Full transcript: The Edenites on London Real
13:08 Hello and welcome to London Real. Joining me is Mr Nick Gabriel, and today we have in the studio Mr Terry Gilmore and Greg Jarvis from the Edenites. Welcome, guys. Thanks, thanks for having us. Can you tell us about your new single, Welcome to London?
13:25 Oh yeah, it’s a poppy summer reggae jam, kind of aimed at the Olympics, but also for us. I think London’s one of the most important cities in the world at the moment, because it’s most multicultural, and we’ve got every different style of people here, and if we can make it work, then surely the rest of the world can follow suit, and so it’s kind of like the New London Calling. Yeah, I think so. I’d agree with that yeah, that’s cool. It’s got that reggae beat to it.
13:55 Is there something, why is it that all, most reggae songs are positive? Is that like written somewhere, that reggae music has to be uplifting? F***ing high when they’re written, you’d be pretty positive too. Seriously, why is it? I mean, the blues is almost the opposite.
14:09 Do you know? I think it’s just it’s this, the style of where it comes from as well. It’s quite a positive-vibed place. To, to contradict it a bit, quite a few reggae songs are actually quite sad about important things that they just managed to, without even realizing make you feel that it’s such a positive thing. Dud.
14:28 No. No Woman No Cry, yeah, or Buffalo Soldier. Marley, a lot of the songs. Have you guys seen that documentary, Marley? We haven’t yet.
14:35 No, we watched the trailer, and I just sat of a smile on me face the whole time. You were telling me you loved it. Every, that was really powerful. I mean, I’m not traditionally a reggae fan, you know. I don’t, if you look through my iTunes, it’s not full of reggae songs, but that’s a powerful movie.
14:48 It really hit me, hit me hard. Big man, big man. Very intense. Cup does does he influence you guys, or did he influence? Massive.
14:57 Yeah, massively. Yeah, I’ll grow up, my parents were a mix of listening to Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and all sorts of stuff, but it’s one of the ones that always stuck with me. But I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who, who will say, I can’t stand reggae, you know what I mean, like, you play hip hop to someone, they’ll be like, how? Didn’t say it, but you know what I mean, like, that’s strange, because Brian and I were just saying to each other the other day, we both don’t think.
15:22 Right? I was watching the movie and I was so inspired by him, because I didn’t realize that he sold out like 2 million seats in Europe over a 6-week period, like something no other group has ever done, and I didn’t realize how big he really was. Mass, I mean, and people, a lot of people forget that things like the Ex… I think it was The Exodus album, wasn’t it? It was recorded over here, and they spent six, seven months right living here.
15:42 Yeah, living here, like playing football in, at the park just, just near where you work, just south of the river, right? Which park was that? What is, I was playing football over there. It was, it was just the park, like C Common or something. Yeah, I think it was one of those.
15:57 He was like living in Chelsea and hanging out with these guys. They own, like, a whole mansion and stuff. You know what blew my mind is when you told me that he was this, like, fitness freak. I had no idea about that. They used to, like, run and train in the morning.
16:06 Was like a big part of his regime in Jamaica. Yeah, it was all about the body and health. They smoked a lot of weed, but, like, he was in sick shape. If you ever look at him, that’s crazy. It’s a weird kind of vibe.
16:15 So, so tell us about the Edenites. How long have you guys been a band? Where did you, where do you come from? We’ve been a band for about a decade now. It’s about 2003, that’s like a long time, like in dog years, like 100.
16:30 It is a long time, but, to be honest with you, it’s got more and more better as the time’s gone on for us, and for the, the amount we enjoy it. I think, yeah. I mean, and we’ve kind of, you know, rejuvenate ourselves with a new lineup as well. With, we’ve had James and Jakeob joined us within the last, well, within the last 12 months. I, I thought, and yeah, it’s good, because it gives you new vibe as well.
