Crowned in Sound: Talking memorable interviews, The Chameleon and Billy Bootleggers with music journo Dom Gourlay

Dom - let’s start with your DJing residency at Billy Bootleggers. What are a couple of songs that never leave your set?

If it's a Saturday night, I'll always end on Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground: one, because I love the song, and two, because the remit at quarter past three is to get people out. If you play a real banger, everyone’s just [mimes mayhem]. And at the moment, wherever, I literally mean wherever, I play Chappell Roan: the whole place explodes. I did a festival in Sweden before Christmas, Viva Sounds - it’s a very alternative festival musically, but I played Good Luck Babe and people got on the stage, just…[shakes head].

Can you see a Nottingham act ever breaking into the zeitgeist like that?

The Nottingham scene is as good now as it’s ever been, we've got so many incredible bands that are breaking through at the moment. I think there’s still a stigma though, about being from a ‘music city’. We've got bands like Bloodworm, Bored Marsh, Swallowtail and Marvin's Revenge - while Midnight Rodeo and Divorce are doing really well now.

But one of the positives is that we've got a really supportive scene. Twenty years ago, it seemed very competitive - now everyone wants to help everyone. We’ve got festivals like Dot to Dot, Hockley Hustle, Beat the Streets - local artists have opportunities which weren't there before, to play festivals that are going to sell out. I've got friends now that travel from Norwich, from London, we’re bringing people into the city who are then saying, ‘Bored Marsh? What a band they are’. It's always been us going to other cities and telling them how great their bands are - now people are coming here and saying that about Nottingham bands.

Was music journalism something you fell into - was there a grand plan, a moment?

I was in sixth form at the end of the 80s, and music was very factional, you had to be a mod or a punk, or whatever, but I just liked everything. There's an old friend of mine called William Guy who used to run a fanzine called ‘Corrupt Postman’. I took a job as a postman when I finished sixth form, so it was a running joke for a while! The fanzine was basically him just turning up early for sound checks when bands like Spaceman 3 and Jesus and Mary Chain played gigs in Nottingham, and that inspired me to start writing myself. 

Then Drowned in Sound started just as I was finishing uni. The internet was getting big. I was doing stuff for the Rock City Review as well, and that was going online. It wasn’t a day job - you might get a free ticket for a gig or an album you liked to review - but then it just really took off in the early to mid 2000s. We didn't expect it. No one expected it. I was writing in my spare time as I’ve always had a day job, then one day I was told ‘we're going to put you on a retainer,’ then it was ‘we're now going to send you to the Jack Daniels birthday party in Nashville.’ I got an opportunity to go and DJ at a shoegaze event in Japan for five days - it was me and Matt Wilkinson from NME, two UK writers/DJs that were flown over and just literally treated like royalty for five days… so I’ll always be indebted to Drowned in Sound.

Have you had any interview disasters?

Oh, God. 99% have been great, but the one that always stands out for me was 2008, Brian Jonestown Massacre. The first time that I met [lead singer] Anton (Newcombe) he wasn't in a good place mentally. They’d just brought out an album called My Bloody Underground - it’s a brilliant record. But it was a weird interview. He’d go off on tangents about conspiracy theories, and the question that threw him was ‘What would you say is the definitive Brian Jonestown Massacre record? He turned the question back on me and said, “What's your favourite?” I said "It's got to be Methadrone, because that was the first record I heard by your band.” And he replied, “So you're basically saying we should never have made another record after 1992?” I said, “I didn't say that”.  And he said “You did. You ****ing did”. We put it up on Drowned in Sound as ‘Unintentionally Enraging Anton’. That went kind of viral.

But there are musicians who are really lovely, too?

Charlotte Church is one. Our interview was meant to be set up at Green Man Festival in Wales. Everyone had a heavy night before so we were all a bit worse for wear, and we were sat having a drink with her. She said, “Do you mind if I don't do the interview now…can we do it after the festival next week instead?” I said, “That's fine, Charlotte, whenever works best for you.” So she gave me her mobile number and said, “Give me a call, we’ll sort a day out.” Then a few days later we had a three hour call about the state of the world, the EU referendum and a lot of personal stuff about her childhood as well as talking about music and how she’d now reinvented herself on the indie circuit, and the stuff that she was just trying to do for women's rights. The piece went up on DiS and got a lot of hits, so she messaged me, going, “Oh, thank you so much for this. This means a lot to me - if you’re ever in Wales, give me a shout.” So I did a couple of times, and she’s now being managed by Sean Adams who founded Drowned in Sound. 

That’s what music journalism can do for the artist, and is there value in it for a reader?

There is for my generation. You know, I bought Melody Maker and NME from the age of twelve, I used to buy Smash Hits before that, which had probably 18-20 pages just devoted to song lyrics for songs that were out at that time. So you’d buy that, and you get the words to like, Stigmata Martyr by Bauhaus, or A Forest by The Cure, in the magazine. It was just a massive, massive thing. 

As time has gone on, with the internet and with streaming sites, do you really need to read what someone else thinks of something where you can just go and listen to it yourself? Johnny [Dom’s son] is only seven, and I've got two stepsons who are a little bit older - I look at their interests - Johnny plays the violin but mainly picks up music off Youtube or TikTok, while the other two boys are just obsessed with gaming, music is secondary to them. It’s something that might soundtrack the next Roblox game. It’s not like it was for me, but I'm still doing stuff in print for Under the Radar. So I hope it comes back.

