Speaker 1what's going on welcome back to the james kennedy podcast thanks for tuning back in how you doing i hope you've all had an awesome week and if you haven't yet checked out the last episode with nathan paul southern go and do it now because that was one of the most mind-blowing conversations i've had in a long time the stuff that guy was talking about jesus christ man go and check it out honestly it was it was an insane chat talking about some mind-blowing investigative journalist work that he's doing over in east asia to do with criminal networks and organized crime and how it overlaps with state governments and stuff again mind-blowing stuff honestly it was it was a fascinating chat so please go back and check that one out if you haven't caught up yet not much to report on my end since the last time we spoke you know honestly man you know i'm working on the second book and when you're doing that you know you well for me anyway i tend to just become a bit of a hermit even more so than normal and just stay indoors and just hammer away at that so so no kind of glamorous instagram posts can be derived from someone just sitting in front of a laptop in a weird typing so nothing exciting really to report at this end but you know watch this space because as i said the infamous mr eddie marsh is now back from touring with iron maiden so the underdogs will hopefully be shattering some eardrums very soon and i will be forced to drag myself out of this long three-year hibernation that i've been going on but fear not because today's guest has a life that is a gazillion times more rock and roll than mine and i'm super excited to finally be able to get them on the podcast but before i do that you know the drill by now have you subscribed to the podcast if you haven't go and do it right now and come back have you left a review yet or a star rating if you haven't come on man help a brother out this shit's free all right let's just get down to business because i'm super excited to talk to today's guest so let's bring him on you may know him as the voice in the hair in the generation defining blackout or the voice in the mullet in the bone shattering raiders or you may know him as the chopsy bastard on the amazing sappening podcast i don't think i need to say any more than that if you don't know who i'm talking about already then what the fuck is wrong with you joining me today from about 10 minutes down the road the talented the stylish and the ever entertaining mr sean smith what is happening sir
Speaker 2wow what an intro thank you very very much um wow you're doing a massive layer james i worked really hard on that sean no no i could tell no no don't get me wrong i could tell it worked talented i write i write talented and stylish and ever entertaining i you
Speaker 1know i don't see any
Speaker 2problem with that dude um well entertaining this i mean if you but you know what could be good or bad yeah exactly yeah what to the car crash could be entertaining hello well
Speaker 1we'll see what we'll see what unfolds yeah that's true
Speaker 2that's true well thanks
Speaker 1for coming on man it's not like you need to be on my humble podcast even though you host you know the biggest you know the biggest you know music podcast on the planet so i really appreciate you you know helping a brother out man
Speaker 2no no not at all um yeah but it's yeah saturday's not that big i think we um we fake it we've only probably got about six listeners i reckon but
Speaker 1somehow you managed to bamboozle like the biggest rock stars on the planet to give me giving you the time so you must be doing something right man
Speaker 2yeah that's it then it's clever it's just basically what's happened is after the blackout finished i realized that um like all other front men who when their bands disband um i could either become a tattooist or a barber and um i'm not very good at drawing and i'm not very good at cutting hair either so um my last option was talk to your friends that might remember you though that you were friends with when you were in the band so yeah started it that way and now managed to con like you said i'm not very good at drawing i'm not very good at drawing i'm not very good at i said loads of um pr people into thinking with an actual right credible podcast and news outlet
Speaker 1but yet to get fred durst is that right oh the bastard
Speaker 2yeah no fred durst yet um but i have i've dm'd him several several times on instagram right and he's liked them he's liked them or he sent back like lightning bolts um but uh hasn't agreed to come on my thing is i think the problem is with what limpets get are currently going through this dad vibe shit right is i think he's a little bit embarrassed um by it so rather than just fucking be like yeah i don't know what fuck i'm fred durst the king of new metal he's going oh well you know your dad like this and all this shit right right and i feel a little bit sad inside so i think the reason he's not doing interviews and podcasts and stuff is because he's sick of being asking when there's new limpets get stuff right i mean right he did a film not long ago with john travolta which i don't know if you if you know about he directed a film with um he directed a film with john travolta and apparently he did like 300 tickets the first week in all of the world oh shit so i i'd imagine he's probably worried that someone's gonna go oh yeah you fucking feel for that whereas i would just love driving on just to rim him for an hour um if it wasn't for him i wouldn't think i
Speaker 1have today we're speaking
Speaker 2metaphorically of course yeah yes well yeah i don't know yeah
Speaker 1depends where it takes place yeah
Speaker 2yeah that's true yeah my tongue's not that long yeah but i could go over zoom right i tried brandon yeah we had brandon on yeah yeah i have tried i have tried to um make love to a man so who else
Speaker 1do you really want to get on that you haven't managed to get yet um who have you who have you contacted it was just not playing ball uh dwayne the rock
Speaker 2he seems busy all the time i don't know what the fuck he's doing yeah
Speaker 1what the fuck does that guy
Speaker 2even do you know well so we reached out to um god's lord really um jared way uh i thought you'd
Speaker 1have a bit of a a gateway to that
Speaker 2one um funnily enough his brother messaged me yeah this is so surreal i'm looking back on this mad really his brother who plays bass in my comic romance mikey he messaged me the other day on instagram saying is this you and then with a link to a forbes article so my first thought was my first thought was are you being hacked right so i replied is this before i check this link have you been hacked or is this real and you're like no i think it's really you and then i clicked on it and it's a forbes article right and the headline is does nose picking um put you more at risk of alzheimer's slash dementia i saw that i think yeah and then when you scroll down there's a photo of me picking my nose from a black yeah from a band shot from fucking 2005 so i don't know number one i don't know what films were looking for when they looked for that why they chose that and the fact that one of michael's romance possibly the biggest band in the world um one of them went oh that's sean i'm gonna send him this no that was mad to me so yeah um yeah i think we're getting closer with the jared way one i think it'll happen eventually um well i want to i
Speaker 1want to get the history on the podcast and all that sort of stuff in just a bit but first i think we should start with the biggie because we got loads of stuff i want to ask you today um let's talk about the big news of the past week or so the fucking blackout baby back playing down on 2023 what's going on give us the backstory give us the lowdown
Speaker 2yeah so basically um for anybody listening who doesn't know anything about the blackout um that's fair enough um we started in 2003 and then we finished in 2015 and in those 12 years we did a surprising amount of touring and playing with our heroes and stuff and then uh 2015 came along and we were all a bit um jaded and let down by the music industry um so we decided to call it a day and then um seven years later november the 9th 2022 uh we announced that the blackout was going to come back for a show at the download festival 2023 so um after us talking for a while we were like oh my god we're talking for about six months about what we wanted to do and what ideas we had for the band um yeah we settled on uh download festival and the lineup looks um incroyable which is french for very very
Speaker 1good insanity yeah man what a fucking lineup to be on man jesus christ so how are you feeling you stoked are you you know are you trepidatious i mean what's what's because it's been a while since you've been in that capacity so
Speaker 2how are you feeling um yeah i was chuffed to be honest um if he's ever listened to my podcast you'll know that i never left the black girl the black left me right the bastards yeah so uh i i was really really excited for it to come out and then probably between 9 p.m on monday the 9th of november and 1 a.m i just read lovely messages that melted my cold black heart and um yeah it was it was lovely it was it was absolutely awesome this year because genuinely the reason one of the reasons why we got back together is because we're all aging so is our fan base and our fan base is dwindling as well because people are obviously moving on and um you know because new bands have continued haven't they music didn't stop in 2015 for some reason and everybody carried on this selfish buggers um but yeah so just seeing how much it affected people and people were like i've had a shit year and this is the one thing that's been good and all that i'm like what the wow it must have been a bad year then if the black yeah the the response has been incredible i don't think any of us expected it at all when it went live we trended it was like Metallica and Slipknot were trending number 19 on Twitter and then number 21 was the Blackout
Speaker 1I saw it yeah man
Speaker 2and no sign of Bring Me The Horizon so I don't want to say we should be headlining the third day or whatever day they're playing but yeah that's our fee I believe yeah that's definitely our fee tell him man tell him I don't mind do you know what I let him keep the headlining spot and all the production but I love their fee that would be better but yeah it's been amazing and yeah I just want to I will constantly be in debt to Andy Carpin and Live Nation for having us because he's always been an avid supporter of the Blackout even when the Blackout was together we played Download in like 2009 2010 maybe 2012 or something like that and so basically Andy didn't get on with the Blackout booking agent and normally if somebody doesn't get on with the booking agent they normally don't book your gigs then but Andy has always been so lovely to us that he would come to us direct rather than go to our agent and yeah he's always been a big supporter of the Blackout and I've got a lot of time and love for Andy and yeah I'm hoping we can do some podcast stuff there as well
Speaker 1yeah that would be awesome man and what a gig to come back with I know you've been asked this before but just to get double confirmation is there any plan beyond this or is this just doing it? for kicks just to you know get back on stage again make some noise together or are you going to not bother planning because then that will kind of take the shine off or are you just going to enjoy this moment see what happens or what's the vibe?
