A new glam racket is roaming the streets of London, I’m talking Bowie not Nikki here, and its name is Jonny Cola and the A-Grades.
I track them down in a musty basement below Holloway’s Nambucca (well most of them, the drummers gone AWOL, as drummers do) and ask them what the hell they’re playing at…
Your music brings to mind the peculiarly British glam sound from the 70’s and the turn of the century revival. Would you say these were your strongest influences?
Jonny: We’d certainly be crazy to say there was no 70’s influence, I think there’s a shared love of good 70’s rock in all its forms. The turn of the century stuff, that’s probably more (Simons) thing…
Simon: That’s probably more my era. The band had a general sound before I joined, but maybe it has gone in a slightly different direction since!
Jonny: I think the bands been influenced by everyone that’s joined it really.
Mauro: We did have a general sound, but I think it’s better now. We’re more comfortable in this lineup than we ever used to be.
Is it that things have changed significantly since new people have joined?
(everyone laughs)
Simon: No! That’s your answer!
Do you think it’s still important to be making Proper British Pop in the 21st Century?
Jonny: Of course it’s important, there are still people that want to hear it. Everything is always changing, but there’s not been that seismic shift that the music press would claim there’s been. I’m not dissing any particular genre, but not every kid wants to listen to grime, it would be ridiculous to assume that everyone does. There are plenty of kids out there that want to hear the sort of thing that we’re doing.
Mauro: There’s quite a dearth of decent British guitar bands at the moment. Not to disrespect them either, but people got excited about the Heartbreaks, and they’re quite good, but maybe seven years ago there were shitloads of bands coming out as good as them. The fact that people get so excited about them proves there’s very little to compete at the moment, it’s quite a fallow period.
On the right night, the live show is quite visually captivating – is this something you work on, or just a sign that things are going right on the night?
Jonny: I think it’s just the way we are actually!
Simon: We definitely don’t practice it…
Jonny: There’s no choreography, there’s no prearranged moves. It’s just the way we feel on the night.
Simon: It’s a combination of things going well, and the stage being physically big enough for all of us to move around.
I have seen you move to the floor before…
Jonny: Yes, I like the floor, I’m a fan of the floor, it’s a good space. I think people should use the floor more in their lives.
As the latest EP, Postcode Wars, showed, London locations feature heavily in your music…
Jonny: Mauro was telling me off for this earlier, he reckons I do it too much!
Are you natives, or is London an adoptive home?
Jonny: Both Mauro and myself have lived most of our lives within Greater London. I grew up right out in the suburbs and the borderlands. The other three, no, they’re not native at all! Simon’s from Birmingham, Jez is from Stoke on Trent, and Marco’s from Rome. Which is probably better than London really.
Is it something you identify yourselves with, being in London?
Jez: Yeah, I’ve been in London for over ten years, it’s my home. I think so for Marco too.
Simon: It feels like my home, definitely.
Mauro: You have conflicting feeling when you go back to Birmingham though don’t you?
Simon. When I go back to Birmingham, I wonder… why I spent so long there!
If we were doing this interview in Birmingham would you be giving a different answer?
Simon: No… (everyone laughs)
Mauro: That’s one thing you can say about Simon, he is brutally honest. With the emphasis on brutality!
Back to the Postcode Wars EP again, how has the reception been?
Jonny: It’s been very good. The thing is though, we’re at a certain level and not a lot of people really know that we exist. It does seem though that everybody who has become aware that the EP exists, have said incredibly nice things about it, which is a 100% strike rate! We could do with more people knowing it exists, that would be very nice.
Simon: We didn’t get any bad reviews, which was great because I expected at least some bad.
Jonny: It’s difficult to break through beyond a certain level, and without meaning to be all conspiracy theory about it, (the industry) is pretty much sewn up. If you don’t fit what is seen as being the thing to push at that moment, you’re not going to get pushed at all, however many people like what you’re doing. I think we’re doing pretty bloody well, we just need more of it…
Perhaps an increasingly unfashionable thing to do, you approach the subject of male sexuality in a very open way on some tracks. Is this is a conscious decision?
Jonny: Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t. My lyrics are basically very honest, I write about what I’ve felt and what I feel. It’s not playing it for the crowd, I’m not doing it because it’s cool or anything like that, that’s just what I feel. I’m writing about my life, and it’s my experience.
Do you find that difficult as a songwriter, or simply part of the process of the songwriting process?
Jonny: Oh no, it’s easy.
Mauro: He can’t stop himself!
Jonny: I’m basically a massive exhibitionist – that’s all part of it.
You’ve done several videos now, you’ve done The Party’s Over and Postcode Wars, and you’ve just done Alpha Male, and it has to be said they’re quite unique videos, they’re not something you’d see on your standard MTV2 nonsense…
Jonny: Good!
Jez: Because they won’t put us on the playlist…
Simon: Our finger is so far off the pulse!
Are the videos important to the songs, or are they just a bit of fun and good promotion?
Mauro: We have to give a lot of credit in the videos to Jez really. He had a massive part to play in those videos, with the concepts and the realisation of them.
Jonny: (with The Party’s Over) Did we even plot it out properly, or did we just think ‘it’ll be fine, we’ll have some drinks?’
Jez: There was a run through!
Mauro: With the budget that we’re working on, which is pretty miniscule, you need to have some good ideas behind it. It’s easy to have crap ideas and loads of budget and make it look palatable, but to make decent and watchable videos on zero budget like we’ve done, it’s quite an achievement.
Simon: It becoming increasingly important. Even a few years ago, YouTube wasn’t that significant, but now it’s a great way for unsigned bands to share their music.
So you say its Jez that comes up with most of the ideas for these things?
Jez: Not really, I just do all the hard work.
Mauro: We couldn’t have made them without Jez, put it that way.
You also populate the videos with your friends – is this deliberate or are they just significantly cheaper than extras?
Jonny: I think both are probably true.
Simon: They’re cheap… and freely available.
Jonny: It’s important to have the right people though isn’t it?
Jez: It gives some kind of vision of where we are really, the bands and the people around us.
After this gig, what’s next for the band?
Mauro: A tour – The ‘Lock Them Up’ Tour!
Jonny: We’re also working on the next EP at the moment, which will probably be out in January.
Simon: And before that, there will be Christmas-based shenanigans!
Jonny: We do have a bit of a tradition now of releasing a Christmas single, so we’ll have to do another one…
Simon: And there’ll be a video to go with that. Right Jez?
Jez: Urrrgh.
The ‘Lock Them Up’ Tour has now sadly just passed – I really should have put this up a week ago shouldn’t I? Still, they’re certainly not stopping there, see www.jonnycolaandtheagrades.net for more info.
