One of our newest features here at Scene Point Blank is our semi-daily quickie Q&A: One Question Interviews. Follow us at facebook or twitter and we'll post one interview every Monday-Thursday. Well, sometimes we miss a day, but it will be four each week regardless.
After our social media followers get the first word, we'll later post a wrap-up here at the site and archive 'em here. This week check out Q&As with Peelander-Z, Agrimonia, Haiduk and Screaming Females.
Peelander Yellow (Peelander-Z)
SPB: What is your favorite music-related book?
Peelander Yellow: I never read music-related book!!!
I have to learn a lot of things without music-related book!!!
music-related book never teach me how to dance "My dance"!
music-related book never show me how to kiss "My kiss"!
music-related book never bring to my world!!!
OK!! Lets start to do myself everything!!
but, how!!!!!!!!
music-related book says like "Do it yourself!!"
Pontus (Agrimonia)
SPB: What makes death metal - or metal in general - so prevalent in Sweden?
Pontus: I think there is a huge music interest in general in Sweden. This might have to do with that it’s easy to pick up and learn an instrument at an early age thanks to Sweden’s community music school, so many people who maybe otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to play an instrument can start out. Also, when there’s lots of people playing--good bands, good shows all the time--I guess people get inspired. Creativitiy feeds creativity. Sweden has a very small population which also might help breaking down boundaries between different scenes and such. Clubs and showspaces are open for many kinds of music. So metal, including other underground music, has had a really good starting point in Sweden, I think.
Haiduk
SPB: What do you remember of your first live performance ever?
Haiduk: I'd been talking to some friends from a local band about possibly, eventually doing one-man shows. So, without telling me, they went ahead and booked Haiduk and their band for a bar show 2 weeks later! The sound guy was somewhat confused when I told him the plan and to run my backing instruments through the PA. I remember practicing my ass off then being disappointed at seeing only 4 or 5 people there.
Jarrett D (Screaming Females)
SPB: What song in your active playlist requires the most practice? What part is the hardest to get down?
Jarrett: Screaming Females plays a different setlist every night. We have a catalogue of about 70 songs.
I'd like to be able to say that we could play any of those songs at any time but that's not quite true. On any given tour we have about 35 songs we are ready to play. Just the other day a kid in the crowd asked us to play a song we hadn't played in probably 3 years. We just so happened to have played it once or twice in practice the day before, so we played it for him. It went ok
Trying to remember the order of a song, the particular beats to that song, and most importantly how the song is supposed to feel is really mind-bending sometimes. But putting aside the fact that at any given show Mike or Marissa might ask me to play a song I haven't thought about in a year or more, the hardest song we are playing right now is called “Let Me In.” It is a new song that we are going to be recording soon (Spring 2014). The song has gone through a ton of revisions and I'm pretty sure we have yet to play any version correctly at a show. The fact that it has gone through so many rewrites makes it even harder. Everything will be going fine playing it and then, suddenly, it is a mess because someone forgot that the chorus is half as long in the newest version.
Overall the order of the parts of this song is its hardest feature. It is not the type of song that is just a couple alternating sections. There is an intro, 2 versions of the chorus section, a verse that has a tough transition into and out of it, a bridge with 3 sections and another tough transition, a part were we all stop for about half a measure while
Marissa just sings, and an outro. And it is fucking fast!