Speaker 2yeah I think we're just going to get back together do this download thing celebrate the songs see how that goes and then after much after download probably a couple of months after download maybe do our own weekend shows because some of the boys are dads now because they left it in um so um yeah so it's probably going to be like maybe three weekends six shows I think maybe that'd be awesome that'd be awesome yeah yeah hopefully as long as people as long as people come I'm wearing a Waynesville t-shirt today I can see it man
Speaker 1you seem to be um obviously this is um this is an audio only podcast so the listeners can't see what I'm looking at so Sean is is sporting a very stylish Waynesville t-shirt but he seems to be um scribbling or drawing some artwork or something as well what's going on there? I just what are you kind of like
Speaker 2yeah it's my ADHD it is um so basically I just write yeah I'm not kidding right so when I do the podcast so the this is from when I've been doing podcasts with other people so I did Alexa on Fire Jenna McDougal from the early November I literally just oh you won't be able to see this
Speaker 1oh it's it's a bit blurred it's blurred as well oh no yeah I can see that
Speaker 2it's just all bollocks I just scribble and I just draw while I'm um talking I've written down we are talented and stylish as well which you said earlier so um yeah I'm probably going to add that to my bio I love that you can do that man
Speaker 1I can't multitask at all there's a guy Scott Carrier I don't know if you know him he does all my music videos and stuff like that and when I sit in on the kind of like the final final final edit or whatever what he tends to do is is when he's editing video he'll also have a movie on at the same time on another screen um and I think he he said he's got some kind of ADHD thing as well so he can't just like edit he's got to watch a movie whilst he's doing it how the fuck that happens I got no idea but like my brain can't do that shit man
Speaker 2yeah I wonder how many times he's confused the music video with whatever he's watching yeah yeah yeah James I'm thinking at the end we get rid of that scene where we dip Arnie in the molten lava what the fuck yeah you've been watching Terminator 2 again guys you've been watching Terminator 2 again ah I've done it again
Speaker 1I'm like fucking hell
Speaker 2James we've been in the jungle where we get Arnie to meet um the other fella and he goes Dylan you son of a bitch I think we should definitely keep that and we're like that was terrible yeah that was terrible
Speaker 1yeah unbelievable I'm actually envious of his ability to do that though man I mean have you have you actually got ADHD
Speaker 2or um I'm not uh diagnosed um but yeah I'm 100% sure yeah I'm 100% sure I haven't gone to get it diagnosed because what are they gonna do
Speaker 1what's the point
Speaker 2yeah yeah it's like I literally feel like what's it all right I'd know and then I'd be like yeah well I've known that for years it makes sense because in school my my report was always the same it was always the same thing can do it very very intelligent cannot focus right and I was like yes yes of course that's me yeah um yeah and that was I got older and I read more about the symptoms and stuff like that I've been like oh yeah of course that makes sense and then yeah I can go and get it diagnosed but if I end up on I don't know Adderall yeah fuck that they give for that that's just gonna make me go
Speaker 1yeah you're doing you're doing great as you are man yeah I think I got a little bit of OCD um I can only really focus on one thing at a time you know and I'm very intense about that but I have to finish stuff like it doesn't matter if it's not even that good I have to fucking finish it if I start something I'm finishing the motherfucker like my first book came out in the lockdown I wrote the whole fucking thing in two months wow I was like I'm doing this fucking thing and I don't do anything else until the thing is finished I grow a big beard I smell you know I got food down me my health goes to shit and I just I can't relax until the thing is done and then as soon as whatever it is is done I immediately start something else like another album or whatever and until that fucking album is done I can't rest
Speaker 2you know yeah well I'm the opposite in a way that I um will not do things until the very last moment um and worry about it or the other thing is if I if I am doing something so say for example like I do band management started working um the last six months with Ryan Richards from Future History Management yeah and Funeral for a Friend we look after a bunch of bands so now we're like we're like so today we have some announcements going out later today but um before I can uh write up those announcements I need more information from the band and now I am on pins because I've sent that email asking for that information if that information comes before two o'clock now the announcement goes out at two o'clock so I am going to be vibrating now until I get the exact information I need from this band right to post before two o'clock so yeah it's a weird one I don't know I really wish if I didn't have it but then well
Speaker 1you get a lot of shit done though dude I mean come on you're smashing the fucking podcast out every week you're in two bands
Speaker 2it looks like that though yeah it looks like that to you right but in my in my head it's terrible everything's on fire so um yeah but that's this is the thing there's been moments where because I've read like ADHD leads to depression and stuff like that and that would make sense because there's been moments where I've been awfully depressed right and yeah it's just there's been moments where I've been like oh you know I wish I didn't have this or whatever I wish I could have listened in school and just got my qualifications but it's like what would I have ended up doing because I don't think there's anything in my body that could make me do like a sit down nine to five in an office
Speaker 1that would kill you
Speaker 2oh yeah I think so yeah I'd have to be the company jester or something along those lines because yeah it's been it's been terrible but then on the same time if I didn't have whatever I got maybe you know myself in the blackout wouldn't have done what we did I guess
Speaker 1yeah well that's what makes you you isn't it that's what gives you your unique creative spark you know and that kind of leads into something I wanted to ask you because you had Ian Winwood on the podcast recently shout out to Ian Winwood he was on my show back in May talking about his amazing book Bodies what a fucking book everybody go and check that out as well awesome and he asked you a question when he was on your show he said is it better to have loved and lost than never to have you know tasted the dream at all and you didn't get to fully finish your answer before the conversation kind of moved on I was really really keen to hear what your answer was to that because you know you've lived you've had an experience of the music industry that pretty much other most other bands will never achieve I mean you know you've toured the world you've played you know stadiums and arenas and things like that you know you've kind of you've tasted that lifestyle you've lived it but also it ended as well and then you had to like pick up the pieces and start a new life so I'd be really keen to hear your answer to that as to what the experience of finally achieving your dream and living your dream was like but then also what it was like when it ended and whether you do think that it was better to have loved than lost or never to have done it in the first place because I'm imagining the existential crisis that you must have experienced when it all ended it must have been a motherfucker man
Speaker 2yeah very much so very much so yeah it was very very tough when it ended because I'd reached out to loads of people before we announced that it was going to end to try and like find what I could do next or what what job I could do or if there was anything available for me and it was like there were people like there was a radio presenter who would they would call me up whenever they needed the blackout to do something for them and we'd go and do it and then so a week before we announced we were splitting up I messaged them oh no a week before we announced we were splitting up so a week before December the 1st 2014 I we went and played acoustically for this person on the radio and then while I was there I was like I'd love to I'd love to get involved in radio or radio presenting or stuff like that and this radio presenter was like oh you'd be brilliant you'd be amazing and I was like oh thank you I was like if there's any way I can come down and shadow you I will literally be your assistant I'll make you tea coffee just so I can come and learn the desk and they were like yeah yeah that's such a brilliant brilliant idea. So I planted seed and then a week later when we announced we were splitting up i messaged this person again no reply and then probably for the next like six or seven months i'd sent the messages by a text by whatsapp by facebook and got no got no reply whatsoever fucking hell so yeah i was lost i was depressed i was lost i had no idea what i could do because if you look at my cv it went um worked in mcdonald's when he was 16 um rockstar no no it's better than i goes mcdonald's when i was 16 argos for two christmases because he couldn't keep a full-time year job castle bingo not a bingo cola sweet not a bingo cola sadly and and then went to college just about to finish my third year of media studies and the ban takes off so my my cv looks like um job job job job job missing for 13 years reappeared so um yeah so when this person didn't get back to me i was very very gutty relaxed i thought i thought i'll use my in really like this will be this will be the start of the new thing i will focus on and complete and they never got back to me so that was 2015 and then 2020 we had a massive flood in south wales that flooded out a place called clubber bond yeah on the priest and this radio dj text me february 2020 said oh hiya sorry i missed your messages um it seems you're doing well with the podcast i'm just wondering is there any chance the blackout would get back together to play a charity show for me so what i've done now is i've purposely not replied to him and in three more years because because they left me on red for five years yeah in three more years i'm gonna reply and go no we can't do that clubber bond i love that i might
