Interview: Baby Godzilla

Matt: Johnny is a man double our age with twice the anger. But he’s always very punctual. When we go on tour he usually eats a lot of Spam and it sends him crazy. Tom likes to hit things really hard - not always his drums. He’s never afraid to act like an idiot on stage, which is pretty cool. 

Tom: Paul is athletic, enjoys a tipple and pulls the best bass faces. Matt is tall and handsome. Sometimes I just sit and watch him, my mind boggles. I think...I think I love him.
 

Tom: Yeah, it was because a couple of years ago we did a five date tour in Poland that was sorted by a Polish guy I knew from work. The band all took a guitar each and I took my cymbals and my snare, and it cost £40 each on Ryanair. We played student festivals and in a cave. It was such a good time and they just love music over there, they were really into it.

Matt: So we planned to go back again this year and use the same contacts. We were really excited and had about ten dates booked out there so we bought a van for £500 and called him Van Diesel. But smoke started coming out of the back just as we got our tickets from the Eurostar. About ten yards later, the van’s engine just stalled; hours passed and we got word back from the AA men that they couldn’t fix it. It was rubbish to let so many promoters

in Poland down that had put their time and faith into us.

Tell us the story behind one of your songs...

Matt: Our song Dave Lancaster is named after the bass player from Hot Japanese Girl. But the lyrics came when I angrily wrote this letter out one night to an ex-girlfriend who had put me through a lot. When I read through it I realised it was horrible, just awful and I didn’t send it. But the repetition was such that it worked like a song. So we jammed and kept just repeating the same riff, while I screamed these lyrics over it.

Matt: Captain Dangerous are a multifaceted bunch of young men, with a lead singer who tends to inflate to at least three or four times his actual size while singing. They write songs about people forgiving them because they’re British.

Tom: Hot Japanese Girl are brilliant - when their new double EP CD comes there’s probably going to be no point in us, or anyone else, bothering to make music anymore. All good riffs and ideas will be taken; there’ll be nothing left, because they’ve done it all. Captain Dangerous? Yeah, they’re not bad. A little weird, perhaps…

Tom: He got us a gig in Bradford on Saturday. Then he popped up on Facebook and said, “Hey guys! What you doing Saturday night? I’ve got this battle-of-the-bands thing that you might be able to judge, if you’re not doing anything.” So you definitely have to keep your own diary when you’re involved with him.

Matt: He’s invited entire bands full of people back to my house, on the terms that they’d get steak and champagne there. I tend not to keep either of those in stock. But he’s great to work with - we wouldn’t want to be without him, that’s for sure.
 

Matt: We’re going to play at The Maze with loads of other great acts for LeftLion. Well, that’s my plan – I hope the rest of the band share that plan as they have all been told.

Tom: I’m sure I’ll be there in some shape or form.
 

Matt: I learnt the other day that analogue display clocks are always positioned around the ten past ten or ten to two position, because they’re smiling in this position. Their arms are up, and they’re happy. The most common one is eight minutes past ten, because you don’t want it to be too perfect as that looks like they’ve set it that way. I’ve never ever noticed that

before and I was told on Monday. Since then, I’ve looked quite a lot and it’s true.