All Things New

I'm Back!

Life Update

Oh, would you look at that. I have a blog. I know, all signs (and date stamps) seem to suggest I've forgotten about it. Not the case.

The truth is, life has been keeping me busy. Not that I'm complaining. Unfortunately, it's nothing new or exciting. More of the same really… school, school, school and school. That accounts for my lack of blogging/video making to be honest. I am not suggesting that I have been so busy that I just haven't had time to write a thing. It's more, have I done anything significant enough to write about? My silence pretty much answers that one.

 Things have been good though. It's November, which means the holidays are right around the corner and if you know anything about me, you know that Christmas is a big deal. I mean, a big deal. It kind of sickening actually… but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. 

 Come January, I am transferring to FIU to get a degree in Public Relations. I'm not someone who dislikes change, but I'm still nervous. I don't know why, but I always feel like I am ill-prepared for everything I do in my life. It's as though I've skipped every step prior to the one I'm currently taking. I don't know how to describe it, but it's a thing.

 When summer rolls around, I am hoping to get some sort of PR internship, somewhere. My dream is to intern in New York City. We'll see how that goes. I just want to make it to Christmas first.

 That has been and is, my life… give or take a few dinners and/or unnecessary shopping trips.

 Anyway!

 I know I have said this before… but I am going to try and do this more regularly. I miss it.

 Hope you all are doing well!

The Boys of BoyBanned

There are few things I enjoy more than being introduced to new music and new people. Sometimes, I am lucky enough to do both at the same time. Thanks to a good friend, (and equally good connector of people) I was introduced to Boy Banned. The name, is rather self-explanatory… Boy Banned is, indeed, a boy band. 

Now, this is typically the part of the blog post where I would sift through the interview questions, pick the best of the best answers and try to interject a bit of my own commentary. But not today, boys and girls. You see, as I was reading through the responses to the questions, I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was edit or fine-tune anything that these lovely gentlemen had to say. 

With that, I present to you, a fully unedited, unscripted interview with the boys of BoyBanned.

Tell us a little about the boys of Boy Banned.

 We've got Ethan, the short, blonde, northern (Manchester) one who is ever so modest about his six pack. You really have to persuade him to catch a glimpse of it. He doesn't post 4 pics of it each day on his facebook profile. That would be ridiculous.

 (It appears he's a bit guilty)

Then there's Adam, the slightly taller, slightly more southern (Nottingham) but still classed as northern, quiet member of the group who all the girls are in love with for his ravishing good looks. Also responds to the name 'mouse'.

Thirdly we have Pob from the west country (Gloucestershire) who keeps the boys under control and is usually the voice behind the weekly FlipCams as he films them. You can catch his face sometimes in the reflection of Ethan's sunglasses during one of Ethan's many pointless ramblings to camera.

And last and by all means least is David. The crazy, energy filled, freakishly high note capable member of Boy Banned. That's not a woman featured on the track. That's David.

 And together we create Boy Banned. Doing something no-one has ever done before. Putting four young guys together to sing pop music as a group. Boys in a band. A boy band if you will.

When did you all meet?

 At 12.34pm on Thursday the....not that accurately? Okay. Well David and Pob were in a band a few years ago, so when David was the first member accepted into the group he quickly called Pob to ask him to audition, which clearly he did and was successful. Ethan came into the line-up a couple of months down the line, and then Adam joined a few months after that, both of them auditioning to complete the line-up as it is today.

 In doing my research/internet stalking, it seems like all of you are genuinely good friends. But be honest, does anyone have any slight annoyances with one another they would like to share? (Asked with an overabundance of sarcasm.)  

 Pob: The other three have this really annoying tendency to breathe. I do wish they'd stop.

Ethan: David NEVER shuts up. And after a long weekend of travelling, late night gigs and partying etc, all you want to do is relax, listen to music in your headphones (Beats by Dre. yep....) - but David doesn't seem to grasp this concept of recharging the human batteries. His are permanently charged.

Adam: The others never let me talk. They always cut me o-----

David: Shut up Adam. 

Individually or collectively, do you have any musical idols or inspirations?  

 We do have a very eclectic mix of inspirations, but amongst the mix there are some shared names, such as Elton John, the great boy bands like N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Take That and Westlife, and then David veers off to the musical theatre whilst Pob and Adam take a right to dubstep/electro, leaving Ethan to potter off towards the piano based ballads which he sits for hours in his room bashing out. On his piano! Let's clear that up straight away. Oh come on now...

Music aside, what are some of your interest and hobbies? What makes you, you?

We like long walks along the beach, stamp collecting, knitting, bingo and bare-knuckle boxing. But only on Saturdays.

In reality, the thing that makes us, us, is that we are all so different and spend our spare time doing totally different things. 

David is a keen gardener. He's always trimming his bushes. He's actually doing a course in horticulture in his spare time. He can name any plant you put in front of him - in latin. We think he has something wrong with him.

Pob used to be a water sports instructor, teaching kids how to sail, kayak, wind surf, power boat, even rock climbing and mountain biking. You'd think he lived an active lifestyle nowadays. You'd be wrong. 

