Noah Has Ideas

The Hard Lessons – “The Arms Forest” from The Hard Lessons on Vimeo.

To Nicole from Tyler Gatlin on Vimeo.

This is a video Tyler made for lady friend Nicole all the way in Seattle. This relationship will probably turn into competition now, and he set the bar pretty high. She might need to get Johnny Depp to beat him, or maybe even SHIRTLESS Johnny Depp…double win.

"You couldn't make me talk, fire couldn't make me talk...."

I have certain music kicks, these kicks will last months at a time. Most music kicks will correlate with the season and the changing weather. More “up beat” music to be the soundtrack for the spring leading into summer. Heartier music shake the leaves off the trees and taunt the skies to bring the snow. One of these bands that help invite the changing seasons is one of my favorites, Bear Vs. Shark. This great band hails from Highland, Michigan, so I cannot help but feel connected to a band that goes through the same things I do, at least geographically speaking. What is more important, is how the music speaks to the audience, how it really grabs you. Only certain bands have what it takes to produce music that can ride down your spine. Connecting memories, feelings, passions, love, friends, anything to what you are hearing at that moment, and Bear Vs. Shark does just that. Another impeccable trait of this band is to allow the listener to day dream, to go from being in a car or room listening to the outrageous rhythms. To a field, running with a battle ax to take out a redcoat in the name of a free country separated from tyranny (or is that just me?). What a person has to realize is the music is just a front, a front from what it’s really trying to do, summon an emotion from the listener. That is why I tap my feet, that’s why I sing in my car and tap the steering wheel, or go all out air drum (or is that just me?). These are all emotional responses, triggered by the music you listen to, the music forces me to react and adapt memories and feelings to it, my music is personal. I say I listen to good music because good music is the type that evokes feeling. Bear Vs. Shark does just that, they push out feelings in the form of flashbacks, dancing, and for the time being, making me love the cold state I reside. __Tracks to start out with- “Catamaran” and “Ma Jolie”.
Thanks for reading.
Noah.

I’m currently working on My Top Ten List for movies, and music. This is something we all talk about and say, but what does it actually look like?
MORE TO COME. BOOM!

Apparently  it is going to be a short movie, that maybe turned into a feature about this robot, who is a murderer.

Creepy, right?

Noah.

( The tagline is: “Soon every house will have a robot helper. Don’t worry, your kids are perfectly safe.” )

Go get this album.

Noah- So where are you guys from?
Jamie-We all live in Oxford, which is a fairly small place laying in the
south of England. It is possibly the most handy place to be for us as
a band due to it’s location; it is only 90 minutes from Birmingham and
London, and you can get to most places in England with relative ease.
We are all happy here for the time being and the city has some
wonderful architecture. Originally, Stu is from North Wales, Tim and
Chris are from a place named Sutton Coldfield and I (Jamie) am (is)
from Oxfordshire so has spent his whole life near to Oxford.

N-How did the band get started?
J-Stu started this band at University after being bored and generally
fed up with daytime television. Tim joined shortly after followed by
Chris who took over drum duties a year or so later. Jamie was the
final member to join as a replacement for Dan Adams (who recorded
Animals with the band).

N-How did you come up with the name?
J-A friend of Stu’s wrote a letter to his girlfriend about an incident in
Grimsby (where he was from), he’d witnessed some heartless acts by locals, one
being someone throwing a brick at a bus and the last line was ‘…this
town needs guns.’ Stu thought it was a decent name and with nothing
else on the table at the time, used it and it kind of stuck. We get some funny looks by people when we tell them the name and one middle aged woman even wrote to her local paper trying to get a show cancelled in her home town, then again she was probably a busy body and I feel that she kind of missed the point somewhat. Also her favourite band was the
grindcore outfit ANAL CUNT, so she had no legs to stand on! But some
people do take it the wrong way and it sometimes makes us a little
embarrassed when say an old guy asks what the name of our band is, so
we say it quick and then try and get out of that situation. This is
probably a bit of an exaggeration! But it makes for interesting
reading.

N-What are some of your musical influences? We all listen to
J-different things. Primarily it is American indie music for us all,
which is why it works, we all have a fairly similar interest in
certain bands and scenes, for instance we all enjoy bands from ’90s
Chicago. But then it varies and we all go off in different directions
of interest. We can be influenced by any number of bands at any
specific time, but American bands seem to be omnipresent. We are
particularly all fans of Make Believe and Joan Of Arc. Though I
(Jamie) like folk music like A.A. Bondy who used to be in the grunge
band Verbena. Chris is a Venetian Snares fan, and we all like The
Lemonheads. Tom Petty is also pretty rad.

N- What are you guys listening to right now?
J-At this moment in time Noyes is playing on my iTunes. I can’t speak
for the others.

N- You guys have been pegged as an intelligent rock band, or (math
rock), do you agree with this?
J-Of course, we use time signatures and polyrhythms to keep us happy, as it is a great thing to stretch ourselves musically and it also
broadens our minds and keeps us on our toes. The ideas and parts we
come up with in practice keep things fresh. We are currently writing
new material and there are a lot of interesting sections but this time
it seems to be less imbued with timing changes, this said the songs
are somehow harder to play, which is funny; it has been fun but we are
all ending up with achining forearms. But we all are very excited by
the new material, however playing a show of all new songs we will have
to be physically and mentally fit, otherwise it may just all turn into
JELLOOO.