17:00 They bring in, obviously, the music they listen to, and that influences the sound as well, so that does change the sound when you bring new members in, even though you’ve already written some tracks. Does it change it a little bit? It does, slightly, with, with, some of the, right, inside, we’ll put it in, and it will be in a reggae fashion, and then you get, like, a guy who loves reggae but he’s into rock. You stick him playing a reggae lick, and he’s just got this sort of rock feel about him while he’s playing it, which slightly changes it to the way I would have originally played it, and before you know, everyone’s doing that, and you’ve created a sound that’s just quite special.
17:33 So you guys have been going for 10 years, and it’s my understanding that you’re on the verge of breaking through. Did you not get disillusioned over the last decade? Like, I mean, I’m guessing you guys haven’t made a huge amount of money doing this. Was there ever a point where you like, f*** it, it’s boring being a struggling artist. I want to just, you know, be able to go to eat steak every night.
17:56 Or, I mean, do you know what I mean? I think it would be nice, but I think if you lose the struggle, to a degree, you lose a part of the music. I do. I mean, you listen to, I can’t think of many bands whose second album is infinitely better than their first album recently. You know, it tends to be the other way around.
18:15 You know, if you’ve been working on music for 10 years, you end up with an album that you spent 10 years working on through the hard times, and then, you know, you make it on that album, they turn around, go, right, 5 months, we want the next album. Yeah, and you’re, oops. Yeah, that’s, that’s an interesting s- w. I never thought about it that way. Do I mean, do you see that with artists today, where they’ve, quote unquote, made it, and you just, you feel the loss of something?
18:38 Yeah, a lot. I think, especially, probably with rap music for me, because rap comes from the struggle. I think, the whole message behind it, it comes from the hard place they’re in. The lack of money, the, you know, the fight, the struggle to live every day, and, you know, all of a sudden they’re getting everything they want. They’ve got women, they’ve got money, they’ve got fast cars, and so that’s what they talk about, and it’s compromises, integrity of the music, right?
19:08 Definitely, definitely. Who, who inspires you from a hip-hop standpoint and who inspires you today in hip-hop? Dre, you can never look beyond Dre really. He’s the Godfather of rap for me, you know? What Dre does, everybody else is that, from producing or from even lyrical producing?
19:24 I mean, I think a lot of his lyrics are written for him, like Jay-Z writes lyrics for him, and things like that as well. Production-wise, it’s It’s All About Dre, and lyric-wise, I think for me is stepping back. It’s all about Tupac really. Okay, and Biggie. Yeah.
19:41 And, what, maybe you could explain to me more? I still, I’m not a hip-hop guy. What was the deal with Tupac? Actually, I’m going to let, Greg explain that. What was the drama between hip hop and Biggie?
19:55 Well, it all kicked off at the Source Awards, didn’t it? Really, really, because Suge Knight with Death Row Records basically said, you know, we want Biggie. Any artists out there that want to come to a record label where it’s all about you, it’s not all about Puff Daddy. Okay, you know? And from there, it just split, and it was really just one night, and it, it was really just Biggie and Tupac, and, well, they had issues with each other.
20:18 Yeah, they used to be very good friends. I mean, they started off very good friends. Biggie used to open up shows for Tupac, okay, and then Tupac got shot, blamed it on Biggie, right? Biggie released a song called Who Shot You, as you do. So Tupac Slept with Biggie’s wife, Biggie’s wife, and then he wrote a song about it, right?
20:40 Yeah, yeah. Hit him up, Ice-T actually. He played Ice-T that song that he wrote about f***ing Biggie’s wife, and he’s like, this is it, man, this is it. And Ice-T was like, you know what, homie, I don’t like where you’re going with this. This is just nothing but hate.
20:52 And he got really mad at Ice-T. He’s like, f*** you. Then Tupac did. Yeah, he said that to Ice-T. He was just like, man, you don’t understand, and, and I was like, this is going, this is going somewhere bad, that old spired well out of control, and it led to both of them being shot by off-duty police officers.
21:06 Right. Yeah, that they were shot by off-duty police officers. We think so, right? No, well, they were. I mean, yeah, definitely, Suge Knight paid them.
21:15 They’ve got the evidence, you know? I don’t know if you’ve ever watched, Suge Knight paid to have them shot. Yeah, well, these police officers do security and their off-duty stuff too, and, well, some of these LAPD. I love LAPD, by the way, but some of them have a little bit of a dodgy background. I got to hear what you love about.
