Never Enough Notes e-zine // reviews + interviews + music

“If you’ve done something politically that has achieved more than The King Blues, then I’ve got the time of day and I’ll listen to your criticisms. If you’re just some kid in the bedroom who is criticising us without actually doing anything, then quite frankly I haven’t got time for you”

Never Enough Notes caught up with Itch, Perkie and Dean from The King Blues to discuss the politics behind their music, ‘Bonkers’ and accusations of ‘selling out’. However, anyone who has ever come across frontman Itch will know that it is very difficult for anyone else to get a word in once he opens his mouth, so unless stated just assume it is him answering our questions…

How does playing at Kendal Calling compare to other festivals?

It’s nice. There are so many festivals about nowadays that you get some really tiny ones that are cool because they’re not right up in your faces; you’ve got the massive ones like Reading and Leeds which are also cool because there are loads of people, and then you have the likes of Kendal which are in between the two. So you get the nice vibe of the small independent scene, where everyone’s having a good time getting to know each other and it’s nice, but you also get the big atmosphere out of it as well. So it’s cool, man, you get the best of both worlds.

You cross a lot of genres, but if you had to place yourselves into a particular category what would it be?

Rebel music, you know what I mean? We see ourselves as coming from a rich history of rebel music, from Woody Guthrie through to Rage Against the Machine, and Public Enemy. It doesn’t matter about the style of music; it’s all about what you’re saying. And we see ourselves as a rebel street band – we see ourselves as coming from that line right from the Blues, you know what I’m saying? We see ourselves as rebel music.

Is it true that some of you had to quit your day jobs to get the band going?

Yeah, man. Those of us who had jobs. Some of us had to sign off, but it’s all good ‘cause we’re like a family. Everyone just gives 100% and looks out for each other, and that’s just how we roll.

Did this put any extra pressure on you to succeed?

Nah, man, not at all. We don’t do this to succeed, we do this because we love it, we do this because we have to do it, you know what I mean? We do this because it’s inside of us, it’s inside of us all, and there’s no other way I’d rather spend my life.

Obviously politics are at the centre of your music. When did this interest first grip you?

I think that being a kid in a single parent family living in a council estate, you are instantly politicised. But I think that when we went to war with Iraq, or just before when there was the threat of that; I think that’s when we really packed up and realised that we need to deal with these things right now.

It was a case of using our first record to try and mobilise people, getting them out into the street to fight for this. We thought that perhaps we could really make a difference and make a change, and there was that real feeling of hope that we could come together in a way that I had never seen in my lifetime. And I think that really inspired us as a band to stick things up a little bit.

Is this political outlook shared by the rest of the band?

Perkie: Yeah, well we’ve all got different views and beliefs and sometimes we have little disagreements, but we all accept that there are different opinions amongst us. But there are a few things we all come together in and have shared beliefs.

Itch: Exactly, and that’s society for me. I think politics is made far more complicated by people than it has to be, and I think that these people do that in order to make you leave the decision making to them. I think the ruling comes down to whether you believe in quite simple things, like peace and love, and if you believe in these then you are not about to go to war and you are not about to join a right-wing party, you’re not going to do any of these kind of things. So it comes down to very basic things; so like Perkie says we quibble on very minor things but at the end of the day we are all in the same mind-set and are all working towards a better world for everybody. So we all come together.

Has success changed your view of the world in any way?

I mean, we still ain’t got no money (laughs), we’re still struggling. Success is all relative in this day and age when bands don’t really make so much money so I don’t think it’s really changed our view. We still try to tap into that vibe of peace and love, and having harmony and one world, one people, one love throughout everyone, and I think that’s going to be there ‘til the end. I think that’s a truth, that’s eternal, I think you can have eternal truth that people can relate to and it becomes timeless. So I think (our beliefs) are one of those eternal truths you can never change.

You gained many fans with your head-on, genuine approach to politics, but you also seem to have lost some who now believe that you have ‘sold out’ on your beliefs. How do you respond to these criticisms?

We’ve had that from day one. When we signed to this tiny little label which ran from a flat in Brixton we were told that we had ‘sold out’ from leaving Hackney and all that. But it’s like, ‘sold out’ from what? Why on earth would we run away to a life where we are completely and utterly struggling the entire time? I’m a father now, I’ve got a son. The right thing for me to do isn’t to be like, ‘let’s keep these politics and these views a secret’, we want to get these views out to everyone. And when I say everyone I’m not talking about cliquey little rubbish, I’m talking about the person shopping in Tesco, I’m talking about your mum walking her dog in the street, I mean everybody.

This message and these ideas are too beautiful to be kept to a small little group of people who are calling on us to be turned on and already know the ideas. We need to get out there. The world is struggling, man, the world is going to fall apart unless people start coming together. Things are moving and happening and we ain’t at the forefront of that movement and we ain’t any kind of leaders of that movement, we are a very small part of a much wider movement. But that wider movement is coming up and it’s taking over, and if people want to say we’re ‘selling out’ for sticking our heads above the water then fine, call me what the f*** you want.

But what I do is I get out there and we as a band get out there and we work damn hard to make sure that what we are putting out into the world has as much positivity and as much love as we can, and hopefully through that we will change something. And at the end of the day, it’s a very British thing, if you start rising above your level, people are ready to put you down. You put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, once the crabs start crawling out and the others don’t help them, they get together and pull them down, you know what I’m saying? And that’s a really bad thing.

I think we need to come together and realise that together we are strong, man, rather than going round dissing them saying ‘they ain’t hardcore, they ain’t left enough. They ain’t this, they ain’t that’. It’s f***ing bullsh*t, man, we’re working for the same thing, we’re working for positive things, so it’s time we all came together and realise we have to be strong. If you’ve done something politically that has achieved more than The King Blues, then I’ve got the time of day and I’ll listen to your criticisms. If you’re just some kid in the bedroom who is criticising us without actually doing anything, then quite frankly I haven’t got time for you.

Do you think politics will always have such a strong hold over your music?

We don’t try to be a political band, it’s just that politics is our life. At the end of the day, we are a working class, multi-racial band, and that in itself is a very political thing. The fact that we’ve got so many different kinds of people coming to us shows that, that is a very political thing. I don’t like to separate politics and life, I think that the fact there are people struggling with no money and no love, it’s just a natural thing, it’s part of life. I don’t think you can decipher what is political and what ain’t, so for us we will always write about what’s real, and what is real at the end of the day is going to be political. It’s an integral part of who we are.

What do you find more important – the music or the politics? Could either survive without the other?

For us, we’re activists first, musicians second. But we come together, especially at a festival. The festival season is a beautiful thing, you come together and play for your 45 minutes or whatever, and during that the proudest thing for me with this band is that we can bring people together from all different walks of life. And even if they ain’t listening to the music, for that little time we’re on stage they are just forgetting about the boredom and the bullsh*t of everyday life, they’re forgetting about their nine til’ five life and the daily grinds, and they come together and they dance in a field, and that’s a beautiful thing.

So music is just as important in my opinion, and music is political. People coming together and realising they are not just part of a system where they are here to work and die, work and die, they are actually there to celebrate life. That in itself is political. So like I say, you can’t really separate them.

Your cover of Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Bonkers’ is fast acquiring cult status. (Download it here). How did the cover come about?

We were doing the Radio 1 Live Lounge and they asked us to do a cover. We were thinking about which artists we like, and we wanted to do something a bit different and unexpected. We didn’t want to get up and cover The Clash or do a Specials tune or anything like that. We love Dizzee, we think he’s a wicked artist, so we just ran that tune down and it worked, it was cool.