|
|
Post by tinydancer on Oct 27, 2005 4:16:30 GMT
gotta love these boys
|
|
|
|
Post by bellestarr on Nov 4, 2005 22:17:08 GMT
liam's latest rant...
Liam knocks Bloc off
(Friday November 04, 2005 06:23 PM)
Liam Gallagher has unleashed a scathing attack on almost the entire current UK rock'n'roll scene, dismissing Bloc Party, Kaiser Cheifs and Franz Ferdinand.
The unusually outspoken Oasis frontman claims the crop of guitar bands dominating the music press in 2005 have nothing on the Britpop idols of ten years ago.
Liam reserves his most devastating words for Bloc Party in a new interview with a US magazine, referring to them as "little c*nts", while comparing Franz to Right Said Fred.
Speaking to Filter magazine, who acknowledge that the Gallagher brothers are currently more popular in the US than they've ever been, Liam is in foul-mouthed, uncompromising form.
On the subject of Bloc Party, he rants: "These are the little c*nts that when I open a paper, these are the ones who are slagging me off!
"The week before I get my crack at them, I open the paper and they've got Bloc Party slagging me off! And that's fine. You slag my band off, but then you better be ready for me to f*cking come after you.
"But, that's as far as it goes. It's just f*cking hatred for each other's music. But that's life."
Talking about Franz Ferdinand, meanwhile, Liam continues: "I don't hate them. I just don't like the music and I think he sounds like the guy out of Right Said Fred.
"And that's it. If that's what you call a slagging off, then f*ck me. You don't want to know what I really f*cking think of them."
On the subject of the current scene in the UK, Liam continues: "It's hard for me to champion England when I don't like the bands I'm championing.
"It's hard for me to go, 'Ah, Bloc Party, it's f*cking great!" They're f*cking rubbish. The only band that I like is Kasabian.
"You've got Kings Of Leon, you've got the Strokes - I'd much prefer listening to them than f*cking Bloc Party and the f*cking Kaiser Chiefs. At least they look cool."
Oasis release a new single, "Let There Be Love", on November 28.
|
|
|
|
Post by sel on Nov 4, 2005 22:24:54 GMT
lol liam is great
|
|
|
|
Post by bellestarr on Nov 4, 2005 23:29:44 GMT
always good for a laugh or 2  |
|
|
|
Post by mickey o'neil on Nov 5, 2005 0:21:56 GMT
|
|
katietill
Struttin' Now
shake what ya mama gave ya
Posts: 359
|
Post by katietill on Nov 6, 2005 4:53:28 GMT
i love this thread, do you know how long it is going to take me to read all these? i can't believe i just found this. don't worry, i WILL read all of them! and kudos to liam. aaand.. i noticed in one of the first interviews that ben kweller is like their best friend!!!! WHAT??!?!?! holy crap, i can't wait to read more!
|
|
|
|
Post by cornflake on Nov 8, 2005 4:58:33 GMT
i love this thread, do you know how long it is going to take me to read all these? i can't believe i just found this. don't worry, i WILL read all of them! and kudos to liam. aaand.. i noticed in one of the first interviews that ben kweller is like their best friend!!!! WHAT??!?!?! holy crap, i can't wait to read more! I agree katietill, there is so much good stuff to read on the kings. Actually, if you want to read the majority of their articles you should go to Kate's (Buck) site here www.o-dusty.com/. It's a brilliant site, not totally finished but has a lot of goodies. |
|
katietill
Struttin' Now
shake what ya mama gave ya
Posts: 359
|
Post by katietill on Nov 8, 2005 12:13:37 GMT
oh sweet thanks cornflake!