21:34 I’m just saying that if you look at, see, early bits of hip-hop and the West Coast perspective, I mean, and you look at what the Rampart Division was like in LA. I mean, the cops were really bad back then, stealing, beating things up, running their own drug deals. You watched that film with Woody, how it was called Rampart? Yeah, it’s heavy. Yeah, have you guys seen that?
21:54 I haven’t. It just shows you how bad. I mean, it wasn’t just a reactionary thing. I mean, these hip-hop lyrics came from very, something very real. Oh, yeah, which was the scene.
22:03 And, you know what do you think about artists today then? I mean, who’s your favorite right now in the top 10? I’ve got time, for example, as I’ve got a lot of time, for example, as a a UK rapper, American style really. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve not got a lot of time for a lot of it. I think it’s, it’s lost its way and needs to scale it back.
22:26 Totally lost its way. Wu-Tang, you know, members of the Wu-Tang always have the ability to bring it back. You know, if Raekwon drops now, and Ghostface Killah drops now, you know, Method Man, especially Redman. Redman still, I know I got time for Redman. Method Man, but I still can’t believe Ol’ Dirty Bastard is dead.
22:44 He was always my favorite. Have you heard Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Stu? I’ve heard him. I haven’t heard his music. I played Brooklyn Zoo the other night, and, like, what the hell is he saying?
22:53 He doesn’t even care, right? That’s not even freestyling. That’s like no styling. You know, the thing about hip-hop that I just, it kind of pisses me off is, like, sure, there were these guys, there was a, there’s a very small, proportion of the US population that lives in these ghettos and really struggles, right, or that that goes through the struggle that these rappers go through, and then, like, people appropriate that, and they, like, make it the sound of their lives.
23:20 Like, you know, I’m, I’m part of this struggle, and they’re not. They’re comfortable people who’ve got Xboxes in their living rooms, and you’ve never, like, missed a meal in their life, and all of a sudden it’s, they’re listening to hip-hop just cuz it’s cool to listen, and that kind of pisses me off. Do you know what I mean? I do know what you mean. I mean, do you guys think that it has to be destroyed again before it gets built up?
23:38 I mean, do you think, by definition, since there is a category called hip-hop, that we can’t, can’t be creative anymore? I well, I think it’s hard, really. What do you, it is hard, cuz it’s already there, so you can sort of you can make something that’s already popular. You need a banging beat and a fat baseline. You pretty much chat over it, and you’ve done it.
23:58 You’ve made a hip-hop track. But to excuse my ignorance, guys, what is the difference no one’s ever been able to explain this properly to me. What is the difference between hip-hop and rap? Oh, rap’s what you do. You know, I can rap on a rock song, okay?
24:11 I mean, I can, I can rap on an opera song, okay? So, rap, rap music is a misnomer, basically. It’s, it’s all hip-hop. Yeah, I, well, that’s always been my understanding. It’s all hip-hop, you know?
24:22 And then you can subcategorize. You’ve got gangster rap and things like that, but they’re all categories of hip-hop. Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. And so you were talking about dropping a fat beat and then talking over it, and now you have the recipe for a hip-hop song?
24:35 You pretty much do. Yeah, okay. You do. But it’s, it’s how creative you can be of it as well. If you can take it a step further, and if you, if you have an understanding of music and chords and stuff, you can actually put something really special together that you would call hip-hop because of what’s going on around it, and especially as someone starts rapping on it, it becomes more and more hip-hop.
24:54 But do you not find that labeling your music as a specific genre could be placing a limitation on it? It does. Yeah. I mean, we write lots of styles of music, so I would never say that we were just hip hop. I would put us in every box I could possibly.
25:09 Just musicians, basically. Yeah, yeah. I I don’t see this as hip-hop. I mean, I think we’d be much more at home, sort of playing on a Glastonbury stage than playing, you know, supporting DIY Ras or at Brixton Academy. You know, I don’t think we’re hip-hop.
