One of the most striking
local bands lately has been The Solo Men Only. Mixing
up noise, dub and hardcore into one cappuccino cup they blew me away several
times at their gigs. Guitar player Arnoud is in the same school as me and we
had to do this assignment together. Too bad, but Arnoud's bag was robbed and
it had all our stuff in it so we can't work on that assignment. So now we're
sitting in my room and instead of worrying about our future I
decided to do a The Solo Men Only interview. I made up the questions along the way,
so they suck and especially the last questions of the interview are a bit
strange, but pretty funny.
Tell me
the story behind The Solo Men Only?
We started out about two
years ago, I guess. Nwaaze had just split up and Rufus and
I wanted to keep on playing. Vincent was still in New Friend and he also wanted
something else for a change. So the three of us had this plan to start a band,
but we were still looking for a drummer. That became Tjeerd from Beaver Feaver
and nowadays NRA and we started playing. Like I said, after a while Tjeerd quit
the band to join NRA and then Robert (Stereo chumps and Jerry) took his place.
That's it.
Where
does the name come from?
It's a sexy
man's lingery brand. A friend of us one day told us
how she heard about
this company. We thought it sounded cool.
What are
your influences?
Punkrock, hardcore, jazz
and dub.
How did you come up with
combining those styles?
It sort of goes automatically.
One of us might listen more to this, the other more to that, but in general
we can all appreciate those styles. It's not like we plan it upfront; "yeah
we're gonna mix this style and this style into one kickass combination." We
just play and something comes out.
When are you finally
gonna release a record?
We've been wanting to record
something for a long time now, but we're all real poverts, totally out of money.
As soon as possible, but there are no specific plans yet.
How's that possible,
with the big Little People Records bosses in your band?
Ask the big LPR bosses....
No, because the litlle people bosses are also broke. And The Solo Men Only and
Little People Records are just two completely different things.
Is a release on LPR not
possible?
Maybe, but we would still
have to pay for our own recordings.
Are people
in general open to you music?
Yeah, I think
so. We're not too busy with that. Ofcourse it's great to hear people tell you
they like you.
But undoubtedly there are also people out there who think we suck.
But we do get positive reactions often and that's fun.
What did you think of
the poem on your band in Sense Magazine?
That's typically a question
I don't want to respond to.
What are your plans?
Just playing music. I'd
like to record something, but our main target is just playing and
making music we like.
Are
there any bands nowadays in Rotterdam you can identify
with?
Yeah there are. There aren't
really bands that make the same music or anything, but that's not really necisarry
to be able to identify yourself with them. Bands like Oil, Apers, Shorttime,
well they're not really from Rotterdam.. But those are bands I really like.
But identifying? For a lot of bands it's just about the pleasure in music and
that goes up for me too. So in that way I can identify with them.
What do you want to convey
with your music?
We don't have
a political message or anything, we just play the music we play.
We're not trying to be this renewing band either.
But you
are.
Well, that's accidentally.
When we're writing songs, we just start and we're not thinking about styles
or influences, ofcourse we have them, but we're not going to sit around before we
start and think about those. The only guiding line we have is that all four
of us have to like it. Nothing else.
How do
you write the songs?
Just with the four of us.
We'd just be jamming half the time in the rehearsalroom and sometimes something
comes out of that. Than we'll take that and go make up some more and if it all
works out, we'd have a song. Does it sometimes not work out?
Sure, and that's the disadvantage of doing it this way. It's pretty frustrating
if nothing comes out. But it's so much the cooler if it does work out, coz it's
something all the four of us made. But most of the time it's just fun, even
if nothing comes out of it.
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cLiCK tO rEaD MoRE --
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