|
|
|
|
Post by bellestarr on Nov 10, 2005 1:36:02 GMT
This was in today's Robertson County Time. (TN) "I always knew you're safer flying in first class Nashville area rockers Kings of Leon play Vandy's Memorial Gym Friday night, and let's hope they're not too tired from their recent trip to South America. The boys actually got an interesting surprise on the long flight down there. They were in first class and there was an attractive woman in a business suit who proved to be quite appealing. She was so alluring that they invited her to play cards with them. Things went great, and the Kings' singer guitarist Caleb Followill even started some light flirting. When they debarked (Don't you love that word?), the woman turns to Caleb, takes his hand, pulls it toward her waist and . . . places his hand on her handgun. "I'm an air marshal," she said with a wink. Then she turned and left." |
|
|
|
Post by caroline, maybe on Nov 10, 2005 2:33:25 GMT
This was in today's Robertson County Time. (TN) "I always knew you're safer flying in first class Nashville area rockers Kings of Leon play Vandy's Memorial Gym Friday night, and let's hope they're not too tired from their recent trip to South America. The boys actually got an interesting surprise on the long flight down there. They were in first class and there was an attractive woman in a business suit who proved to be quite appealing. She was so alluring that they invited her to play cards with them. Things went great, and the Kings' singer guitarist Caleb Followill even started some light flirting. When they debarked (Don't you love that word?), the woman turns to Caleb, takes his hand, pulls it toward her waist and . . . places his hand on her handgun. "I'm an air marshal," she said with a wink. Then she turned and left." that is the BEST story I have ever heard. I wish we all could have seen the look on his face! ahaha |
|
|
|
Post by The Morning Seed on Nov 10, 2005 3:31:14 GMT
Ahhh... what a fine gentleman, and i thought his kind all went and left in this day and age.
And the whole air marshall thing is fabulous, and i never say that word. Thats something out of a movie. Hey if you got a rockstar flirting with you that cant feel bad.
|
|
|
|
Post by sel on Nov 11, 2005 17:05:37 GMT
aww they fly first class! i hate economy!
|
|
|
|
Post by bellestarr on Nov 12, 2005 0:49:45 GMT
This is a printer friendly version of an article from the The Tennessean.
Kings of Leon come home to work, play
Nashville's Kings of Leon will perform at Vanderbilt University tonight with punk-ish power-pop act The Donnas. Kings drummer Nathan Followill says the two bands shared a Lollapalooza bill a few years back, "but we were banished to the parking lot stage. They were living it up with Perry Farrell and the boys on the big stage. We'll be sure and give 'em some (expletive) for that one."
BY NICOLE KEIPER
Staff Writer
Published: Friday, 11/11/05
Although most everything you read about Kings of Leon mentions that the band hails from Nashville, to be fair, it's not a place they get to hang around much.
"We got home on Halloween day," says drummer Nathan Followill, the eldest of the four Kings at 26. "I think this is the first time we've been home for seven days straight in a while."
Nathan and brother/singer/guitarist Caleb Followill, 23, moved into a new house the day they got back, too — brother/bassist Jared, 18, and cousin/guitarist Matthew, 21, Nathan says, got apartments downtown, but "We bought us a house on a bunch of land a little further east, moved closer to Mom so she can come over and cook and do our laundry for us."
The new home bases have come after strings of tours that kept the Followill boys skipping across the globe, and for this little break before they were due back on stage (tonight at Vanderbilt University's Memorial Gym, with The Donnas), they got to take a bit of time to just hang out. Hanging out in Nashville, though, Nathan says, will keep a guy on his toes.
"Lord, every time we leave, the bars that we hung out in, we come back and they're closed," he says, "I don't even know what the hot spots are (now) to be honest with you."
The Kings have good reason to stick to that new house, anyhow. Nathan and his band mates have songs to finish writing, since they'll soon start work on the follow-up to this year's Aha Shake Heartbreak — probably recording it here in town, so they'll get a bit more time at home. According to Nathan, they're already in good shape this time, too.
"The last record, we really didn't do any writing on the road," he says, "just kind of came home and our memory just started flooding back, and we spent two weeks just writing the stuff down as quick as we could. This last little clump of tours we did, we took a lot more advantage of sound check and worked up new stuff. We're definitely a lot further along at this point . . . We're pretty excited about it."
A part of that "little clump of tours" was an arena jaunt alongside superstar act U2 — a band that's managed to stretch both critical and commercial success over nearly three decades. That trip, Nathan admits, taught the Followills a lot about longevity.
"(U2 is) a band that's been doing this for (so many) years, and they don't seem like they've sold out, they seem like they're still doin' what they love and makin' the kind of music that they want to make," he says. "But you know the thing that impressed us was, someone gave us a DVD of one of their first shows in America, and they were so young, but they've still got the same passion and energy (now) that they did back then. And that says a lot, especially when one of the guys in the band is also runnin' the world, basically."
The Followills are still quite young, but they've already achieved a considerable amount of commercial success (largely in the U.K.), and, increasingly, critical acclaim.