25:23 We’re music that uses rap. For me, when you guys sit down to write the track, Welcome to London, when you’re like, take, I guess it’s a couple years back, and you’re like, blank piece of paper, I want to make something that’s going to be popular we’re going to love to sing, the crowds are going to pick up on. How do you, how do you start that creation process? We’ve, Welcome to London. It was interesting.
25:42 One, me and Jony, the bass player, we were working on a reggae vibe. We wanted something really good, reggae sort of style. We come up with it, and we’re talking with Greg, and Greg’s, we’ve got to do something about London. It’s got to be for London. We’ll talk about where we come from and how much we love it, and it went from there really.
26:00 We had the music set. We had the idea, and then we just had to sort of push it together and make it happen. Yeah, you get the hook you think to yourself, you know, London Town, and we go play, and you think, you know, there’s something there. Now we just need to build around that, and you know, yeah, yeah. It actually, it went together quite quickly, I think, once we got the idea there.
26:21 Over the course of a couple of days to a week, we’re pretty much bang that up and did you guys instinctively know that you were onto something special? Not straight away. I think when we was doing for me it was just a reggae vibe at the time, and I was really, really liking it, and once we sat down and put some lyrics over it, had a melody going. I think we go verse by verse, get a rap verse and a singing verse, and go, oh my God, this, this has to be a work song.
26:44 This is the, and as soon as we played it live, I think we became very quickly aware that that was the song everybody wanted to listen to that’s cool. Is that how you can tell, like, when you have a live audience, is that when you know you’ve got something that’s… I think so. Yeah, if you can get a whole crowd of people who aren’t even there to watch you nodding their head to it, and silence, that, that, for me, let you know you’ve got a good song. I, yeah, if I can hear everybody talking amongst themselves, it’s not a big song.
27:11 If I can, if everybody stops talking and goes, I like this song, and turns and faces you, then you know you’ve got a song. Really, that’s interesting. I never thought about that way. So, your single’s coming out on iTunes on the 16th of July, so people just type in Edenites and they can find that. Yeah, what else are you guys, gigwise, coming up this year, and what’s, what’s like the next six months look like for the Edenites?
27:32 Well, we’ve got a show just around the corner from you guys next month on Friday the 13th at the Underbelly. It is quite exciting for us. Love that date. In the face of fear. Friday the 13th, yeah, and from there we’re hoping that with the Olympics coming and stuff, that this song is, it’s on the verge of breaking, so if, if everyone can get behind it, and they hear it, and they like it.
27:54 It should be a good year for us. We should be able to not just release a single and see what people think. We’ll be able to back that up with an album. So, here, here’s a tough question, guys. Let’s say, welcome to London isn’t the big hit that we’re all hoping it’s going to be.
28:09 Mm-hmm. Do you guys have a contingency plan? Will that really rock, rock the band to its foundations? You know, because I mean, it seems to me like you guys are really putting a lot of your eggs in this basket. Yeah, we are, but if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell.
28:22 I’ve still got it to listen to my car, and the next song will sell. You know, it’s, so you just enjoy the music yourself. Oh God, yeah, you have to. We make it for ourselves, and if other people like it, that’s brilliant. I had this, like, vision the other day.
28:35 I was walking on the street, and I was just thinking, the whole Olympic Stadium there, and right before they’re about to start the Games, they just crank out Welcome to London, and everyone just like, oh f***, what just happened? Japanese tourists are like, what, what’s going on? Right. So in order to get that, ideally we need to get you on the radio station, so the guys out there should be hip to this track, figure out what’s going on. Is it just a simple decision, or does it have to go through a corporate hierarchy to get played?
29:00 You think, I think that DJs have a degree of leeway, don’t they? I think they’re allowed to pick like 5% of the songs they play on their show, and I think 95% are handed down to them from station controller. So you guys have got a real tough gig, because not only is it getting to access to the DJ, but it’s getting him to make sure that one of the 5% of the songs is, wow, that is tough. It’s, it’s hard, but for me it’ll be their loss, cuz they’ll be the ones playing it retrospectively and saying B, how did I not say that comment?
