A Conversation With Bloc Party

About two months ago, my wife’s parents got a black lab puppy. They had decided that they could handle a big dog at the same time a friend’s dog had a litter. How convenient! They named him Amigo.

Right about the same time my wife and I had decided that we wanted to get a dog. We tried to get a puppy from the same litter as Amigo, but there were none left. My in-laws saw how much I wanted a dog and said that if they couldn’t handle Amigo, they’d give him to me.

What does this have to do with Bloc Party you ask? Well it just so happens that Amigo was staying at my house for the week when Bloc Party played New Orleans on June 10. He’d been to my place before. The in-laws thought it would be good for him to get used to our place just in case they decided to get rid of him. I welcomed the wee pup into my home and called him Devo so he would be used to his new name just in case he ended up being mine. He’d never been any trouble, and I was starting to grow fond of the li’l fella.

That is, until the afternoon of June 10.

I didn’t get off work early like I had wanted to, so I was running a bit late. No worries. I’d still make it to the venue in time. I get home and I’m greeted with the wonderful Dino Flintstone welcome that every dog-owner knows. I let Devo out to relieve himself since he’d been inside all day (our yard isn’t fenced and we don’t have a way to chain him up, so we’d been keeping him in our rather large master bathroom during the day). After we ran around for a bit outside we both went inside and I started to get ready for the night’s event.

I found a proper outfit for interviewing a rock star – holey, patched, low-rise jeans with a nice studded belt and buckle combo. Add to that a designer-thrift T from a local resale shoppe and some Chuck Taylors and I’ve got a get-up that screams, “What, this ol’ thing?” The only thing that the outfit needed was a bit of tweaking to my hair. I went into the bathroom to wash my hair in the sink and…what’s that hissing noise?

I looked in the direction of the noise and noticed that the top of the toilet seat was wet. That’s weird. As I got closer to the toilet I noticed that the floor was wet as well. Closer still, I discovered that the source of the water was a small leak in the tubing that runs from the tank of the toilet to the water hook-up on the wall. Evidently my lovely little black lab puppy had become fascinated with plumbing during the day and decided it would be fun to chew a hole in the aforementioned tubing.

Anger. Yelling. Cursing. Thoughts of doggycide. This was not what I needed an hour and a half before the big interview! Wait. Calm down. Think. It’s going to be fine. Just turn the water off and wipe up the mess and you’re on your way. Deep breath. Glance in the mirror at your hair. Head out the door.

I gave my wife Faith a call to let her know what had happened. I let her know that the water was off and I’d take care of the leak tomorrow. As of now, everything was fine. I was on my way to the show and she was on her way home to get ready for a friend’s wedding. Life was good. Everything was under control.

About 10 minutes before I got to the venue I get a phone call from my wife. As much as she’s trying to hold it together, I can tell she’s on the verge of tears. She was calling to inform me that the slow leak had evidently been going all day and had flooded the carpet in the adjacent hallway. Now I’ve got to decide between seeing a free show with one of my favorite bands and going back immediately after the interview to help in the clean up process. No brainer, eh? Stay for the show and let her take care of it. After all, Cleaning does combine with Cooking and Procreation to form the Holy Trinity of Women’s Work. But being the Renaissance man that I am, I knew I had to go back and help.

So with this new development fresh in my mind, I stopped at a pub for a Black and Tan to help me collect my thoughts. At about 6:30 I walked over to the venue – a wonderful little place in the French Quarter called One Eyed Jack’s. Once there I met up with the band’s tour manager who said they were running a bit late, but they could still squeeze me in after the sound check was done with. No problem. That’ll give me some more time to get my head together.

After a minute or 20 and some nerve-calming Newcastle, I was brought backstage and introduced to Kele Okereke. We found an upstairs room without too much noise pollution and sat down for a chat. He was eating some plump red grapes and I was holding an empty beer bottle. The table on which my recorder was sitting was uneven and rocked back and forth on its own volition. His hair and clothes were perfectly unkempt. I wondered if he noticed my cool outfit.

