I've been called a "Lazy Journalist" by a Punk Legend, my life is complete....
A month or so ago we learned about a punk festival @ the 02 in Sheffield (HRH Punk Festival) and because we have a high opinion our ourselves we attempted to blag free tickets and give them away to you guys (honestly, we're nice)
That didn't work and HRH Punk just ignored us (nice one guys, real professional) so we ended up buying a couple of tickets so we could at least attend and give everyone some coverage. (we'd love to buy tickets and give them away to you, but we're not made of money)
Cut a long story short the line up is first class, Penetration, Peter And The Test Tube Babies, Cockney Rejects Chron Gen, Discharge etc and one of my current favourite punk bands Anti-Pasti
I personally got into the band 6-7 months ago, really great outfit and certainly one the best of the 2nd generation phase of punk groups, seriously go check them out, massively underrated, you'll love 'em
....Anyway prior to attending I'd thought I'd try to interview the band (or in this case, the drummer Kevin) just the usual light hearted questions like "Do drugs help or hinger music?" "Has your family life suffered as a result of the band" "Do you ever wish you'd just been a postman instead?" along with "Would you sponsor my nieces swimathon this Saturday?" and my current favourite question/statement "Isn't Ed Sheeran a ginger wanker !?"
I duly found his email address and fired off my introduction.
What follows is a copy and pasted transcript our our email conversation...
Hello Kevin
Just had to drop you and the guys a quick message.
We are really looking forward to seeing the band play at HRH Punk in
October.
I own a online music store (www.Tophatrecords.co.uk [1]) and manage a
very active Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tophatrecords/ and
Punk in particularly is always very popular with our amazing 3600+ fans and 47k
monthly views on our website.
We would love to arrange a little Q&A with the band and post before
our team attends the festival in a couple of months.
If the band would be open to answering a few brief questions we would
love to hear back from you.
Kind Regards
Nicholas
Kevin (Anti-Pasti)
"Of course, as long as I don`t have to type it out. what did you have in mind?"
Hello Kevin
Thank you for getting back to us so quickly.
In past Q&A's we've just emailed the band 8-10 questions and they've
answered them at their leisure, we understand people lead busy lives.
We've found that by directly copying the bands answers nothing can
becoming diluted by our interpretation and
the band can cover any points they want to expand on that will further
help them.
If you would prefer we can give you a call and jot your answers down
if that would be easier for you?
We are really open to any other suggestions you might have that would
make your life easier.
Thanks you once again for taking the time to reply to us so promptly.
Kind Regards
Nicholas
Kevin (Anti-Pasti)
"Hello again, we/I are approached from all over the world (as are other bands) by people expecting us/me to type out answers to the same old questions. Many of the answers can be found on our website or other on-line forums, for instance `where did you get the name?` , lazy journalism with no research done.
It`s nothing personal, but we don`t ask journalists to go on stage for us!
I`ll be happy to take a call 07********8"
As you can by now see our mask was off, Kevin had sussed out our lazy ass approach to journalism (I've never been called a Journalist before, get in!) and to save wasting any more of his time (and the possibility of getting told to "FUCK OFF" by an utter legend) we decided the best (easiest) thing to do was rip off the bio straight from the bands website, so here follows, quite possibly, the laziest bit of "Journalism" I've ever done,
Enjoy...
The Anti-
England, 1978… the Punk Rock explosion had enveloped the country. In Derby, anti-
Surprisingly, the line-
None of this had gone unnoticed by executives of Rondolet Records, who signed the band up and speedily released the single Let them Free. This was closely followed by Six Guns and the album The Last Call which reached thirty-
It was at this time anti-
It all went quiet on the anti-
2012 arrived with an offer to play the much celebrated Rebellion Festival and Roper plus Nixon and Ollie Hoon joined together again, this time without the involvement of Will Hoon and Dougie Bell inviting Ben Hanson to take up bass duties. Hanson brought his own brand of musicality to the instrument, complemented by anthemic song writing skills, displayed clearly in I See Red. Hoon and Nixon retaliated with Viva Che, and a new dynamic was born.
After the huge success of Rebellion, the venture began to flourish, with a UK tour and selected European dates going down a storm. A demo was recorded and the proposal of making an album was broached. All four members decided to go with the idea and the song writing triumvirate of Hoon-
The remaining three musicians were left with a dilemma. A ten date American tour was cancelled as were high profile UK dates, but with an album’s worth of material written (given a working title of We See Red) the people’s band went to the people for inspiration. The people (THAT’S YOU READING THIS) decided that anti-
The new look band performed at festivals across Europe, toured Germany and recorded the long awaited third album RISE UP which was released by Westworld Recordings to universal acclaim.
A week before the album launch the band parted company with the latest vocalist forcing the cancellation of some high profile UK dates. Martin Roper offered his services to fulfil commitments in Belgium and Paris but then disaster struck when drummer Kevin Nixon underwent hand surgery, again forcing the band to withdraw from the live circuit. During this period Roper quietly retired once more.
Anti-