Reviews of Kings of Leon's latest noted a marked difference between the band's Southern-garage debut album, Youth and Young Manhood,and its jittery avant-rock follow-up. And for his part, Nathan says you can expect his band's new disc to be "as different from those two as the second one was from the first.
"We're definitely a lot more confident now than we were, as far as our ability to play and our ability to write songs," he says. "I don't want to sound cocky by no means, I mean it could come out and people could think it's pure (expletive). But at this point we just feel that we've evolved and I think we're as much of a band now as we've ever been, as far as just knowing what we want to do, and not being scared to try stuff.
Published: Friday, 11/11/05
GETTING THERE
Kings of Leon will perform tonight with The Donnas at Vanderbilt University's Memorial Gym (201 25th Ave. S.), starting at 8 p.m. Tickets are $7 for Vanderbilt students with ID, $15 for Vanderbilt faculty, staff and other college students with ID, $25 for the general public,
|
|
|
|
Post by bellestarr on Nov 16, 2005 20:46:42 GMT
kitsapsun.com
Nashville rockers find it's good to be Kings
By WAYNE BLEDSOE
November 14, 2005
The Kings of Leon had hardly played in their hometown when they became one of the hottest young bands in England.
"We've played Nashville maybe five times," says Jared Followill, bassist with the group. "Now we're probably the biggest (rock) band from Nashville, but we're definitely not the biggest band in Nashville. Tons of bands who play there do better than we do."
The group, which features brothers Jared, Caleb (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Nathan (drums) Followill and first cousin Matthew Followill, has just the sort of story that journalists love to mythologize.
The brothers' father was a traveling evangelist, and the boys were constantly on the move. They were also forbidden to watch MTV or listen to modern music.
Jared says not all of what has been written is accurate.
"That we grew up playing music in church, none of that is really true," says Followill. "We just went to church."
When the brothers' father quit the clergy, the boys and their mother moved to Nashville and dove into the sorts of things that other teens were doing.
"In Spanish class, a kid gave me a Pixies CD, and it blew my mind," says Followill. "I went home and got on my computer and typed in 'Pixies' and looked at their influences, and one thing led to another."
Followill dove into early 1980s rock - Joy Division, Talking Heads, The Cure; though the brothers were also listening to Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zant.
"But when our first record came out, that wasn't what it sounded like," says Followill. "People say it sounded like Lynyrd Skynyrd, but we really hadn't heard Lynyrd Skynyrd."
Nathan and Caleb landed a publishing contract to write country songs.
"It was like everybody else in Nashville," says Followill. "You know they'd sell some songs and go buy some weed."
He says the songs his brothers wrote "only became popular in our house - they were pretty hilarious."
However, Nathan and Caleb soon became bored with their commercial country endeavors.
"After a while, though, they just said . . . 'Let's start a (expletive) band!" says Jared Followill.
Jared, then 15, bought a bass and learned how to play. A month after starting the band, the group recorded the EP "Holy Roller Novocaine." Released on RCA Records, the disc did modest business in the United States but took off in the United Kingdom.
"We'd ship boxes, and they'd sell out. We'd ship more boxes, and they'd sell out," says Followill. Shortly thereafter, the band released the full-length album "Youth and Young Manhood," which also found its most enthusiastic audience in England, and the band toured Europe to support it.
"I thought it was awesome," says Followill of England. "It was crazy. People looked like us, not like a bunch of frat boys. We were used to getting weird looks and (expletive) from people."
The band hadn't expected things to take off.
"We just threw that record together," says Followill. "I remember saying if just 15,000 people buy the record, that'll be 15,000 people who heard our record. Well, we sold 500,000!"
He says that the band knew that the follow-up, "Aha Shake Heartbreak," released in February 2005, would be better.
"We'd listened to a lot more records, and we all knew what we wanted to do," says Followill. "We had a lot more songs, and we were a lot more confident."
Followill says he doesn't know if being a family band creates particular tensions because he's never known anything else.
"We argue a lot, fight, fisticuffs and stuff, but I don't know if it's because we're brothers or just because we're in a band," he says.
(Contact Wayne Bledsoe of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at http://www.knoxnews.com.)
.
|
|
katietill
Struttin' Now
shake what ya mama gave ya
Posts: 359
|
Post by katietill on Nov 17, 2005 2:14:50 GMT
does anyone else think that jared is a genius?