Speaker 1reply going oh i see
Speaker 2clubber bond to sort this stuff out yeah yeah yeah can i have a gig yeah um so yeah so so when the band yeah so when the band fell apart i was so so lost and i'm i genuinely mourned that like it was it was like the death of a friend um which was which is why it's taken so long and it's been so hard for me to get the other boys back in and on the same terms because um we genuinely all mourned it like we were all absolutely gutted it had to come to an end and yeah looking back on it now it was like the business side of it that killed it for us it was so many fingers and so many pies so many people taking from us yeah um since then we've really we found out that like a record label owes us in excess of 26 000 pound um and apparently i've somehow been scammed out of the rights for our album and ep uh and so they don't own that anymore which means we don't own that anymore which means we don't know it's it's been taken off streaming websites oh fucking hell so yeah it was the business side that put a fucking end to it it's very very aggressive get it
Speaker 1out man get it out
Speaker 2yeah um but yeah no it was fancy question we'll go back to the windward question of to loved and lost don't get me wrong i had the best time of my life nobody expected us to do what we did i never expected to go to japan or australia and to meet my heroes who were all fucking lovely to me but yeah there was part of me that wish i just fucking didn't have whatever i got listened in school really could work in an office and i was like i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna and yeah just because to have this ability before we came out to the blackout it was so unstable in all ways like financially
Speaker 1yeah um mentally uh but did you feel like that when you were in the band when the band was doing well and doing its thing i'm sure you didn't feel like that
Speaker 2then no not not early on but i suppose probably from 2012 onwards when it became the shows were the only highlights i think it was the only highlights i think it was the only highlights right so playing the gigs was the only fun so if you think about it say you know you could be doing a fucking three month tour or whatever only one hour a day you'd be enjoying it and the rest you were trying to work out where's our money gone why haven't we got any money can the boy you know can we afford to pay our rent because we all had like houses and girlfriends and fiances and you know the boys had children back home and we could see that our our profit was dwindling or whatever so yeah it was just like the last two or three years were um not so fun apart from the shows like right to this day like everything i've ever loved about our band everything i've ever wanted for our band was just to play gigs just to show off and have fun and have a laugh and that's the whole thing like um towards the end recording was like boring like i'm just just kind of bored we kind of bored of that because you know you've got to record to put something out to play to try and sell it's a hamster wheel yeah yeah yeah and
Speaker 1um that's interesting man that's interesting
Speaker 2and the thing is it sounds ungrateful and that's the worst bit about it but this is what in ian winwood said on my on the podcast as well a lot of people in bands don't feel like being in a band is a proper job
Speaker 1proper job yeah because
Speaker 2it doesn't because you're not doing fucking 95 art graft yeah like all the other fucking men before you in south wales yeah and all this shit but yeah i did get a travel i got to meet my egos i got to live in this world but that's the thing it's like even when after it finished like even after it finished me and my girlfriend went to go and see death of anna play somewhere and i was still jaded and like blasé about it all so i went there and basically i would like pick apart the show to my girlfriend because you know i've done it so when i went to see death of anna i was like oh my god i've done it when i went to this show it was almost as if some how do i describe this somebody else's i was sexy the girlfriend on stage i guess it's like oh i could i could do that as well as well and give me a go even you know unless death of anna an amazing band james is a better singer than i could ever be in my life but there was you know there's always part of me that whenever i went to a gig made me go oh i could do this i this is what i do this is my thing like i know everything that's going on in this show and so yeah like sometimes me and my girlfriend would go to shows and it was like a busman's holiday right so like we would get in there and she was excited to see the band and i was just like i couldn't care less it's not me
Speaker 1yeah yeah yeah i know i relate to that yeah
Speaker 2yeah so um it seems ungrateful to say you know part of me wishes that it had gone differently maybe not even have happened at all for me to be more mentally secure but you know i have lived my i have lived my dreams and
Speaker 1yeah my heroes yeah that that you know and that means something man you know what i mean it's like you've got the stories you've got the memories you've got the life experiences and the growth that comes from that that's something in it i think like i mean you know i don't want to turn this into an ian winwood appreciation society but i mean you know he touches on the book is so fucking good it covers all this stuff doesn't it i mean the people that level in the industry where they've got the stability you know emotionally mentally and financially a very very few man it's less than one percent you know yeah it's gotta be it's gotta be so the only reward the rest of us can get is is the things that you just mentioned it's the experiences you know what i mean it's to taste those highs and have those memories and those stories but it sucks then when the fucking party's over you know
Speaker 2yeah um or or when you write an album called start the party um that's that's when it starts to suck us up because we made the mistake of doing a party type album thinking oh we're partying now i'm sure our audience apart oh no they're much younger than us and they're still miserable shit um so yeah we put out the start the party album and then that that that led to a decline as well so that didn't help um but yeah like i am i am grateful for what we did but there were more there have been moments where i second guessed and doubted if i should have done it at all wow but it's lucky it's lucky called the gift of the gab i guess because if it was like another say garvin for example now like if garvin was in my situation i don't think he would have done a podcast like he went straight back into working with um neil starr from a band called attack attack and dopamine in south wales who uh he runs um a merchandise company called all about the merch so gabby went back to work with him whereas i guess me doing the podcasting is trying to make some money off these good memories that i've got so the one thing that i did get from the band good memories and the ability to meet people and do these crazy things i am now trying to still monetize via talking about it yeah because they didn't make enough money back then
Speaker 1well it's exactly the same bro i mean like my book i mean we my band kashira never got to do any of the shit that the blackout did far from it you know so but when when my band ended and we didn't even get above the level of just getting fucking royalties and stuff like that it was like i'm not royally rogered from every angle by every crook in the fucking game i was like yeah i've got to do something with this you know even even though i don't have the stories that you've got or whatever or the experience is like i've got to do something with this so i wrote a fucking memoir about how fucking shit it all was just trying to do something with the experience you