Circle Six Magazine: Well the first thing I wanted to ask you is how long have you been together?

Kele: Well in this line-up, since the start of 2003, so not very long. But I’ve known and been in a band with Russel, the guitar player, since 1998.

C6M: How old are you?

K: 23

C6M: Jesus!

K: What?

C6M: Oh nothing. (thinking to myself) Damn, I’m getting old.
Can you pinpoint the moment when you knew you had something with this band?

K: I think it would be when Matt joined. It all felt like an uphill struggle, but when Matt joined we were able to realize a lot of the different ideas that we were having about music. And that’s when I realized that we were doing something that was better than most other people.

C6M: Do you remember ever having that epiphany experience when you knew you wanted to do this for a living?

K: Well you know, it was something that throughout my teens I always wanted to do. I couldn’t really see the point in any other lifestyle. And I didn’t see the point in not being creative with my life. Everything else, you know, the idea of working 9 to 5 with a job in an office, seemed like the most terrifying and pointless thing. I think I always wanted to somehow do something where I was being creative and using my mind.

C6M: So what makes Bloc Party different from the current crop of indie guitar rock bands that are out there?

K: I don’t know. I think we’re probably a bit darker than most of the other bands that are playing out in the UK right now.

C6M: Do you have any favorites besides Interpol.

K: I suppose The Futureheads.

C6M: You played with them didn’t you?

K: Yeah we did.

C6M: Do you remember the first band you were really into?

K: Yeah, Blur was the first rock band I was really into.

C6M: Did you get to play with them, or him?

K: We played with Graham Coxon.

C6M: Right, Coxon.

K: That was cool.

C6M: So why’d you guys sign with a smaller label rather than taking the cash that some of the bigger guys were throwing at you?

K: It seemed like there was absolutely no reason to do that at all. The thing about Bloc Party is that we’re very serious about our career and we’re very serious about having an output of records, not just one record. The thing about signing some huge deal is that you’re putting yourself under a lot of pressure to be very successful immediately. You know, a lot of labels won’t give you a second chance if you don’t recoup on your advance. We want to be as good and as popular as our record determines and not just have a lot of money thrown into it. That kind of stuff’s completely pointless. And the people we liked the most were the people at our label, so it was a really simple decision.

C6M: What’s the writing process like for you guys? Is one person more or less the creative driver of the band?

K: Yeah pretty much. Pretty much the songs are my ideas and we kind of fill them in. I’ll have an idea for a rhythm or have some chords or a riff, I’ll show them to the others, and I’ll get them to layer their parts on top of it.

C6M: Hey, how’d you hook up with the Chemical Brothers?

K: They got in touch with my management and asked me if I wanted to sing one of their songs.

C6M: Yeah, I just got that album and I’m really diggin’ it. Good stuff. Are there any collaborations in the works right now?

K: No.

C6M: Is there anyone you’d love to do something with?

K: The Basement Jaxx.

C6M: Nice. Ok, moving right along. I read that you don’t like mixing music and politics.

K: Well…no…um…I didn’t…

C6M: Is that a misquote?

K: Well the way that you just said that, it’s just kind of… You just left out some of what I said… I just think it isn’t my place to be… Well I think it’s tricky because as an artist you’re subject to your external environment, and I think that ultimately it is the role of the artist to draw attention to things in society that they perceive to be unjust. It’s always been the role of the artist. If you look back at the ancient Greeks, the playwrights would write plays about the injustices of war. You know, even Picasso had a lot of political undertones in his paintings. I think that it is your job to raise public consciousness, it’s just I feel there are ways to go about it. I don’t think that just sort of railing off a cliché sound byte is going to affect anyone at all. If anything, it detracts from discussion, which is ultimately the aim. I don’t think music and politics shouldn’t mix, I just think you’ve got to be very careful about how they do mix.

C6M: Right. So tell me a little bit about MakePovertyHistory.org.

