I shall transcribe the interview in a bit
Translation Anglais:
V: First, the usual questions. What was the best gig you've played?
S: They’ve been good, really good. They got better each day.
L: Last night was our favourite.
S: Yeah, last night was a lot of fun.
V: Why did you decide to play together?
S: We didn’t really decide, it just happened. When the band started, we just got together for fun, you know? Just to have a jam, just to mess around and then we liked it, so we made it a band.
L: Yeah, we just didn’t think about it. We didn’t have time to get anyone else as we just started gigging, and we just thought we don’t really need anyone else.
S: We never thought “oh we should be a three piece”, it just sort of happened like an accident. A good accident!
L: The best one!
V: What was the first gig you ever went to?
S: I know what yours is, I know what you’re going to say.
L: Yeah, mine was Guns n Roses when I was about 8, in Ireland, and it was brilliant. What I can remember of it, anyway. I still love that band.
S: I think mine was Greenday. But I can’t remember much, because my parents took me to lots of gigs when I was young. But Greenday, I think, was the first time I went on my own.
L: Yeah, first time I went on my own, I think it might’ve been Hole, or Ash. I can’t work it out. I don’t like Ash any more, but I still like Hole.
V: What was your first musical crush? You know, the first band to make you realise that you really wanted to make music.
S: Mine was the Sex Pistols. They were the first band that I heard that made me go “wow, I wanna do that”. Although actually, when I was really young I wanted to be Bruce Springsteen when I was about 7 or 8.
L: And Michael Jackson…
S: Yeah, I liked Michael Jackson around that time too. So maybe that was the thing. Yeah, I was pretty young. The Sex Pistols were the first band that made me actually get an instrument and start to play.
L: Mine was either Hole or Babes In Toyland.
V: I guess the influences on the way you play are a bit like grunge or riot grrl.
L: Yeah definitely.
S: We were just saying that we’re not very indie. I like that, “raw & violent”.
V: So, if I say your sound was like some 90s bands, like Pixies style or something, you’ll agree?
L: Yeah, out of most things, that is more like what we sound like.
S: Yeah, but in England people compare us to really weird indie bands, but we don’t listen to that sort of music.
L: The White Stripes!
S: Yeah, we listen to much rawer stuff, like Pixies or Nirvana, than that. We like it to sound a bit nasty. Nasty, but kinda fun.
V: What were your artistic influences for the videos?
S: We didn’t think up the videos. Our friend, a director in Brighton –
L: It’s the only thing that we don’t do, isn’t it!
S: Yeah, he had done all three of our videos so we always work with him, and he always comes up with loads of ideas. If we like them, we’ll say yeah. He usually comes up with really cool ideas, inspired by the music.
V: Why sunglasses? [for the IGBBTS sleeve]
L: Because the song is about the sea, and summer and it seemed like something you’d associate with the seaside. I had some in front of me and thought “oh, I’ll draw that!”
V: Why don’t you have a forum on the website?
S: Shall we get one? People like them…it’s probably because we never go on forums, so we never thought to put one on our own website.
V: What were your first bands like?
S: Punk
L: Mine was a bit more riot grrl.
S: Not like greenday punk, a bit more like Sonic Youth but faster.
V: How would you describe Blood Red Shoes in only three words?
S: Raw and violent!
V: On your Myspace you have a quote: “we do things our way and we're very loyal to people who are kind to us.” What does that mean?
L: He can explain, I’m drawing.
S: It’s just that, we’ve been a band for two years, and in the last 6 months, it’s been like a professional thing. Before that, loads of people were really kind to us, and helped a lot – gave us gigs, etc so we always really loyal. Like our video director, he made our first video for free, and now we have a label we can pay him. But instead of using someone else we can go back and use the same guy because we’re always really grateful and loyal to people that were good to us from the start.
We don’t like to let other people control all the things that we do. Like apart from the video, we do everything. We record our own stuff, Laura does all the artwork, we run our own website, we run our own MySpace. The guys we work with are all friends of ours, we didn’t just get someone we’ve never met, we work with people we know. We don’t want to turn into U2. We want to keep it enjoyable, make it like a little family thing and keep us in control. We don’t want someone else to tell us where or how we’re going to record or how the record’s going to look. If people are kind to us we tend to stick by them. If people are horrible we tell them to fuck off!