Speaker 2know what i mean yeah yeah well that's the thing though um yeah it just makes me look and feel ungrateful for um what i had and what i lost or whatever but i don't think so man i think it's
Speaker 1honesty because i think it's i think it's healthy that that with that honesty as well because so many people especially fans of bands or young musicians wanting to get into the game i think that kind of mythology just sets people up for so much fucking bad health and and let downs themselves i think it's i think it's healthy to be honest about the reality of the industry you know
Speaker 2yeah yeah i guess so yeah i hope some people have you and me speak about it i'm going oh cool but it's not all fucking glitz and glamour and gold and maybe there is some sort of because that's the thing like when i was you know when i was coming up as a kid you didn't get any of that like don't get me wrong you had rocks yeah and that's obviously fucking awful but you you know i wasn't thinking of like i remember back early on in the blackout days when i had no idea what depression or any of that shit was and i remember arguing with them at the time the editor of rock sound because we were talking about kirker bane and i said something like fuck kirker bane i can't believe he'd do that i can't believe he'd kill himself and he's got a kid and he's got all that money it's like and then cut to about fucking seven years later and i was like oh no i completely understand why you did that fucking hell lucky we haven't got shotguns over here um but yeah so yeah there was you know there's moments where because i grew up thinking oh being in rock star is just all fucking glitz and glamour you're just loved by everyone there's no fucking downside yeah and there was no one for me to like you know check out before and yeah so hopefully people can the podcast and realize that it's not all glitz and glamour and there's moments where it's really hard work and um you're not gonna make much money if any at all if any at all yeah that's the thing it's like again like to go back to fucking ian winwood he's turned to a fucking yeah like he mentioned about it being a job and stuff and it's like points in the blackout where we were earning i don't know probably like fucking 400 quid a month each right but we were like we should be grateful for this like we're doing this and it's like we're
Speaker 1living our dream yeah other people haven't got this
Speaker 2you know yeah and we put so much into that that we were like literally just forgetting what we need for the future or whatever we were like yeah well you know you know we get to travel to japan it's like yeah yeah but i'm really close to man yeah like lucky we all had lucky we all the majority of us are partners and girlfriends at the time otherwise we would be doomed like or homeless or well for yeah for a while for a while i kind of was because we were out on tour for probably like seven months at a time and me and an ex-girlfriend has split up so i had to move all my stuff back to my parents house into my old spare bedroom well i went on tour for months this is
Speaker 1fascinating for me man because i did all the same stuff too but we were still at the club level you know and i was thinking fuck this is only happening to us because i'm such a fucking loser
Speaker 2you know no no it's happening to the majority this is the thing i think a lot of people a lot of people and a lot of bands online well everybody online is doing it they're showing how they've got a better life than they actually are it's bullshit and everybody in a band who claims they do it fucking well unless you're in paramore my chemical romance or musical or muse yeah or billy eyelash like you're not doing you're not doing well like this it's those things like it's madness and i don't want to put people off being in a band
Speaker 1so what advice would you give to young bands
Speaker 2yeah what advice would you have to musicians out don't fucking bother get a job learn excel yeah get into finance concentrate yeah learn to concentrate oh this is
Speaker 1fascinating stuff man yeah it's so good to to like to you're so honest and open about this stuff man what was your experience of the industry when you were in it then you know before the reality started to sink in and stuff and what what what would what would your relationship like with the industry guys i mean were they did they conform to the cliche of the cigar chomping coke guzzling sex predator fucking um money grabbing fuck tad or or were they genuinely like nice guys and you you know
Speaker 2no that was it it did right first time sorry um yeah up and down really like little column a and a little column b so i wouldn't say many of them were into cigars but i would say a lot of them were probably into cocaine which is welsh for cocaine and yeah a lot of them never been this is the problem we ended up having people manage us and look after us who had never been in a band i'd never written a song i'd never dealt with any of the band life stuff probably had never even fucking booked a hotel before they started working or for us or whatever and um yeah it's it's all the same thing like i think we were lucky the blackout were lucky that we were six reasonably intelligent lads from 2008's third roughest town in britain mercer tidville and but we were switched on to the fact that people were blowing smoke up our ass right and we were always so um almost negative to be like nah this is never gonna happen for us or yeah whatever so like every record label every band goes to if the label's interested in signing you they'll tell you that they're planning for you to be the biggest band in the world right we all knew from the start this is a fucking load of bollocks right don't listen to this shit do what we can to just keep going and keep going and keep going and keep us fucking playing because playing is the most important thing to us and then since then i've seen bands it was a band from mercer right that were called um pretty vicious yep where um zane lowe they had a single out called the cave song zane lowe described the front man as possibly the voice of his generation so this band from mercer tidville started to get some traction so me and one of the other boys in the blackout wanted to try and like help them like they're one of their fathers and one of their uncles was managing them because they'd been in the cover band oh shit so basically for our last show for the blackouts last show um rita carlisle sent in a mercer we did two nights we asked pretty vicious if they would come and play to open for us as like a passing of the torch to be like here's mercer's next fucking big thing get on these now and it was sold out so we didn't you know we weren't going to sell tickets and um yeah one of the fathers and one of the uncles said to us yeah they want two grand a show and we were like okay cool never mind then because we don't need them jesus christ yeah yeah and all this shit and we tried to get me and matthew from the band tried to get involved with them to help them because we knew that if we just leave any old numpty from mercer in charge of a band you're doomed um unless they switched on to it yeah and then i i used to speak to my friend then who was friendly was pretty vicious as well and he would tell me stories and i'm like that's never going to happen and he's like oh yeah so they went to warner the other day i want to give him 250 grand or whatever and got him got him loads of these gibson guitars and stuff i'm like yeah and they have to pay your lap back 100 this is what you don't and he's like oh they've been told they've told they're going to be the biggest band in the world i was like yeah we've all been told they're going to be the biggest band in the world listen and then my friend was like oh apparently rumor has it and this is the funniest story in the world apparently noel gallagher right so basically in mercer tidville is a pub called the grower right lovely lovely pub i love it there uh when i've been there but um yeah so anyway the grower pub my friend said to me pretty vicious i've had an email um from noel gallagher's agent saying noel gallagher is going to come to the grower to ask pretty vicious to go on tour with him right and i went to my friend i went craig that has never ever happened in the history of a headliner asking a support act you they've never gone to their hometown and a specific pub yeah yeah it's literally we just had an email of noel gallagher's agent asking if we want to go on tour that would be it yes there'd be no noel that i viewed come from people associated with pretty vicious who have just fallen for it because they've had the smoke blown up their ass right but that's one of the things that blackout never did like we were like all right yeah we get it because we knew we were like a screamy heavy band we knew we were never going to be fucking news or um james arthur like we knew we weren't going to be those thingy fucking massive things. Like we always knew that there was like a, a limit to what we could do but the amount of people who come into this and they haven't got a clue and they just think it's well the thing that ended pretty vicious was drugs and rock and roll I don't know if they were having sex much but I know drugs and rock and roll really fucking put an end to that band because the singer got really