When I was a kid, growing up in a house with Cat Stevens,
Neil Diamond, and Simon and Garfunkel, the first time I ever heard Kiss's
"Detroit Rock City,"
it was a moment of musical epiphany. It was just so vicious, aggressive and
mean. It changed the way I listened to music. I've had a few minor epiphany's
since then, when you come across a band that just brings something new and
revolutionary to your ears.
What have been your musical epiphany moments?
At home, my father was always traveling because of his job, my mother, who has always been a big fan of music, played Elvis, Little Richard, The Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday records on repeat ... they were the first artists who opened my mind to music. Then it was my cousins, John, Ronan, David and Jimmy who really introduced me to the world of rock music. Thanks to them I discovered Jimi Hendrix, Led Zep, The Who, David Bowie, Roxy Music and many more. Then at school with my west indie friends I discovered artists like Toots & the Maytals, The Skatalites, Desmond Dekker, Prince Buster during parties they were organizing. My very first concert was a birthday present from my cousins, they drove me to the concert the Sex Pistols was giving at the Brunnel University of Uxbridge in North London. It was at this very moment that I decided that I would be a musician. After that I had the chance to see bands like The Clash, The Damned, The Stranglers, Siouxsie & The Banshees .... I loved all the British punk bands as well as all the American punk bands. In 1982 I am in Paris with some friends and we are going to see one of my favorite band of the time The Cure. They play at the Paris Olympia and it's the Pornography tour, this concert will remain marked for life with the Sex Pistols one.
Talk to us about the song-writing process for you. What comes first, the idea? A riff? The lyrics? How does it all fall into place?
Since I quit all drugs, like all the other musicians in the world, (because drugs are not good and I eat healthy, I play sports and I no longer drink beers), my songs are crap !! So I do Yoga 3 times a week for inspiration, I read all of Deepak Chopra's books I only drink fruit juices and I went vegan, but my songs are still crap. So I quit everything and went back to drugs and junk food, I gained 40 Pounds but I have inspiration again!
More seriously, I Usually don't have any writing process. But often I first create the music with my guitar and a vocal melody without words that I record with my phone. Then depending on the state I'm in and what the song inspires me, I know what the song is going to be about and the lyrics come last.
Who has influenced you the most?
The Beatles, they were so far ahead of how to create music that they opened all the doors to modern pop music.
Where do you look for continuing inspiration? New ideas, new motivation?
I listen to a lot of music, as well bands that I adore for a very long time, but also I am very attentive to young artists of all kinds of music. I quickly realized when I was younger that I couldn't lock myself into one genre of music because it was seeing the world in just one color. So I have always tried to discover artists who make me vibrate and whatever the musical genre. Of course I have subconscious preferences, but I remain open to any music. The inspiration comes to me without me saying to myself, today I am going to compose a great song. Usually I take my guitar and let myself be guided and whatever comes ... Sometimes I just have shit, but that's okay because Shit Happens!
We're all a product of our environment. Tell us about the band's hometown and how that reflects in the music?
The band's hometown is the city I currently live in and it's near Grenoble in the French Alps, so there is no influence on my music. I mean how could it possibly influence me as I grew up in south London until I was 20!
Where'd the band name come from?
I thought of the name as a futuristic evolution of mankind. We are in year 4600 and earth is no longer the only place we live. We live on planet earth but work on the moon, we go on holydays on Mars, etc…Imagine the traffic jam on rush hours in space and I got the name Spacejam. Or maybe when I was in Amsterdam, after eating a space cake. I am not quite sure.
You have one chance, what movie are you going to write the soundtrack for?
A global production called "COVID 19 when humanity's biggest lie killed our freedom"
You now write for a music publication (The Ripple Effect?). You're going to write a 1,000 wordessay on one song. Which would it be and why?
I would choose the Muse Uprising song because in a thousand words it pretty much sums up the current situation I find.
Come on, share with us a couple of your great, Spinal Tap, rock and roll moments?
I'm going to share one because it pretty much sums up what we were going through at the time. We were touring Germany in the mid-eighties and there was that group of 2 crazy girls we met in a Bar in Dortmund after one of our shows. They took us to a strange party and everyone was dressed like aliens and at the entrance, there were tall glasses with lots of different drugs in them and I remember the bass player and I took black pills without knowing what they were. I don't remember what happened after that, just flashes from time to time, and the same for the tour I only remember being on the car ferry and seeing the port of Dover again. The other two in the band told us after the tour that the 2 German girls wanted to get married in England with us and they were glued to us all the time. Eventually, they were turned back by customs officials at the French border for invalid passports.
We are a power trio and on stage the songs are much more powerful and they literally rock your socks off and blow your mind away. On stage, we go straight to the point, no time to beat around the bush. Our audience takes a one-way trip to escape and change of planet. Welcome to our world!
What makes a great song?
In general and from my point of view, a great song is a song that you can sing in the morning when you wake up and in the evening when you go to bed, it's engaging and easy to remember with a gimmick that does not leave you. It's a song that you won't necessarily remember the title, but which you can easily whistle the tune.
Tell us about the first song you ever wrote?
The very first song I ever wrote was called Wow. I was 12 and that was after the Sex Pistols gig and I just took my guitar and played the only chord I knew at the time an E and I was yelling Wow for 2 minutes and that was my first song!
What piece of your music are particularly proud of?
Our latest release Alive.
Who today, writes great songs? Who just kicks your ass? Why?
Yungblud, Liam Gallagher, Stereophonics, Twenty One Pilots, Greta Van Fleet, Junk Bunny, Poppy, Machine Gun Kelly....To answer the question why i would say that all the artists I mentioned earlier, I can't say which one kicks my ass the most because they all have a handwriting that I love and very different from each other. It's an ensemble that I like in their writing, the productions of their songs are so cutting-edge and you have to listen to their song very often with a headphone to fully understand all the work that is behind a simple song and I love it. ca, that an artist takes me into his universe to capture the slightest note of his song.
Vinyl, CD, or digital? What's your format of choice?
Vinyl to listen at cause I love the sound of it, but to work with, digital which today allows such a multitude of possibilities with unparalleled quality.
Whiskey or beer? And defend your choice
The choice is not easy, I want to say the two together in a big glass! I grew up in Kent and my great-grandfather was a brewer so my choice is a choice of the heart. I'm a big IPA beers drinker and I particularly love all those from Brewdog which also have an eco-responsible by being a carbon negative company.I love the complexity of the perfumes that are in their beers and they are creatives who always question themselves and who have sought ever more daring recipes. I highly recommend them if you are a beer lover.
We, at the Ripple Effect, are constantly looking for new music. What's your home town, and when we get there, what's the best record store to lose ourselves in?
I'm from Dartford (Kent) and it's been ages since I went back there and even less in a record store. But I heard of one store which has everything you need to get yourself lost and it's called littleuniversemusic, They have crazy stuff.
What's next for the band?
We're going to go back to the studio to record a new song within a month or so and then we'll release the video. I have a lot of songs in stock and we're moving through this slow-motion world step by step. Our future is still very uncertain to this day but we have to keep moving forward every day despite everything.
