TUBELORD Interview

Jo from Tubelord (left) with sweaty fanboy (right)

Interview Date: 26/01/2012
Interview Location: The Flapper, Birmingham

Like a cult film, Tubelord will be in the cultural canon of the underground for a long time. Like a cult film, Tubelord will be appreciated almost secretly by many but never publicly by the masses. Like a cult film, Tubelord are an acquired taste.

But unlike cult films, Tubelord are not a film, they are a most excellent band.

And they were nice enough to take some time to answer some questions from Secret Admirer that they have probably answered a hundred times over already.

Why did you choose the name Tubelord?

James: Dave.

Dave: Owweee. Tom!

Tom: I wasn’t even in the band then!

Dave: Precisely. Next question.

Ok. Why did you start the band?

Dave: Why? Because we were at college and we had music studio classes and Jo was like: oi dave, you play the drums and I was like yes I do. He said: come on, we’ve got the studio booked on Tuesday evening, do you want to come and play some drums and I was like: yeah. Then after a couple of weeks we were like: we should start a band, we’ve already got some songs and they are already recorded. So there you go, it’s pretty easy isn’t it?

Jo: It’s really easy.

How did your first gig go as a band?

Jo: The first gig?

Yeah, the first one you ever played.

Jo: Yeah, it was pretty easy. It was in Dave’s house.

Dave: Shit! So it was! We supported my other band.

Jo: I think the guitarist broke a string and then I went to get my guitar for him to play but he unplugged his guitar and plugged it into my guitar and told me to carry on playing. He went on the keyboard and then it pretty much turned into a two hour jam thing. Sean on drums, I don’t know.

Dave: It was wicked fun. Basically we had this idea, it was like sick man, we’ll do party at mine and we’ll have bands playing at it’ll be sweet. Everyone was like wicked, garden, stay out in the garden. Smoke, drink, oh there is a band playing, I can still hear you talking outside so we’ll stay outside. It was just basically a bad jam at 2am in the morning. It was great fun. Well good.

Jo: I think someone threw up on your carpet.

Dave: Yeah! I got him back. We had a fire extinguisher fight in his halls when he was at uni and he got a massive fine. So I had to pay for industrial carpet cleaner and he had to pay the fine so we are even now.

What was the first song you wrote together as a band?

Jo: The first proper recorded one was ‘Death Of A Digital Alarm Clock’ and I think there were two more before that.

Dave: And that real post-rock one.

Jo: That eighteen minute long…

Dave: That was so much fun. Basically we just completed post-rock and we moved on. We were a post-rock band for one song.

Tom: You completed the level.

Dave: Then we were like: this is fucking easy, we’ll leave it to drunk Scotsman.

Jo: Tall Ships never quite got over it.

What’s been your favourite place to play gigs so far?

Jo: Coventry. Awesome place.

Do you have a lot of fans there?

Jo: We have about 12 fans there.

Are they dedicated?

Jo: Yeah, yeah. They come from as far as Birmingham and things.

That’s cool. Do you have any creepy fans at all?

Jo: Dave’s had a few. Dave’s had a fair few. James has had the most though, in Europe.

Dave: They actually forced him to have sex with them, so…

James: They’re not creepy.

Dave: The one with the metal underwear was pretty fucking weird. There was this girl, she was well into Lord Of The Rings and was wearing Lord Of The Rings underwear.

Do you want to go further into that or…no?

Dave: Actually there was a dude the other night who wanted me to sign his Game Station card. I was like: if they actually bother to check, you won’t get any gamer points. I was like: you won’t get any gamer points then, why would you bother? And he seemed like the guy who probably would get a lot of gamer points. A lot more than I ever would, so it seemed really creepy, yeah.

That is pretty weird. Did he want you to sign it so it was your card or something?

Dave: Well yeah…but then it was for him. It wasn’t like he was giving me a gamer card with ridiculous amounts of points on it.

That’s weird, there’s no logic…

Dave: No. None. Absolutely none. I think he had ulterior motives to be honest but I’m not sure what they were.

James: I think he was trying to steal your identity.

Dave: Probably that. Or at least my Game Station identity.

James: He’s using your Dave Game Station account.

Dave: This is going on the Internet idiot! Everyone’s going to steal it!

James: They need to know.

What’s your favourite song to play live?

Jo: Propeller

James: Tears For Fears.

Dave: Oh yeah there’s this song by Tears For Fears, it’s called ‘Shout’. We play that.

Do you do a cover of it?

Dave: Yeah it’s the shortest cover ever, it’s also hidden within the songs.

James: Secret cover.

Dave: It’s a secret cover, that’s really fun to play. I’ve enjoyed playing ‘Tidy Diggs’. Is that the last track on the album?

