360 Degree Music began working with Inwits in September 2009, and the band have been busy writing and rehearsing ever since, breaking only to play the odd show, with a particular highlight being their stunning performance at the Stroll On Christmas Party in December.
On March 28th they head off to Edinburgh to play their biggest gig yet, supporting Idlewild in the 1500 capacity HMV Picturehouse. This gig is actually just one part of the Haddow Festival taking place in venues all over the city on the day, and promises to be a humdinger!
We caught up with the lads for a chat prior to this momentous occasion:
Q1: Where did you get the name from?
Ah well if we were to tell you too much it might defeat the object of its meaning. Our inner wit chose it really. Inwit is a word that’s fallen out of use in the English Language over thousands of years so it’s both old and new – a lot like our musical influences. A certain Irish novelist resurrects it in his novel Ulysses, quite possibly the greatest artistic statement of the last century. The plan is for our record to achieve that status for this one!
Q2: What are you currently up to, and what are your plans and goals for 2010?
Currently shooting the breeze, but the breeze has been colder than usual of late so also making a point of keeping warm in the rehearsal room and learning a few new chords. We’re now on C#m… Our plan and goal and dream will always be to make great music, then release it and hopefully play it to more people. The exciting thing about 2010 is we can actually realise that dream this year, so I guess that’s the first plan and goal. From there we just want to play our instruments more and more till we need a breather.
Q3: Tell us about the four guys in the bands?
Buskers. Schemers. Full-Time Dreamers. The sum is most definitely greater than its parts.
Q4: Who are your influences, musical and otherwise?
Anything or Anyone with Soul. It’s getting harder to find.
Q5: Jazz or Electro?
Both are extremely exciting and there’s nothing like a dirty electro beat to get down to. But programmed beats are one thing, “The Freedom Rider” by Art Blakey is quite another. Jazz was, is, and always will be the coolest genre of music known to man. That’s coming from a guitar band. Socially it’s as important to black America as the blues (and we love the blues), musically it pisses all over most things with still a fair bit left in the tank. Finally, and most importantly, it’s unquestionably the sexiest sound going. Getting sexy to a jazz groove takes the word living to a whole new level. Miles Davis over Little Boots any day.
Q6: England or somewhere else?
England is where we’re from, and is obviously important to us. As an English band you can’t help but inject an element of Englishness into the music you make, especially with the rich musical history Englishness entails, particularly over the last fifty years. We’re all products of our time and place so obviously our songs brim with references to London, because that’s our experience. But at the same time we’re all citizens of the world and there’s much to see! James Joyce wrote masterpieces about his homeland from Paris, Zurich and Trieste. We want to be on stage playing music wherever that stage is. There’s six and a half billion people scattered around this globe and we want to play to as many of them as possible, be they in England or indeed somewhere else.
Q7: On your MySpace page, you claim that ‘attitude breeds creation’. How so?
Attitude channeled in the right manner breeds creation, those who can appreciate that whatever they’re doing in their own life will understand the meaning of that statement. Those who can’t, well essentially their the type who channel their attitude into hitting people with bottles on a Friday night, and spend the majority of their adult lives doing coke in the toilet of the same pub they’ve been drinking in since they were sixteen. We stopped worrying about those people a long time ago.
We don’t care he supports Tottenham. Jokes Dave! He’s a good lad from the north side of town with an eye for a garment and an ear for a melody. He and his sidekick Michael Warren have hit on a type of melancholia most of these idiot fashionista bands would remove the entire stitching of their skinniest pair of jeans for.
Q9: Is there ever anything good on the telly? If so, what?
Depends what you’re into. In fairness though some of the documentaries that have hit the small screen in the last few months have been nothing short of superb. Berlin, Making of Modern Britain, The Bible and How Earth Made Us to name but a few. It’s been a while now since it finished but Bruce Parry’s Amazon showed us all what traveling should be about. (No offence to the millions of Brits on tour in Australia). James reckons Gordon Ramsey puts on a good show whatever anyone says about his wrinkles or extra-marital activities, where as Joseph is more of a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall man! But you can’t beat the political parlance of This Week with the unholy triumvirate of Andrew Neil, Dianne Abbot and Michael Portillo late of a Thursday night.
Q10: Name five great movies.
Citizen Kane - Stonewall classic.
Un Prophet – French gangster masterpiece currently up for an Oscar.
The Big Lebowski - Comedy genius from the Coen Brothers.
Apocalypse Now – Vietnam epic based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness.
