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Serpico <serpico-band>

"Let's turn this world into a Neon Wasteland....."

	Mikey Serpico Interview for SKIM	43 dni temu
	Hey! Long time no update Decided it was about time I put up the interview which shall be featured in SKIM (: What made you and the rest of the guys form the band? Well, I’d been writing music for a few years and I’d been playing in Open Mic acoustic nights at pubs and getting good reactions, especially from some of my own music, so I was kinda spurred on by that. I was in the middle of my degree at uni and it wasn’t the kinda place that you could really find other people wanting to be in a metal band, so I advertised on the net for people to join a band and it just went from there. I’d tried applying for a couple of other bands in London and I got quite far but never made it (thank god!) but the whole experience of it made me really focussed on getting together my own band back home in Edinburgh.   How did you and the rest of the band meet? It was through advertising on the net. Obviously back in the day you used to put adverts in the back of music magazines (like Metallica did way back!) but nowadays it’s all online… and basically it’s kinda like Match.com for band dudes! Haha! Basically you see an ad you like, email the guy and then go on a blind date with him and see how you get on – it’s certainly an interesting way of doing it! Luckily I found Jonny and Iain straight away and none of us were so weird that we put the other ones off, so that was good. Then Stevie joined about a year after I initially met Jonny, just a couple of months before I left uni and we recorded the EP – again, he saw we were looking for a guitarist, messaged us on myspace and it went from there. Then Olli joined at the end of 2007, after Joe left the band… again he’d seen something online about it. He actually was playing (and still does sometimes) with a band that we’d done a show with a while back so I think that’s how he’d come to know about us. Funny how things like that happen!   Who came up with the band name and how? I’d always loved the name Serpico and it was just one of those names that I said to everyone and they were like… yeah, sounds good. Normally there’s someone that goes… “hmmmm… yeeeeaaah, maybe….” But everyone was just like, “Serpico… ok… cool” and that was that!   Who writes most of the songs or is it a joint effort? Normally I’ll come up with the basic structure and some lyrics, then we kinda workshop it a bit with the rest of the guys. Normally I’ll have some ideas in my head about how things should go, but I can’t always realise it on the different instruments. So I’ll have an idea about a beat in my head and then Jonny will play what he’s thinking and we’ll kinda work something from there. Same with the lead guitar, Stevie will improvise and we’ll kinda go… that bit’s awesome, that bit’s not bad but could be better etc. So I come up with the songs and then we come together to flesh it out. I kinda like to use the analogy with a script writer – I’m the guy who comes up with the overall vision of what’s going to happen, the “who, when, why, what, where” of the story… but then when the actors who’re going to be playing the characters come in, they’ll often add new touches, little nuances to a character that that weren’t explicitly in the script and that’s what the rest of the band do. They flesh out the songs. Also though, they’re my first port of peer review on the songs… so when I write a new song I’ll send it to them and they basically get to chop it down or not! So there’s a lot of power there!   What is the first song you wrote and how did you go about it? I think the first song I wrote, certainly music-wise, was a song called Decline that, if we’d had more time in the studio we’d have probably recorded as a B-side for the album, but we didn’t! I’d only just got my first guitar and kinda learned how to do easy hammer-ons and I’d been listening to a lot of INME’s first album, Overgrown Eden. I kinda took the idea of the hammer-ons in the main riff of that song and was like… well, why don’t I write a song with a hammer-on riff and so I did. It wasn’t too bad, considering I could barely play… but it certainly wasn’t my most accomplished musical oeuvre! haha   What was the first gig you played and were you nervous? The first gig I played with back in the days of Decline, when I was still at school. My friend Dan and I (Dan was an original member of Serpico, but left because of uni commitments) organised this rock concert at school, where 4 ragtag groups of kids just threw themselves together to play some covers and a couple of original songs for about 300 screaming school mates – and it actually ended up being really awesome! Technically our first gig was earlier in the evening, we’d done a warm up show at this bar in Edinburgh and I was pretty nervous for that one (basically the audience was just all sitting round the side, no energy at all… no fun) but because of that when we turned up at school I just felt great and we all went out and rocked it!   Is being in a band what you expected? Yeah, I guess so! It’s a really hard slog a lot of the time and it can be incredibly demoralising (getting a bad review, missing out on a tour, seeing other bands get promoted ahead of you) but it can also be the most amazing fun! Doing a good tour with other cool bands is incredible. Feeling the energy of a crowd really enjoying a show is unreal. Like when we played Download in June… seeing 2000 people there, just to see us and all going crazy – that was pretty special!   Do you ever have fights within the band? Of course you do sometimes, just like anything where you’re cramped together for long periods. It’s normally just stupid things like not loading the van when everyone else is or stuff like that. It’s rarely serious… we’re all fairly slow to anger and quick to forgive so it’s not a big deal. When we had our old guitarist Joe in the band we used to fight a lot more because he had quite a volatile temper… he’d be up and then down really hard and that would cause friction. But we’re all fairly chilled out guys so it’s normally a pretty good environment!   Who is the most annoying member of the band? Almost certainly me… obviously everyone’s got little things that can be annoying, but I reckon I’m probably most annoying to the other guys! haha   Who spends the longest the getting ready for a show? Well, it’s definitely not Iain! None of us really take that long… but I probably take marginally longer than Stevie straightening my hair! Jonny likes to do stretches, but I go and do my vocal warm-ups… it’s gonna be me again!   