"It's
certainly helped us out as far as having to scratch to get our
recording done, but we don't reckon it's changed us as a band.
There's more support for a lot of bands by record labels than a lot
of people can see from the outside."In not quite 3 years, 28 Days have gone from indie underdogs with a cool sound, to proud owners of a recording contract & an excellent ep which has been praised from all over the media front as well as from their growing number of fans & their new label Mushroom as well.
I recently had the chance to catch up with the band by phone, where an interesting multi-member hook up via speaker phone was held. A little difficult to hear at times with the members talking over themselves, I managed to get a few snippets of information out of them.
First up, I asked how they felt about the new record contract & whether it had changed their outlook on the music industry.
"It's
certainly helped us out as far as having to scratch to get our
recording done, but we don't reckon it's changed us as a band.
There's more support for a lot of bands by record labels than a lot
of people can see from the outside."
I asked about what other local bands we should know about from the band's own area.
"That's hard to say. If you're talking about bands that are worthy of a recording contract then I don't know. We're just so pleased to have a contract ourselves that we don't really look at other bands that way. Maybe we will later on, but not for now. If a band are good enough then they'll attract the labels themselves."
With the talk of record label support, the band's opinion of MP3 as a distribution format of the future certainly made for interesting conversation.
"MP3 scares us a little. There's so much bootlegging going on. If they ever get the piracy issue sorted out, then MP3 will really stand a chance of becoming legit, but there's real problems you know, with people ripping our songs off. We're not coming from any sort of high moral ground or anything like that, but people are just downloading stuff off the net without paying for it. That's not to say that the legit sites aren't paying the royalties, but there's so many people getting stuff for free."
I asked if the band had lost stuff from bootlegging on MP3 yet.
"Not that we know of, but it's probably happened. That probably sounds funny, us being sort of a punk band & talking about getting paid for our music but it's a personal thing for me. Musicians in this country make stuff all from their work. I still have a job working in a pub at the moment & if people don't buy our music because they can get it for free - & I don't blame people getting things for free - then then we can't make more music because the label aren't getting enough money from our past releases so they can't put any more for us to make another project."
That said, the band have received a lot of support from Triple J playing tracks off the Kid Indestructible ep, mostly Kool. I asked how other stations had gone for the band's exposure.
"We've been really lucky with triple J especially. I guess other stations like Triple R have also been great, plus other community stations & Triple M here in Melbourne have also been reasonable, but radio isn't really very supportive of any bands outside that. We're not complaining though, because as a band we've been very fortunate."
A lot of people are looking forward to hearing some more new material from the band & they had this to say about when we can expect an album.
"Look it's great having a contract because we get to sit around all day playing Playstation - but seriously, we're waiting for the producer top fix his desk or whatever is happening. We hope to get it finished before the end of this year & released around late November or early December, but there's no promises."
Check out the band's ep Kid Indestructible through Mushroom or look out for the band touring soon.
