Derby’s Addictive...
COLSTON CRAWFORD finds longstanding local band Addictive Philosophy welcoming the City of Culture bid and playing their part with an open mic day and a new album launch
LIVE music in Derby market place will help launch local band Addictive Philosophy’s fourth album on Sunday.
The band are playing an early evening gig starting at 7pm sharp to showcase their unique mix of musical styles, of which more in a bit.
Addictive Philosophy are more than just a band and in many ways this is more than just a gig.
It will be preceded from midday through to 6pm by a full band open mic extravaganza in the city’s performance venue in the market place.
The whole event is linked in with the City of Culture bid being put together in Derby, one of the first of a series of events which aims to prove wrong the oft-repeated and patently wrong assertion that very little happens in the city.
In the absence of a bespoke large performance venue at the moment, much of what does happen is promoted at grassroots level – and there is actually a lot of it.
And so to the band and the album. If you have even half an ear to the ground in terms of music in Derby, you will probably have heard of Addictive Philosophy. They are a collective as much as a band, an ongoing musical melting pot that stretches back 25 years.
Members, 19 of them, have come and gone, there have been numerous tours in the UK and Ireland and three previous albums but the current line up is the longest standing.
They are Gez Addictive (lead guitar, vocals, production), Carol Cockeram (synths, vocals, visuals), Anna Croxall (trumpet, vocals), Anna Melidone (bass, vocals and also of fast-rising grunge trio Muddibrooke), Lauren Greaves (drums) and Nick McCann
(rhythm guitar).
The one constant is Gez, a very beacon of positivity, who has run studios around the city for many years. He is currently manager of Alpha Pro Creative, which offers a range of facilities from a unit in New Street.
“Addictive Philosophy have existed in Derby since 1996 but didn’t really come into prominence until some 10 years later,” says Gez.
“Since then, momentum has built and line-ups have changed. There have been numerous UK and Ireland tours, appearances at the heralded Rebellion Festival and a few releases here and there.
“But since around 2010 the lineup has been predominantly female, possibly making this Derby’s most successful and enduring predominantly female act.
“The band fuse energetic punk with dub reggae sounds, with a healthy dose of electronica and samples.”
What is the philosophy in Addictive Philosophy? Says Gez: “Be excellent to one another, live long and prosper and party hard. Or maybe it’s say your prayers, do your training, and eat your vitamins. Or stay in school.
“It’s anything that is positive and about working together for the greater good.”
When you listen to the album, there’s just so much going on: trumpets and synthesisers weave in and out of the guitar, drums and bass foundation. Some songs are political but often they address everyday problems and not without a dash of humour
I found a constant was that it made my feet tap and that’s a good start.
The 10-track album is called Back & Forth and it is unlikely to be the last.
“Over the years, output has been sporadic, but with the set-up now there’s more stuff being written and once the album comes out there’s already material coming together for the next one,” adds Gez.
He has been asked on board by the powers that be who are organising Derby’s City of Culture bid and hopes people will take it seriously. In a video to publicise Sunday’s gig, which you can find on Facebook, Gez says: “Derby’s going for the city of culture bid and there are a lot of us over the years who’ve said a lot of things like ‘Derby doesn’t support… this that and the other.’
“A lot of people know what I do, I run studios and I get involved in a lot of creative things, working with young people, a lot of grassroots stuff.
“As a result of doing that over the last 20 or so years, finally, because of the city of culture bid, conversations have started happening with people like me at grassroots level.
“People, the powers that be, are trying to support different things. I’ve been approached to put things on. It’s being funded, that’s why this is a free event.
“It’s a 350-capacity venue in the market place. If we can get things going in there and be able to say ‘people do want this’ then they have to listen.
“We can’t complain that Derby doesn’t do things when it is there and it’s given to us.”
Quite so.
We can’t complain that Derby doesn’t do things when it is there and it’s given to us.
Gez Addictive
DEXTER star Michael C Hall is known to TV viewers for playing a serial killer with a talent for murder and a mind packed with creative ways of getting rid of the bodies of his many victims.
There was never any tell-tale drop of blood to link him to the bad guys he dispatched... apart from the collection of glass slides that he kept as trophies of his kills.
Dexter is currently back in murdering form on Sky Atlantic in new series Dexter: New Blood, after a decade away, but Michael has been keeping busy over the years with a number of projects including performing and recording with the band Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum.
Michael is a longstanding Broadway performer having played lead roles in Chicago, Cabaret, Hedwig And The Angry Inch and Lazarus – one of the last works completed by David Bowie before his death.
He’s been singing his entire life and met his fellow band members, former The Wallflowers and Morningwood drummer Peter Yanowitz and Blondie, Boy George and Cyndi Lauper keyboard player Matt Katz-Bohen, when they were all working on Hedwig in 2014.
But Michael says the formation of the band came as a surprise to them all.
“We didn’t plan on it,” he says. “Peter and Matt were making instrumental tracks because the guys enjoyed being on tour together and wanted to keep doing stuff. I don’t think we necessarily thought we would become a band, not even when I heard those tracks and offered to sing on them.
“I did not think of it as anything other than just an experiment and to have some fun, but the collaboration between the three of us took on a life of its own. Before we knew it a bunch of songs had been written and we felt compelled to book a gig and come up with a name.”
Matt says: “We all come together on certain things definitely. We all love Black Sabbath a lot and desert rock here in the US. We all came together basically via the Hedwig show, which is very 70s glam-rock orientated, very Bowie orientated.”
Peter adds: “I think we share this strong desire to perform. We’ve been doing this now for four years. We’ve been playing around New York for almost all of that time except for the pandemic. But we are still a new band and we haven’t done a tour, so there is that excitement to see how the music translates in a live setting.”
The trio brought out their debut album, Thanks For Coming, earlier this year under the cloud of the pandemic. Nearly half of the album’s songs were written and recorded after New York City went into lockdown, but they are now heading to the UK on tour.
Peter says: “It’s a really exciting place. Excitement and fear they go hand in hand. I always get a little bit nervous.”
Michael points out: “I think if something is not at least a little bit scary then it’s probably not worth doing when it comes to performances and artistic endeavour. Excitement and fear can definitely intersect and intermingle. Ultimately it’s liberating to be putting across your own material rather than being a mouthpiece for someone else’s.
“I think in the shows we’ve played since we’ve come back... there is a collective sense of gratitude amongst both performers and audiences.”
He chuckles: “I do think there’s maybe a sense of just the simple wonder of all being in the room together is something that people are appreciating anew.”
Matt says they have already recorded and mastered a new album which they hope to release next year, following the UK dates, and the guys point to the influence of Giorgio Moroder’s 70s productions for disco diva Donna Summer, new wave dance music of the 80s and contemporary electronic dance acts like Justice.
Fifty-year-old Michael says: “My first concert was the Bay City Rollers. I was in second grade or something and I think the first album I bought was Styx’s Cornerstone about the same time.”
“That’s crazy,” says Peter, “one of my first concerts was the Bay City Rollers and I also saw Styx in concert. Aerosmith was probably my first one.”
Matt joins in: “My first concert was when I was 12. It was the Headbangers Ball with Halloween and Anthrax and was a super metal show. I got my mom to take me and I remember my head hurt afterwards from all the headbanging.”
The tour runs until December 9 and the album Thanks For Coming is out now. Go to bit.ly/3khW2Cc for ticket details and for more information follow on Instagram: @princessgoesofficial
Excitement and fear can definitely intersect... Michael C Hall on pre-gig nerves