An Interview with Neils Children (2/4) By Caroline Murphy

(1/4), (2/4), (3/4), (4/4).

John: ... so me and James met that way, and I met Brandon at college, in Harlow. We studied music together, and started thinking we wanted to start a band, and started playing music, and we needed a bass player, and we knew James, and he was good. So we just thought we'll have him !

Cari: What would you be doing now if you weren't playing music? James: Don't know, probably something really dull, like a cab driver or something. John: Yeah I'd be a rat catcher! Brandon: I don't think I'd have stayed in England to be honest

Cari: You talk about tapping into bad emotions in your music. Why is this? Do you think this allows you to create better/more worthwhile music? John: I never think of things like that, I never think of some music being more worthwhile than other music. I don't think people should ever be self righteous about what they sing about, simply because every type of music and every sort of band that has an audience deserves to be heard. I don't think that's the nature of what the song's about, I don't think that necessarily means we're better or right about these things.

You know when disco came out, they were talking about dancing and having a good time, and that's just as valid cos people know what it's about and it's relevant to sing about that. I think it's the way we are as people really... the lyrical nature suits the style of music. Yeah, I think that's what it's mainly down to. Cari: You say you don't want to be sound-a-likes, or to be put into a box in terms of musical style, but how would you describe your music?

John: I think it's always really difficult when you get asked that question because everyone's going to turn round and say that they sound like bands they really like, so we sound like whatever; I like this band, therefore I think we sound like them. We couldn't really say that. There's lots of different influences in our music.

I'd say there was a lot of influence from underground, psychedelic music from the sixties - British psych. - a big influence on us because we met in that scene, and we also just love the sort of experimentation of the music, and it's great to think that that was once classified as pop music. There's also a punk element to it, but it's more a post-punk element because it's a bit more progressive, not in terms of progressive rock, but in terms of experimentation and eclecticism, you know like all this, not just standard punk. I like things to be a bit quirky.

If you're going to throw band names around, I suppose, you know, Creation, Gang of Four to an extent, Public Image, maybe even Buzzcocks. I suppose there's a bit of Who in it as well. It's really sort of all those pop-art bands, you know, who've always done that sort of experimentation, bordering on slightly noisy. I mean we've definitely got that noisy edge to us, but not as noisy as we used to be, just simply because obviously you want to try and rein your sound in a bit and concentrate on it a bit more, and I think that's what we've done with the new songs and stuff.

James: Also, with all those bands you've mentioned, it's about their music and it's about their attitude. John: That's it exactly. I think that's what we've got in common with a lot of those bands- it's that attitude -it's that all or nothing thing. You just live and breathe the band -you think about it all the time. You think about every aspect of it, which is why we look like we do and have the attitude that we do. Not that we sit down and think we need an image, what shall we do?.

Continued ...Next Page

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