into drugs and drinking and mental health and stuff and yeah so a couple of times I tried to get involved with them to help them out but they just wouldn't listen and then they ended up fucking self-imploding. Wow that's crazy and it's sad it's sad more than anything because they literally had the potential they could have been fucking massive they could have been but this happened this is something I'll fucking I'll be proud of March 28th 2015 was the Black Arts last ever show and we had an after show party in Merthyr Tydfil and two of my friends came but two of my friends loved Pretty Vicious right they loved the idea of Pretty Vicious I think they loved Pretty Vicious and both of them made the point on the night of the Black Arts last gig of telling me how massive Pretty Vicious are going to be right almost as if they were rubbing it in my face right and one of my friends would phone me up when Pretty Vicious did anything good and he was like oh they're doing this and I'm like I don't care and two of my friends that very night our last ever gig was like I bet you by 2014 what was it 2020 no it wasn't even that it was like 2018 their headline read in Pretty Vicious I shook on this £150 each they both owe me money so Craig Bowen, Martin Williams if you're listening to this you both owe me £150 I wouldn't be surprised if you know Martin Williams by the way get on it Mark you tight fucker yeah it's just people have like literally put all their fucking money on Pretty Vicious doing well and you know I saw so many people in Merthyr try and get involved with them early on so they could you know ride the rocket with them
Speaker 1happens all the time man doesn't it you know I mean it's like especially like where we are in South Wales there's so much talent around here there's so many bands and you know you hear this all the time like your band will be on the scene for like two minutes and then all of a sudden you know they're playing arenas they've got a record deal you know they're supporting you know massive bands and it's like oh wow you know these are going to be the next guys you know then when you speak to them they say yeah how's the band going boys you know they're like oh no it's bad you know the label are rinsing us you know we're hungry you know we haven't got any money and before you know it it all comes crashing down again it's such a shame but it happens literally all the time so you know it's so hard man it's tough out there you know well here's another
Speaker 2story that maybe your listeners can they're probably so far removed from feeling anything with me at the moment so the Blackout got offered to do five Linkin Park shows so five shows supporting Linkin Park we worked out that over those five days we played 150,000 people right so we had a box of a thousand t-shirts printed thinking this is good if we work it out and you know 150 you know it was at least 30,000 people a gig maybe does that work out does my mask work out for that?
Speaker 1No idea. Yeah
Speaker 2yeah it does yeah 30,000 people a gig right 30,000 people a gig so we thought if we get a thousand t-shirts a gig right surely we'll shift most of them five days supporting Linkin Park 150,000 people by the end of the tour we had sold 14 t-shirts. What the fuck? And that's not because we went down bad we went down very very well right this is the thing with the Blackout super good at stealing other people's fans
Speaker 1oh yeah great life ban man
Speaker 2super good at doing enough comedy in between songs that people like the band one way or the other they either hate the music and think oh but they're funny or they think I love the music I wish that long-headed twat would stop trying to be funny but like we we'd won so many people over on that Linkin Park tour that we found online after like all those things like went up but we sold 14 t-shirts on that whole run so that closed the show and we were probably on a support we were probably on 400 quid a night if that so you're doing these places and these are in we did Greece Latvia Lithuania Munich we played in Madrid in a ballroom how many people can say they played
Speaker 1a ballroom? That's fucking mental
Speaker 2well loads of matadors I suppose yeah so we played like these shows that we had to fly into and you know sold out our hotels we got paid 400 on the show and then you worked out you sold 14 t-shirts
Speaker 1hang on a second is that the band or per member?
Speaker 2oh no no that's the band 400 quid yeah yeah if you're supporting those big bands sort of say now my character romance we were main supporter then I don't know but I'd imagine we were probably being paid under a grand a night between all of us wow for those arena shows but yeah like if you're opening for a big band like the amount of times we opened for lost profits in theatres and stuff like that we were on 50 quid opening
Speaker 1Jesus Christ yeah
Speaker 2so even when you're like a main support there's not much unless you're doing some sort of giant co-ed like type tour with someone the supports are not being paid that much
Speaker 1well you're doing it I suppose for the you know the exposure to a bigger crowd but then if you like you say does that translate then into actual new fans because if you're shifting 14 t-shirts when you play to fucking gazillion bands you're not paying that much billions of people then what's the what's the conversion you know
Speaker 2yeah and I guess that's what our live show and the the comedy aspect of it um came in with winning people over it didn't yeah it didn't translate into merch money but then some of those gigs with my chemical room uh with Lincoln Park one of them in Latvia we found out because as a support band we had a price match for Lincoln Park so say Lincoln Park t-shirts were 30 quid our t-shirts had to be 30 quid we couldn't do them 20 like we wanted to yeah in Latvia we did a show where they uh their teachers like it came to like the average week wage in Latvia for one of their t-shirts now and we sold one t-shirt of that gig in Latvia and we always said if we ever meet that person they have free access to any blackout shows forever right because you spent a week's wage on a stupid t-shirt from a silly band from Wales who were supporting Lincoln Park yeah when you could have bought Lincoln Park merch yeah and that's the thing people don't see don't see the the hidden costs and or the lack of money it's like they see you supporting My Chemical Romance to this arena and that's cool but when you work out everybody else around the band is getting paid more than everybody in the band it comes as a shock to people um I remember the black the backwards biggest ever headline show we played Camden Roundhouse and it was like 3 000 people sold out and I worked out everybody who worked for the band that day got paid more than I did for that week of shows fucking hell yeah that's fucking good for some reason fans now make less money um because people just steal the music for free online right fans are in 2022 costs but techs and stuff are still in 1980s money got you so like guitar techs drum techs fucking front of house tool managers they're all getting like the 200 plus a day and then the six people on stage who brought these 3 000 people to this gig were on 150 quid a week it's
Speaker 1fucking wrong man it's wrong it's wrong the one thing I wanted to ask you was having sort of had success in what could be considered now the older model I suppose when it was still my space of cds and merch and stuff like that and now obviously you're in a new band raiders in in the new model starting out in a new model what how do you what's the comparison for you do you see it as better or worse now I mean I've always been a kind of someone who got fucked so hard by the old model I've always been an evangelist for the new model and now I can make a record in my house for free put it out myself do what the fuck I like I'd make all the money if there is any you know no one tells me what the fuck to do I've got social media I can do all that I've always been an evangelist for that but the truth of the matter is there's actually zero money in that at all there's there's creative freedom but there's there's nothing else you know so what are your thoughts on do you think it's better now or just a different set of problems
Speaker 2I think it's I don't know for some reasons um obviously the reach um that you can get out to you know all corners of the world now because when we started literally we were one of the myspace fans yeah so I think the probably the most famous ones are like arctic monkeys enter shikari did very very well off myspace um who else did very well dain cook the comedian did very well of myspace and yeah so we were we were one of the early kind of myspacey bands which led us to get signed to fierce panda red which was our first record label and our first album in the first week of sales did 12 000 records right so did 12 000 sales yeah if that was today we'd be number one by 6,000 records we'd be double number one like and that charted at like 128 right so We Are The Dynamite came out sold 12,000 copies the first week charted like 198, 889 it was way down in the hundreds anyway and then we went on to do The Best In Town, Hope and Start The Party all charted in the top 40 off streams and off the stuff like that but like I said earlier we were in the model, we were the crossover between CDs to MP3s and stuff but this is where I'm saying we're owed money now like Fierce Panda still owe us and they've literally told us four physical copies so that's first album stuff we've never been paid by Fierce Panda and we're still waiting on it now we spoke to them and they said they were going to give us some money and we want to see the accounts basically because apparently they've got no money but yet Simon the owner of the label just released a book about how shit his record label is
