Having formed just over a year ago, Caretaker have been a resounding success on the local scene and attracted serious record company interest after just their second gig. The first time I saw them was in May, supporting Fungus, and they blew me away with their lo-fi rock racket. Since then, they've been playing loads more gigs, and are improving with every one. Unassuming teenagers from Petersfield they may appear to be, but they know how to rock! They were also cool to interview too, and this chat took place after their fantastic set at he Aldershot WEC in October.
Names and instruments, please.
SEB: I am Seb and I play the bass.
JOHN: I'm John and I play guitar.
HARRY: I'm Harry and I'm the singer and I also play guitar.
CHRIS: I'm Chris and I play the drums.
How and when did you all meet and why did you decide to form a band?
HARRY: All at college. We were originally in a band before with an extra member under a different name and we were just doing covers. But he preferred punk music and so we went our separate ways. We only really started writing our own stuff in December ('98) so, um... it's just gone from there really.
CHRIS: We all formed a band because we like music.
SEB: It seemed 'cool'.
Can you remember a particular moment which inspired you to get into rock music?
HARRY: Before I went to college I was quite a teenybopper, so when I went to college I started getting into more underground music. That had an effect on me, I really wanted to play guitar and do that sort of music. I suppose it's the same for all of us. I mean Seb learnt to play the bass especially to be in the band which shows his commitment really...
SEB: ...punk rock!
Describe the band's sound.
SEB: Oooh, one that often causes controversy!
HARRY: We've been compared to many bands in local fanzines. We've been compared to @tomika, Therapy?, and Idlewild. None of us really see these comparisons. Listen to our music and you'll probably say quiet verses, very loud choruses, and attach whatever name you want to it really. We don't try and pigeonhole ourselves.
CHRIS: It's whatever people make of it. We are Caretaker.
How does your first demo sound to you now?
HARRY: Good and bad really, doesn't it? It's nice to hear it.
SEB: We're always messing about with the songs so much they change from day to day.
CHRIS: Our old demo tape sounds completely different to how we do now, apparently.
HARRY: The basic framework's the same though.
Have you improved as songwriters?
SEB: I think the problem with our songs is that Harry writes most of them. That's not a problem in itself, but we're not that musically inept so we just play them as best we can.
HARRY: Even when we play well you can see errors in our live performances. We're still a bit scrappy because we've only been together for under a year playing our own songs.
SEB: It's all about how much we enjoy it I think, that's what it is for me. Like I really enjoyed our gig tonight even if it wasn't that great.
HARRY: The important thing is that although we're not technically proficient on our instruments, we're okay. I think what we make up is quite interesting to listen to. When you hear these wanky guitar bands with a bloke like, wanking all over his fretboard, I think our stuff is so much better than that.
CHRIS: We have passion.
SEB: Exactly. Pure unadulterated passion!
I've heard rumours about you signing to both Fire and Deceptive. Is there any truth in them?
SEB: Well we were meant to sign to Fire records but apparently they went bankrupt and we got really pissed off with the guy... Harry:...dodgy delays with posting stuff through.
SEB: They were very shifty. But Deceptive have shown a bit of interest in us. They came to a gig of ours in London about a month ago.
HARRY: Tell him about Jamie from Scarfo as well.
SEB: Oh yeah. The other day, as Tim well knows, we went to see Uresei Yatsura and Fiji, and Fiji's frontman Jamie, who used to be in Scarfo, has now set up his own record label and I'd sent him a demo tape a while ago and anyway, when I saw him he told me he loved it. He thought it was great, so that was cool!
HARRY: We're attracting interest from various quarters, which I suppose is all we can do at the moment. We're not expecting anything to happen really fast. As long as people like us somewhere...
SEB: It'll happen when it'll happen.
HARRY: As Barney (local promoter) says, it'll take ages to get signed but it will happen.
What's the best thing about being in a band?
CHRIS: Performing live!
HARRY: Yeah, performing live definitely. The togetherness we get onstage. It's the thought that we've created this sound and we're all sort of playing along and it's our own little... thing. (laughs)
SEB: The best thing is when you're just doing something and you get a tune in your head and you wonder what that tune is and then you realise it's one of your own tunes. It's a brilliant feeling, it's just so cool.
CHRIS: And also, the other day, I was in an IT lesson and I didn't know these people because I've just started new at South Downs college and these people asked whether I was going to the Symposium gig (in Portsmouth) and I said yeah, our band's supporting them, and they were really impressed. And I made some new friends, which is another good thing.
How important is image in Caretaker?
SEB: We all keep our hair well groomed (laughs)... except for me.
