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"We don't use our skirts or vibrators anymore though," continued Alex. "I had to take a year out of the band to take a year in industry during my university course. The bassist that temporarily replaced me wouldn't do it, and we couldn't force him to. I still had input into the band while I was in London. We never went back to wearing skirts when I came back to Stafford. We still like to have a laugh though."
You have a female singer, what does she think of your shenanigans?
Alex laughs. "Eva [W1red singer] tends not to get involved in it. She pretends to get mad with us sometimes, but girls are worse then the lads sometimes!"
How did the band form?
"I contacted Zaid through a notice that he had posted on the board at Stafford University in January 2001," said Alex. "He was offering guitar lessons and I sent him an obnoxious email. We met and became good friends."
"We met Eva on the bus," said Zaid. "We were on our way out and had drunk a few drinks already. She told us she could sing and we gave her a chance even though we didn't really take her seriously at the time."
"We locked her in a bedroom with some of the music we had written and a cup of coffee," said Alex, "and told her she wasn't allowed to come out until she had come up with some decent lyrics!"
"Our drummer, Paul, joined the band in September 2002," said Zaid. "He saw us play at the Night and Day Café in Manchester and asked if he could join the band."
"The relationship with the drummer at the time and ourselves fell apart shortly after that, so we agreed to let Paul play for the band. He is a very talented drummer."
You've played a few successful gigs
"Yes," said Zaid. "The best was winning the heat for the local radio station, Signal 1 in February 2002."
"We were deemed too un-commercialised at the end," continued Alex.
"A band called Excel won the competition. Their singer was 14 years old and wore an orange boiler suit on stage. We obviously weren't the kind of band that the judges were looking for. We have never heard anything from the winning band again though."
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"We were successful at the Night and Day Café, and also at the Cavern in Liverpool late last year. The worst venue that we ever played was the Roadhouse in Manchester," Alex said. "We had an eight o'clock appearance with an electronic band. The promoter of the Roadhouse, whose name rhymed with t*at, hadn't even listened to our demo CD and had no idea what our music was about. He also proclaimed that live music was dead."
"We won't be asking for more gigs at the Roadhouse again. You can't line up a funk and an electronic band. In fact, we have only ever played with two bands that have a similar style of music to ourselves, and one of these is a very good band called Santa Carla."
And which are your favourite venues?
"We play anywhere," said Zaid. "We love the gigs at Staffordshire University. We have a few gigs lined up there for the coming months." (see W1red's website www.w1red.com for more details.)
Tell us about your music
"We are influenced by a whole range of music," Alex said, "from Zero 7, Brand New Heavies, Incubus, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Beverly Knight, Lauren Hill. Paul likes the prog rock stuff. Our music is very funky and the lyrics are mellow."
W1red have a promotional CD available. They are currently writing material for their second CD entitled A Distinct Lack of Control. "We will be recording this in March 2004," said Alex. "The name of the CD suggests the duality of the band."
And what does the band represent?
"We are a play hard, hard working funk band," said Alex. "We like to have a lot of fun, especially when we are playing live. This represents our personalities. But the main aim for W1red is to please the audience with both our live shows and our recorded music."
Want to send Andrea a message ? Email Andrea@ukevents.net
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