Speaker 1oh I saw that yeah
Speaker 2and I thought I'll have some of that money in you cheeky fucker because you've used our money to keep yourself alive so technically I wrote that book by keeping you alive you fucker but yeah so they owe us thousands of pounds so we didn't really see any money from the CD era really I mean I've got it there somewhere there's loads of our money in somebody else's bank account but yeah it's just I'm currently involved in the shooting of a music documentary as well which at the moment is tentatively called The Price of Sound because we're trying to work out is music worth anything anymore because now you're literally doing it for free to put out to people to get them to come and look at your other stuff and hopefully buy a t-shirt which is cost more than your songs
Speaker 1it's the bait for other stuff I've got a theory that that's always been the case I mean when we were paying like 17 quid for a CD or a vinyl or something like that we weren't paying for the music we were paying for the plastic and the cardboard that's my theory now the manufacturing aspect is gone and music is just a thing that exists in the ether it doesn't have any value to it but I don't think it ever did I don't think we were ever paying for the fucking music we were paying for all the other shit in the manufacturing chain so it's a strange one what value do we have the value that we give to this thing that exists in the ether we've got to decide what our value is and I know that everyone feels that value because it's the soundtrack to everyone's life but it's just so fucking mad that we've found ourselves in a system now where that's the norm that musicians just give their shit for free and we're expected to live on fucking thin air or something yeah well yeah
Speaker 2do you think that's the norm? you don't get that in any other job though do you? like you don't go like oh like don't think I don't think Tesla employees should be paid for their work
Speaker 1yeah because they're doing it for the crack they love it like you know
Speaker 2yeah because they're doing it because they love cars that's what they oh they've studied in that so they should be doing it for free
Speaker 1yeah yeah they love it like you know they're being grateful
Speaker 2yeah no yeah but that's the problem with being in a band like people are going to be listening to this going Sean I'm in a fucking treacherous job I'm a fucking I'm an offshore fucking troller man yeah I dare you fucking I dare you fucking complain about this shit but that's it you're just being milked like as a band you're being fucking milked by people who can send some emails for you or something like that yeah yeah yeah and don't get me wrong there are needs for managers and stuff like that when it gets tougher but yeah the amount of bands I see who are so desperate for a manager and it's like oh yeah yeah just cut away 20% of your money now yeah you're fucking mental just so you can so they can send some emails but you can fucking look after them emails surely
Speaker 1yeah so it's no better now than it was it's still just as fucked if not worse
Speaker 2yeah I think it's kind of worse now just because it's worse if you're not a producer or you haven't got any computer talents basically like me or anyone in radio well Styx is good at producing and stuff but doesn't do it because for some reason Raiders we are stuck in the recording the overlay model got you so we all have to go to a studio and do it that way and pay a fucking fortune
Speaker 1that's a good point that's a good point
Speaker 2whereas other people who can just fucking open a laptop up and play all of the drums probably like your fucking self yeah yeah when you do it all that's awesome because you've got that in you and congratulations but then yeah for us losers who can't do that um I think yeah it's got shit up for us because we still have to do the old model yeah that makes a lot of sense get somebody to fund it get somebody to fund the record studio and stuff because yeah yeah that's
Speaker 1something I took for granted because I had that's a conversation I had with Ian as well and I because I was saying like hey the new model gives us all this freedom and bloody blah and he said yeah but you're lucky that you know not lucky in the sense that I've learned how to do it but I take for granted the fact that yeah I can make a studio my last album was made in this fucking chair on this desk didn't cost me a penny you know and then put it out for free on you know Digital Kid or whatever the fuck you know but um not everyone is in that situation you know like you know if you're a drummer or a guitar player in a band you're not the lead singer or you don't know how to produce I mean it's like that's that's just not true of most bands is that there are still overheads and expenses for most bands you know a band that is expensive and that's and that's just so about making the record if you want to get out and do some shows fucking hell dude I mean just just booking the thing costs you money half the time you know if you want it certainly if you need accommodation or a vehicle hire or you need you know food and petrol it's fucking through the roof like
Speaker 2yeah people don't that's the thing people don't see the ah this just sounds like a woe is me no no people just don't see the people don't see the mounting cost in being in a band like so so you know my new band Raiders now we played Bridgewater not long ago right you know we're probably asking for I don't know maybe 200 pound to go and do a gig and then promoters are like oh you know if we can't guarantee a sell out or whatever you know we can't afford this and we're like okay well factor this in it costs 150 pound to rent a van it costs us 100 pound if you will right we've got to possibly get someone to drive the van if we can't get one of the van one of the band to drive here because none of us really fucking enjoy driving or whatever we've got to get the merch printed that costs us until you know we don't see the money back for that until they're all gone or whatever and we've got to get the merch printed and so yeah just on the van alone we're 50 pound down before we even leave the house so if you can't afford that you're fucked like and that's what it kind of comes full circle that's kind of what we said about the blackout now is we'll do it for fun we don't want no business side of it we're not looking to record anymore just celebrate these songs and we're not looking for major money because we never made major money the first time we're not looking for major money just enough money so we can do the shows and everybody enjoys themselves so we can pay our crew yeah so we can pay our crew we can get there our travel is sorted we don't have to pay anything else cool that's how we're looking at it now
Speaker 1yeah that's what people say what advice would you give to young bands starting out in Slovenia that's exactly the advice for what who the fuck am I to give advice but that's what I would say from my own experiences just do it for the crack and the love of it because the second it starts being about anything else it goes south you know oh 100%
Speaker 2100% I say yeah set little goals because I always had little goals for the blackout like when we started I wanted to play somewhere with a stage and then it was play somewhere with monitors even though I didn't know what a monitor did I'd just seen rocks put your foot on it just seen rocks I was putting my foot on it and I was like I'd like to stand like that while shouting that would be cool and then yeah and then it was play somewhere with a barrier and then yeah and yeah it's just little goals and just have fun have fucking fun make the most out of every gig it doesn't I have literally played shows right where I have been main stage Reading and Leeds right in the middle of the day probably I'm not very good with counting very quickly but I reckon it was about 90,000 people stood in front of them right I've also played a show in Cardiff Barfly where I played we went on to a sound guy and his dog yeah and the sound guy left
Speaker 1I've had that exact same thing yeah I've played a show
Speaker 2I've played to a gig to a dog six of us played a gig to a dog and I remember us going boys we're getting paid to practice it's £50 to practice that's how we saw it back in the day so yeah I've done 90,000 people I've done playing to a dog once in Mersey Lounge in Newport we played to two guys in suits who'd just bought a bottle of champagne who sat next to the stage facing out didn't even watch us I didn't even know where they came in sat next to us so yeah just use every gig just make it fun just try your best to make it fun if there's one person there try your best to win them over or make them so angry that they go home and tell their friends about you
