Im Rahmen der Me the Band und Neckless Tour in der Schweiz hatten wir die Möglichkeit, mit beiden Bands Interviews zu führen. Das Interview mit Neckless Sänger Marcel Sprenger findet sich ebenfalls hier auf dem Schaffhausen.net-Blog. Nachfolgend das Interview mit Spike Rogers, Drummer von ME the band - das Interview ist in englischer Sprache.
Beat Hochheuser: Hi Spike and welcome! How do like Switzerland? There are a lot of clichés and traditions about the country, do you know any of them?
Spike Rogers: Oh you mean apart from the chocolate and the cheese... and Roger Federer? Beautiful women!
Beat Hochheuser: Yes, you know, the first Bond girl was Swiss, Ursula Andress.
Spike Rogers: I think the cliché of Switzerland is, that it is beautiful, with beautiful women, really good food, that they are smart and it's expensive! That there live a lot of rich people, that's pretty much all I know. We have been here in Zurich before - 2013 at the m4music festival. It is a beautiful city. We came by car and traveled during the day, so it became green more and more. The other contries just don't look like as healthy as Switzerland does. And Zurich is an easy place, because everybody speaks English. Even if you try to speak some Swissgerman, they answer back in English, because of their English is much better.
Beat Hochheuser: I heard the same about Germany. If you want to learn German in Germany and the people realise, that you speak English, they smile a litte bit and then they anwser back in English to practise the language. So it is very difficult to learn German in Germany.
Spike Rogers: It is exactly like that. If you want to learn German, you have to find one person that always speaks German with you. Otherwise you have no chance to learn it.
Beat Hochheuser: Allright, so how fluent is your German now?
Spike Rogers: It is not fluent at all!
Beat Hochheuser: What can you say in German?
Spike Rogers: Schmetterling!!! Hahaha - I don't know why this word. And I can count like one, two, three. I can say: Zwei Bier bitte! grosse, kleine. You know, I can speak Japanese. And to be honest, there are two reasons, why I don't learn German. One is time, I'm so busy with the band and with doing some other work as well. And all of my life is surrounded by English, especially in the music scene, so I don't have that much opportunity to learn it. The other side is - which is not a very positive comment - that I don't want to learn German. I know that sounds very negative, but I don't necessarily think we are going to be based for too long, we will be traveling quite a lot. So I don't want to learn the German language super well. When I learn a language, then I want to learn it all, but German is not necessary to do that, because I'm not gonna be here for too long. So Berlin will be our base until mid next year and then, I don't know. First, we are now going back to Australia for two or three months to spend christmas and then we come back to Berlin. Then we will do an UK-Tour and hopefully some european-touring as well. We would also love to come back to Switzerland then. And later we would like to do an album in Berlin, finish writing the album and record the album in Berlin. And after that point we go to wherever music is working. That was also the reason why we originally moved to Germany, because music was working well in Germany.
Beat Hochheuser: And London, where you stayed before, was very expensive, right?
Spike Rogers: Yes, right, London is one of the most expensive cities in the world - Zurich, London and maybe Sidney in Australia. So London is very, very expensive and we were lucky that we were traveling so much. It would make sense first to go back to England, because we still have so many fans there. But we will record in Berlin, because it's cheaper and we are sourrounded by creativ people all the time.
Beat Hochheuser: If you would organise a festival, who would you pick to play there, dead or alive?
Spike Rogers: Oh wow, yeah we do this in Germany with the "Satisfactory Factory". That was the idea, we want to choose bands, that we love to play there. So, who would I choose... My favorite bands are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead - so I would definitly have them play on the main stage. And then, I also want to have a jazz stage and one with classical music as well.
Beat Hochheuser: Great, I would definitly go to that festival! So do you still go to concerts of other bands?
Spike Rogers: Not as much than we used to go, because we have kind of short time, we are working as well and there is much recording. The last concert, that I went to - it was a festival actually called "First We Take Berlin" - was "Catfish and the Bottlemen" and "Royal Blood", the went number one in UK about two weeks ago. And we go to see a concert on thursday as well, "Antemasque" - the band of the ex-members of "The Mars Volta". And we see the shows of Neckless, the band we are touring with, they are pretty cool. On Southside Festival we saw "Queens of the Stoneage".