The Last Waltz – Swansong of The Band, with greats like Dylan, Van Morrison, Dr. John, Clapton…
It seems to me that there are too many people/companies running new online – music related – sites that purport to help bands gain action. Aren’t these sites just a pain and a hindrance?
Don’t they just eat up your time and drag you away from doing something more productive?
I suggest they are mostly a waste of time and should be avoided.
How does it go….
“Why don’t you sign up to our great new site (run for your gain only) and upload your music, maybe a video or two, fill in a biog and away you go”
Also called the ‘Give Us Your Content For Free’ proposition.
Of course having an online presence is totally necessary, but choose wisely where you sign up and who you give your content to. Bear in mind the more sites you have the more sites you’ll have to manage and keep up to date. A site that is stale with old with out-of-date content will give the viewer the impression that nothing is happening.
So where do you go from here…
Your own artist/label website: Definitely. Own your data and respect your subscribers. MySpace: Having a presence on MySpace is pretty much a given…. for now anyway. Blogging: Definitely. Blogger, Wordpress etc. Twitter: Yes. Easy to post and relay people back to your own site. YouTube: A no brainer.
After the above, for me, it all gets blurred and unclear. Last FM, Jango etc. I’m not saying the above is it – the list to end all lists - I’m just saying… You can have too much of a good thing, can’t you?
I’d love to hear if anyone has any comments or thoughts or has any other suggestions.
Ten years ago we were all wondering what would happen when ‘99 turned into ‘00. Back then, the mp3 format was still in short pants as was Daniel Radcliffe; Jedward were in nappies and Simon Cowell hadn’t yet adopted his (now famous) square-headed, egomaniacal, antichrist persona and the mad menace we call the media thought the world would end at midnight. Rational people, (myself included) just partied hard to the sound of Prince, but we woke, gingerly to the syrupy sound of Westlife – who were having some kind of dream and seasoning their sons or something – if my memory serves me well.
Anyway, it is totally feasible that many of you reading this now, were in bed (or propped up in a corner by your parents) for the passing of the last decade. It is also quite possible that music wasn’t on your radar at all then and you were still waiting for that epoch-making moment in your lives when some righteous tune hit you between the ears and you traveled (pre-oyster) and bought your first CD single (pre-iPod) in Virgin records (pre-retail meltdown)
So, jump ten years and say goodbye to the noughties and hello to the teenies (or whatever)
Now it’s over to you. You are ten years older and the music industry is going to hell in a hand basket – a Guy Hands basket even.
Music is being run by odd folk don’cha know – Syco Cowell is in the NME calling that RATM Facebook campaign cynical, Hands of EMI is in the Guardian wingeing on about bankers and the oddest of all, WAG Cole and the lesser Minogue are both in demand as music guru’s! Fuck me, you couldn’t make it up.
Maurice Oberstein must be turning in his grave.
The majors and their allies are sucking every digital start-up up, like a Dyson powered cancerous locust but this decade it’s time to get the music back. Let’s get Indie back to the Indies and I am talking about independent music. NB Florence and The Machine ain’t an indie band no matter how much Chris Moyles thinks so.
Bad news is it isn’t going to be easy, and it’s pretty much up to you to drive you. Yes you, the Musical Yoof of 2day.
Here are eight revolution resolutions to get you started in 2010 if you fancy.
1. Define your goals and map them out as step-by-step objectives.
Always under-promise and over-deliver.
2. Be realistic.
If you want a booking agent, you’ll need to do much more than want a booking agent.
After all they can have any band or artist they want, right. You need to make your own story.
3. Don’t get hung up on radio play.
There are no (or very few) tastemakers on radio anymore. Radio only wants to be connected with hits. They want to feel they are championing tomorrow’s number one tunes and not a great piece of ‘un-majored’ music, sorry. Just put yourself in a radio controllers shoes. He/she is thinking about his/her wages, advertisers, corporate sponsors and ego. I’m not sure in what order though.
4. Don’t get obsessed with being in the NME.
Again, advertisers have a huge amount of sway with the printed and online media. When there is a buzz around you they’ll all want to know and write about you. They just don’t want to stick their necks out.
5. Do get in tune with your fans at gigs…
Word of mouth is very effective and it most certainly shouldn’t be underestimated. So when you do a gig make sure the audience knows who you are. Sell CD’s, give away free music, a card or a postcard with your email address or mailing address, a connection in some way. It might sound crap, but don’t be afraid to be a traveling salesman, but do it with belief.
