Lost 45s UK Interview Jonny Magus talks to West Yorkshire Beat revolutionaries, The Lost 45 UK’s, under the watchful eye of their manager Micko. Find about The Lost 45s UK at their website and buy all their releases, cause they are an awesome band.
The
Lost 45s UK are Mick Organ/VocalsNick Guitar/VocalsNige Bass/VocalsDave Drums
/Technical wizard
Jonny Magus Origins. How did you start?
Nige That’d be myself, Mick, and a drummer who shall remain anonymous, got together in about 1998. Mick had a load of songs, I had a load of songs and we did 8 rehearsal and 4 gigs. Mick And then the drummer disappeared.
Nige So Mick and I carried on with a drum machine, ahem, as Beat Casino.Mick We recorded lots of demos but didn’t do much for ages. A chance meeting with Nick in a pub…well I’d never met Nick but I’d heard about Nick a lot, kinda knew of him, so just asked him if he fancied joining a band. Dave came along soon after and the rest is history Nick Dave was advertising through the classifieds at work. Dave I was selling a four-track, but also put that there was a drummer for sale too. Nige The line-up was done all very quickly, after bumming about all them years, Mick and Me.Nick I remember Nige from Indigo Prime way back .
Jonny Magus How long have the actual four of you been together then? Nige Probably about 2 years JonnyMagus When did you actually start gigging? Nick A year last November (2003).
Jonny Magus So in public perception you’ve been going just over a year? Mick Yeah about that.
Jonny Magus How would you describe your style, your sound?
Nige In my head, we’ve got this ‘Beat’ thing going on.JonnyMagus A term which is going down well. Nige Aye it has. Recent single ‘Ivy’ has got things rolling and made us accessible. ‘Beat’ is the basis of it all.Nick Though ‘Ivy’ is not the full representation of what we do.
Nige ‘Ivy’ is just one side of coin. With Nick I think we’ve got a bit of a soul thing, which adds to what we do. Everyone puts in, but all the songs we do sort of comes under the same umbrella of a ‘Beat’ style.Dave I just love what Nige does on bass. I think the bass lines are important to our sound and it carries it through.Nick I was thinking about this other day and I think we’re basically northern country music played in a ‘beat’ rock style.
The themes of the tunes are very sort of northern, very sort of suburban, but very ‘beat’ rock when it all comes together. Nige’s bass is very Specialsy, very dance hall type.Mick We’ve a ska/new wave vibe, not really overt, sort of diluted a little. I don’t think we go too far down that alley, but we’ve the ska/new wave influences. It’s not too obvious, but it’s there.
Nick We’re sort of wannbe mods, though I wouldn’t call ourselves mods, I’m just not dedicated enough, cause for hardcore mods, they live and breath it all the time.Nige All the music I listen to would come under the sub mod banner, whether it be beat, soul, ska, a bit a psyche.
Jonny Magus Bill Kelly (WFMU DJ) would just call it real rock’n’roll, which encompasses all sorts of cool rocking styles. As long as its good and it is for real, it’s real rock’n’roll, which you boys are.
Nick (In philosophical pause)’The child is the heart of the man, never lose that’.Mick Yeah! We don’t actually go out and jam tunes, all the songs are composed individually then the band gets them. We may write a song of a certain style, whether it be mod, ska style etc, but the songs are already made up by the time the band gives it the final sound.
Jonny Magus What sort of gear do you use?
Nick Well, I’ve just got a Selmer valve amp twin combo.Nige Lost 45s UK use Selmer.Nick I’ve gotta a Rickenbacker like yourself Jonny.JonnyMagus I know know, ummm ha ha.Nick And an Epihone Casino, which is actually Mick’s.Nige I use a Vox violin bass and a Rickenbacker as a backup Mick I’ve a magnificent Hammond with full on majestic accoutrements Nick A truly wondrous machine Dave I use a pearl export kit .
Jonny Magus What your thoughts on recording and production?
Dave Our studio, Purple Studios, is a purpose build attic studio open to anybody. We’ve built up the studio as we’ve gone along. The early recordings are terrible.JonnyMagus I see em more as rough recordings.Dave Yeah demos.Nige Do you think ‘Ivy’ is our first proper recording then? Dave Yeah I think ‘Ivy’ is the first real one we’ve done. We use an 8 track and any old bits we can get together that can do the job right.
I like messing around with mics, doing recordings using headphones, turning headphones into a mic to get a certain sound.Nige Recording wise it’s traditional what we do, but we’re not opposed to using some modern technology, so we recorded through 8 track, but mixed it through a pc.
Dave I’m into learning any recoding techniques, like recording with mics in different parts of a room. On ‘The Man That Time Forgot’, on the intro we recorded the cymbals using sticks with socks on them, to get the right sound.Nige Very Joe Meekish is Dave, Dave I mess around with the mics on the drum kit to get the sound that we want. Doesn’t matter how you record it; it’s the sound that you want that’s important. If it does the job…
Jonny Magus You’ve got three releases. Is it two official demos and a single?