Are music publications adapting to the internet age?

I think some have, to their credit. Line of Best Fit’s still here. DIY is still here. Dork seems to be going from strength to strength. The Quietus - I know they’ve had a few bumpy rides every now and then, but they're still here. So, you know, there must be a way to survive. Certainly with the first three I mentioned, I think a lot of their rationale for being around is that they've bridged the gap between music journalism and PR, while also embracing partnerships with music festivals. The flipside of that is how do you remain critically objective if an artist, label, or festival is advertising in your publication? It’s a double edged sword.

Do you think we can draw the line between PR and journalism?

I've got friends who do music PR, and that's a really tough gig at the moment. Most PR contracts mean that they’ll get paid for getting a certain number of reviews or mentions or articles over a period of time. But then probably 99% of writers, certainly online, aren't getting paid, yet the PR has to sell their artist to a writer who's not going to get paid. They’re not going to get a physical product. It's just going to be a stream that might expire in twenty days - how do you try and spin that as an incentive to someone to then take hours out of their day - sometimes even longer - to write about something, when they're getting any real recompense for it?

That's why most of the stuff I take on now is paid. If I've got to interview an artist, talking to someone is actually the easy bit, The hard bit is the transcription, which can sometimes take days, then trying to make it all flow and make sense, which can be three, four days worth of work, and that's three, four days uninterrupted. And if you've got a busy day job and a young family, you have to try and balance everything. It's just really difficult, so I'm careful now about the stuff that I take on. At the moment I’m the Festivals and Live Reviews Editor for Under the Radar. And if I'm getting 400 pounds worth of festival tickets to write one or two articles about a specific event, great. I mean, you know, there's some festivals that are still really appreciative for coverage. 

On the subject of live gigs, we’ve lost one or two venues here - is there anywhere you’d bring back?

The Chameleon, all day long. Some of my friends have had birthday parties, even a wedding reception there, you know, that was our social. It was a massive loss for the city, a huge loss for touring bands, and for local bands that want to start out in that kind of venue. We've still got J.T. Soar, which I think is amazing, just everything about that place. And I think Billy Bootleggers is very underrated - the upstairs room at Billy's has the potential to replace The Chameleon - it’s the right size, it's the right sound. The sound engineers there are incredible. And a lot of people don't really know about it.

And on the festival front - anywhere you want to point us to?

Rockaway Beach. I've been to every single one and I’ve DJed the closing party every year since 2019 - it's an incredible festival. It’s set in a holiday camp in Bognor Regis. It started in 2016 and used to be held in October. The line-ups have always been incredible, but it just never sold out. The organisers lost money on it, and it took a year off… then Ian (Crowther, Rockaway Beach founder) decided he was going to move it to January. I said ‘Ian, you’re going to struggle with that, no one goes out in January’. But that was the biggest selling year so far, and it's gone from strength to strength ever since. This year’s event sold out six months in advance, and the headliners were Spiritualized, Leftfield and Ride. It's kind of replaced the All Tomorrow’s Parties events from the late 2000s.

I understand you’ve got some judging to get on with at the minute…

I'm on the panel for Glastonbury Emerging Talent - I’ve been part of ETC since 2011. I have to submit my top three entries by the first weekend in March. There's thirty judges, and then there's normally between seven and eight thousand artists that enter, which then gets split down between all thirty judges, so I've got 235 acts to go through. I'm struggling because this year the standard is so high, and there's probably forty acts that are really, really good. A couple of those are from Nottingham as well, but I’m not going to mention names, because I don't want to get people's hopes up!

Anything else coming up this year you want to shout about?

The Karma Weekender in March is one that stands out for me. I’m DJing both nights. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and The Paddingtons are headlining, so that's going to be a bonkers but fun couple of days. And there's an electronic music festival called Psychic Dancefloor in Derby on Saturday 22 March, which my friend James Thornhill is putting on. I played it’s sister event (WFR) last year… And of course the Manic Street Preachers tour, obviously! They’re my favourite band and I’ve seen them more times than anyone else. 

I'm going to big up Billy Bootleggers as well. I’ve been one of the resident DJs there for two and a half years, and it’s a fantastic venue. The staff, the other DJs, and the clientele. We all try to create a safe space, a safe environment where everyone's welcome. It's really inclusive. It's free entry. And you know, a couple of people have said to me that it’s the least pretentious venue in Nottingham. I'd go along with that.  There is no pretence. Anything goes within reason, which is a bit like my DJ sets!

Lastly, and most importantly, where are Forest going to finish in the league this year?

It’s been an incredible season so far, but I think it might be a tall order to finish in the top four. Nevertheless, just to be in contention for a European spot is a dream in itself… if someone said to me this time last year “Forest are going to be sat third in the table going into March,” I’d have laughed at them. The football’s great to watch - Nuno’s done a wonderful job. He’s also managed to continue what Steve Cooper achieved in bringing back the affinity between manager, players, club and the fans.

undertheradarmag.com