29:32 It’s one, one of those songs too that I think you only need to hear it once or twice. It’s really catchy. Super catchy, super catchy, super catchy. So if people know DJs out there, forward this on, and we’re going to have a special session later after this, where it’s going to be acoustic version of Welcome to London and a few other tracks. So we’re really looking forward to that, and as far as, like, what’s the next six months, a year, two years out for you?
29:53 I mean, the thing about you guys, which is cool, is that you, you don’t seem to be in a rush. You’ve been doing this for a long time. You obviously enjoy doing it. But what is the plan? I think the ideal plan would be that Welcome to London, it would do really well.
30:08 It’s the right time for it. So, like, we make a shed load of shells in a week, we’re done. Then we’d look at, we’d like to get picked up by a record label, yeah, preferably setting our own label up as an affiliation, you know, a way of learning from people like Jay-Z and people like that who did it for themselves with Rockefeller. And yeah, set it up and change music, bring as many acts through as we can. Yeah, we, we know a lot of guys that if we had our own position, we could pull through all genres of music that were very good at, as well.
30:40 They’re very skilled, so I think we’d like to do that. We got to get ourselves there. Yeah, so I would like to get signed up by someone, but eventually we’d like our own label where we just pull through everyone who’s worth it. Yeah, I’ve got it. I like the idea of sort of changing the way record labels run.
30:56 So, so what do you think is wrong with the way record labels are run? I think it’s all, well, it’s all about sales. It’s all about tying in an artist to a contract, so he’ll only work on what you want him to work on. He’s not free to experiment, and, and to work with people he want he wants to work with, actually. I have a friend who he actually became quite a success in the music industry in the UK, and eventually he just got disillusioned with the system.
31:22 I mean, he was, he’s high up in some, some company, one of the top companies, and he just said it’s not about music. These people don’t really know anything about music. They’re just business people who are trying to extract as much money as they can out of the system. Oh, yeah, and that I found was kind of sad, and it’s sad, because you guys, to become successful, you’re going to have to do it from within that system. I mean, there’s pretty much no other way, right?
31:46 Well, to a degree, I think I mean, it’s hard, because I mean, look, look at record sales now. They’re, they’re down so much, and what they used to be, what it used to take to get number one compared to now, is, is down so much, and this is because people are bored of this generic music just being thrown at you over and over again, the same song being remade, and, and thrown at you, and everybody can make music now. Most of the music I listen to now are you know, I, I’ll find on the internet, un-signed bands.
32:14 I, I don’t care who EMI are pushing at the moment, because I’ve probably heard it all before. Interesting, MH. Yeah, it’s the same. Like, I used Spotify now, and I, you haven’t used. No, I haven’t.
32:27 Now it’s quite cool, because once you, if you listen to a song that you like, you click on artist, and then it brings up a little option where you can find it, it says similar artists, and you keep going down these rabbit holes of finding music similar to the stuff that you like, and most of the stuff that you find is pretty obscure, and it’s really good music, you know, but you never would have heard of it otherwise if you hadn’t been using Spotify or the internet, which is, yeah, I guess it gives you guys a chance. Right? Yeah, and what’s the best wave that you guys are pushing into things now?
32:58 Is it all about social media these days? I mean besides the, the radio, airplay, you guys becoming Twitter experts. The Internet, it’s, it’s a great tool. It’s how we met you guys, through the medium of Twitter. Crazy, huh?
33:11 By the way, Brian, big respect. Brian has just got us our 10,000 Twitter follow, follow. I was really impressed. Follow us, many rounds of applause. It’s crazy, but I mean, these guys I mean, found out us, we found out about them on Twitter.
33:25 I heard their song, and then it was just like we hooked up, and it’s amazing how something like that can put two people together. I mean, they literally recorded this song, like, you know, 300 M away in inw ser, and we’re in Hoxton. Is that how close it is? But like, we would have never met unless it was for Twitter. Yeah, and then all I took was one view of their jam on YouTube, and it was like, okay, these guys are legit, legit, you know?
