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Written by Vince Pettit | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 |
Another band thats been on our cards to interview for ages is The Holloways! I was joined by Alfie, Rob, Dave outside the Barfly in Camden just after their gig at the XFM X-Posure gig.
Bryn wasn’t around…it seems he had gone off on some random mission to West London as soon as they had come off stage! also watch out for a cameo appearence in this interview from Larrikin Love’s Ed! Enjoy….
When were the Holloways formed?
Rob: October nineteen ninety….er… *laughter as realises he’s completely wrong* 2004
How did you get together, did you know each other or…
Alfie: No it was really random I met Bryn at a party in Holloway and then he randomly moved in over the road a week later and I liked him and I said I’m forming a band and I’ll teach you the bass and he was like, alright, so we’d then got bass and went down Nambucca On that Sunday, Rob was playing some songs and we liked him and we said do you want to have a jam and we let him in and Rob did a couple of songs acoustic, Dave was there and he was like you guys are really good I wanna be your drummer and we had a jam two days later and that was it we were formed and it all happened really quick in Holloway and that’s why we call ourselves The Holloways.
Dave: And plus Holloway’s the coolest place in the world, that’s true
What’s your favourite Gig so far?
All: Frog, yeah Frog
Dave: It was awesome. It was great, he did stack it *nodding towards Alfie*. Not bad.
Alfie: I fell over
Rob: Yeah and I jumped on him to make it worse
Dave: Rob did a crowd surf
Alfie: We’ve been going out in Frog for ages like that A year ago when we like first started getting together it was like we envisaged playing there and there was like a load of our mates were there and it was a great atmosphere and really good fun and when you danced and fell over it was fun.
Dave: It was great
Worst gig
Alfie: It was in Old Street in that old strip joint,
Rob: Oh what the spread eagle
Alfie: yeah the spread eagle, horrible, really crap sound system, really small stage
Dave: Crap drum kit I was using,
Alfie: everything kept breaking. It was just horrible.
Rob: It was like one of those gigs where you have a sound check at three in the afternoon
Dave (in the background): ugly girls
Rob: and then you play at ten so you sit around Shoreditch drinking.
Dave: You can’t stop, its like, have another beer, have another beer, go on stage and like what’s going on
Alfie: I wasn’t drunk
What’s your favourite song to play?
Alfie: Favourite song to play, it changes
Rob: Yeah it does, Two Left Feet, I’ve been liking that word a while
Alfie: I’ve been liking Two Left Feet quite a lot or a while
Dave: I like playing Reinvent myself. I get to beat up, beat up the kit, properly smack it!
Alfie: Generator’s a lot of fun ’cause there’s always a lift in the crowd, if someone knows that song well like you automatically get a lift if the audience get something they know, they always sing along a bit, yeah exactly.
Rob: I like playing Sound of the Sunshine, That’s the one with the violin just to get a bit of variety in it and its fun to sing
Dave: And you like doing your little solo bit, And I show off, showing off’s quite good though I like the bow on the guitar
Rob: What spontaneous? With the bow
Dave: The bow with the guitar
Alfie: We’ve been joined by Ed from Larrikin Love.
Ed: Fucking Holloways, So what, you going to give me thirty quid or what?
Dave: Oh I dunno, I could…
Alfie: We’re trying to do an interview here
Ed: Oh sorry, shit. And while you’re on tape thirty quid or you’re not having it, thirty quid or that’s it.
Alfie: The Holloways then proceed to have a big scrap and then nail Ed big time
Ed: Bollocks, so it’s on me versus ten
What’s it for?
The Dish online music magazine
Ed: Cool
Alfie: Sorry, go on
How did tonight go?
Rob: Well we were first on so, we’re not used to playing so early in the day
Must be a bit of a weird one to play?
Alfie: I really enjoyed it because I had my Saturday morning TV mood on and that’s one of my favourite moods. It’s like Saturday mornings; it’s like yeah its Saturday.
