The Band

Martha Kinn caught up with Palladium at the cafeteria of their Record Label last month...

I was lucky enough to meet these four lovely and polite boys at the Virgin headquarters to discuss the pressing topics of Kate Nash, Nu Rave and Nymphomania...

Who thought of the name and why?
Peter: We all brainstormed a load of names and we wanted one that had very large connotations. Stadium, Palladium.

John Peel could never work out what was in The Smith's record collection, what's in yours?
Pete: We don't have our own record collections we just listen to our Dads.
Rufio: Not that we all have the same dad, it's a bit confusing.
Fez: Lots of stuff, like Jimmy Hendrix, George Benson, Police, Pink Floyd, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Beach Boys,
Pete: Michael Jackson, Yes, Focus
Rocky: Steely Dan, Toto
Rufio: Kate Nash
Rocky: Oh God don't say that that's a lie

Are your dandy-like courageous fashion choices inspired by the Nu Rave scene or a piss take of it?
Ru: Neither, I don't really know anything about the Nu Rave scene. None of us are really interested in fleeting trends. It's not a reaction against anything, we just like dressing up.
Pete: Nu Rave is more like glow in the dark, innit?
Ru: Nu Rave is kind of slightly taking the piss in itself
Pete: We don't glow in the dark we shine in the light
Ro: That's a classic, we do shine
Fez: It's terrible!

What's your new video about?
Ru: It's about Rocky Morris' hairstyle (laughs)
Pete: it's the first video that we've made and it goes with the song high 5 which is about stealing a girl from an undeserving man.
Fez: Its got wolves and cockerels, all kinds of symbolism
Ru: Its quite fairy tale like which is something we're all quite enthralled by
Ru: We love story telling and that's what most of our songs are about.

Why choose a nymph as your main symbol? Would any of you consider yourselves to be nymphomaniacs?
Pete: Nymphomaniacs?!
Ru: No (To Rocky) he's a necrophiliac
Fez: You've been rumbled
Pete: no its cause of the fairy tale thing
Ru: It's mystical. And the nymph is androgynous. Not that we are. But the whole point is that it's an emblem
Fez: It's pretty strong. You can use symbols much more than you can use a band name. Like a nymph you can put everywhere, you can get it into your art work, you can put little flashes of it in your video. Or nymph Earrings?
Ru: yeah or you could make a pack of cards with a nymph on the back, lots of really cool things

How are you going to the save the world?
Ru: We're gonna save the world by producing incredible music.
Fits of laughter.
Ru: Well how else are we gonna save the world? I've got a Starbucks card so I feel like I'm doing my bit.
P: Nah we wont save the world but we'll set the nymph free
Ro: Yeah he'll do it for us
Ru: We wont save any whales though.
P: But it helps... kids and stuff.
Ru: Yeah the nice ones, not the prats.

What was good about the 80s?
Ru: Well we were all born in them.
Ru: So that was quite exciting. The Falklands War
(laughter)
Ru: Well the 80s was great music
Pete: Yeah just cause of the invention of digital synth and midi. Whenever you bring new technology into music, there's a lot of experimentation there a lot of people who get it wrong, there's also people who get it very right. Sadly with the 80s, people only seem to remember the really cheesy horrible stuff when there was actually a lot of great music in the 80s.
Ru: Generations have a tendency all the time to hate, you know even in classical music, baroque to classical, people dislike or react against the era before them. So I think in the 90s everyone was like 80s is a really dirty word. I mean there's a lot of 50s, a lot of 60s in it still, like the harmonies and the beats.

What was your favourite Pink Floyd LP and why?
Pete: Probably dark side of the moon because it just takes you on a journey and they only ever use like 2 chords.
Ru: No its true, you can listen to the album and for one of the biggest selling albums of all time, each track's a good 7 to 10 minutes and you can't help but get completely immersed in it.
Fez: Its quite inspiring that you can be so different and still be such a success
Ru: Cause when you listen to it and you think this is one of the top 10 albums ever it is really quite progressive, still.

What do you think of the current music scene and how do you see your role in modern music?
Pete: Erm, current music scene... the same as it always has been. There's a lot of crap, but there's also some good stuff and some of the good stuff normally gets overlooked now.