Speaker 1that's what I tell people 100% oh dude this is like therapy for me I thought I was alone man I thought it was just me no no well I was speaking of money when we when we were doing our thing in Caixira doing everything you just described you know renting vans and stuff to get around Europe and things and you know you know, fucking relentless costs and merch and all that bullshit. We've formed a covers band and what we would do is we would fucking hammer the cover scene for a bit and put all the money in the in the kitty and save it up because if you're getting paid like 200 quid for a raiders gig you get fucking paid 400 quid for a covers band you know i mean and you're just two minutes down the road you're fucking owned by you know midnight or whatever 400 bucks in the kitty so we would hammer that for a bit save it all up and then that would we pay for our european tour or whatever in advance in cash it was all done um that was fucking awesome that was the model that we did for a bit um but one night i was setting up a gig in card if ready to go on and i heard this fucking guy screaming going hey oh hey i was like what the fuck and he kept doing it so i like looked over my shoulder see where the fuck is this guy and he was screaming at me he's like oh this is like i gotta fucking nip this in the bud now so i ran over to him i said dude what's up man what are you fucking screaming about and he's like hey i know who you are but i know you what and i was like oh i who am i then he was like hey now in a fucking talking but i fucking know you but and i was like oh i you know who am i then tell me and he was like ian fucking watkins but and i was like are you fucking serious i said what this is about fucking it's got to be like he was in the neck at that point it was like it must be about eight years or something like that he was like um i was like dude you think do you think they let him out on a weekend to play fucking mr brightside you thick fucking twat you know what i mean and he i said you want to go you want to be careful going around saying that to people because they'll fucking knock you out like you know i mean it's like hey i fucking know you but and he just fucking left and walked off without without giving me the kick in you would think somebody would give someone if he thought he was
Speaker 2ian watkins yeah yeah like yeah that says more about that person yeah for not kicking the shit out of me yeah yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry but you should have had the shit kicked
Speaker 1out of me i know i was offended i was like dude you have a civic duty to kick the shit out of someone if you think it's ian watkins you know just walk away but um that's mad i mentioned that because of course you know you were close friends with the man himself i was i was very close friends with the man himself yeah i was i was loathe to bring this up but i mean you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to but i think it's uh it's just another one of the very interesting parts of your life story isn't it you know oh
Speaker 2yeah it's um it's fucking bonkers and to be honest i genuinely it's been it's been 10 years now since he's been arrested december the 12th now coming up would be the 10th anniversary of him being arrested um it's literally just a story of when i was growing up i was into stereophonics well originally i was into happy hardcore um uh or dragon forces is no no um i was into happy hardcore and then obviously being from merthyr tydfil and the welsh valleys i got pushed into loving the stereophonics um so the first gig i ever went to was morpher stadium um and i was like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be uh with the stereophonics and that changed my life and then um and then i found limp biscuit and i heard fred durst swear 48 times on the song hot dog and i thought shouting and swearing that's two things i'm really good at that's me i need that yeah
Speaker 1yeah i could do that yeah
Speaker 2so i i saw them and then that lead me that led me to find lost profits and i went to see lost profits playing blackwood miners institute downstairs 200 people and it changed my life right it literally made me go i'm all in on whatever this fucking music is i love this they were fucking running about stage diving running on people's heads spitting in the air and it was landing on the crowd it was mosh pit i'd never seen like a mosh pit like that before because i'd only been a stereophonic so it was all just sardines pushing each other about yes and then when i was in lost profits it was a circle pit there were people with dreads topless spin kicking people and i was like this is like a fight and i saw them i saw lost profits doing the music that i wish that i could have done so seeing them do that and then like they were getting attention in america and they were fucking all over karang and skuzz and p-rock or whatever the fucking channels mtv2 when mtv2 did music um and they were the catalyst for me going oh you can do that that's nuts yeah i think i could do that so then i literally stalked them until they became my friends and then he went from being my hero my frontman hero to being one of my best friends wow so then becoming the world's most evil man and yeah and to say i never like i never in a million years to be honest like i yeah like i started saying earlier i don't think i've 100 dealt with it mentally because when i think about it and i've when i think about it hear about it or i've read about the crimes that he committed they seem so far out of what anyone is capable of yeah yeah but i but i don't think yeah i don't think my my brain has processed it i guess because it's fucking wild how can you how can you it's so far out of life like you said yeah and one of the things i've been lucky lucky enough to do with the podcast is episode 50 excuse me episode 50 yeah 54 i think see the 54 58 i think it's 54 episode 54 we had stewart richardson who was the bassist from lost prophets and it was the first time anybody from lost prophets had talked about what had happened with the end said yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't he's been arrested and our whole point in that podcast was trying to make the name lost prophets not a dirty word yeah the names ian watkins can be a dirty word forever and deserve to be yeah you should be fucking strung up you should be fucking undrawn and quoted right the lost prophets is five other guys who give fucking everything right to be in our band they fucking loved it it was their lives and they had it all taken away from him by this one man's fucking disgusting actions and we had people messaging us after that podcast you're in summer stew stew talks tells a story about beating ian up for missing a show yeah right i listened to an half hour show yeah and people thought that they knew what he was up to and it's like stew smashed ian's face in with a camera monster for missing a show in america right bear in mind stew's got kids they've all everybody else in lost prophets has got children they beat him up for missing a 30-minute show imagine what they would have done to him if they'd known what he was doing they would have turned him into a pink mist when i spoke to mike lewis from lost prophets about this i said yeah because this is things people you know you've seen it obviously people thought people thought i knew people thought everybody around him because all the band all the bands who were related to lost prophets got tarnished with that yeah so if you look look at everybody after that everybody starts dropping off yeah for a friend went the blackout went kitchen glass houses went we all kind of got tarnished with the oh we were friends with this twat bus but yeah when i was speaking to mike lewis about it you know i said oh you know people think that we knew what he was doing and mike lewis said if we had known we would have dropped a boulder on him right and that couldn't be any more true so the best thing to come about this podcast is that we're going to talk about podcast that i'm doing sampling podcast was getting to rub off some of the dirt of the lost prophets names because without them i wouldn't be uh we wouldn't be having this conversation i wouldn't have got to live what i've lived and there's so many bands who wouldn't exist now if it wasn't for lost prophets totally 100 i think a lot of people forget that could just because one man's fucking absolute criminal fucking evil oh pure evil pure evil um literally tarnished so many people's lives and so many people's lives and so many people's lives and so many different bands and um it's just fucking heartbreaking to see like no
Speaker 1dude i can't imagine i just can't imagine being in that orbit when that happened you know i mean it's just it is impossible for us normal people to process that so my heart goes out to you and everyone who's around that man because you know that's just yeah how you how you come to terms with that i i doubt you probably ever are you