Beat Hochheuser: What is the funniest thing that happend to you onstage or backstage?
Spike Rogers: Not a lot of people know this, it was on a tour with one of the bigger bands, "Panic! at the Disco" or something. We were all very drunken and they made me promise, when I was drunk, that on the last night of our tour, I would wear anything that they gave me. So on the last day of the tour, they were able to buy me anything and I would wear it on the stage. So we were on tour with "Twin Atlantic" and the guitar tech went and bought me a 12 years old dress, very small, I didn't really fit in, with a little hat and I had to wear it in front of 800 people - and the hat didn't fall of, so that was pretty funny. And I got a wet suit - that was pretty hot and very embarrassing.
Then we had to load of, so I took all the equipment and then I had to go around at the front of the audiance to get backstage again. But because I was wearing a fucking dress, I didn't have my backstage pass. And at the door was a big security guy. He looked at me, and said: NO! So, I was just on stage, I was the guy wearing the dress - he must have tought that I was crazy. He said, if you don't have a pass, you can't go in. I said, dude, I'm waering a fucking dress, I need to go back, I have to change. For 5 minutes I had to wait there until someone was gonna to come out from the other bands, but no one came out. So, in the end, the bouncer opend up the door and said: There is a guy in a dress outside and sais he is in the band - and everyone started laughing, and then they let me in. So that was my funniest backstage and onstage story.
Beat Hochheuser: When do you guys write your songs?
Spike Rogers: It depends. At the moment we are writing songs in a bunch of different ways. Maybe a little bit slower that we should be. I don't write myself, but the boys write them individually and then we come together to work on it together. We have been trying a bunch of different methods. Sometimes one writes the whole thing and sometimes we write the song in the studio. So we just come out with a bassline or melody or something and then we just demo it with different drums over the top - we write the song like this. The reason that we decided to try to do this is because we wanted songs that sounded differently. You don't want to write the same song over and over again and we didn't want to write the first album again. As you know talented bands, that survive, they change their sound every album. After the last album, we got a new Bandmenber, Josh, and this changed a lot. The new sound is definitely Josh. But it is also because we have changed as a band and as people and we have moved countries. Sleepwalker was the first song Josh was involved. It came from mainly Luke and then we recorded it into a studio together. Shoot, our new single, was like a production-song. Mikey had a bass rift that he came up with and then we worked on it four nights long and then Mikey spent like two weeks just mixing it and cutting it up and turning it into something. So that's more a production piece than just a song. We don't have a formula on how we always do it and I think this is kind of exciting.
Beat Hochheuser: What non music related hobbies do you have that would suprise us?
Spike Rogers: I do magic tricks with playing cards, my grandfather was a magician, not professional, just hobby, but he was good and I picked it up from him. I still do it at parties. That is my main kind of hobby. I also like computers a lot, I build homepages, also our ME-Homepage for the band. I also like drinking, but magic is the one that would suprise you. I never told anyone that in a interview, so you are the exclusive on this.
Beat Hochheuser: What was the worst job you have ever had?
Spike Rogers: I have been really lucky, I have never really had a bad job. The first one I had was called a school-holiday-programm. It's where all the kids from the school go and look after the younger kids during the school holidays. So we put on activities, played games and had picnic. I used to work with the kids that were ages like 7 to 14. And then I got moved into the kindergarten, so I stoped looking after the other kids. It was fun but it turnd into my worst job because there was one kid and his dad was very famous, a famous australian actor. This kid was crazy, it was abosutely crazy. He was maybe like 5 or 6 years old and he got very angry with the other children. So I would have to stop him and come down, but he wouldn't do. He put up a rake and he started hitting the other kids. So I had to stop this, it was crazy. And then he started hitting me. Because I was the older one, I couldn't hurt him, so I had to try to tell him, that this is not cool, and he hit me across the face and I still have a scar on my nose from this little famous kid. So that turned it into my worst job.
