Dire Wolfe Interview!

Dire Wolfe Interview!

Oxjam @ Bumper!

 

 

Anyone for a strawberry … tuck in boys!

 

Hi ya! So formal introductions first I’m Sally and you are?

 

Dan – Front man and lead guitar

Tarek – Drums

John – bass

Joe – guitar

 

Can we take our shoes off?

Yeah please you’ll be much more comfortable if you do strip off it you like I don’t mind.

 

Why Dire Wolfe?

Dan – I went through a stage of Greek mythology. One day I thought I would type in to Google ‘Greek mythology’ and Dire Wolfe came up as a mythical creature. It’s apparently a black wolf that roams America.

John – it also goes with his t-shirt,  he is always wearing wolf T-Shirts.

Everyone – wolf Boy!

 

Who would you least like to be compared to?

John – As a band or individually?

As a band, individually or both if you like.

Dan – Millhouse

Everyone – yeah Dan looks like millhouse

Joe – Dan wouldn’t like to be compare to millhouse or postman pat

Why not postman pat? He is amazing!

Dan – Where’s Wally and Gok Wan

Tarek – I Don’t want to be compared to anything indie like the Artic Monkeys

If you don’t see your self as being indie how do you see your selves?

Joe – We are quite indie but we just don’t want to be seen as it.

Fare enough.

Dan- it’s more ‘indiecore’. Its not mainstream indie its more alternative indie.

Joe – it has got pop sensibilities, as someone said

(Who is this someone?)

Dan – its charismatic

Charismatic is definitely the right word to use in my opinion.

Dan – hopefully!

 

You must know each other pretty well by now so who has the worst habits?

Tarek – lying. My habit is lying.

Dan – Taric is a terrible compulsive liar and Jo is always late –

Joe – I’m like the queen I’ve got my own time zone.

Do you have 2 birthdays as well?

John – Seriously I’m talking hours late like not just minutes.

Not good then?

Joe – if there is a way round it I’ll get around it and I’ll push it to the limits of taking the piss.

 

What’s the inspiration behind some of the songs you have written?

Tarek – Dan writes all the songs but when we practise them we all come together and tell him what’s good and what’s not good.

John – Dan sort of gets the ideas and we kind of take them and manipulate them.

That cool. So there’s no particular song you could pick out to say that that was influenced by such and such…?

Dan – What ever I am doing at the moment.

John – what’s red room about Dan?

Everyone (except Dan) Whey hey…!

Dan – Red rooms about my room

John – and what happens in that room?

Dan – (in a Marvin Gay ‘esk’ voice) I make love. I make love in my red room!

Nice! Your going to have to stop your making me blush

 

Which do you prefer recording or live gigs?

Dan – Playing live.

Yeah I think everyone does don’t they?!

Is there a reason why?

Dan – its nice to see people enjoying the moment and the music.

Tarek – you really don’t want to mess up on stage so …

Jo – its builds up the pressure

John – yeah

Joe – I like recording come to that and we should like recording and record more because were sound techs.

Tarek – when we go to record were quite experimental and some items we cant really and don’t really put that into our set which is a bit bad so were trying to get around that so when they hear our recordings they see like ….

 

Cool

 

Shit I lost my place and trail of thought …

Band all together – oooooooooooo!

It’s terrible!

Ha Ha!

 

If you weren’t musicians what would you be?

John – a drug dealer

Good choice, lots of cash – dangerous though

John – no lots of drugs, which is also dangerous may I just point out.

Tarek – a wild life ranger, yeah! A wild life ranger or a pilot.

Dan – I’d be a gigolo

Joe – there’s quite a lot of money in that

Dan – I’d collect wild animals.

Joe – I’d be a dustbin man. It’s surprising how much stuff you find.

And you get really good tips at Christmas

Dan and Joe – do ya?

Yep really good, Think of all the old ladies who give the bin men a little 50p tip every Christmas and add them all up you’ll see.

Joe – No you don’t

Yeah maybe your in the wrong business!

Dan – I’d be a super hero or a comic book character, where stripy tops and hide from people

Joe – like where’s Wally Ha Ha!

What would be your super hero or comic book character name?

Tarek – Slut man!

Dan – cheers man!

John – shit bastard

Shit bastard. Ha ha! Not very child friendly is it?

Joe – hey kids here comes your favourite super hero shit bastard!

Tarek – I’d be boogie brown.

 

What’s your band of the moment?

 

Joe – mine was vampire weekend

 

Was … why not anymore?

 

Joe – oh it probably still is I’ve just gone off them

 

(That’s a contradiction in terms I think)

 

John – band of the moment, band of the moment, hummmm. Hot club de Paris. An epic Liverpool band!

Dan – I’d say Youth Movies

Never heard of them.

Tarek – king tubby, he’s a dub artist. King tubby.

 

Never heard of the last to how sad I am … get with the programme!

 

What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done whilst intoxicated?

In chorus – OoOoOoO that’s a good one.

Joe – that’s a good one for me

Tarek – when he (jo) got really, really drunk

John – by the way this was in my room

Tarek – his 2 friends stripped him down, put shaving foam all over him, tooth paste in his hands

Joe – and up the oraphisises as well

Tarek – in his bum hole, shaving foam. Gaffer taped his all over and when I came home I had to shower him with my own hands, I didn’t touch his willy.