K: Well it’s an organization. I think we have a link to it on our website. It’s kind of just a very simple good cause that a lot of British bands have sort of gotten behind. Without very much information, it’s just a cause that we’d like to raise awareness about.

C6M: Well I saw you wearing the white band. I just didn’t know if it was just a website thing or if you were really behind it. You know what I’m saying? Because sometimes management will just connect a band with something without them…

K: Well I didn’t even know that was on our website until recently. So you know. I don’t feel very qualified to talk about it. I think we have a role to affect change and I think this is a good cause.

C6M: Well Blair just announced today that he and Bush have come to a compromise and they’re deciding to…wait I wrote it down. $16.7 Billion in relief that they’re going to wipe off the books.

K: Really?!

C6M: Yeah, to 18 different countries. Most are in Africa, but some are like other 3rd world countries.

K: Yeah.

C6M: Honestly I didn’t think Bush was going to do it because he and Blair weren’t really seeing eye-to-eye. But I read in the NY Times today that they’re actually going to do it. And they said that there are like nine other countries that they want to include down the road.

K: Is that the whole debt or is that just a percentage or what?

C6M: I’m not sure. The article mentioned 18 countries and they put out the number $16.7 Billion. So I don’t know if they’re wiping the slate clean or if they’re just putting out a big number and letting people think that or what. But it’s better than nothin’, eh?

K: Yeah.

C6M: Let’s see…what else have I got? Is this your first tour in the States?

K: Second actually.

C6M: Oh yeah? How’re they treating you?

K: Yeah really well.

C6M: Yeah?

K: All the shows have been sold out, which is nice. And we’ve gotten a lot of positive reaction.

C6M: That’s cool. I don’t want to blow smoke up your ass, but it’s probably one of the best debuts I’ve heard in a long while

K: Well thank you very much.

C6M: With all the touring, are you getting sick of any of your songs yet?

K: No. Aaah… Well, kind of.

C6M: Do you change ‘em up live at all?

K: We’re lucky because we leave ourselves a lot of room to try and just go with the flow a little and improvise. But, you know, we’ve been doing a lot of writing on the road, which is really good.

C6M: Oh, that’s cool. I was just going to ask if you’re working on any new stuff.

K: Yeah, we’re working on a lot of stuff, and we sometimes play new songs in the set.

C6M: Nice. It seems like on the album there’s a lot of space in some songs to just take off on a tangent live, and that’s something I’m looking forward to.

K: Yeah.

C6M: What’s your favorite song on the album?

K: “Pioneers.”

C6M: What’s your favorite song to play live?

K: Uummmm… “This Modern Love” probably is the one that whenever we play that song we always get people’s attention. It’s one that works really well live.

C6M: Well I just have a few more.

K: That’s cool.

C6M: What’s the one question you get the most and are you sick of it yet?

K: Just about Franz Ferdinand I guess. We gave them a demo before we were signed and before they were really big and they put us on for one show. And everybody just assumes that we’re really good friends but we’re not at all. We played with about 10 other bands that they hand picked to play a night that they were hosting and that was all. It’s really become this mythical sort of story.

C6M: And my last one is: How bad does it smell in your tour bus?

K: Not that bad. It smells pretty bad in my bunk because I get quite sweaty and the sheets don’t fit over the mattress. So I’ve got to sleep on the mattress. But that’s ok since it’s only me in there. You know, I’m no stranger to filth.

And on that note my time was up. We shook hands and parted ways. He went back to being a humble rock star, and I went to my in-laws house to borrow their wetvac. In between plotting how to kill my dog-in-law and pouting over the show I was missing, I patted myself on the back for doing the right thing. I’m sure there’s some grand karmic reward headed my way. At least the Hallway Flood of 2005 gave me something to write about on my blog. Man! I’m a nerd.

by Jacob Taylor

Links of note:
MakePovertyHistory.org – UK based site for 3rd world debt relief
One.org – US based site for 3rd world debt relief
BlocParty.com – a great band site that has nothing to do with the Communist Party

jacob@circlesixmagazine.com – complaints, compliments and recipe requests