Gig Reviews
The Smile
K.B. Hallen, Copenhagen, DEN - 13/3
Album Reviews
Stars Burn Stripes
Previous Nextauthor PP date 31/08/10
Sunny Monday afternoon, and I'm sitting at the casa of Stars Burn Stripes, or more precisely that of Filip's, where Brian is also staying for the time being. It's right across from where the band are about to have a rehearsal for their upcoming European tour. Instruments are lying all around the place, but otherwise it looks reasonably tidy. It's interview time, the first one ever for the band according to their own words at least, and everyone from the band is present and waiting as I arrive fashionably twenty minutes late to our agreed time slot. I've got about half an hour's worth of questions to the band, ranging from current news to questions about their latest EP, the future, and the European tour. Better late than never: here are the answers from the boys.
Filip: European tour in September for ten days.
RF.net: So how did that come about? Did you guys book it yourself?
Filip: No, we know better.
Lasse: Troels, from Mighty Midgets, is booking the tour. He has the 5 Feet Under label, and they're also trying to establish some sort of booking agency.
RF.net: Is it just you guys headlining or are you supporting some bands, or how does it work?
Leo: I think it's different from night to night, actually. One of the bands playing with us on the tour is a German band, who are playing more than one song.
Lasse: But basically, it's different bands.
Brian: There are a few shows with the same bands, but mostly it's with different bands. We're planning on going to Russia as well in November, but I don't think that any of the dates are confirmed yet.
RF.net: Okay, that's pretty cool. For this tour, there are no other Danish bands going? It's just you guys and a bunch of Germans?
Lasse: We were gonna hook up with The 20Belows but I think that show was canceled. It was supposed to be in Berlin.
RF.net: Do you guys have a following down in Germany already? What kind of expectations do you have?
Filip: We have one big fan. He played saxophone on the last time we were in Hamburg...or was it Magdeburg? He played it on "Sever The Tie".
RF.net: What kind of venues? Are they big or small? Empty rooms or a lot of people? What do you guys think?
Lasse: Well this is our first time really doing a lot of abroad shows. We've only been out of Denmark a couple of times. Back in those times, I guess local people visit the venues and know the local bands, but I saw some Facebook events with at least 30 people. [laughs] So that's gonna be like a crazy night.
RF.net: Why's that?
Filip: We're just brothers.
Brian: Probably some time down the road here after maybe half a minute or so.
Leo: I think it comes naturally for us just to goof around and do all kinds of stupid stuff because that's what we're like.
Lasse: That's what we do when we're not on stage.
Filip: We actually have fun.
Brian: It's the same on and off stage pretty much.
RF.net: Yeah, I've seen that from some of the videos that you guys have posted from the other shows
Filip: We're gonna film a lot of video at the tour.
Brian: Actually, I think maybe Green Day has been my biggest influence because I listened to them when I was like 10, and they got me into the punk rock music. Later on it's more like NOFX, Bad Religion and Pennywise.
Leo: The punk rock bands that I listen to most are Millencolin, Pennywise and Lagwagon. That's the kind of punk that got me into punk rock. I listen to other kinds of music as well, but those might be the three main bands.
Lasse: The funny thing is that we listen to a lot of different music, actually. We have certain bands in common that we've just listened to every since we were really small.
RF.net: Lady Gaga?
Lasse: [laughs] not really, but I listen to a lot of different bands. Spice Girls being one of them. I've kind of grown bored of them...but I listen to Saves The Day a lot. And a lot of other bands, I don't really wanna mention them all.
RF.net: What about here in Denmark? What sort of bands do you follow right now? What's your favorite Danish band?
Filip: I listen to Kill The Rooster. [laughs] (ed note: Leo is in Kill The Rooster as well)
Lasse: Actually I like Kill The Rooster a lot.
Brian: I like Mighty Midgets, especially their new CD.
Leo: It's always easy to pick out friends because the scene is so small here so everybody is friends. We go see each other's shows or just get drunk at parties at people's houses, because we all know each other on and off stage.
Lasse: But we don't really know some bands, like say Assassinators, I don't know them personally, but I really like them, they're very good. I don't think they've been playing that much lately, but they used to play a lot in Ungdomshuset.
RF.net: What about internationally? Do you have a current favorite band?
Lasse: I listen to some music right now that I've never been listening to before, stuff like Bill Callahan. I think Brian would say "it's pretty gay", but he thinks anything that's slower than Pennywise is pretty gay. It's really mellow music.