"Jared, then 15, bought a bass and learned how to play. A month after starting the band, the group recorded the EP "Holy Roller Novocaine."
|
|
|
|
Post by caroline, maybe on Nov 17, 2005 4:04:40 GMT
oh yeah. he's got... I would say skills, but he's way surpassed that even....
definitely a genius
|
|
|
|
Post by californiaxwaiting on Nov 17, 2005 12:43:33 GMT
Jeezus, i wish i could play bass like him.
|
|
katietill
Struttin' Now
shake what ya mama gave ya
Posts: 359
|
Post by katietill on Nov 17, 2005 17:27:32 GMT
i mean, really they all are...
|
|
|
|
Post by schooltardy on Nov 17, 2005 23:15:07 GMT
This is an old interview with Caleb from Bristol University's student paper, Epigram, but I thought it was quite sweet:
Son of a Preacher Man
Caleb Followill of the Kings of Leon
Naomi Williams meets Caleb Followill of Tennessee garage rockers Kings of Leon in - bizarrely - the ping pong room of Gloucester Leisure Centre, and finds him to be a well-mannered Southern gentleman who worries about upsetting his mum with his 'dirty' lyrics. Bless.
After their million-selling debut Youth and Young Manhood, the Followill boys have come of age. Though they're not quite grizzled rockers yet, massive success and a couple of years on the road has left them older and wiser and, it would seem, a great deal more introspective.
'It changes you. It changes you in a bad way at first and then you kind of change in a good way. At first you have your head up your ass, then eventually you just realise that you don't have to be the kind of person that everyone expects you to be... I've seen the world and I never imagined that I would leave Tennessee. And I drink wine now. I never drank wine before! Quit smoking cigarettes, which is good. It's changed me in a lot of ways... I got with a pretty girl once!'
Caleb Followill blushes and a coy smile crosses his face. There is a surprisingly profound aura of unassuming modesty in the fresh-faced 22 year-old, coupled with a genuine gratefulness to be in the position that he and his band are in that was seemingly neither expected nor planned. 'At first I thought I'd be a preacher like my dad... and then I was doing construction work and a bunch of hard, heavy jobs and decided I wanted to be a chef, a nature photographer or an actor.' However, after a particularly hard day of construction and college respectively, Caleb and older brother Nathan decided to sit down together and try to write a song. Despite it being, by all accounts, 'terrible', eventually the songs got good and the brothers soon realised that they could make a go of things. 'We knew that the kind of songs we wanted to write no one else would sing! [laughs]'
Caleb's first experiences of singing in public, far from pubescent neighbour-bothering garage rehearsals, was rather more, shall we say, spiritual. 'My mum and dad always tried to get me to sing in church. They got me up there one time and that's only because they said we'd go to Disneyland!'
The Followill family's strict religious upbringing seems to have had a lot to do with the humble and polite demeanours of each member of the band, and Caleb is the first to point out that there is a marked disparity between his childhood and the, in comparison, altogether more debauched life that he leads now. 'We never had a television, my mom never cut her hair, never wore make-up. The first movie we ever watched in the theatre was Twister! So we were very religious. Course, we're living a completely different lifestyle now and the old me would kick my ass right now if I saw me.'
True, Kings of Leon aren't exactly known for their clean living, so what do Mr and Mrs Followill think of their sons' and nephew's mode of employment?
'Our dad thinks it's great. I don't think he's ever read the lyrics or anything like that. But our mom, I mean, she loves us and she loves the fact that we're doing something and making a name for ourselves because she always told us since we were really young that we were special and that we were the best ones in the family and that we could do whatever we wanted to do... but she's read the lyrics before and she's cried. She hates the fact that we talk dirty!'
Talking of family, there has been a great deal of speculation in the ever-cynical music press about whether the band really is related, or just the result of some damn good record company spindoctoring. When I bring this up, Caleb silently hands me his laminate tour pass which features a sepia-toned photograph of four very familiar-looking young faces that looks as though it was lifted straight from the family album. He talks of 'the fire in our eyes that we have when we're all together' and the fact that 'we're all so close.' That familial bond is more than visible, notably when the band are doing what they do best onstage. 'We're doing stuff up there that four regular friends can't do,' he states adamantly.
This bond inevitably meant that more than a few of their songs, primarily written by self-confessed main songwriter Caleb, are going to have a rather inward-looking slant with it being rumoured that there is a song written about each member of the band on the new record. Caleb confirms this, revealing that ''Slow Night So Long' is about a girl that Jared was with that I thought was pretty, but she didn't like me. And there's a b-side called 'Head to Toes' about Matthew which is pretty personal, kind of mean, but... I mean, fuck, I have to write ten songs about myself that are personal so why in the hell can't I write songs about them? One day they'll see it as a good thing.'