33:46 So isn’t that crazy, huh? Yeah, I guess it’s a good way, I guess. Also, you guys have to compete with all the, all the fluff out there as well, right? Yeah, yeah, that, that can be hard. I mean, it, that, that’s the only thing that disillusions me, I think, is when you see…
34:00 I don’t want to say any names really, but I’m, when you see Cheryl Cole climbing to number one in the, and you think, Christ Almighty, what? Have you listened to the song You Know Why, Why by, it’s it’s nonsense. Yeah, she is kind of easy on the eye, to be fair. Yeah. So buy the video, but don’t download the song.
34:21 It’s F… I was, I’m reading this book called The Long Tail, which our DJ that was on here Johnny Miller told me about, and it’s all about how it used to be the age of the blockbuster. Like, you would go see Jaws, cuz everyone told you that was the movie to see. You would listen to, you know, whatever, not the Beatles, but someone else, because that was the big thing. But these days everyone’s finding their own niche, because they like it, and they can, cuz it’s on the web and stuff.
34:41 So, like, some people listen to London Real that don’t want to watch, you know, BBC, you know, and people can find guys like you because they don’t want to listen to Cheryl Crow and stuff like that. But I guess you have to find that specific audience somehow. Yeah, well, you want, well yeah, yeah, it, that’s, that’s where the internet comes in so handy. Again, cuz we can also push it to people we would think would like it as well. With promotion companies and stuff like that, it’s hard to contact anyone like that who might be able to push it for you, so we do it ourselves.
35:15 And, you know, bar standing on a straight corner with a sign and a guitar saying, you have to hear this. It is one of the greatest ways to get it out there, I think, without radio jumping behind it. Your best bet is to go on the internet and hunt everyone down that you want to hear it, and I think it can be more personal than you know, than it seems at first. We, we’re Twitter. We run it.
35:37 We answer people. People always will. You know, I think it’s, you don’t want to speak to a corporation when you message a band, and that’s what most of it is now. You know, you go to MySpace, and they say, you know, we read your message. It’s not, it’s somebody being paid minimum wage sitting in an office, you know, reading it.
35:55 But I’d always want, I’m reading, I think, and replying. Yeah so, if someone came to you and said, we will give you a million quid, right? But you, we want you to record a cover of a certain song, and we want you to do it with this specific style. Would you guys do it? No, no.
36:15 I think, I think they laughed at it. Would you have done it 5 years ago? No, no, never. Yeah, I think, yeah, we make music that we want to make, and if, if that’s good enough, the labels want to sign us, then sign us. If, if you want us to make other music, I’m, find a band that’s making that music easier.
36:33 What about 2 million quid? It’s, I think it’s irrelevant, really. I’m just messing with you. It’s cuz when you talk about that, I just think about it from, like, our perspective, and, like, you know, what if someone came in and said, we want you to do this, but we’re going to edit it, and you have to wear a suit, and, like, we can’t swear, you have to do Taekwondo. Yeah, gosh, be horrible.
36:52 But I mean, I guess at the end of the day, you have to look at yourself in the mirror, right? And you have to be believing in what you do. Oh, yeah, you have to be, you have to answer to yourself, don’t you? What, what advice would you give to people that are either in the music business or thinking about getting into it, and they, they watch you guys, they listen to Welcome to London. They’re like, man, I’d love to be doing that.
37:11 What would you tell them to do, and what not to do? As for what not to do, there’s, there’s not really much wrong. You can’t, you can do if you’ve got a song, or you’re, you’re making a song. It’s, it’s important to believe in yourself and push it as much as you can, but you can’t really go wrong if you decide that that’s what you want to do. It’s always good to know what you’re doing.
37:30 So we spent a lot of time recording stuff, and we upped our equipment to levels where we finally thought, oh, we’ve got the right microphone to what we’re doing. It’s good to look in and know what you’re doing as for advice as to what to do, the internet again, it’s a great way to do it, but you just got to have a lot of faith in yourself. Yeah, the one that bugs me is, you get a lot of people say, I’d love to learn a music instrument, I’d love to, you know, but I don’t have time, and things you think, well, should do, just pick it up and play it when you want to.