Brian: I've pretty much only been listening to Bad Religion for the last month for the concert.
Filip: I re-discovered Satanic Surfers.
RF.net: So what do you think of the new Satanic Surfers band?
Filip: Atlas Losing Grip? I missed them at the Bad Religion show, unfortunately, but I listened to them on Myspace and it sounds pretty good.
Leo: All the boxes [points to back of room where a large pile of cardboard boxes are stocked], that stuff over there, all the boxes, that's just CDs.
Filip: And that's just half of them. The rest of it is not here.
RF.net: How many did you guys print?
Filip: A thousand! [laughs]
Lasse: That was the deal that the printing label gave us.
Brian: So far we've sold four.
RF.net: Seriously?
Lasse: No, but I think that every time we record something, it's a little bit better than the last time. So I'm still happy with it, but I'm looking very much forward to recording some of the new stuff we've been writing, so.
RF.net: So you guys have a couple of new songs ready, or?
Lasse: I think four, maybe, and then we have four or five more in the making.
RF.net: So it'll be a full length instead of an EP.
Lasse: We wanna do that.
Leo: It's the eight songs... eight songs or ten songs, not that big of a difference.
Brian: All about stuff that you do now that you will pay for in the future if you don't think about it. Environmental stuff.
RF.net: Okay, so it has a semi social/political undertone?
Lasse: It's just as much as much personal. If you're a schmuck to others, then later on, it'll bite you in the ass.
Leo: Actually, we just wrote a song about why we don't write any political songs. We don't really enjoy being preachers. I think it's very cool to write songs that people can reflect on and get something out of when you're not directly preaching people into thinking in a certain kind of way.
Lasse: I think it's pretty arrogant to think that as a musician you can influence people, that your opinion is somehow worth more. I think you can learn much more just by reading a book than listening to a rock album.
Leo: Most rock musicians are actually pretty stupid [laughs]
Lasse: That actually happened yesterday.
Leo: Last time we rehearsed, he fainted.
Filip: So we decided to put in a little chorus for me there.
Lasse: No, I think people have always been very positive about us sharing the vocals, because I have a certain kind of a vocal and Filip has the complete opposite. Usually, when we write songs, we write them together and then we sing what we've been writing ourselves.
Filip: We both enjoy singing so it's natural.
RF.net: So what's with you guys not allowing Brian to sing ever?
Lasse: Well, we have a video from Germany...we can show you. [hysterical laughter]
Brian: No need to do that.
Lasse: Lets just say Brian is very talented. Just not with the vocals.
Leo: Or speaking German.
Brian: I guess my guitar riffs are so complicated that no person in the world can sing at the same time.
Lasse: Actually, Leo is the first drummer who has the same taste in music and has the same ideas that we do. The previous drummers we've had, had some influences in other genres that weren't really what we wanted to do with the music. And then we've gotten better at writing songs.
Brian: And recording has also improved, even though it's the same place we've recorded at. The sound is much different, and we've become more experienced with recording, I think that's better as well.
RF.net: Did you guys record it yourself?
Brian: No, we were at a studio with a guy called Niels. That's the studio that helped us producing it.
RF.net: Is he good to work with?
Lasse: Yeah, he's very laid back, and he just enjoys rock'n'roll.
Filip: He can say: "Guys, that sounds like crap". And then we can change it a bit. He has some good ideas to some stuff.
Lasse: Actually, he did Kill The Rooster's last EP as well, and also Revolt Of Darwin's. I hope his studio re-opens. It's closed right now. He had to move his studio elsewhere.
Lasse: He certainly has, since then.
Leo: And also it's always good to be on a label. Somehow, people take you way more seriously int he business.
Lasse: Unless they read this interview. He's gonna sell some CDs for us as well. He has an internet store on the web page.
RF.net: So does it mean that you guys are still looking for another label, or are you gonna put out the next thing also on 5 Feet Under?
Lasse: Well, it's kind of weird to think about labels now with music being available for free everywhere. What could a label really do for us, I don't know. We would always like to get more contacts. The goal is really just to get out and play. And if you have a label that has really good connections, and they can get you more concerts, then that would be pretty cool. But otherwise I think we're getting by.
RF.net: So you guys haven't had any approaches by any record labels?
Lasse: No, but we've been pretty lazy as well. We haven't really sent any stuff out.
Filip: We talk about it a lot.