Jo: Yes.

Dave: We’re playing that one live and that’s the last song of the album that we learnt to play so that’s the freshest so I think that’s the most fun. But that changes day to day.


"I’m not going to list the reasons why humans like music" - Jo

Do you prefer your first or second album? Do you have a favourite out of the two?

Dave: To play or to listen to?

Just generally as a completed work, do you have one you prefer?

Dave: I think we harbour some resentment towards our first album.

Really?

Dave: Yeah not because of the music just because of everything else around it which no one else is obviously aware of. So in that sense, probably the second album. Jo is nodding.

James: We weren’t even on the first album.

Dave: Yeah so they haven’t really got a choice.

Tom: It’s shit.

Dave: Yeah I think we are all pretty happy with the second album. It’s definitely more us right now.  What you are getting in front of you, four guys watching Batman too much.

Do you have any plans for a third album?

Dave: Dunno.

Jo: Not as yet.

Do you intend to keep writing music?

Dave: Dunno.

Jo: Not as yet.

Dave: Not as yet. We’ll see. We’ll get to the end of this tour and see what happens.

Jo: Chance would be a fine thing.

Dave: Isn’t it change would be a fine thing? Or is it chance…

Jo: What else can we pull out as answers? What else is there?

James: Take it or leave it?

Dave: Yeah take it or leave it.

Jo: I’ll tell you something for free…that’s one as well.

Dave: It totally was not in the box. Definitely not a red card.

Are there any other bands you like playing shows with?

Jo: Oh you put that in there because you know we were gonna say Drool.

You could say Drool, you don’t have to.

Jo: (Laughs) Yeah Drool, they are pretty good.

Dave: (Laughs) Good choice, isn’t it?

Jo: All we talk about is Drool and their…

Dave: Olympians from Norwich are soundchecking downstairs. They are really fun to play shows with.

Jo: Not as fun as Drool though.

Dave: No probably not as fun. True.

James: There’s this band called Drool.

Dave: There’s this band that was called Blakfish that are now called &U&I, they’re pretty fun to play shows with. That’s probably it.

James: There’s this band called Foo Fighters. I reckon they’d be really fun to play shows with.

If you could soundtrack a film, which one would you choose?

Tom: Sound-check a film?

Dave: Soundtrack!

James: What?

Tom: Alien.

Dave: Which one? Just Alien?

Tom: All of them. The Alien quadrilogy.

Dave: The boxset. I’ve never seen them, I’ve only ever listened to them, so…

James: That makes you even more in a prime position to do the soundtrack.

Dave: I did notice that there is very little music.

Jo: In the second one there is loads, too much.

Dave: Yeah but not compared to something amazing like Jurassic Park. That’s basically a musical. And I’m not complaining about that, just for the record. John Williams did a fine, fine piece of work on that album. That film even…

James: I’d like to do a nu-metal soundtrack to Jurassic Park, like, replace the orchestral score…

Dave: Yes!

James: In kind of like the way that low budget action films always have fairly limp nu-metal soundtracks. It’d be ace to do one of them.

Dave: Yeah like that Mission Impossible, they used Metallica wasn’t it? That was lame! Yeah, something like that.

Something lame.

Dave: Yeah, something well lame.

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

Jo: What do they get?

Is there anything you’d like them to get?

Jo: What we want people to get.

If there is anything at all.

Jo: Not sure. Why do people listen to our music?

Dave: Because they want to. Because they like it.

Jo: I’m not going to list the reasons why humans like music.

Dave: Peer pressure I think.

Jo: It’s going to fall under one of those taglines.

Tom: It makes them happy, let’s just say that.

Jo: A lot of people, especially on this tour, seem to always be really happy that we’ve arrived and we’re playing because they have seen us before or because the songs are quite happy. Like ‘Night Of The Pencils’, that’s quite a happy song.

Dave: Yeah, if music makes you happy then go and see it.

Jo: When you listen to Tubelord you don’t tend to sit back and reflect on much. It’s more of a band that you’d listen to, to get you up and going. A lot of people have said it’s quite good to run to.

Dave: It’s active instead of passive.

Jo: Yeah.

Do you like playing in Birmingham?

Jo: Yeah. Played The Rainbow last time which was fun. Always good in Birmingham.

Tom: We always have fun at Off The Cuff.

Dave: Yeah, that’s good. They are doing a stage at a festival this summer I think. Might be the truth, might not be a lie, that’d be good. What’s it? They are curating a stage at a festival. I think Y Not? Festival but I’m not sure. I think that would be amazing, because they are bang on it.

Thanks for your time guys.

Dave: Thank you.

Jo: No worries man.




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