N- Do you guys hope to come and tour the States, or have you in the past?
J-We are currently planning a tour of the East Coast of America and some
dates are in Canada too. We are pretty stoked about this as have
always wanted to go and play some shows in the US. We will be playing
with Love Of Everything who we played with in the UK. So it will be
great to hang out with those guys again. The big thing is that when
you live in such a small place like England, America just seems
colossal in comparison and therefore massively daunting. Also people
have been like: ‘WEST COAST, COME TO THE WEST COAST’ but that is
pretty hard as we have two weeks designated to this tour. It makes me
laugh because we say we’re playing in the UK, then people say ‘Come to
the US’, we say we’re playing in the US and people are like ‘Come to
Australia’, it could go on and on until we are playing shows on
Jupiter, touring the moons, though we may need space suits and we
don’t have a space ship, though I am saving for one.

N- What do you guys love about England?
J-Well it is where we spend a majority of our time, and I am a firm
believer that you should respect where you are from, treat people
well, treat the environment well, be helpful to less fortunate people.
So of course, I am always happy when people share the same love of
their surroundings. Sometimes it is disheartening when others
disregard this and don’t respect stuff. But generally it is great
having all different types of weather, the countryside is great too.
Scotland, Ireland and Wales are all beautiful places too and we like
playing in those countries too.

N- Where is your favorite place to go in Europe?
J-We have been to Germany a couple of times now and there are some great cities there, like Hamburg and Berlin. Also Paris is pretty wonderful,
we played to around 300 people there which was the last day of our
last European tour, we were really happy with that. Though some of the
places we have been people are confused by the music. We played in a
very traditional southern town in France and no one there had really
heard us before and were used to more traditional French things so I
am pretty sure we weren’t received too well. Luxembourg was also an
amazing place to be.

N- Animals is such a great album, how did the creative concept of
this album come up?
J-It wasn’t such a preconceived notion, it was more that Tim and Chris
had a bunch of riffs which turned to full songs and they couldn’t
really remember each individual part by saying ‘Let’s play the one
which goes durrr dddaaaa durrrr’, so for ease of remembering the
tunes, they gave them names of animals which just stuck.

N- Being from Europe, I assume you guys are football fans (soccer),
who is your favorite team?
J-Stu is a Manchester United fan, I can’t stand Manchester United one
bit as used to be a fan of Arsenal. But there are teams you don’t
necessarily support but admire and it is good to watch the highlights
of all of the weekend matches. Tim plays a lot of football but I don’t
think he supports a specific team.

N-What is the weirdest thing you guys have experienced on tour?
J-There are so many funny things which happen that most of them just
stick in the memory and some don’t, but all are equally entertaining
like really happy drunk Chinese men walking into walls whilst saying
‘HHHEEEEEYYYYY BOOOOYYYYYSSS’. A new song we have been working on is named Women & Swimming which is a line a drunk man from York told us. He was saying ‘Daniel O’Donnell, housewives’ favourite… there are two things I love in life, women… and swimming.’ There have been
many nights out where just amazingly entertaining things happen. Or
even just by chance we walk past something funny. And these things
become catchphrases which we just blurt out from time to time. A
favourite is when we were in Groningen in Holland and a police man
said ‘You can NOT go up this road, it is forbidden, so you must take
the second left over to this street… ALSO FORBIDDEN.’ He seemed
happy but angry.

N-What do you think you would do if you weren’t musicians?
J-If we weren’t musicians, well I think we all kind of do the things
we’d be doing anyway. Tim is a primary school teacher, Stu works in a
big publishing company in Oxford, Chris teaches too, and works doing
delivery but has been a librarian for a bit too, and I (Jamie) do
design work though not as much as I used to. But if I could, I would
be a bat specialist

N-Batman or Superman?
J-Well, you see, in England we have a different kind of superhero, he is
Eric, and when Eric eats a banana he becomes Banana Man. So I would
have to say, a superhero that means a lot to us is Banana Man.

N- If you guys watch LOST, do you have any theories?
J-Okay, well I am the only one who doesn’t watch Lost. Tim, Chris and
Stu watch it, Stu watches it on tour when he isn’t driving. But I
still have a theory, I believe that the entire cast are robots
controlled by Jay Leno. I also believe that there is a secret portal
in the centre of the island which is a gateway to the set of Who’s The
Boss? starring Tony Danza and Judith Light. I also believe that the
fat guy with curly hair is Screech from Saved By The Bell and he got
put on the island by Mr Bellding because he cheated on Sports Day,
beating both Zack and AC Slater in the egg and spoon race because he
stuck his egg to the spoon with some chewing gum. People may shout me down and brand these notions as farcical; I may be alienated for these beliefs but I have unprecedented evidence that this the truth, the
truth is out there my friends. Open your frigging EYES, MAN!

N- Favorite movies of ‘09?
J-Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. NEXT!!

N-One place you as a band want to visit the most?
J-Chicagooooooooo; the Windy City YO!

Seriously some great guys, thanks to Jamie for taking time out to answer these. Go out and buy their latest cd, Animals. It is a great listen, and hopefully if enough of you buy it, Jamie will fulfill his dream of seeing the windy city.

Thanks for reading!

Noah.