RF.net: So lets say your phone rang the next day and it'd be, say, Brett from Epitaph asking if you'd want to put out your next CD with them...
Lasse: I think I would quit my job. No, I don't know. That's pretty surreal to think about.
Filip: Yeah, there's a lot of plans so it's hard to put a time limit on it.
RF.net: Ok, so not anytime soon anyway?
Brian: I need to write all the songs for it.
Filip: Yeah, and earn some money to pay for the studio
Lasse: Yeah, in different ways because we've been different people. As a band and the name, we've been around since 2004.
Brian: I think the plan is to go on and I'm pretty sure that we all enjoy it, and we'll keep on enjoying it. So hopefully we'll just go up from here, or at least steady.
Lasse: We've made a deal once, I don't know if we were drunk or something, but we made a deal to be ridiculously old people still playing punk rock. I don't know, at some point I realize that we're very lucky just to be a band and to be able to rehearse and to be able to play as many shows as we actually do, because I can't really believe that we're playing this many shows. And also, we're going on our first tours, and we have two of them, which we have been waiting for ever since we started.
Filip: We still like the same kind of music and don't have big artistic differences, that's really cool that we can work together to make a song and still be happy about it, everybody in the band.
Leo: And also get along. We've all played in different bands with each other..
Lasse: There's just not such a big audience for it.
Brian: But it also seems that there are more people coming to the concerts now, I think, than there were two or three years ago.
Leo: Two years ago you would only play for bands. It was only bands coming to see the bands playing.
Lasse: And now we're gonna go to Europe and play for some entirely new bands! Yay! No but I've been following the scene in Ungdomshuset a lot, and that seems to be pretty good right now as well, but it's kinda hard when they have this new shitty place instead of the old one. I mean it's not shitty, just a shitty location. The problem has always been that we're too divided. People are too single minded to just come to every concert, they only go to a specific sub genre of their liking. It's really ridiculous when you think about how small of a country we live in, and people still wanna divide everything up in little groups.
RF.net: Are there any unknown bands in Denmark that you'd recommend for people to check out?
Lasse: Well, that depends on what you mean by unknown because every Danish band we know is pretty much unknown. But we know each other and people in the scene know all the bands, because as I said, it's a very small country. But there's a lot of exciting new bands coming, I mean Stream City is a really original band compared to a lot of other Danish bands.
Brian: Great for the riverdance bands!
Lasse: Yeah if you like to do a riverdancing mosh pit, you can always....
RF.net: [laughs] yeah I read that review.
Leo: There's a rumour going around bands that it's a really shitty place to play. I've played there for four or five times and most of the times it has been a bad experience because they treat you like shit, it's like they don't care for the bands who play there. Of course, then nobody wants to go play, and then it's only shitty bands...and when bands go there and play, they don't put up 100% because you get disappointed when you are there. It's like they don't care, at all.
Filip: Last couple of times we've played there, there have been like five bands on one night. It's way too many. There's always somebody getting disappointed about playing at 9pm, and their friends miss them.
Leo: It's too much for the audience also. It's hard to stand and listen to five different bands. At some point you just go, fuck this, and take off.
Leo: Also that scene is not that big in Denmark either. I think they've realized that recently because they've started having techno parties and hip hop concerts and stuff like that, they experimented with that a year ago or something like that. But then there weren't that many people at those kind of events, because they had this idea of The Rock being a rock only place. And then all the usual guests got scared away, too, because they thought "oh The Rock is selling out and is becoming a bad place now" so they didn't go there either. So that was kind of stupid. Maybe just be a more open place? There's not that many dedicated venues in Copenhagen just to one genre. They all have clubs in different ways, reggae clubs and stuff like that. Rust, places like that. I don't think there's a future in having a rock venue in Copenhagen.
Lasse: But when you think about it, a lot of venues are closing down.
Leo: Yeah they are, isn't that also because of the contribution from Copenhagen? Stengade, for example, couldn't get the money from Copenhagen. RF.net: Pumpehuset, as well.
Leo: Yeah, exactly. And Vega, they had these plans about building a larger stage, Mega Vega, it was actually pretty close. They had all the plans and the drawings, they just needed to say go. But then they couldn't get the money for it either.
RF.net: Thank you!
Lasse: It's nice to see people who aren't in a band doing something for the scene. That's kind of like what Troels is doing from Mighty Midgets, he's getting more involved than just being a lead singer in a band. I think we need more people like that, if we're gonna save what's left of anything. Not pop music in Denmark.