Welcome to our almost daily quickie Q&A feature: One Question Interviews. Follow us at facebook or twitter and we'll post one interview every Monday-Thursday. Okay, sometimes we miss a day, but it will be four each week.
After our social media followers get the first word, we post a wrap-up here at the site and archive 'em here. This week check out Q&As with Universe217, Astpai, 30,000 Monkies and Girl Scout
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Universe217
SPB: As far as I know you record your music at your own studio. Do you think that that allows you to be more creative? Having more time to try out different things?
Universe217: We have our own studio, yes. We actually never produced a record other way, so I can’t really compare it with not doing it by our own.
We learn things: How to get a better sound out of everything, re-doing what’s not ok, having the chance to experiment and then delete it.
We even have the time to check how much microphones bleed between them when we play together,
All these things are a big lesson that is also applied in our live gigs.
Zock (Astpai – vocals)
SPB: What is the furthest you’ve ever traveled to see a show (and who was it/where was it)?
Zock: In May 1999, I woke up on what I thought was gonna be yet another lousy school day (I was 12 years old at the time), preparing myself for eight hours full of incompetent teaching and an evening of annoyingly boring homework. Little did I know that my mum had made big plans, so far off of what I thought was gonna happen. She had decided to take me out of school for two days and put me on a train to the very west of Austria to see The Rolling Stones live, as she was convinced that it’d be one of the last chances for me to see my most favourite band at that time. Needless to say, I had my mind blown when she broke the news to me over breakfast. A couple of hours later, it was my mum and me on a Rolling Stones-themed train with free drinks (lots of sugary soda for little me), a disco-carriage blasting all of the Stones’ biggest hits and lots of drugged out teens and tweens that you had to climb over on your way to the toilet. It was fucking amazing!
We arrived in Imst, Austria after a 7 hour train ride, walked up to the open air stage in pouring rain and hung out on an open field with thousands and thousands of other people, dreadfully waiting through the hour long sets of each support act, which happened to be Zucchero and Bryan Adams (!) in a very down-to-earth three-piece line up.
The Rolling Stones were the loudest band I’ve ever watched to date. They played for hours, including a middle part where a huge ass bridge would extend from the bottom of the main stage, leading the band to a tiny, club-sized stage in the middle of the fucking crowd. I was in heaven!
Throughout their show, I remember my mum having to randomly befriend an impressively tall guy in the crowd to sort of protect us from the mad asshole that got really upset about me standing on a little folding chair right in front of him. The jerk actually tried to kick me off twice. What a great reality check for a 12 year old!
After the show, we had to wait a few hours in the cold to catch our train back home to eastern Eustria – this time, it was just a regular ride with no other theme than maybe “no space anywhere” or “good luck getting some rest.”
I had to promise, not to mention anything about the trip to my schoolmates, so that my mum wouldn’t get any trouble from one of my teachers. Easily the unexpectedly coolest experience of my pre-puberty life!
To be completely honest, this story is not about the furthest I’ve ever traveled to see a show, but it’s a damn good story to tell and it would still make my top 5 distance-wise.
Ruben (30,000 Monkies – vocals/guitar)
SPB: What is the worst reunion concert you ever saw?
Ruben: I've never really seen a bad reunion concert actually, but there is one that I attended that had some shitty consequences for us. In 2009, at Pukkelpop festival, My Bloody Valentine played their first concert in Belgium since their reunion. All in all it was a pretty awesome concert: very loud and the physical wall of sound that My Bloody Valentine is known for (including a 15 minute 'Holocaust section' in “You Made Me Realise”). They reached decibel levels between 125db and 130db, which caused some kind of outrage in Flanders and, ultimately, the Flemish government passed a very strict law to limit sound levels at concerts (a maximum mean of 100db over 15 minutes). So thanks to My Bloody Valentine, we're now unable to play loud concerts which we always thought was an important element of our live show. We did get an honorable mention as a bad example in the presentation that aimed to teach live sound techs how to cope with the norm though, which at least was a little funny to us. Oh well, luckily there are still some venues that don't follow the regulations too closely.
Jeremy (Girl Scout)
SPB: What varieties of Girl Scout (the band) cookies would there be?
Jeremy: We always talked about making weed versions of Girl Scout cookies and selling them as merch because there is nothing more Girl Scout than getting high, turning up the fuzz and having some fun. We just wanna put the "tree" in trefoils, y'know?