Do you get on well with other bands? We get on pretty well… I mean, we’re not a really luvvie scene band that knows every single band in the world and are their “super best friends” but 99% of the bands we’ve toured with we’ve got on really well with. Obviously it’s much easier to become friends if you’re headlining a tour and you’ve got bands supporting you than vice versa… but yeah, when I was walking around backstage at Download or at the Kerrang Awards there were plenty I could talk to!   Did any of you ever think you would be in a band as a living? Well… it’s not quite as a living yet! But, to be honest… I kinda did! I’m quite a positive, optimistic guy and when I started the band I really felt that we’d get somewhere… I was always pretty confident. Now, I know we’re not My Chemical Romance or anything yet but the fact I’m sitting here doing an interview means we must be doing something right!   What does it feel like to play onstage in front of so many people? Well, as I said above… it’s incredible! I mean… it can be scary if the crowd doesn’t seem to be getting into it. Walking onto the stage without a cheer or anything really sucks… but when you can hear the crowd cheering as the intro music goes on and then the screams when you go on stage… there’s nothing much that beats that! Then seeing the crowd just explode when you start playing – it’s a really nice feeling, let’s put it that way!   Do you guys ever hang out as just friends without the band stuff? Sometimes we do, yeah. Iain and Steve live kinda outside town, so we don’t see them as much, but Jonny and I see each other a fair amount and talk on the phone every day and we see Olli a fair amount for drinks and stuff. It’s cool to meet up, but equally, it can be good to have time apart, when you spend so much time together on tours etc.   If you could would you change anything in your life right now? Well… yeah, I’d get us on the front cover of Kerrang, supporting MCR on their next arena tour and then headlining a sold out Brixton Academy! I’d make our album sell 20 million copies and I’d buy houses in Edinburgh, London, LA & Mauritius! That would be all right… slightly better than right now. Either that or I’d graft on Cristiano Ronaldo’s body to my head and I’d make £200k a week playing for Real Madrid… that’d be all right too!   Who would be the band's main influences? Avenged Sevenfold, Bad Religion, Offspring, Greenday, Metallica, Papa Roach, Alice in Chains, Sabbath, Pantera, Iron Maiden Kill Hannah, HIM, AFI… bands like that I guess!   Do you have any advice for young bands trying to make it? I’d probably say that the best thing to do is try and beg, borrow, (steal), save any money you can, because it’s not cheap being in the music business these days. Until you can pull a decent crowd, promoters aren’t going to be giving you any free money! Also there’s quite a lot of upfront expense… like merch etc that people don’t often think about. One of the things that really helped us when we started out was giving out badges and stickers at gigs… people really appreciated them and they remembered us because of it. It’s like bits of promotion like that that can make the difference between someone coming home and saying, “The opening band was called Serpico and they were really cool” and “Yeah, that opening band wasn’t too bad… don’t remember their name…” But… badges and stickers aren’t free for you – so I think young bands really need to concentrate on the business aspect as well as the music, because long gone are the days of major labels throwing £200k at a new band they heard down the pub like in the 80s!   What band- except your own of course- would you love to be a member of? I’d love to be in Avenged Sevenfold… that’d be cool! They’re a great band musically and I love their songs. Also, I’d get to dress up as “rockstar” as I could and wear sunglasses 24/7, which would obviously be fun!   What band or artist are you embarrassed to say you are a fan of? I’m not really embarrassed, but other people are normally embarrassed on my behalf! I absolutely love Basshunter! Jonas (Basshunter) and I have become good mates since I met him last year in London, but even before that I just loved the music. It’s so cheesy, but brilliantly constructed pop and great to work out to!   What is the most embarrassing thing to have happened to you onstage? I’ve lost my voice three times during a set… once in Amsterdam with Black Stone Cherry and once in Edinburgh with Kill Hannah and on the headline tour in Norwich… it never gets any less devastating! With BSC I just blew it out in Berlin and then in Amsterdam I sounded like Wednesday13, croaking along! It was horrible… although the crowd kinda dug it and we had a fun night in the end! The Edinburgh one was terrible because it was the first night of the tour and our first big hometown show for ages… and I just sucked. With my Dad in the crowd. Ugh… that was embarrassing! In Norwich it was pretty bad, but the support band had taken most of the crowd with them… so that was quite embarrassing anyway.   If you weren't in a band what do you think you would be doing with your life? I’d be really unhappy for starters! But I do have a law degree, so I might be doing law… or I’d love to get into broadcasting in some way, I did student radio at uni and I’d like to get into that – possibly a future career anyway!   In your opinion, what is the band's greatest achievement so far? I think that Neon Wasteland is a great achievement – I think it sounds as good as almost any album out there and it was made for a 10th of the budget of most similar albums out there. Other than that I’d say that Download was definitely huge for us… we packed out a tent, got great reviews – all from the biggest gig of our lives, that’s got to be a result!   What does the band hope to accomplish over the next few years? Well, I’d love to get another couple of big support tours for this and next year, release another couple of videos perhaps and then start writing our second album. I’d really hope that we start getting more mainstream coverage because I feel that we deserve a bit more recognition than we’re getting at the moment from mags like Kerrang – fingers crossed we’ll get it!   Well that's it xD
	opublikowane przez Serpico