When did you first realise that COVID-19 was going to have an effect on your band?
We really realized what was going on as we were officially told us to “Stay Home”on the first lockdown in March. From one day to the next this government of incompetents forced us to stay at home and we were deprived of all our freedoms and we did not have the right to say anything, just the right to obey!
Initially, what was that whole situation like, and how did your band overcome/react to it?
The first two weeks of the lockdown, we really didn’t know what to think or do. Then we organized ourselves to face this lockdown. We wondered how we were going to continue to live from our job as a musician without being able to perform on stage. We had to rethink our entire economic model and reinvent ourselves day by day. We focused our communication a lot on social networks and did a lot of live streaming and videos.
How has your creative process changed as a band over the last couple of months?
The creative process hasn’t changed much in songwriting, as it all starts with me. What changed were the rehearsals that we could no longer do in good conditions. We tried to rehearse in web streaming but the sound quality was really poor due to the poor internet communications. So to continue to build on new songs everyone recorded their parts at home and I compiled the whole song with my computer.
What’s been the hardest part about writing/doing music this way?
The hardest part of creating this way is not seeing each other and interacting together live. We are human beings who need to experiment our emotions together to build us. This need is a vital need for living human beings. Not being able to interact with each other makes us in the long run a kind of meaningless robot.
What bands/artists have you been listening to over the last couple of months?
I had time to discover a lot of young artists like Yungblud, Machine Gun Kelly, As it is, The Struts, Poppy … I really took the time to listen well and I was very surprised by the production incredible of all these artists. It taught me a lot. I realized that I too had to integrate this new way of thinking about a song until its production.
So, what do you think you’ve learnt the most from being a band through COVID-19?
What we’ve learned the most as a band in this shitty Covid Plandemic is to constantly adapt and not give in to stress. We have learned to live from day to day thanks to all this incompetents government. We have become the puppets they play with. One day you go out, another you don’t!. I would also say that for our good mental health, we have learned to seek other information than the ones given by the fake news media and we are thankful to all the whistleblowers from ail over the world, we have the balls to continue our job of musician and that we have not gone totally insane in a society which explains to us that we should look for a new job!
What kind of effect do you think that it’s had on the music industry all together, and how excited are you to see it return to normal?
First of all I think all of this shit has had an effect of saturation, great stress and opportunity on the music industry. In the end I think that one part of the music industry has been and still is very afraid of the future. I have a lot of friends who have lost everything, the work of a lifetime, there are a lot of small / medium venues who won’t reopen and musicians who won’t go back on stage. I would not speak of the major music companies which are controled by financial powers which will always be doing well no matter what, they are opportunists who will follow the orders of the government to the letter. Tomorrow to go see a concert the biggest ticket sellers such as Ticketmaster is planning to use app to verify COVID status, in hopes of return to full capacity shows in 2021 and other businesses are going to follow, the same goes for football or any sport games and to go to the pubs or to the restaurants! I’m not at all excited about having to get vaccinated to be able to live in the tomorrow’s world! The world as we have known it is dead and buried and the new standard is on the way. Orwell’s world is no longer a fiction, we are changing the paradigm. Yeah i know it’s all very scary what I’m saying, but i still have some hope left, I know we all can change this if we unite and stand against this dictatorship. I know more and more of us are fighting to save this world gone mad, so let’s be hopeful. Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!
What tips/advice would you like to give to other bands who are also going through this?
As I said above, we must unite if we are to survive in this world gone mad. It’s up to us to build the world of tomorrow together, our elders did it for us in 1976 thanks to the Punk movement, so it’s up to us to create our own movement. We don’t have to sit back and hope someone will do it for us, it’s selling his soul to the devil, and the devil always wins in the end! We are the 99%.
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