PRIZE PETS Interview

Secret Admirer sent PRIZE PETS some questions over email and they got back to us, as ASAP as humanly ASAP.

Where did the name Prize Pets come from?

J.S : From a newspaper competition, Baby of the Year was never going to stick.

Why did you form the band together?

J.S : We were all doing different things but i think we all wanted to do a 'rock' band together for a while and we only really knew one other band in our town that we liked and they looked to be having a lot of fun so we wanted to be having more fun because we were quite bored.

G.H : For 3/4 years before Prize Pets even existed Dan, James and I had all been promoting DIY shows in Nottingham, both individually and collectively under the name "New Weird Nottingham". After putting on so many shows and attending so many awesome gigs in Nottingham's (once) healthy DIY music scene it seemed like a natural thing to do. It definitely felt like things were changing in the city with promoters like Damn You and Liars Club both becoming less and less active which also happened to coincide with a number of friends moving away too, so starting the band was exciting and it seemed like a great way to spend time with my friends.

Do you feel like you are rebelling against anything as a band?

J.S : Everything all the time

What has been the best live show you have played so far?

J.S : I think I love nearly all out shows, usually the ones I like the most the others don't seem to like. Most Brighton shows we play are great because people get into us down there and also the two shows we played at The Old Blue Last in London were great, but I also loved when we played to 10 people in Bradford who have probably all forgotten us by now, we just played with a lot of energy, usually if i enjoy it, I'm not so bothered if anyone else does.

G.H : Ha, yes I remember Bradford, that was a strange show. It was in the middle of the summer and we played a polish working men's club in Bradford the night England played Algeria in the World Cup, they were showing the game downstairs whilst we set-up. I remember the atmosphere of the city being really weird/tense, probably a combination of the hot night and another crap England performance. Didn't seem to bother James though as he played great. Anyway my personal favourite show would have to be Dudefest 2 in Brighton, for a combination of reasons: Great bands, awesome BBQ in the sun, lots of friends plus it was the day that we first got our hands on our first 7", oh and we played pretty well too I think! Following closely would probably be the New Weird Nottingham Christmas Party we played with Golden Grrrls, in Nottingham of course!

What music have you released so far, and what are your plans for future releases?

J.S : We have released one 7" last summer which was three tracks all recorded in a day, they were great. Then we tried to record three tracks in two days and we totally sucked so we scrapped them and worked on them a bit more, recorded two of them again and they are on our new record with two other songs which we hadn't intended to release. We were approached by Palmist to do a split with this band Beaters from San Diago and we liked the idea of the split series and the other bands who were doing so we put together a side with for songs and that is out on August 15th 2011. Right now we are recording some stuff entirely ourselves because we can't handle being in a studio, we get to never and ess everything up and we can't afford loads of studio time so we are just doing recording ourselves for the time being. It's going well and we want to self-release a 4 way split with some friends bands so everyone has a record to sell at shows but not 300 copies each that they might not shift. Then we are having a live break for a while to do some other things but also probably right an albums worth of songs to record late next year. bit of a long answer.

What do you want people to get from listening to your music?

G.H : Er other than enjoy it? I just wanted do a punk band which would be fun to play in and to watch live, something that people could dance to or rock out to without feeling self concious and without any pretense. I hope people feel like that when we play!

J.C : I want people to make big decisions based on their experience of listening to Prize Pets. Such as; Whether or not to have kids, what to call the kids, whether or not to breast feed, whether or not to buy that new car, book that holiday or shave your head. I hope that we have a positive influence on someone someday that will make their big-decision-making a little easier.

For someone who hasn't heard your music before, what can they expect?

J.C : When you first listen to Prize Pets you should probably expect nothing, empty your mind and the answers will come to you.

How has the internet helped you as a band?

J.C : We are a band between two cities so the internet is vital to our keeping in touch and organisation. We also use it to keep momentum in the song writing / recording department by sharing ideas in mp3 format that we can then take to practice sessions, a great time-saving device.