interview with hell city glamours
Have any of you played in other bands? we all played in various bands prior to HCG but for 12 years HCG's was everyone's main focus, now the band is finished we've all moved on to other bands, Mo is in Mucho Sonar, Robbie has Blackbird, Oscar's band The Persian Drugs and myself (Jono) does Firearms, Degeneracy and solo stuff as Terrance Barfuck
How is it that you started playing music? personally, I pretty much picked up bass after moving to Sydney at 14 odd years of age and becoming good friends with a drummer and a guitarist, bass was the logical step (that and Flea's stupid pants in that Young MC filmclip)
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? Jono - Bass, Mo - Lead guitar, Oscar - guitar/vocals, Robbie, drums, I'm 39, I think the others are 32 or 33 now, we were young once!
Have you had other previous members? yup, I replaced Archi in 2005, he went off to Europe with another Sydney band called Doomfoxx
Did you make music even when you were young? I started my first band on my 15th birthday when I got my first bass so yeah, I've been writing music for 24 years now, no idea how many songs but probably close to 1000, not that anyone's really heard any of them!! though they're all demoed
Where are you from? we're from Sydney, Australia and formed in 2002 (I joined in 05)
What's your style of genre? rock 'n' roll, simply put
What inspires you? other bands, friends, life, travelling on public transport, enemies, bad break ups, happy times
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Australia isn't a country that you can make a living from music easily so we always have held down jobs whilst touring as much as possible
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? we had one at one point, he was great but we had differing ideas on stuff so we amicably parted ways, he (Rob G at Select Music) was a massive part of HCG's early years and we wouldn't have gotten where we got without his invaluable support
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? labels are a waste of time in Australia, you can do everything yourself and make more than a dollar an album, they're important for some people but definitely wasn't for us
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Oscar did the majority of writing though I wrote one song on each full length (Shake on the new one and whatever the secret track on the first one is called, Thank You I think, I've completely forgotten)
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? personally I write lyrics when they pop in to my head and fit them to music as that pops in to my head haha
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? sitting on my couch in my lounge room generally
Have you done any covers live? a couple, Dumb Things by Paul Kelly and The Crowd by Operation Ivy and we played Brown Sugar by The Stones at a friend's 30th birthday once!
What language do you sing in? English
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? for our own gigs I think the record payers were 4 for the smallest (in a little town in queensland) and I think around 750 for our Broken Glass, Beatless Hearts EP Launch, most we've ever played to is about 4000 at a festival
What ages are most of your concert attendants? mid 20s for the most part but due to being a bit more on the 'classic' sounding side of rock we have plenty of fans up to their 70s
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? we had about 8 staple songs then
Do you have a regular place you play live often? not anymore of course but Oxford Art Factory in Sydney, Crowbar in Brisbane and Cherry Bar in Melbourne were our go to venues
What was your first gig like? My first gig with HCG was supporting Alice Cooper in a venue with seating only to about 2000 grumpy Alice Cooper fans, very odd experience
What was your latest gig? our final gig was July 12th last year at Oxford Art Factory, sold out, good times, great send off
Have you had to cancel a gig? only once as Oscar managed to break his arm hanging up on a 4 foot mini ramp the day before the show
Where have you played live this year? we broke up!
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? with Hell City none! the rest of our bands will be playing regularly though
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? the band has been selling tshirts since it's inception, we've even still got some left if anyone wants one!!
Where can people buy your merchandise? the few things tshirts we have left can be got here hellcityglamours.bigcartel.com and you can buy our music from this link http://www.waterfrontrecords.com/artist/16126
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records nowadays? just buy a tshirt or go to a show if you're going to steal our music ok
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? it's been screwed by it's own stupidity pretty much, everyone knew it was coming but no one bothered trying to adapt (I've worked in the music industry outside of being in a band for 20 years)
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? hopefully even though we're long gone now some people will check out our tunes in Sweden and dig em, we love the Hellacopters after all (just listen to Better Upstairs on our second album haha)
Do you have any role models or idols? Tony Lombardo and Karl Alvarez from Descendents/ALL
Why do you think that they exist? to make me happy with the best basslines on earth
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? a bit of both, I own thousands of albums spanning decades of time, they all combine to make me make what I call music
What have been your biggest obstacles? having the word Glamours in our name, instantly pigeonholed as a Poison cover band, very far from what we actually do!
What advice would you give other bands or artists? either do it 100% and throw away everything to succeed aka make enough money to live or just be a weekend warrior and play some shows, there's no real middle ground
How do you get psyched for a gig? stretch my old bones, drink beer and powder my nose
Do you have any new material? nothing forseeable, we may put some live stuff out or finally finish a couple of songs that didn't make it on to the albums
What are your web sites? if you go to our facebook www.facebook.com/hellcityglamours it has links to all our new bands there, check out HCG then check them out too!
How can people reach you? email is good!
What are your plans for the future? make a career as a jaded ex punk rocker with an acoustic guitar haha
Do you have something to add? just a thank you to all our fans over the last 12 years and to you Robex for the opportunity of an interview!
