“Erase” by Shark Bandit
More than a dozen local bands will be playing the Fall Semester showdown at the Canopy Club on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. In case you’re not familiar with some of them, we’ll be running capsule interviews with as many of them as would respond to our emails over the next few days.
First up: Shark Bandit, who will be playing on Saturday night as part of a five-band bill also featuring Worlds First Flying Machine, Zach May and The Maps, Hot Cops, and On Again Off Again. Cover is $7, and the show starts at 9 p.m.
Smile Politely: How would you describe your sound to a person who you don’t think will like your music?
Shark Bandit: For someone who we don’t think would like our music, we would tell them that each band member has completely different influences, and because of that the person might be surprised to hear something they like in a song that they weren’t expecting to hear.
Smile Politely: Is there anything your music has been compared to that you don’t particularly agree with?
Shark Bandit: People really haven’t compared our music to much other music. This could be because we don’t sound very much like any single musician or band. We’ve been told that our vocalist sounds like the Simple Plan vocalist a couple times, and we can see why they’d think so.
Smile Politely: Are there any non-musical influences that one might not expect?
Shark Bandit: Our non-musical influences are things like past relationships and things of that nature. Conner writes most of our lyrics and they tend to be about heartbreak and working through the pain of breakups and such.
Smile Politely: What are the primary factors/influences/motivations that keep you doing what you’re doing?
Shark Bandit: I think we each have different reasons why we keep doing what we’re doing. One thing that motivates all of us is the fact that we are all becoming more comfortable together as band members and as performers on stage. We’re a fairly new band and now we’re starting to click really well and we’re learning to blend our different influences when we write songs. Because of that we’re putting on much better shows and having a lot more fun than we used to and we’re starting to see more and more people at our shows. It’s really motivating to see that people besides our friends and family want to hear what we’re playing.
Smile Politely: What is the best (or worst) thing happening in music today (either local, national or international)?
Shark Bandit: One of the best/worst things in music today, in our opinion, is the internet. It’s great because it’s very easy (and cheap) to promote ourselves and deliver our music to people who would not otherwise give us a chance. We’ve also been able to network and book shows that we would not have otherwise been able to book, thanks to MySpace and Facebook. However, it’s disappointing to see how much money musicians are losing to piracy and file-sharing.
Smile Politely: Tell us about the worst show you have ever played.
Shark Bandit: Our worst show would probably have to be one of our first shows we ever played. We had only been playing together a couple months and didn’t have any stage experience with each other, so we were pretty nervous. That definitely affected our playing early on. We’ve gotten past that and are much more comfortable now.
Smile Politely: What do you have coming up on the horizon?
Shark Bandit: On the horizon, we don’t really have too much planned. We had a VERY busy fall with recording and playing shows, and now we’re going to focus on booking some winter shows and writing/recording some new material.
Smile Politely: What can people expect from your live show that differs from what is available from your MySpace?
Shark Bandit: At our live shows you can expect our music to be much more explosive than what you hear on MySpace. As with any band’s music, delivering our music to someone through a recording doesn’t give the listener a full experience of what our music is. When we play live, we aim to play with a lot of energy and to put on a good show. That can’t be experienced by just listening to music on MySpace.