Ethan studies Spanish at university alongside the band and has a passion for shopping for expensive soaps. And tissues. He always takes a load of tissues into his room when he's giving his piano a beating. Don't know why.

We aren't too sure about what Adam does. He doesn't seem to like telling us things. 

Back to the music! Can you tell us a little about the process that is involved when it comes to writing, selecting and recording new music. Do you all have a system or process?

Our management put a load of songs into a hat and we pick them out blindfolded. Sometimes they put a really rubbish song in there just to make us look bad. We will leave it up to the readers at home to judge how many of these we have selected.

We actually get a lot of input into selecting new music. When the band was first formed we launched in Berlin (Germany) so a close friend of ours wrote a load of euro-pop style tracks, from which we selected our favourite few by voting for them and deciding on the final selection. Since then we have focused more on the UK so our sound has changed, but the euro-pop songs are still there in our back catalogue. We spent a while working closely with just the one songwriter who wrote Street Lights, Hot Spot and Lovesick (our first three releases) as well as Free and One World (the euro-pop songs, both also available on iTunes!) - but then we branched across to America to a fantastic songwriter called Charlie. He wrote Summer Rain and we instantly loved it. It is our first step towards our 'new sound' we feel, and we have received endless amounts of demos from him for us to trawl through (when do these writers get the time to make all these songs!?) and we always sit down and debate which tracks would work for Boy Banned.

So to conclude! We have a democratic system of selection! And we are looking forward to choosing more songs to record next!

You all seem to be very connected with your fans via social media outlets. How, if at all, has this affected your music, or your overall success as a group?

Twitter is the most amazing tool for bands to connect with fans, especially now you can have it on your phone, so literally within seconds of something happening you can tell the world. Compare that with the 90's where things were reported in newspapers the day after they occurred, and the internet was still fairly new for mass use by the general public. It has totally changed the way the industry operates. 

We love it though, as it allows us to be on a more personal level with the fans, whilst still maintaining a certain amount of privacy in our own lives. It certainly helps us a lot as well, as in the 'olden' days, your music would really have to fight to get heard, whereas now bands can whack a song up on all different social media sites, and if people are already interested in the band/artist then they've caught someone's interest immediately, and the music is heard much easier. Without social media we wouldn't be here today, there's no doubt about that.

Your new song, “Summer Rain” was recently released on iTunes. I think a lot of people can relate to this song. Does it have a special meaning to any of you?

 Yes it does. We live in the UK and it's always raining in the summer.

That is genuinely what we first thought was good about it when we first heard it! But then after a few more listens with the songwriter Charlie pointing a pistol at our heads making us appreciate the blood sweat and tears (of past artists he worked with who didn't pay attention to his pistol) that went into creating it we could relate to the true meaning of the track. We've all made rushed decisions with relationships in the past and had regrets about calling things off too soon, so we were able to put some real emotion into the recording. And the rain in the video (which made number 13 on the iTunes video charts thanks very much) was 100% genuine UK summer rain. We waited for ages for a really rainy day to run outside and get drenched in. We nearly had to get an intern, a step ladder and a watering can.

Currently, you have a number of singles released on iTunes. Are there plans for a full album?

As we mentioned earlier with the transition of styles from euro-pop up to Summer Rain and beyond, we are working on finding our sound in the studio, so each single we release is a progression. We are happy to keep recording a couple of tracks at a time, releasing them, then working on the next step whilst we are so early on in the life of Boy Banned. Another thing we have spoken about as a group is that albums are generally just a few good songs with a load of 'album tracks' that no-one ever gets overly excited about, and we don't want to make album tracks, so we'd rather have a selection of tracks on iTunes that we were happy enough to release as singles, and then the consumer can pick and mix their favourites and create an album of their own!

At the risk of sounding Cliché, musicians really do lead an interesting life. What is the most gratifying element about being a musician for each of you?

We have friends who studied hard at uni (and some who didn't study so hard) and are now struggling to find a job inputting data for a chicken farm etc whilst we are having the time of our lives traveling around the UK and Europe (and hopefully soon the states!) making music and just messing around. So our friends are usually jealous about our lives, and that's a good feeling! We all know that we are very lucky to be where we are, and we still have a long way to go before we 'make it big time' so we don't take it for granted, but the fact that we are doing something that we always dreamed about when we were younger and never really thought we'd get the chance to do is very gratifying for each of us. 

Is there anything that I didn'’t ask in this interview that you would like to share?

 Pob once had a couple of budgies called Beavis & Butthead.

Now! Let's get to what's really important. The music. Check out the Summer Rain video. Featuring... boys, singing in the rain. Who could have seen THAT ONE coming?

 Be sure to check out iTunes for more music! 

Also, if you are so inclined, please check out/politely stalk BoyBanned's website, Facebook, Myspace and YouTube.

P.S. 

If this is my last post for months, I've run off to buy expensive soaps with Ethan and investigate what I'm calling "The Tissue Issue."