, is probably rage. There's nothing like being really pissed-off to make you pick up the bass and start banging out a new tune. And no gig is better than an angry gig. I think rage is something we've lost in rock. I'm tired of bands made up of good-looking smug guys making competent, mediocre, smug music. With shit like Coldplay and similar landfill Indie, as well as all the electro toss made by posh London kids, we've lost passion, and intensity. We've lost rage.

And I don't mean angry like metal bands are angry. They're just angry because they're stupid and don't quite understand how the world works, so are vaguely aware that they're not getting the most out of it. And that anger comes through as an over-compressed mush of a sound with no focus and no dynamic range. I mean angry like Big Black were angry. The kind of angry that makes you produce music that sounds like a Stanley knife. The kind of angry that means you have to make music or write or SOMETHING to take part in a meaningful creative act.

4. How long have you been together for?

Its 4 months since Jim walked into our rehearsal space and thought 'what the fuck have I got myself into here?’ I've known Ania for a couple of years, and Ben and I played together last year in a short-lived instrumental band called Inemuri.

5. Will you be recording an album or EP anytime soon?

Hopefully. I'm just trying to find the right engineer and studio. I'd like to find someone who hasn't grown up listening to MTV, and can understand what records are meant to sound like, rather than compressing everything to fuck, overdubbing loads of times, mixing the bass out, and all those other things that make every single guitar track on TV sound exactly the fuc king same. We'll probably do an EP first.

6. Any last words?

Yeah, for those who haven't got time to read all the above, I shall summarise:

Metal licks balls.

This is an amazing band that I look forward to seeing sometime in the near future. Check them out on myspace www.myspace.com/songsfromtheshows