Joe's Big Toe

Feb­ru­ary 11^th and after a week in action, the NME Awards tour is in full swing. Tonight it’s Birmingham’s turn to play host to the onslaught of Indie rock and judging by the num­ber of people, young­sters and adults alike who are already brav­ing the freez­ing con­di­tions when we arrive, it’s not hard to see why the tour has sold out all but three of its four­teen dates. Bom­bay Bicycle Club are amongst the line-up which also boasts the Mac­ca­bees, The Drums, and London’s electro-rock duo The Big Pink, who …

There’s some­thing about hav­ing a band like Reel Big Fish in Birm­ing­ham that always causes a stir. Out­side, people are already start­ing to mill around, and as I walk towards the doors, a man who may as well have the word “tout” prin­ted on his bomber jacket almost asks me if I have a ticket to sell, before he real­ises its only 4pm and changes his mind. The tour man­ager, Tom, smiles broadly as we make our way through the build­ing. “Cold out there huh?” “I know mate” I …

“They’re here!” I’m already half way down the stairs when the shout comes, but as it does I find myself paus­ing, run­ning through a last few checks in my head. Yep, everything is ready.
In the main recep­tion I greet Tom, Jake and Jack of Basic Terms, a Walmley-Based Indie-rock trio. They’ve been mak­ing their rounds on the Birm­ing­ham music cir­cuit since March last year and their most recent record­ing, uploaded to their Myspace page, shows a lot of prom­ise. As a single unit they’re rel­at­ively new to this, but make no …

As I walked into the small venue that is the Bar Academy, I was greeted by the tour man­ager who ushered Chi (bassist), Soup (drum­mer) and I into a tiny side room to begin the inter­view. The girls were extremely polite with their strong Glaswe­gian accents and seemed excited to be per­form­ing in Birm­ing­ham.
How long have you guys been together?
Chi: Umm about a year (looks at band mem­ber) Too long in some cases *giggles* it feels we’ve been on tour for a year!
Rock and roll seems to me to fol­low patterns, …

Your new E.P., How To Get Out Alive is one of the most impress­ive E.P.s I’ve heard in a long time. What inspires your song writ­ing?
Stubhy: Well, mostly just story telling. I’ve always liked to take things hap­pen­ing in my life and embel­lish them to make them relat­able to every­one listen­ing.
Dumb Pop Song strikes a chord in the heart of adoles­cent teens the world over… what’s the story behind it?
Stubhy: I was infatu­ated with my friends sis­ter and her boy­friend was an abso­lute tool. One day he ran up to …

Your band name is fairly unusual, how did it come about?
Pretty much out of the ether! We picked it out ‘cos we liked ‘The Go-Gos’, but in our youth­ful inno­cence, we didn’t know about the other ‘Go-Gos’. We just switched the o’s for a’s and it kinda stuck. It’s a pretty stu­pid name for a band admit­tedly, but then so is ‘The Beatles’
What are your roots how did the band kick off, and evolve into what it is today?
Well we’re from all over the place… Somer­set, Stafford, Sao Paulo …

Not four hours ago, I was enjoy­ing a beer with Enter Shi­kari back­stage at the Lead­mill in Shef­field. The band have gone from strength to strength, mov­ing from a rel­at­ively unheard of, unsigned band record­ing demos in a gar­age, to who they are now, play­ing to massive crowds across the coun­try. The lads from St. Albans are well spoken and friendly.
‘Enter Shi­kari’ is an unusual name for a band. Where does it come from?
Rob: Yeah, it is unusual!
Rory: Well, it means hunter in Indian and Pun­jab and a vari­ety of …