Rob: You didn’t go out though you weren’t out last night
Alfie: Yeah I know I was entertaining a young lady last night
Rob: We were DJing at Koko until like three in the morning, and drinking really loads
Alfie: Yeah I took a night off
Dave: Drinking too much Jack Daniels
It’s evil stuff, don’t touch it. Don’t touch it kids Jack Daniels is bad for you.
Rob: Yeah it is
Alfie: Lime and water
I enjoyed that, its really good fun
*Hooting and flashy Mercedes comes flying around the corner*
Alfie: Shut Up, Fucking suit….Jesus Christ
I reckon this might have to go on line as an audio file
*Laughter*
Dave: Us shouting at people
*More Laughter*
What else have you got lined up for the year so far?
Alfie: Loads,
Dave: touring basically
The next single comes out in March, the 20th
Alfie: Happiness and Penniless
Dave: Happiness and Penniless, buy it kids, sensible records lets go
And yeah it’s just touring. Yes lots of touring, we’ve just done our first tour and we fucking loved it
Alfie: yeah we’ve had such a good laugh
Dave: Yeah getting out of here going up and down the country just meeting loads of cool kids, So that’s what we’ve got planned, touring and record an album
Alfie: We’re in negotiations over some contracts at the moment and our lawyers looking at it and all that business so hopefully we will be like doing like proper stuff getting everything recorded and released properly so just waiting for our lawyer to make our percentages a little bit more
Rob: We’ll still be down in Holloway won’t we
Alfie (Shouting): Edward I love you
Rob: We won’t be moving out or anything like that
Alfie: Yeah touring, negotiating with big bits of paper and writing
Dave: Writing
Alfie: Yeah we’re writing in the van, we nicked this guitar from an unnamed venue
Dave: no we didn’t
Alfie: in an unnamed city
Dave: no we didn’t
Alfie: Alright we found the guitar
Rob: We obtained the guitar
Dave: We found the guitar, it was in our van when we got back in the van, it was like Wow look at this guitar, quite a nice little guitar that is
Alfie: We are just borrowing it,
Dave: we are going to return it next time we go to that unknown venue we shall put it back where we found it
Alfie: Yeah we’ve written some songs in the back of the van all about Tracy Myspace this girl who I think is quite pretty but
Rob: What, what you on about it’s a dog
Dave: Tracy Myspace is the most minging girl you’ll ever see
Alfie: Hey, she’s got a bit of a Trisha scrapeback and some big golden earrings,
Dave: Ginger hair
Alfie: She’s got nude pics online
Rob: Don’t’ don’t put this
Alfie: We’re writing another song
Dave: There’s probably loads of girls called Tracy surely
Alfie: Anyway
Rob: Anyway
Dave: Myspace we love Myspace
Alfie: It is handy
Dave: It’s a very handy tool,
Alfie: Online community, and all the girls are pretty on Myspace, It’s amazing
Dave: That’s because they choose what pictures go on, that’s why
Any gigs coming up you are looking forward to more than others?
Alfie: Leeds because every time we go to Leeds its good fun, it’s a really cool city
We like Leeds and me and Dave found out there’s lots of nice girls there
Dave: Lucky Lucky Leeds
Alfie: Tonight should be good Koko because we’ve had two gigs there so far and everything keeps breaking every time we’ve played Koko
Dave: It’s kinda cursed, every time we’ve played Koko our amps and shit break, not me obviously, I’m fine. I’m just holding it all together; these 2 keep fucking up all over the show.
Alfie: Its not us things keep breaking, what can you do
Rob: Well yeah we believe in 3rd time lucky so tonight we’ll be alright
Dave: We’ve put new batteries in the peddles, tested all the leads
Rob: I did have a dream about it last night that…i don’t wanna say
Dave: DON’T SAY!
Alfie: Crikey…
Dave: Did it involve girls?
Yeah was it about tonight or…
Dave: Or was it was about Alfie
Alfie: Rob…dirty boy
Rob: It’ll be good tonight
What are your influences?
Dave: Holloway road!