Speaker 2probably ever will i don't know yeah i don't know it's like i've read i've read the full court case of what he did to the point where i was nearly fucking sick and yeah just because what happened was i think in 2009 or something like that i think he found drugs so i think he went to america and he ended up doing crystal meth or some fucking mad drug with somebody over there and then got into it in a big way because around about 2009 we all started to see a change in him even the lost prophets boys did he started because he used to be like if we were doing something he'd be out then he'd be fucking hanging about the majority of the time he's you know looking for a girl or whatever and then all of a sudden he just started staying in his hotel just going back to his hotel room straight after gigs and staying there and all this shit and then i think they found out that he was like making ghb in the bath in some of the hotels and then that drug then in that drug then it gives you fucking intense high and then apparently knocks you out so um i don't know if he was using that as like some sort of sleep like day trip drug or whatever but yeah you just get into more darker things and then I think a picture of him appeared on the internet of him blowing blowing transvestite or something like that and then he denied that was him and yeah it all just went downhill from there I think and I think he had a website where he was prostituting himself what the fuck Jesus Christ yeah money for crack or whatever and yeah it was just I think it was like Crystal Ness that like sent him fucking mad but you know I guess he must have also had those thoughts and those desires in his head prior to that yeah but you know now that you go around going oh I'll tell you what I'm into boys but he never like we had no fucking I just thought he was I remember I'm in a conversation with Mike Lewis we were in Canada in 2000 and , whenever just before Liberation Transmission came out I went over to Vancouver and recorded with them I did some screams on a song called Everyday Combat and I was talking to Mike Lewis because he had had two dates in one day with two separate girls and I remember saying to him at this rate he's going to complete women and move on to men and Mike said and Mike said to me nah no way he loves he loves women too much and it's like look he moved on to men and then he got even worse like he just
Speaker 1it was it was
Speaker 2just pushing the boundary like I mental
Speaker 1mental it's fucking
Speaker 2it's nuts it's absolutely nuts
Speaker 1it's fucking absolutely fucking mental I mean what a thing to have lived through man I'm sorry to bring that up dude you know because I think that's a scar that you're probably going to carry for the rest of your life I think so thanks for talking about that with us man and it's fucking really you know noble of you that you're using your platform to clear the name of the band and you know the rest of the boys in the band whose lives and dreams were destroyed by that prick you know so but when we'll change gears we'll move on because I mean talking about bands you're in a new band The Mighty Raiders so tell us what's going on there and what's happening
Speaker 2nothing nothing we're we put out some songs over the pandemic period by our band camp we're doing the band camp Friday thing and we've got five songs out at the moment some American bastards took the name a week before right we went live on Spotify and so we're Raiders UK on streaming websites again I just wanted to play live I wanted to play angry angry heavy rock songs and yeah just have a laugh with my friends so I managed to convince Bob from The Blackout to do it my friend Sticks was in another band called Flailing Whale and then Sticks ended up getting Ryan involved who's our bassist and yeah we just wanted to play shows and festivals and stuff like that so we've been recording slowly we've got five songs out now we're hoping to record again soon hopefully about drummers now having a baby well it's Mrs. having a baby early next year so yeah I'm hoping to do some more shows and stuff with Raiders but yeah we'll see what happens really I guess but yeah it's been fun getting back out there and again we've gone you know we've gone back to playing rooms to hardly anybody and it's been liberating and fun right it's been nice it's been good yeah to play to people who are not our crowds as well and I've met loads of people who had no idea who the blackout were who have come on to me after and gone oh you're really good at this thanks thanks man yeah yeah I've done this for at least two weeks I don't know I don't know I don't know but yeah there's that it's gone a bit slow lately but yeah we're always looking to play so if anybody's listening to this and checks out Raiders and wants to put us on put a gig on let us know I guess we've already spoken about fees on ya so you know you know how much we need to get the event in
Speaker 1yeah if you're listening to this like go and check out Sean's band Raiders honestly Jesus Christ man that band will fucking tear your face off and feed it back to you I mean you know as soon as you finish the podcast go and check them out
Speaker 2but yeah that's the thing we're like basically if yeah if I was left the front in the blackout on my own angry and shouty like Raiders is is what it would be right luckily for the blackout we've got Gavin Butler's beautiful voice dulcet tones
Speaker 1yeah man yeah
Speaker 2but yeah it's like an angrier version of the blackout I guess yeah the blackout meets a lot of people say death tones which is strange to me I think it's just
Speaker 1riffs riffs maybe but it's got that aesthetic I suppose but no that wouldn't come to my mind
Speaker 2like yeah angry 2008 if you remember 2008 that's what Raiders sounds like so please check it out
Speaker 1go and check them out well Sean man look I promise I wouldn't keep you for longer than an hour we've already gone over time I've got loads more shit I want to ask you but I know you're a busy guy and you've got a busy day heading man so I'm going to let you I'm going to let you go before I keep you here until fucking midnight before we go how's the picture coming on
Speaker 2I'm just still colouring in yeah I've done I've done devil horns around the circle for some reason I've written I am the fire because somebody asked me the other day to write out I am the fire so she could have it tattooed that was a lyric by the blackout oh sweet yeah it's just hearts and pentagrams mainly which is my life so there you go
Speaker 1when it's finished send me a photo of it because I'd love to know because I can't I can see you scribbling but I can't see what he's scribbling so I'd love to see the work of art that's been occurring whilst he's also been having this chat with us so thanks so much for coming on and chatting with us today man I really appreciate it you're a super cool dude you've got a lot of love out there man and keep keep doing what you're doing and keep being new dude best wishes with everything and I can't fucking wait to see you tear that fucking stage and download a new one next year so best wishes with everything man and thanks again for joining us thank you very much thank you Sean Smith ladies and gentlemen put it together for him nice one thank you for having me brother thank you for coming dude see you bro see you man and he's gone wow what a conversation that was man and what a cool dude you know I mean Sean you know he's a cool guy man you know and he's very open and open and honest and articulate and intelligent and I'm super stoked for him that he's getting back on the big stage with the blackout after all these years because that's his natural habitat that's where he should be you know if there's any young or emerging or starting out bands and musicians listening take heed listen to what Sean just said because it's every single word of what he said is true not just of his experience but of mine and every single musician I have ever spoken to in my life ever the music industry is mental it's always been mental and I can't see any sign of it getting any better anytime soon so the more people know musicians and music lovers and the fans and you know the general public alike the more people know just how fucking bad it is for us musicians in terms of getting paid from anyone I think it's you know I think that's a good thing so I think the more musicians who are open about the true reality that they're living financially and emotionally and in terms of you know just having any semblance of like normal everyday creature comforts whatsoever I think the more people know about that then the better so props to Sean for sharing his story with us today I found that really enjoyable fascinating and interesting and funny chat I hope you did as well as always please subscribe to the podcast you've just listened to how fucking rough it is for us musicians so the least you can do is to subscribe to the goddamn thing and help my podcast my humble podcast which I also don't get paid for so if you could please subscribe leave a rating or a review or a comment or something like that that would really help me out thank you so much I'll be back next week with another awesome episode and another awesome guest stay tuned in the meantime take care of yourselves take care of others stay awesome have a great week and I love you loads bye bye
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