Interview: Band of the Week - Self Against City - Page 3

Exactly! We're going to have five heads instead of just two.

You talked about sound influences, but who are some of your songwriting influences? Or are they the same?

Obviously I'm a huge, huge, huge fan or The Beatles. They are, in my opinion, the greatest band that ever formed. Whatever they touched turned to gold, or I guess platinum (laughs). Bands that have made themselves last, bands that have achieved greatness, I look up to those bands because they've obviously done something right if they can write a song that kids can love and 45 year-olds can love… for forty years. Bands like The Beatles, Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, ELO, even dating further back to The Everly Brothers, and further back, the Supremes, those bands have done something right. And even further back, Beethoven and Mozart wrote things that have put a mark on history itself.

We like to look at bands and musicians and individuals who have done that. Trying to figure out what they've done to achieve that is a very difficult task. I'm sure we're far from learning how to do it. I feel like, why not strive for greatness. Why not take influence from bands and individuals who have achieved greatness.

You say in your bio that you were picked up by Drive-Thru as a direct result of posting two of your songs on-line. Does the internet continue to be a marketing tool for you?

It's funny you ask that because we've been bashing our heads together non-stop these last few months trying to figure out if the internet is going to continue to be such an amazing tool. It is unstoppable right now. You can access any band in the world from your chair in your bedroom.

As of right now, obviously sites like Myspace and Pure Volume allow people to hear music from bands they would have otherwise never heard of. At this time I would say the internet is untouchable in doing that. Whether or not it's going to continue to be the tool for discovering new music is something we've been pondering for awhile.

We're trying to figure out what's going to be next. Record stores are shutting down right and left, so what's going to be the next thing. Is it going to be individual songs that you have to purchase from iTunes or something like that or is it going to be completely different? So, we try to keep our heads on straight as far as the internet goes. There's no relying on the internet for us. You know what I mean? We don't rely on Myspace to get our fans. We don't rely on Pure Volume for people to hear our songs.

Article Author: Connie Phillips

Wife, mother, aspiring novelist, and music editor at BC Magazine, Connie Phillips spends most of her time in a fantasy land of her own creating. Contact: Phillips.connie@gmail.com

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