Would you consider yourself to be a type of new prog rock band?
Ru: Well I dunno cause prog is another weird word as well because again people just brand it. It's the same thing.
Ru: You could say Beatles albums are progressive or stuff like Beach Boys, what happens is the great players get together and write great stuff and perform it and then everyone else likes to put it so they can organise it neatly in their record collection.
Fez: I don't think its really up to us to have to describe what we are.
Ru: We're a combination of influences and that might be a facetious answer, but it is as simple as that
Pete: Leave it to the journalists
Ro: Yeah they'll be putting us in enough boxes as it is

So would you say that you're inspired by prog rock?
Pete: Yes we're definitely inspired by what is now called 'prog rock' because of the fact that it is progressive. Its progressive emotionally, technically
Ru: It's as much as inspired by soul music
Pete: But you get a lot of soul bands like the other side of Sly and the Family Stone, the more 'progressive' side of that, again you get progressive soul music.

What did you get out of the school tour? Is that the audience you're aiming for?
Pete: We're not really aiming for a specific audience, we're just aiming for everyone.
Ru: The thing is with playing to people like that, when you play clubs its great but you don't get to play to anyone younger.
Fez: Yeah I would have loved for a band to come into my school.
Ro: Its just like a new audience to hear your music that haven't been able to come to the clubs
Ru: So that's great. As rewarding as doing any gig.
Fez: Because we get the little question answer thing afterwards. Most people ask the band 'what are your influences?' If you can get someone to go and listen to old records then that's a good thing in itself.
Pete: It is an education for them as well because most of the kids there will have never seen a band live.
Ru: The reaction is really nice because its completely unaffected, like if they want to shout at the end of a song. Like today it was great this kid just stood up completely unexpected with all his group of twelve year old mates and just started clapping and he was just like (arms outstretched) and then you looked round and saw that no one else was clapping. It was funny, it was so great cause for him, it was like a sudden epiphany and he was just like yeah! As a musician if what you're trying to express comes across to whatever age then that's a good feeling.
Fez: We don't have a problem with playing schools, I'm sure a lot of bands would but then that's the difference between us and other bands.
Pete: Its quite scary
Pete: Cause the kids could murder you if they want to because at the same time they don't have the same inhibitions to really enjoy it, they don't have the same inhibitions to cuss you out as well.

How do you deal with all the screaming girls?
Fez: Just direct them to Rocky
Ro: By the way Martha (yours truly) went to a girl's school
Fez: Yeah we had a little talk about this earlier, about the sexual repression and when you see a boy you just wanna... (cheeky look)
Pete: To be honest the first gig we did in that gymnasium, we started playing and we thought, hang on a minute there's something wrong with the sound and I was looking around thinking oh my god we've just blown the PA or something and then I realised it was the kids screaming so loud it was drowning the sound out.

Do you consider yourself to be a pop band? And how do you differentiate yourselves from cheesy boy bands?
Pete: Oh we were just having this discussion innit. What is pop? Who really cares?
Ru: Its true people forget that Michael Jackson is pop and Prince is pop and all that happened was at some stage in the 90s pop started to get manufactured a bit more. So it doesn't matter, the way we differentiate ourselves is just come to a gig or listen to our records because there's nothing insincere or manufactured about it.
Pete: We're a real band, it doesn't really matter what you call us, we're just a band, it doesn't matter if we're pop or not

Where would you like to see Palladium in a year's time?
Ru: Playing stadiums round the world. People laugh when they say why did you start a band? And they think you're taking the micky cause you say I wanna be the biggest band in the world. But I don't see why if you're gonna be in a band and your passionate about what you do why you wouldn't want to play to as many people as possible.
Pete: We wanna be like our heroes. That's why you start playing cause you hear someone and you think wow I wanna be like that and usually that isn't Jim the guy who plays mouth organ down the rat and parrot.
Ru: Jim is good. Is that in Notting hill? Don't you know him? He's like one of the top three harmonica players in North West London.
Pete: People think its greedy or arrogant to say that but its not its because we really love what we're doing on the stage and we really love our music so we want as many people to enjoy it in the same way we do.
Ru: You wanna try and give the same feeling back that you had when you were listening
Ro: Or playing on stage
Ru: In a true artistic way as a musician, that's how it works.

Palladium's passionate performances can be witnessed almost daily in schools and gig venues around the country. Are Palladium the most hardworking band around? Let's not forget that the Beatles worked daily for two years before they reached fame outside of Liverpool. With the same work ethic and passion to be popular, there's no doubt that this pop band can reach similar astounding heights.

So, are Palladium really going to save the world? Perhaps not, but the pop world may have just found its saving grace.