Nige Yeah, like two demo eps and the ‘Ivy’ single.
Jonny Magus Any plans for future recordings?
Dave Yes, we’ve just done the ‘Ivy’ single, but we’re planning on recording ‘Sister Sue Said’. Fingers crossed that’s gonna be recorded within next few week. Still not 100% sure what we’re gonna do for the b-side.
Jonny Magus Will be out early Spring? Nige More or less Jonny Magus Good news.
JonnyMagus
Tell me about ‘Ivy’
Dave Nigel’s dirty deedsNige Obviously, there’s no truth in it, it’s just a character song. Going back to soundtracks and with the lyrics, I’d like you to feature it in your mind in pictures. If it doesn’t work in the lyrics, then pictures are in the playing. There’s a little bit that Nicks plays on guitar, after the lyric ‘The dirty deed was done’.
Dave said the guitar break reminds him of the bedsprings going, and that’s what I like about it. In using what we’ve got, which is a basic band line-up, we’re trying to get the sound of the song to come across with the lyrics. I don’t you how you can put it into words, but that’s what I hear when I hear it, and that’s why I know whatever ideas we’ve got, we can somehow get it down. I’d Iike to say I’ve not had any relations with a lady of the night, like…Jonny Magus You’re trying to get a visual, cinematic vibe across with Ivy.
Jonny Magus Tell me about ‘The Man That Time Forgot’.
Nick The song is about not progressing. I live in a house that is overlooked by the house I grew up in. You can go so far then you end up where you started, melancholy stuff.
Jonny Magus Are any Lost 45s UK songs available to download from your website?
Micko the Manager Yeah you can download 60 second excerpts of the tunes from the website, but not the whole tunes, in mp3. You can order Lost45s UK Demos and the new single through the website, via me, Micko the Manager.
Jonny Magus What’s your future plans?
Mick World domination. Micko the Manager We want to build up a residency in Leeds. Nige Obviously with ourselves, Coburn and the Freebooting Profiteers (West Yorkshire Beat Revolution bands) and with what we’ve done over the last 12 months, we gotta tie it all together somehow. We’re all known for different things, but we’ve done quite a lot together and I want to put that across with a residence.
Jonny Magus Any plans for a long player?
Nige It’ll happen, Mick We’ve got plenrty of new songs in the pipeline.Nige Yes, putting ten songs on a cd, ‘full of killers not fillers’. The whole idea of when we came up with name Lost 45s UK was that we believe all the songs we have are all worthy of becoming a single, otherwise we’d be lost if we weren’t playing them and I still believe that.
Jonny Magus What are your thoughts on Lost 45s UK?
Nick I find it right hard. I think we’ve got such a long way to go sound-wise, because it doesn’t sound like what’s in my head. If we actually reach that point, no one will probably like us at all, but we’re only just starting out as a working band, that’s how I see it. Nige When you play live, you wanna get that vibe out on tape, but it never happens.Nick I think we’re much better live than we are on recordings.
Jonny
Magus How’s your reaction been in the US?
Nick You can’t be a prophet in your own land. I just sense, how do approach promoting yourself in this country, you don’t know where to start? Because America is so vast and caters for so many people, so you feel you have more of a chance.
They have high quality freeform radio that is not catering to formulaic trends of the latest music. The UK is small and insular, everyone is each others fucking pockets, baffles me over here, but we’ve had a goods reaction in the USA. We got an email from this bloke who heard us on Bill Kelly’s show as he was driving to work in Connecticut. He was wondering how we got our name, but it’s weird that a bloke driving to work in Connecticut to an aerospace factory, has emailed us to ask this, it’s…
Nige He went out of his way to speak to us. Even if we finished now, over this round of drinks, that to me, makes it worthwhile. It’s great that someone has gone out of their way to email us. I’ve heard loads of music and loads of bands, but I’ve never actually sat down and got in touch with them. Great stuff.Nick If it was left to people in bands to maintain any kind of the music scene, as people in bands are lazy good for nothing egomaniacs… to get something like that coming from a bloke over there, I think its absolutely amazingNige Yeah, we maybe retro, whatever like, but that is where it all came from, the USA.
Nick There’s an expectation in this country where you have somehow to tailor yourself, but there’s nothing more natural than a group of lads wanting to play good tunes. USA seems an irony free zone for retroish-bands; you’re taken as you are. In this country, if you’re 60s influenced, you can only do it with a nod or a wink, which is bollocks; you play it as it comes out.
Jonny Magus The Lost45s UK, sum yourself up in couple of words
Nige Cursed
Dave Beat
Mick Gifted
Nick Proud/Pride
Final word from Nick as he says ‘We make the music we make, even though everything is stacked against us’