Y'r Impossible Interview

After impressing us at last years In The City showcase we thought it about time we found out what makes Preston band Y'r Impossible tick. Problems with background noise meant Stevie, Fil, Daniel and Adrian joined me in the relative quiet of the girls toilets! Well it'll make for a good story one day.

R13: For those who don't know you yet who are you and what kind of stuff do you play?
S: We are Y'r Impossible, a new wave pop band from Preston.
R13: Who does what in the band?
S: My name's Stevie Guy, I am lead vocals and synth, well I say synth but I haven't actually done it yet, we're doing it tonight for the first time but it sounds good!
D: I'm Daniel and I play the bass
A: My name's Adrian and I play the fool... and the drums
F: I'm Fil and I play the guitar and do all of the hard work
S: Get to fuck!
laughter

R13: How long have you been together?
F: We've been Y'r Impossible for about a year and a half but with this current line up about a year?
S: Less than that
F: This is the definitive line up though so we judge it from then. We had another singer before but we had to let her go for other reasons and now we have this minx

R13: So when I saw you at In The City that must have been one of your first gigs?
S: Yeah and the bassist, we'd just sacked him about two days before so the guy that played bass at In The City practiced that morning so it was one of the worst gigs.
A: Yeah we came away thinking we didn't play very well

R13: Do you think the line up changes have influenced the direction of the band or have you always had an idea of where you're going?
At this point someone conveniently turns on the hand dryer!
F: There's a specific vision that we want to go forward, we know it's new wave, we know it's post punk but each new member brings in their very unique style and a lot of new songs get written as a new person comes in so that does influence it. The bunch of musicians we have now are the best that this band could ever hope for.
S: We're moving away from new wave a bit now, it's a bit more melodic, a bit bluesy.
D: I can play scales!
laughter

R13: Things seem to have been happening for you recently, you've just some work for Channel M, what was that like? (Manchester based TV channel)
S: It was a rush as we were about an hour late! It was really good actually.
R13: Did you play live?
S: Yes, four songs, it felt like we were on Top of the Pops, it was well good!
A: Plenty of close ups of me!
S: "Do I look fat?" yeah
laughter
F: The more exposure we get in Manchester though the better, we want more gigs like this
S: We do want more gigs in Manchester because we've only played Dry Bar three or four times so we want to get a few more.

R13: You've also had some radio play from Steve Lamacq I believe?
F: The Radio 1 One Big Weekend is in Preston this year and they wanted to check out the Preston scene and they asked a few bands so our very own Stevie Guy appeared on the radio and said some stuff.
S: I put on a posh voice
F: It's great that Radio 1 has actually picked up a lot of Preston bands, for that they only picked three or four bands and we were in that three or four, which is great
S: I paid them!
A: Paid them with what?
S: Steve Lamacq's a lucky boy!
laughter
A: They came to us and I think that's really good as it puts us up there

R13: So you must be really looking forward to that?
S: Can't wait, there's fringe gigs as well that Radio 1 are paying bands to do and we've got one on the Friday so it's really good. It's mainly signed bands but if we can get some exposure around that it will be good stuff.

R13: So you're from Preston, which seems to be coming to the fore somewhat at the moment with lots of new clubs and a big rock scene
F: There is a big rock scene but there's a lot of everything going on. Because it's a new city, it's only been a city for three or four years, they're just plugging everything and because the council really want to plug the culture side of it, music is the main part of that. They're doing things like paying buskers to play in certain places, trying to create the idea that Preston is another musical city in the north. Preston's music scene five or six years ago was absolutely dead but a bunch of people came along and said right, let's start putting on club nights and so on. We've been lucky enough to get in on that and now every band is trying to outdo the other one so now everyone is really good.
S: Plus a few bands have been signed, which is really good.

R13: You've done at least one demo
F: Yeah that's the one we've done with Stevie, we did have one before but it's been dropped. We're going back in the studio in a couple of weeks to knock out a few more of our newer songs because we've been trying to get Stevie to write most of the lyrics where a lot of the old songs maybe I wrote the lyrics or our old singer did, so we've been dropping those to make it more personal to Stevie.
A: It's going to be totally new stuff that's not really been gigged a lot either but has been practiced to death.

R13: Any plans for an album to follow that?
F: Well a lot of bands tend to rush into putting an album out, like "oh we've got eleven songs together we must put out a cd" and then charge £5 for this album, well I don't want to buy your album! We want people to hear the music so we want to either give them out or do them as cheaply as possible so perhaps doing an album now might be overkill.
S: We haven't got enough songs for an album, that's the real reason!
laughter
A: A bunch of two or three songs is enough for a new band really to get a taster of what they're like.
S: Then hopefully we try to turn it on in the live show as well
F: We're planning on doing a DVD of live footage to give out to people at gigs and as press packs
R13: Good idea
S: Oi that's my idea!

R13: Have you had any interest from record labels yet?
F: A few have said they like our stuff but I think they're just waiting to see what happens
A: They just sort of look at you and say "yeah I really like your tunes"
S: We're planning on winning the lottery and funding it all ourselves
A: We've got a good manager now
F: He saw us at ITC as well and he's been working on getting us loads of gig swaps in Manchester and Liverpool. We were in Edinburgh the other day and that's better for us, doing more gigs rather than concentrating on putting a long playing record out and never getting invited because noone's ever heard of us.
A: It keeps the marketing side of things going as well so we don't slow down.

R13: You've been doing some gigs further afield, Edinburgh for example, what was the reaction like up there?
F: It was good, we played with a couple of cover bands but the people who were there were really into it.
A: We went down to Sheffield on Monday night for a gig swap, which went really well
S: We got a good gig from that
F: When you go and play in a strange place you expect everyone just to be stood there with their arms by their sides, like they've come to see the local band and don't care about you but they were really enthusiastic, they were bopping away and I'm thinking "ooh we're not rubbish!"

R13: Any idea where you'd like to be this time next year?
F: In a girls toilet!
S: This time next year, getting paid to do it! I don't really care how much as long as I can give up the day job.
A: I think we'd all say that. I don't want to be mega famous I just want to make a living out of it.
F: It doesn't matter what degree of success we have as long as we're doing what we want to do, which is making good records and playing good gigs, whether as an underground cult band or a huge band.
S: Nah I want to be in OK magazine!
laughter
A: I'd like to put out a proper tour and put out a good album that we've spent some time on.
F: Playing what we want to hear as well rather than what other people want, I like what we play, I'd never sell out.
S: I'll do anything!
A: She will.
R13: Ask Steve Lamacq eh?
S: Shut up you!
laughter