Gosh, if you haven't seen this documentary already then please, please, please check it out.
What I would've done to have been old enough and aware enough to go see this tour back in 1991.
I love the scene of Dave Grohl in the backstage area feeling up the grapes and kiwis!!
I really think it's time to harp back to the days where great bands tour together because they have a similar ethos, attitude and love each others music. Although we just did a few nights of the Selfish Cunt tour back in December, there was a real sense of kinship between us. Hell, maybe all bands are currently touring with each other to experience that but I want to experience this again for myself.
Who knows what the future holds? This current lifestyle leads to dramatic shifts in fame and fortune in the space of a few days let alone trying to plan and manage expectations beyond that.
I know it seems like I harp on about Nirvana in almost every post but I just can't help it. I'll try and vary the musical references from now on but today, it's going to be all about Nirvana. Again.
We played Shot By Both Sides, a great club night, last night at the Amersham Arms. It was great to play south of the river as the people and bands we played with were slightly more eclectic than our usual east London haunts.
In between festive merriment and whilst standing outside for a breath of fresh air, a man came up and started talking to me about how much he enjoyed the show. It later transpired that the man was Gordon Keen - member of Captain America/Eugenius and BMX Bandits, two massively underrated Scottish bands from yesteryear. As soon as he mentioned this, I got slightly excited as Kurt Cobain often spoke about his love for these bands. Captain America supported Nirvana alongside Shonen Knife on their 1991 Nevermind European Tour. How's that for a story?
Keen said that after hearing us a few songs in, he turned to his friends and said how we need to get into the studio with Steve Albini. He's top of our wish list too. The feedback we got from him was great as not only did he understand what we are doing, he also said it was great to see a band keeping the faith alive - the faith that made bands of his generation do what they did. It was very inspiring to hear these words from the hero of one of my heroes.
I also thought I should mention a bit more on Shonen Knife as Keen mentioned he thought we were Japanese when he saw us in a magazine. Just for the record...we're not Japanese! The similarities with Shonen Knife lie in the fact we're a 3 piece composed of a pair of sisters and we also love punk/surf but we're not ethnically the same! X-Bird and C-Bird are from the Philipines and I'm half Nepalese, half South Indian. Hopefully that's cleared that up for good!
Now I make no habit of hiding the main influence behind me taking up drumming - the man in question is Mr Dave Grohl.
Growing up listening and watching Nirvana, I was mesmerised by Grohl's drumming. Despite having one of the most enigmatic, tortured, genius frontmen of all-time, watching Dave Grohl drumming struck a deep chord with me and drove me to take up drum lessons aged 13.
You may think I bang on about Nirvana endlessly, but this band mean everything to me. Lyrically, musically...everything they stood for and did. They epitomised all the power a 3 piece could achieve...no other bands at the time had such a basic line-up that was so incredibly powerful. This really gives me a quiet confidence with the approach of The Birds. We don't need to do anything conventional if we don't want to. There's nothing wrong with 2 basses in a band or instrument swapping because that's what comes out of us when we write and perform. The instrumentation we use is the most precise way of us expressing ourselves. If we sat down and procrastinated over everything and swapped for the sake of swapping then we would be the most contrived band out there. We do what we do because it is organic and just happened this way.
Here is a wonderful clip of Nirvana at Live N' Loud - I love the drumming to Scentless Apprentice and the lyrics are so beautiful. The inspiration behind the song was Patrick Suskind's novel, Perfume. Some of you may have seen the film that was made of it last year - the first half an hour was amazing and the rest of it was Hollywood rubbish. I'd love to do a soundtrack for a lo-fi, gripping indie version so if there are any budding filmmakers out there - get in touch!
There are also a few female drummers who I found inspiring when I first started playing. The obvious choice being Moe Tucker from The Velvet Underground. She is an amazing woman and a great drummer. I also like Patty Schemel from Hole, a very understated powerful drummer. This is Drown Soda, which I actually played drums along to during my Music GCSE. No one was that impressed unfortunately and other students were a bit scared of Courtney Love's voice. Ah well.
I also love the drummer from DAF. It's quite unusual having a drum kit in an electronic band but I think it works so well for them. A few people know this, but I actually played drums for Eve Black/Eve White once in a rehearsal - however the dynamics were slightly off with the use of a drum machine as well. It was an interesting rehearsal though and if it worked then maybe there would be no Birds...
Another hugely influential and understated drummer is Stephen Morris from Joy Division/New Order. He's absolutely amazing and his use of both electronic kit with acoustic kit influenced many drummers. This is one of my most favourite songs ever by one of my most favourite bands.
I'm not really a fan of standard 'indie' music drumming mainly because there's too much hi hat and cymbals involved (I'm not really a fan of either) however classic indie drumming can certainly serve its purpose. I love the drumming for Vapour Trail - it's a beautiful song and could have got lost in a quiet sea if it wasn't for the drumming. I love the honesty at the beginning of the clip!
I love male and female vocals - from the beautiful harmonies of The Raveonettes to the harsher raw quality of The Pixies, I have a list of bands that do this and do this so well.
Starting off with Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra - Hazlewood embodied everything masculine and Sinatra embodied femininity at its highest form. Hazlewood's grainy, husky voice in contrast to Sinatra's dulcet tones set up a musical partnership that has never really been matched.
'Summer Wine' is a personal favourite alongside the heavily covered, 'Some Velvet Morning'.
Jumping forwards to the 1980s, my love for The Vaselines emerged after hearing Nirvana's 'Incesticide' EP in which songs like 'Son Of A Gun' and 'Molly's Lips' were covered. Here's a clip of Nirvana doing 'Molly's Lips' with The Vaselines' Eugene Kelly on guest vocals.
I also love the collaboration between Jesus and Mary Chain and Mazzy Star - two of my all-time favourite bands:
My good friends The Raveonettes remain a close source of inspiration and Sune and Sharin's voices are perhaps the most musically entwined I've ever heard. At times it's hard to differentiate who is actually singing and I think that makes them all the more fascinating. Their harmonies are tremendous and I love what they do so much.
Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell's project has also been really inspiring. I've always wanted to do a male/female vocal semi-acoustic project and this is something I'll certainly give more time to in the future or perhaps we may even recruit a guest male vocalist for The Birds at some point.... D-Bird