Why did you have to shower him?

Tarek – then his mum saw the pictures on facebook the next day,

Joe – yeah she was really upset

I can imagine

Joe – my mate nicked my camera and took pictures of me so I chased them out into student halls court yard, naked.

Taric – and everyone saw it

You still look a little embarrassed now just talking about it.

Joe – and then er

Jonh – it was in his bum and his foreskin

Everyone together in an almighty roar – errrrrrrrrr! No! Yuk! Ahhhhhh! Ha Ha Ha!

I wish this was a video camera not just a Dictaphone, If only I had the know how to describe the look of sheer horror that was on Jo’s face when the bassist said foreskin.

 

Any plans for the future?

Dan – make it big and make lots of money.

John – make lots of babies. Lots of band babies.

That’s your aim to make lots of babies?

Bassist – Yeah-illegitimate babies called shit bastard.

Joe – I just want a family, yeah that my ultimate aim.

Really?

John – and have a pet dog.

Joe – yeah and move to the West Indies

And have a family … so this is just to keep you occupied for the time being?

Joe – yeah!

That’s a good enough reason.

 

Where you playing next?

Dan – The Caledonia! 4 other bands are playing, 2 rockier ones and 2 acoustic ones. It should be good and it’s free so it should be a good turn out.

 

Lastly I’m going to play a game with you. I’ve got 10 questions and the winning team wins either mini eggs of a kinder surprise! Each team has to come up with a buzzer noise to answer each question, if you shout out the answer without the buzzer noise the point will automatically be given to the other team.

 

The winners were Jo and the bassist!

Dan and Taric were very sad and Dan Croll is a terrible loser! I wanted the sweets, he said. Better luck next time my darling.

Raising money with the power of music!

Oxjam @ Bumper!

 

Raising money with music.

 

Before I begin I would just like to ask a question to you all, just to give you something to think about. If you were a venue manager and a charity event was being run in your venue, if it ran over a little longer then planned but you still had a packed bar with paying customers would you shout at the organisers and then unplug the PA mid way through a set? Bumper did just this last week @ Oxjam.

Helena Haigh and Sinead O’Regan worked very hard to organise a fantastic night of live music with bands that they knew people would want to hear, one of which of Dire Wolfe who headlined the night. Most people, as at word of mouth a few weeks ago, turned up to see Dire Wolfe.

            Kick off was meant to be at 8pm sharp with a tight change over schedule in-between the acts due to venue hire guidelines to finish by 11pm. By the time 8pm rolled around very minimal people had turned up so an conscious decision was made to push the show back half an hour meaning if all run smoothly the end would be half an hour late. Due to it being a charity gig the assumption was made that this would be ok but how wrong that decision was!

            Base naked played first, followed by a band from Leeds called Ten Floors, My favourite boys of the moment, Minus IQ, played second to last and the headliners Dire Wolfe obviously played last!

            I had heard the others play before so I was mainly eager to hear Dire Wolfe. After having missed them at word of mouth it was my priority to have a real good listen to their set and see what everyone found so fantastic about them. To my disappointment this never happened.

            Before going on stage they were told by the venue manager they had 5 minutes to play their set … Ludicrous! When on stage you could see in the boy’s eyes that they were annoyed and ‘pissed off’ they had waited all night to play their set and ten’s of people had turned up and paid £5 just to see them play. You could tell they were not happy and were very annoyed that they would be letting the audience down. All of which affected their playing ability. They seemed rushed and they seemed to had lost all interest in playing. I found it very hard to give a fair review on Dire Wolfe due to the unusual circumstances so I guess I’ll just have to go see them again!

            The main issue was how badly the situation was handled and how unsympathetic the manager of Bumper was.

            If anything you would think that he/she would allow an extra 15 minutes at least due to it being a charity gig. There seemed to be no understanding of things over running and why they were pushed back. I didn’t and still don’t understand what the problem was. There was at least 50 people in the back room at bumper, all of which were students, up for and laugh and having a good drink which meant money was being taken by the bar. If treated properly the bands and the student based audience would have stayed afterwards to have a drink in the open section out the front and their turnover for the night would have probably been higher, much higher, then that of a normal Thursday night.

            The way it was handled was, in my eyes, appalling. Both the organisers, Helena and Sinead, were shouted at as if they were young children at school being told of by their teacher for doing something wrong and when listening in on the original conversation that took place with one of the bar staff (I know, ear wigging isn’t clever) Helena was calm, polite and almost pleading with them to allow her to let the headliners play a full set. Nothing seemed to work and after failing to negotiate with the venue manager to give them another 10 or 15 minutes the manager stormed over to the PA and unplugged the amps risking blowing the equipment due to improper use. All I can hope is that I hope he/she is pleased with the way they spoilt a pretty great evening and I hope they noticed how many people left their venue on purpose, boycotting bumper totally and how long the boycott will last is totally down to you guys. All I will say is that is was a total shame the night couldn’t end on a high because it was a fantastic night and actually the space and stage was perfect for what the event was.