37:58 Don’t, don’t pick it up and play it because you think, one day I’m going to have a number one single. Pick up and play it cuz you want to play it. You, I hate that f***ing excuse. I don’t have time. It’s bulls*** everyone’s got time to watch three hours of TV a day, right?
38:10 But they don’t have time to, like, yeah, yeah. So right that. So I mean, how do you, I mean, after, like, a long day of work and you come home and you know you’ve got to practice for five hours with, you know, with Edenites. Is that difficult to do sometimes, or do you just enjoy it that much? It’s too much fun to.
38:25 I think sometimes you’re tired, but as soon as you know I can be as tired and not in the mood as is possible, and I’ll see Terry, and it be, no, let’s do it. You know, it’s funny when you think, think of the typical musician, you think of, like, Jim Morrison, who’s like always drunk and hasn’t shouted in three days and forgot where he parked his car. But you know, like the successful musicians are also good businessmen at the end of the day. But I mean, how, how do those two coexist?
38:52 Cuz is that just a myth, that the musician is X? I think, think it is a myth, because I mean most people who into music, they like to enjoy themselves, whether it be with alcohol or other substances. They, they’re going to have a good time when they want one, but that’s the same as people who aren’t musicians. They’re going to do that as well. So you can kind of, you can enjoy yourself as much as you want, but if you start getting high all the time and drinking, you ain’t going to get nowhere, and you’re going to feel bad to yourself for, for letting yourself down.
39:18 So you kind of have to balance the head-ism with the pragmatism. Yeah, it’s something that you would naturally feel. I can’t do this all the time, and I can’t just be the businessman. So you, you, you, you’ll do it both as much as you can, and then, tag. I mean, well, we used to, with gigs, you, we, we’re serious before a gig.
39:35 We keep our drinking relatively low. Back in the day, we didn’t. I mean, I remember doing a gig back in the day, and we been called to go on stage, and I’m sent out to look for Terry and no one knows where he is, and I wander out, and he’s leaning on a car barely able to stand up and so we sort of dragged him inside and played the set. It was the best set we ever played, we think, so, we, the crowd, did, I don’t know. It’s cool.
39:59 Can you play while, while intoxicated? Does it get better to, is it like playing pool? Like you get great after the third drink, and then it goes downhill? Yeah, yeah, I think it’s the same with everything. You get a little bit better, cuz you get confident and you enjoy it a bit more, but then you go too far.
40:14 And was it like Jim Morrison? He was [expletive] in every performance he ever did, pretty much. Yeah. Or Janice JL used to drink a b bottle of Jack Daniels for every show. Even take it back further.
40:24 People like Dean Martin. I don’t think I ever seen a fight with Dean Martin without a glass of scotch in his hand. Do you think it was basically like a, a confidence prop, or a confidence boost? Do you think that’s why a lot of people do it? Like, a lot of performing artists take cocaine and stuff like that, because they’re just kind of under a lot of pressure, and they’re just nervous.
40:41 Why, I can imagine it helps. That, you know, if you, you make music videos and things like that, and you’re naturally, you’re going to be shown as being up when you’re on stage. You’re going to be this lively person, and you know, if you’re walking around and meeting people, and everyone wants to come up and talk to you, then you’re going to want to lift yourself up. Aren’t you? I think that’s where they start spiraling.
41:03 That control, really. Fair enough. Have you seen a musician perform where they were just completely out of their mind, and you were like, this is not good? Many times. Yeah, many times.
41:12 We’ve done a fair share of the Camden and gig circuit, and you see some pretty shocking things. How has the Camden circuit changed? I mean, in the last 10 years, or even the London music scene changed? Smoking bands killed it. Yeah, yeah.
41:26 Smoking, smoking. We did a gig, shut down P now. You know, it was a place called The Ordinance, and we did a gig there the week before the smoking band, and then a gig there the week after the smoking band, and a week before everybody’s enjoying it jumping around the whole time. The week afterwards, you get halfway through your set, you know, we were playing two, three hours I think. That night, halfway through the set, the whole pub emptied for people to go out for a cigarette.
41:54 The whole pub. So we put our guitars down and went out for cigarettes, and that can really kill business. It does. People want to stay at home and smoke or go somewhere they can’t smoke. Yeah, yeah.