Das komplette Interview kann man sich hier anhören:
Hier noch ein paar Videos von ME the Band auf Tour in der Schweiz:
ME the Band - Bar Rossi Zurich
ME the Band - Kulturkeller Höngg / Zurich
ME the Band and Neckless - WG Party in Zurich
ME the Band - Grabenhalle St. Gallen
 |
| Luke Ferris and Spike Rogers from ME the Band (Foto: Southside 2013). |
Beat Hochheuser: Hi Spike and welcome! How do like Switzerland? There are a lot of clichés and traditions about the country, do you know any of them?
Spike Rogers: Oh you mean apart from the chocolate and the cheese... and Roger Federer? Beautiful women!
Beat Hochheuser: Yes, you know, the first Bond girl was Swiss, Ursula Andress.
Spike Rogers: I think the cliché of Switzerland is, that it is beautiful, with beautiful women, really good food, that they are smart and it's expensive! That there live a lot of rich people, that's pretty much all I know. We have been here in Zurich before - 2013 at the m4music festival. It is a beautiful city. We came by car and traveled during the day, so it became green more and more. The other contries just don't look like as healthy as Switzerland does. And Zurich is an easy place, because everybody speaks English. Even if you try to speak some Swissgerman, they answer back in English, because of their English is much better.
Beat Hochheuser: I heard the same about Germany. If you want to learn German in Germany and the people realise, that you speak English, they smile a litte bit and then they anwser back in English to practise the language. So it is very difficult to learn German in Germany.
Spike Rogers: It is exactly like that. If you want to learn German, you have to find one person that always speaks German with you. Otherwise you have no chance to learn it.
Beat Hochheuser: Allright, so how fluent is your German now?
Spike Rogers: It is not fluent at all!
Beat Hochheuser: What can you say in German?
Spike Rogers: Schmetterling!!! Hahaha - I don't know why this word. And I can count like one, two, three. I can say: Zwei Bier bitte! grosse, kleine. You know, I can speak Japanese. And to be honest, there are two reasons, why I don't learn German. One is time, I'm so busy with the band and with doing some other work as well. And all of my life is surrounded by English, especially in the music scene, so I don't have that much opportunity to learn it. The other side is - which is not a very positive comment - that I don't want to learn German. I know that sounds very negative, but I don't necessarily think we are going to be based for too long, we will be traveling quite a lot. So I don't want to learn the German language super well. When I learn a language, then I want to learn it all, but German is not necessary to do that, because I'm not gonna be here for too long. So Berlin will be our base until mid next year and then, I don't know. First, we are now going back to Australia for two or three months to spend christmas and then we come back to Berlin. Then we will do an UK-Tour and hopefully some european-touring as well. We would also love to come back to Switzerland then. And later we would like to do an album in Berlin, finish writing the album and record the album in Berlin. And after that point we go to wherever music is working. That was also the reason why we originally moved to Germany, because music was working well in Germany.
 |
| Singer Luke Ferris and Josh Murphy (guitar, vocals), ME the band at Bar Rossi |
Spike Rogers: Yes, right, London is one of the most expensive cities in the world - Zurich, London and maybe Sidney in Australia. So London is very, very expensive and we were lucky that we were traveling so much. It would make sense first to go back to England, because we still have so many fans there. But we will record in Berlin, because it's cheaper and we are sourrounded by creativ people all the time.
Beat Hochheuser: If you would organise a festival, who would you pick to play there, dead or alive?
Spike Rogers: Oh wow, yeah we do this in Germany with the "Satisfactory Factory". That was the idea, we want to choose bands, that we love to play there. So, who would I choose... My favorite bands are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead - so I would definitly have them play on the main stage. And then, I also want to have a jazz stage and one with classical music as well.
Beat Hochheuser: Great, I would definitly go to that festival! So do you still go to concerts of other bands?
Spike Rogers: Not as much than we used to go, because we have kind of short time, we are working as well and there is much recording. The last concert, that I went to - it was a festival actually called "First We Take Berlin" - was "Catfish and the Bottlemen" and "Royal Blood", the went number one in UK about two weeks ago. And we go to see a concert on thursday as well, "Antemasque" - the band of the ex-members of "The Mars Volta". And we see the shows of Neckless, the band we are touring with, they are pretty cool. On Southside Festival we saw "Queens of the Stoneage".
 |
| Michael Godde (bass, backing vocals) and Luke Ferris (lead vocals) - ME the Band |
Spike Rogers: Not a lot of people know this, it was on a tour with one of the bigger bands, "Panic! at the Disco" or something. We were all very drunken and they made me promise, when I was drunk, that on the last night of our tour, I would wear anything that they gave me. So on the last day of the tour, they were able to buy me anything and I would wear it on the stage. So we were on tour with "Twin Atlantic" and the guitar tech went and bought me a 12 years old dress, very small, I didn't really fit in, with a little hat and I had to wear it in front of 800 people - and the hat didn't fall of, so that was pretty funny. And I got a wet suit - that was pretty hot and very embarrassing.