All in all the intriguingly-named Aha Shake Heartbreak - the well-received follow-up to the band's acclaimed debut - is a rather more personal offering than before. 'The first record we were writing songs about wishful thinking and putting ourselves into other peoples' shoes and trying to imagine what it would be like, and this album we've been on the road for so long that we didn't have to look outside of ourselves for inspiration.' Caleb attributes their emphasis on the personal in part to the influence of his father and his vocation: 'My dad, as a preacher - he could take the biggest man in the room and make him cry, and then he'd have him cracking up because he would just talk about himself. And so that's how you kind of have to do it.'
Caleb is always quick to point out that Kings of Leon are much more than their backwater brothers story and beardy image. He rejects the superficiality of the music industry wholeheartedly, remarking, 'That's what made us so sick. That by the end of the last whirlwind you'd read about Kings of Leon like, 'Ah, sons of a preacher man, blah blah blah, moustaches, tight pants... Oh yeah, and they play music.' It's just like, come on. Any time they put emphasis on anything other than the music it's kind of odd.' So, of course, I had to bring up the band's apparent change of image. It's no understatement that the vast majority of female music fans experienced a collective swoon when Kings of Leon burst back on the scene after a brief hiatus looking, shall we say, rather more groomed than before (those cheekbones! Ahem...) Caleb is blasèôbout the supposed 'new look' though, replying that it was less a conscious decision and more a necessity: 'We had been on the road for so long that when we got home we all just... we hated everything. We hated everything that people were saying about us and everyone's preconceived notions of what they thought Kings of Leon was and our sound and everything... the only real conscious decision was to go and start over and make a record that no one expected and really just make a record that impressed us. In the process, we took a long bath and my moustache was actually just dirt - washed right off!'
The one thing that Caleb sees as setting Kings of Leon apart from other bands is their honesty. Honesty is, in his words, 'what is gonna shine through in the end.' Although, this has put them is a sticky situation once or twice, especially with the more personal second release... 'It's kind of hard to sing about erectile dysfunction [on the aptly-named 'Soft'] when you know your mom's gonna hear it! I'm like, 'Hey mom, no - I'm saying I'm soft on the inside!'
So, what's next for the band? 'I'm having a kid!' Just when Epigram thinks we have the exclusive of the year, Caleb lets out a good-natured laugh and continues, 'Um, I don't know, we have people that are fuckin' already planning shit... there are rumours of us coming back over here in April, which'll be same-old same-old,' he smiles, a look of unfeigned eagerness crossing his face.
And with that, Epigram leaves the Followills to their game of ping pong. May the best man win.
|
|
|
|
Post by schooltardy on Nov 18, 2005 0:13:48 GMT
From Nashville Channel 2's "Pith In The Wind" site:
Kings of the Blogosphere
Posted by Steve Haruch (11.16.05, 2:33 PM)
Information Leaf Blower has posted the Top 40 Bands in America 2005 , according to an informal survey of mp3 bloggers. Nashville's own Kings of Leon came in at #21, between Crooked Fingers and We Are Scientists. At least they came in above Gwen Stefani. Gwen Stefani ? Anyway, Dceiver...
Information Leaf Blower has posted the Top 40 Bands in America 2005, according to an informal survey of mp3 bloggers.
Nashville's own Kings of Leon came in at #21, between Crooked Fingers and We Are Scientists. At least they came in above Gwen Stefani. Gwen Stefani? Anyway, Dceiver had this to say about KoL:
Calling these guys the “Southern Strokes” was probably meant to be complimentary but feels more like a write-off, especially after the release of Aha Shake Heartbreak, which finds the band in expert control of some elemental rock power. They match revelry with regret, power with vulnerability—you get the feeling that the world is open to these guys.
I would venture to say that the only way to get more Nashville bands on lists like these is for our boys and girls to get out on the road. Beginning their campaign for Best of '06, The Carter Administration are doing just that, hitting Ohio on Friday for a 4:00pm spot on the internet-only radio station WOXY.com in Cincy and a gig at The Nite Owl in Dayton later the same night. If you haven't heard them already, check out a few songs on their obligatory MySpace page.
|
|