6. … and online.
Inform and connect through your website and your blog as well as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace.
Don’t take on too many social networks – it ain’t your data – make your choice and just do the ones you choose well, but make sure you are always driving traffic back to YOUR OWN website.
Remember, promotion and marketing is like washing, you need to do it daily and thoroughly and not sporadically.
7. Develop your songs.
Be critical. Dump the bad ones and refine the good ones and be tight on the ones in your set.
8. For fuck sake get out there.
If the furthest you travel to play and pick up fans is the Dublin Castle in Camden shame on you – unless you live in Dublin that is.
Beg, borrow or steal a car – target places you can drive back to that night – use ‘the music lover’ Rupert’s MySpace site and connect with bands who have a following in that area. Bingo.
Return the favour for those bands and arrange a gig in your area. It’s a Fuckin’ Love-in!!!!!!!!.
BIG Question: Who is going to make your band truly great and get you where you rightly belong?
Answer below…
First, please go though this seven-question checklist and as long as you answer yes to all of them you’ll be fine.
Question 1: Do you have good songs?
Including…
Time to rehearse those good songs (regularly)
Time to book gigs, (and not just in the street you live) get to those gigs and play those good songs live.
Question 2: Can you communicate well?
Here is a small sample of people who you may need to communicate well with. Please feel free to make notes.
The band; People who like the band; People who are helping the band; Friends of the band; Fans of the band; Manager of the band; Promoters, and on the periphery a vast array of people who can assist the band to complete this questionnaire.
Question 3: Do you collectively have chemistry – do all of the members of a band add up to a giant great mass of greatness?
As Spock said “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”
Translated. If you aren’t all pulling one way, for the collective good and looking after each other, with respect you are fucked!
Question 4: Do you have good looks and style?
Including, but in no particular order, good hair, Twitter fingers, Blog-ability, a love of fried chicken and cheap lager, big moustache (you know who you are!), sex appeal, charisma and a vacant stare.
Question 5: Do you have a powerful desire?
Also phrased as, how bad do you want it?
Including… (a) Will you sleep in a van, telephone box or friendly police cell if you need to?
(b) Can you sponge off your girlfriends, for as long as they’ll have you and then move on to fried chicken in another part of town?
(c) Can you drop everything for an opportunity?
(d) Can you dig deep when you need to?
Question 6: Are you happy to…
Do a gig, then give out flyers with your web address on or tell someone to sign up to your mailing list, sell a CD or a 7″, stick a sticker in places you shouldn’t stick a sticker and finally talk to people about your question 1’s. If you are lucky, later you’ll get to show off your question 5, but don’t piss the fans off along the way.
You need them more than they need you and you never know, one of them might turn into a 5b.
Question 7: Do you understand facts?
E.g. iTunes has more than 10,000,000 tracks within it’s walls. Most of which don’t even sell one copy.
Great to be there but if SJ decides to dump music you’re gone.
MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch – yes that old music lover.
Use it please do, but don’t rely on it solely because if Newscorp decides to dump you you is dumped.
Facebook is owned by some bloke/corporation who pretends he listens.
See MySpace.
Xfactor is not about music.
Power Rangers.
Bread has loads of salt in it.
Toast is good…..crumpets are better.
BIG Answer: Obviously it’s you. Right?
This is not meant to be a lecture, although I guess it could read like one. The truth is there is so much competition out there that you just have to do more, be better than and be more flexible and creative than the rest.
You need to make your own story before anyone will read you.
Write, get better, play, write, get better, play, communicate, get up as early as possible, email people, tell them how good you are, ask them for opportunities, drop the cunts that use you, dump the dodgy promoters and then start again.
Please do:
Get a web domain of your own and collect data. Be nice to that data.
Use MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the other social networking sites smartly while they are there because sure enough they’ll fuck you in the end.
I knew it would happen one day – Two of my greatest passions would collide!
I might quickly add that I’m not terribly good at either of them – playing the guitar and fooling around with the stock market that is, but I love them both dearly.
I remember, when I was a kid, struggling with F Major for a year and more recently managing to successfully lose more money than even those dumb assed bankers in the credit crunch.
But I’m still here – playing and listening to music, trying to work out if oil will go lower or higher, surfing lame financial pages for tips along with MySpace for new music and Twitter for Tweets and then I came across this.
I remember reading an interview with Kenny Rogers where he said one day he just knew how to write great songs. It came to him in a flash – so to speak. He’d discovered the theory.
