Words cannot express what this band means to me, and not even so much the band, but the ideals of it's members.
The break-up note Sam has left on their message board depresses me on so many levels, but also makes me beam with pride"
"Firstly I would like to apologise for the elapsed time between this information becoming public and any personal announcement to yourselves. However we had no idea that a passing comment between friends/associates etc would fly so far into the public domain so please, don't believe all ye read and give us a bit more credit. . . And you all know that a cockrock stage announcement is not really our way!"
"To know that maybe we were one of "those" bands to someone, anyone, is genuinely the highest praise I could ever wish for. . . When we are all old miserable granddads we can all tell our grandkids about that band we were in, with pride because we feel we did it right. We have nothing to be ashamed of and I wonder whether many bands can say the same thing."
But how did this sneak in there? Say it ain't so Sam
"Sometimes life is more important than silly rawkanroll bands....not often but sometimes!"
The reason I respect them so was after an interview that stretched for two hours with Sam and remains the longest and most intelligent interview I've had yet with a band or a member. It's also one of the most rewarding conversations I've had with an individual in the past few years.
I would do pull quotes from the feature I wrote on them for Toaster, but I don't think it'd justify the band. Instead I'll simply note that they created special records for their tour to hand out to audience members with the hope of them making five copies of each to distribute to other fans they come across online, but to mail them instead of file share them as it was a more "romantic" concept. After believing the records would only take a couple of days, two weeks later they finished making those records with just one hour before their flight for the start of their North American tour.
They typically had projections at shows, but when performing at one festival the projector couldn't make it to the stage so they had type2error sit at the front of the stage with notepads scribbling out drawings and quickly throwing them out into the audience for the duration of the set. And on yet another occasion when their equipment broke and they delivered a less than stunning performance at the V Festival, they invited everyone around back of the stage to perform an acoustic set at which point fencing fell over, the police came in to calm the crowd and ended with Sam sitting way far apart from the guitarist Ant, singing into a loud hailer that a kid held up for him while a crowd of 200 sat cross legged in appreciation.
Picking up a copy of Nylon, there was a portion of the short interview dedicated to one member recalling his call to his mom after he'd joined the band. He told her he had bad news and she asked whether he'd gotten a girl pregnant. He replied "No, worse-I've joined a band with Sam."
Picking up a copy of the Fly, the mag had a feature on the band after their failed-ish US tour where the discussed the magical moments, such as stepping out of the bus and encountering people to play ukulele alongside.
The band was magical to put it simply. I think I have listened to their debut maybe twice, but have recounted their words infinitely.
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