HARRY: It's become more of an issue recently. In the past we looked a bit static on stage and like, no banter with the crowd, we were just playing our songs and that's it, but now, as you will have seen tonight, we put more into it. I don't know whether it comes across well or not, but I think it shows we're getting into it more.
JOHN: I think it's the sound that's actually more important, guys.
SEB: Yeah, fashion-wise it doesn't matter at all, we are who we are. It's how we dress normally.
How successful can you see yourselves becoming?
SEB: Oooh, number one in the album charts, on Top Of The Pops every week (laughs)... or not.
HARRY: We've probably had a relative degree of success already if you look at who we've supported; Ligament, Billy Mahonie, Fungus, Nojahoda and Symposium next week.
SEB: I mean, we've only been going like, six months...
HARRY: Well, since December so it's about ten.
SEB: Okay, about ten months. It'll never be chart success, but hopefully success that is enough to live on.
HARRY: We're hoping it's going to be like where Idlewild are at now. Their rise has been astronomical, really. Where they're at now is where we'd like to be. It sounds like a starry-eyed thing I know, but all of us really love music and that's the sort of thing that we want to do. If we make a living off it, then that's even better!
Would you have any loyalty to indie labels over majors?
HARRY: We'd like to bear it in mind wouldn't we? At the end of the day though, if only Mushroom and Parlophone are offering us a deal and nobody else is, I guess we'll have to take it.
JOHN: A lot of independent labels are owned by major labels anyway.
Do you think being young is a major advantage?
HARRY: Yes, because we've got time on our side, but we're not very good at the moment. (laughs)
SEB: In the past I've noticed in the music press that being young can be a bit of a disadvantage because you get loads of piss-ribbing. There are some bands who will always be like, seventeen like Silverchair and the Llama Farmers.
HARRY: We've got plenty of time to get it right I suppose.
What's the most rock 'n' roll thing you've ever done?
CHRIS: Probably tonight when I jumped on Harry!
HARRY: I dunno, Chris always breaks drums sticks which shows how heavy he's getting into it.
CHRIS: I've only started doing that recently actually. For our first three gigs I didn't break drumsticks and then suddenly we started getting weird and mental.
SEB: I think the most rock 'n' roll moment has to go to Harry in our first gig. We have a particular line in one of our songs that goes 'scared, scared, I'm fucking lonely', but because Harry's auntie was there, he would not swear in front of her and so he changed the words to 'scared, scared, I think I'm lonely'. That was definitely punk rock!
HARRY: That comes under the consideration towards relatives section! I think our live show is much more energetic now. I'm not sure if it's very necessary, but we enjoy it!
SEB: Can I say that Harry is getting a lot more confident in his singing as well.
To tie in with the millennium, what do you think has been the best decade ever for music?
HARRY: All our favourite bands are from the nineties and it's because we're young that we haven't yet broadened our musical horizons.
CHRIS: We've been described as early seventies.
HARRY: I really like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, so the seventies are okay.
SEB: The eighties were shit.
But what about the Pixies, Sonic Youth...
SEB: Oh yeah, I'll give you that! And 'Bleach' by Nirvana came out in 1989 as well.
What do you think of the local scene?
CHRIS: We love Dreyfuss! Yeah!
SEB: I think that in the local scene I've discovered more bands than I have through Radio One or anything like that. It's where all the talent is.
HARRY: Fourth Quartet got John Peel play didn't they? But you have to get out and the Aldershot West End Centre is a brilliant venue, there's so much going on almost every week.
JOHN: There's small bands and big bands. We need more venues like this I reckon.
HARRY: If a group of friends are bored, they should go to a local venue and check out the local bands.
What have you got coming up in the next few months?
SEB: We've got a gig with Symposium which'll be pretty major because we'll be playing in front of four hundred and fifty people. That will be cool, just being seen by so many people.
HARRY: We're hopefully going to try and get into a studio to record a four track EP with Woolsey, ex of Supermodel. It's just when he can fit us in and when we're properly rehearsed to do it... hopefully before Christmas.
JOHN: We've got a gig with Side Parting as well.
HARRY: (laughs)... slightly less prestigious!
SEB: One to stick in your diary. The CD is not really about sales or making loads of money out of it, it's about giving it to record companies and stuff. It's just to let people know we exist. People don't seem to take a demo tape as seriously.
HARRY: It's also a sense of achievement that we've got a CD that you can play in a CD player.
Finally, give me a Caretaker exclusive.
SEB: John's gay! (laughs) And we're metal as well. It's exclusive!
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Issue 5 Winter 2000 © Tim Bragger