Rob: Punk rock reggae folk
Alfie: Everything like that, me and rob are big time into Eddie Cochran, and all the like first stuff
Dave: Hank Williams is our favourite at the moment #I saw the light# that’s a great song
Alfie: Everything smiths, supergrass, smashing pumpkins, REM, even
Dave: can of craze
Alfie: anything melodic…
Dave: These guys don’t like can of craze I can’t work it out….do you like can of craze?
I don’t think I’ve heard any of their stuff…
Dave: Can of craze they’re great, it’s kinda like Americana easy listening, its good, its like dad-rock
Alfie: People always compare us to like Clash, squeeze, we haven’t even got any squeeze
Rob: Dexy’s midnight runners
Dave: You do look a bit Dexy’s though
Rob: He was the Dexy
Alfie: I’m a Dexy
Dave: You’re both a bit Dexy
Alfie: And you’re desperate Dan
Dave: I’m the sexy
Alfie: I mean the main influence is the things we see living around here, there what make the songs and then musically, anything melodic with guitars in really
Any particular band you’d like to support?
Rob: I’d like to support the Futureheads, seen them a couple of times and really enjoyed their shows, Maximo Park
Dave: We’re doing the young knives tour they’re cool
Alfie: Is that confirmed
Dave: Yes that’s confirmed, we ARE on the Young Knives tour
Rob: I don’t want to support larrikin love, ‘cause they’ll make me play violin for them and I’ll actually die
Dave: Rob has to play 2 gigs in one night
Rob: 2 gigs in the barfly is not wise
Dave: we gonna do another gig tonight, so that’s 3 gigs in one day rob, see he’s the hardest working Holloway. Rob is the hardest working Holloway
Alfie: that’s a lie
Dave: its not, he’s the hardest working Holloway
Rob: and the most talented
Alfie: that’s also a lie
Dave: and the prettiest
Rob: and the youngest
Alfie: and the most liar-ist
Dave: Liar-ist!? That’s not a word man
Alfie: it is….I just invented it
Dave: really? Safe! Wow! Put that in the dictionary
Alfie: Next year it’ll be there…2007
Is there any festivals or anything lined up?
Alfie: Our booking agency says so…
Rob: Reading, wanna do one in Japan
Supposed to be quite a big scene out there in Japan isn’t it?
Dave: Yeah its good, you can sell a lot of records out there.
Apparently it’s the second biggest seller or something?
Dave: It is yeah, there is a big market, plus it s fun
Alfie: People have already been buying our records in Japan, we’ve had like a distributor over there that wants to release a 10 song compilation of ours, and we’ve had quite a few sales in random places like Italy, Spain
Rob: We wanna get out there really, wanna go round these countries and travel around a bit, at the moment its just England
Alfie: Girls….
Rob: Wanna go to Scandinavia
Dave: …not Finland though…I don’t like Finland
Rob: You can’t say that!!
Dave: It sounds like they’re talking backwards underwater!
*Dave does random Finnish impression*
Alfie: That’s Chewbacca isn’t it?
Dave: It sounds like they’re sorta talking inwards rather than outwards, they sorta suck there words in…
Alfie: I like the fins
Dave: I’m not saying that I don’t like Finnish people; I don’t like their voices…
Alfie: I like Finnish people, Dave likes fattish people don’t ya, ah sorry
Dave: Hang on a minute who likes fat people?
Rob: You do *Pointing to Alfie*
Alfie: Oh shut up
Dave: We call him Ahab
Alfie: She was cool, she was a little bit large but she was cool
Dave: Little bit large!?
Alfie: I felt like I was in Carry On and pulling Hattie jakes, and thought that’s really cool, your just jealous ‘cause you weren’t in a Carry On film and I was!
Dave: Anything else?
That’s all I can think of at the moment
Dave: That’s all you can think of!? Shall we just make stuff up?
Alfie: Well we have, we been talking out of our arses aint we? Sorry we have been talking absolute bollocks.
Dave: We gotta go play another show…we gotta go!
Alfie: Have a look on, we got a website holloways.tk and ermm myspace.com/theholloways and you can download some songs
Rob: Come see us! We’ll be near you soon I’m sure..we got a lot of touring coming up
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