Then we had to load of, so I took all the equipment and then I had to go around at the front of the audiance to get backstage again. But because I was wearing a fucking dress, I didn't have my backstage pass. And at the door was a big security guy. He looked at me, and said: NO! So, I was just on stage, I was the guy wearing the dress - he must have tought that I was crazy. He said, if you don't have a pass, you can't go in. I said, dude, I'm waering a fucking dress, I need to go back, I have to change. For 5 minutes I had to wait there until someone was gonna to come out from the other bands, but no one came out. So, in the end, the bouncer opend up the door and said: There is a guy in a dress outside and sais he is in the band - and everyone started laughing, and then they let me in. So that was my funniest backstage and onstage story.
Beat Hochheuser: When do you guys write your songs?
Spike Rogers: It depends. At the moment we are writing songs in a bunch of different ways. Maybe a little bit slower that we should be. I don't write myself, but the boys write them individually and then we come together to work on it together. We have been trying a bunch of different methods. Sometimes one writes the whole thing and sometimes we write the song in the studio. So we just come out with a bassline or melody or something and then we just demo it with different drums over the top - we write the song like this. The reason that we decided to try to do this is because we wanted songs that sounded differently. You don't want to write the same song over and over again and we didn't want to write the first album again. As you know talented bands, that survive, they change their sound every album. After the last album, we got a new Bandmenber, Josh, and this changed a lot. The new sound is definitely Josh. But it is also because we have changed as a band and as people and we have moved countries. Sleepwalker was the first song Josh was involved. It came from mainly Luke and then we recorded it into a studio together. Shoot, our new single, was like a production-song. Mikey had a bass rift that he came up with and then we worked on it four nights long and then Mikey spent like two weeks just mixing it and cutting it up and turning it into something. So that's more a production piece than just a song. We don't have a formula on how we always do it and I think this is kind of exciting.
 |
| Spike Rogers - Luke Ferris - Josh Murphy - Me the Band at Kulturkeller Höngg |
Spike Rogers: I do magic tricks with playing cards, my grandfather was a magician, not professional, just hobby, but he was good and I picked it up from him. I still do it at parties. That is my main kind of hobby. I also like computers a lot, I build homepages, also our ME-Homepage for the band. I also like drinking, but magic is the one that would suprise you. I never told anyone that in a interview, so you are the exclusive on this.
Beat Hochheuser: What was the worst job you have ever had?
Spike Rogers: I have been really lucky, I have never really had a bad job. The first one I had was called a school-holiday-programm. It's where all the kids from the school go and look after the younger kids during the school holidays. So we put on activities, played games and had picnic. I used to work with the kids that were ages like 7 to 14. And then I got moved into the kindergarten, so I stoped looking after the other kids. It was fun but it turnd into my worst job because there was one kid and his dad was very famous, a famous australian actor. This kid was crazy, it was abosutely crazy. He was maybe like 5 or 6 years old and he got very angry with the other children. So I would have to stop him and come down, but he wouldn't do. He put up a rake and he started hitting the other kids. So I had to stop this, it was crazy. And then he started hitting me. Because I was the older one, I couldn't hurt him, so I had to try to tell him, that this is not cool, and he hit me across the face and I still have a scar on my nose from this little famous kid. So that turned it into my worst job.
Das komplette Interview kann man sich hier anhören:
Hier noch ein paar Videos von ME the Band auf Tour in der Schweiz:
ME the Band - Bar Rossi Zurich
ME the Band - Kulturkeller Höngg / Zurich
ME the Band and Neckless - WG Party in Zurich
ME the Band - Grabenhalle St. Gallen
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