On the eve of their first ever Wolverhampton gig, Counteract caught up with Kid British backstage at The Slade Rooms to chat about Birmingham, albums and illegal downloading.
Counteract: So you guys are on tour, what the best thing about touring?
Kid British: We’ll we’re just doing spot gigs at the moment and we will hopefully be touring in October or late October. We’ve never played Wolverhampton before so it’s kinda good.
C: What do you think about it?
KB: We’ve not really seen it but we got some good food from next door and that’s the best thing about it up to now. We’ve not been out anywhere.
C: As you know we’re a Birmingham based magazine, what’s the best thing about Birmingham?
KB: The water. The waters supposed to be the best, don’t know why it just is. The Canals. The people are pretty friendly anyway. With the type of music that we do when we come to Birmingham the people appreciate it as it’s the area that it originated from.
C: What’s the weirdest thing to have happened to you on tour?
KB: Well… (Note: Simeon, James and Adio all look pretty mischievous) Yeah. Here’s one, here’s one. On the tour bus there’s about 16 bunks and I (James) heard strange adult noises coming from one of them. So popped my head out my bunk and it was coming from Tom’s direction. So, went and ventured down thinking that someone might have had like a chick on the bus or something but that wasn’t the case. He was in his bunk watching adult material. That’s pretty weird if you see Tom. It’s not something you want to come across. There’s probably loads of stuff because we’ve been on so many tours and stuff.
C: What’s the most memorable thing been?
KB: [all] Specials. We did like six dates with The Specials. We did one at Leeds Millennium Square to like 8,000 people and that was really good but scary, you know what I mean? Yeah scary, obviously as a lot of those Special’s fans there are like die-hard fans from like when they were out the first time. Watching them makes us realise we have to step up. They’ve had time to develop and stuff; if we could be half as good at them in 30 years then…
C: How did you feel when they asked you to support them?
KB: It’s amazing as it’s like your idol’s taking his hat off to you, giving you the green light to say go ahead. But yeah it was good, it was amazing.
C: So you’ve got a new album coming out soon, when’s it due out? And what’s it called?
KB: Lads, this gets mixed (Simeon looks at James and Adio for support) October you say? Yeah back end of the year. It’s called ‘To Get Nowhere Follow the Crowd’. Like if you follow everyone and a lot of people keep just following trends and same with bands. Like we just want to do what we want to do to be honest. The biggest thing is that you got to do something that you believe is right and not follow fashions.
C: and then a tour with that?
KB: yeah the tour. That’s when we’ll tour, either October or September. We don’t like to give a dead date as stuff changes.
C: You’ve changed your record label since you’re last album haven’t you? How come?
KB: it’s just; they wanted to take us in a direction that we felt we’d passed. That’s all it was really. And with the new label we felt that we could be a bit more comfortable to do what we want to be doing. We have more freedom to be independent. That’s how it came about.
C: So is your new album much different to your first?
KB: Nah because we released the album in two halves. We released the first half but not the second so a lot of people have been waiting for the second. So what we’ve done is instead of releasing the second half we’ve used some of the songs off the first and second half and then some completely new songs. So it’s like a mix. They’ll be some stuff that people are waiting for. It’s good, it’s sounding a lot better, a lot stronger.
C: You’re very much a social commentary band. Do you find yourselves being compared to any artists such as Jamie T?
KB: I think out of most artists that are out you could say like Jamie T, people like Plan B when he was more rap. Nah I like Plan B, he’s not changed for the worse, he’s still contributing to music and bringing out good music. I’d rather hear Plan B than many other artists out there at the moment. Anything that’s talking sense or has relevance, that’s what we’re about, things that we see around out local neighbourhood
C: Has that influenced you more than other bands?
KB: Yeah I think that at first it was one of the only things that influenced us when we started out. And then when you become more aware of different types of music. People used to say we reminded them of The Specials but we’d never really heard of them before that. But where we’ve come from has influenced us more than other music. It’s great to be compared to such bands [as The Specials]. The Specials have said that they like us, UB40 have said they like us which is good.
C: Which artists, dead or alive would you like to play with?
KB: Bob Marley or Joe Strummer on the same bill – both headlining. Just us cleaning up after they’ve played [we’re all laughing by now] if we could even see them bands. Just what they stood for and spoke about. There are some bands they never reach an audience but those artists made songs that make a difference to their audience which is what makes them such great artists.
C: What do you think about illegal downloading?
KB: I think it’s great. We do all this hard work in the studio and then people just take and we’ve got no money. It’s like you going to work every day and your boss coming up to you and saying that he’s not gonna pay you.
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