DISTORT
Sometimes there's a strange synchronicity that happens in the world, and the phrase DISTORT was one such thing - not only had Evo's Pete just written a demo tune with the same name only days before, but it turns out that Jay from Enigami had done the same thing completely separately. And then comes the third link - DISTORT is also the name of a new, monthly punk/grunge/hard and alt rock event. When we found out Jay was behind all this, it all started to make sense...
So Jay, we've just been invited along to an event called Distort. This is an event run without promoters, by the bands for the fans. Sounds intriguing, tell us more...
Basically it was started by me and a guy from Century Thirteen (Kevin Mcguire) with the idea of starting a movement in Glasgow for punk bands and alt rock groups so we didn't have to deal with promoters and playing alongside folk, indie or death metal bands, and we came up with the concept of a non-profit monthly gig where it was run by all the bands helping each other out, we now have I believe 8 bands involved. In fact, 9.
So this sounds like you're promoting the scene from the eyes of people in the scene, rather than a random promoters idea of what should be happening?
Exactly yeah, plus working with promoters we never get the feeling that its about the music, just about them making money usually, and none of us got into it to make money we all just want to have fun and turn people on, but the gigs we tend to get are tinged with the feeling we have to sell X number of tickets or play alongside bands we aren't into which kinda bums us out. So we got a plan together and printed out some poster ideas and went to Kelvin at Ivory Blacks with the idea and pitched it to him. We have 4 months booked and hope to keep it going indefinitely, with the hope of taking it on tour and possibly starting them in other cities and culminating in a festival, that's the big idea
Kelvin is pretty sound, how is the split of any takings being done? Obviously there's no promoter to pay, but I'm guessing there's a venue hire?
Nope we wont be paying anything and wont be receiving anything and if it makes a lot of cash then we will take money to expand the idea and promote it with posters and CD's to hand out
Sounds good - it could end up being something like the ska movement, what with all the similar bands working with each other to play similar gigs at the same time rather than spreading themselves all over the place
Yeah man, you never know. I just think promoters aren't needed in the punk scene, they tend to just drain the gigs of feeling if you ask me, with the exception of some awesome cats
What we hope to do with Distort is have it as a monthly thing that people will go to just to see new bands, and see who's in Glasgow to support, not necessarily for the bands friends like other gigs tend to rely on, its about getting real fans of the bands and starting a genuine buzz, and the bands will profit from getting fans even if they don't profit from the night itself, that's the idea anyway.
Thanks to Jay for taking the time to talk to us. You can find more about Distort from the following links.
The guys are still looking for photographers, videographers and artists to get involved with this project, so if this floats your boat, get in touch via their Facebook page.
Official Event Page on Facebook
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