42:04 It’s not even, I think it’s just cuz they can’t, they can’t do it there in the comfort, and if they don’t want to go outside, and that’s enough hassle for them to go, you know, what, let’s go to the shop and get our alcohol in there, and just sit in and watch London Real on the TV. I would have never thought that. And what about Camden? Has Camden changed significantly? You guys still gig there?
42:24 Yeah, it’s, I think, sold out a bit. It has sold out a bit now, from, from the way it used to be. It used to be this cool place you could go, and now it’s just this place which still can’t stand, you know? It’s like with the gigs as well, though. It’s all run through promotion companies now as well, so it’s, it’s a sewn-up scene, a son-up area, with like a production and a promotion company sort of almost behind it, making it what it is, and who’s playing and who’s doing what, not the people turning up and making it that, you know.
42:53 And you get things like, on a Wednesday night, they’re trying to charge five entry to get through the door, and this is just unrealistic. It’s like a theme park. I think it is. Yeah, it is. It’s like, come to Camden.
43:03 You can see the tattoo places. You can see the alternative music, which, and thetive people that all moved to London, or moved somewhere else, or moved to Enfield, or where has that moved? Well, Enfield wasn’t bad a couple years ago but what’s Enfield like? That’s where you guys are from, right? Yeah, what’s it like up there?
43:21 It’s, it’s quite quiet, cuz we’re, we’re bowled at the M25, where, we’re, the edge of London. Yeah, okay. Very, nor, yeah. But it has a pretty cool music scene, but most of the pubs, they, it’ll be a band on the weekend. There’s one pub that we actually play at, the old Bell in Enfield, that’s a great rock club, and it has live bands on a Friday, a Saturday, has a rock acoustic jam night on a Sunday.
43:45 You can’t go wrong with something like that. But that’s, that’s one. The rest of them are more sort of inclined to have, like, a, like cab acting, or something. Well, you used to have sort of five, six pubs in Enfield that did live music, and over the years they’ve fallen by the wayside, because, well, people start, they serve food now. A lot of the pubs don’t know this, way they’ve gone, because that’s where you make the money.
44:04 That’s crazy. Wow. You know what? What we’re going to do now is pretty much shoot. You guys do some acoustic stuff here.
44:11 We’re really looking forward to that. In the meantime, people want to see you. They can come to Hoxton Square, which is Friday the 13th. I’m going to be there and it’s the Underbelly, and that’s kind of, be kind of your Welcome to London, a release party really. Rel.
44:25 That’s cool and then on Monday, they go to iTunes, type in Edenites, for under a pound, they can have the single, the London theme song for the year 2012 and beyond. We’ll be there on the 13th of July right, if any of the fans want to come down. Yeah, if anybody wants to come down, we’ll be there. You guys are going on early, I think it’s 8 or 8:30, right? Just like the hot spot to get everyone in and to get the labels there.
44:45 That’s it. That’s the idea. Get the people from the industry there early, and then we can get rather drunk afterwards as well. I would have enjoyed the, you know, I wish you guys all the best. You guys got really good energy.
44:56 You’re really doing it for the music, and it shows. You know, I mean, that’s really weird, but that video you guys put out on YouTube was just you filming behind your personalities. Really come out, and you guys got a really good vibe, and it’s just like, I want more people to hear your song. That’s brilliant. I want what you want.
45:13 Awesome. Well, thanks for coming in. We’re going to be featuring your stuff we’ll put up on YouTube, and yeah, let us know how it goes. We come next time, next year, before you go to Glastonbury, stop by and remember the little people. Oh, of course.
45:26 They help get you there. We’ll get you backstage passes for Glastonbury, and groupies. He said that. That’s there, that’s unrecorded. That’s, that’s on.
45:34 Yeah, definitely. That’s awesome, and on Twitter, you are the Edenites, and we’re following them, and your website is, is it the Edenites. co.uk? Yeah, that’s the one. That’s awesome.
45:45 Guys, well, we wish you all the best. Brilliant, thank you very much for having us. Indeed. [music] [music] [music]
