Freak Scene

College can be a Nirvana for aspiring musicians. At last – a place where people love Mogwai as much as you do! Where not everyone wants to like Slash! Where the same four musical influences aren’t bandied around in every conversation!

Gaz Harding from Hot Press/Beck’s Fusion Competition winners The Kinetiks agrees. He’s studying Sound Engineering in Temple Bar, having completed a degree in Social Science at UCD, and two of his bandmates are taking courses in Dundalk. Having come close to winning this year’s National Student Music Awards, he’s well-qualified to advise aspiring bands.
“There are many reasons why college is a great place to put a band together. You can just see why bands that form there become successful. It’s the only time of your life when you’re going to have that excess time, and disposable income to throw at making demos, buying music and rehearsals. A bit of time-management is important, but once that’s sorted, you can throw a lot of your time at music without jeopardising your studies. After three years you can be anywhere you want to be – if you put the work in, you see the benefits.”
As Gaz discovered, UCD was an ideal place to find a bunch of fellow musical hopefuls.
“When you go to college, every second fella plays guitar, and every third is a bass player, and every tenth is a drummer – it’s like a breeding ground for new bands!
“It’s so easy getting time off – I have a job at the moment, and it’s just the biggest song and dance getting the morning off or whatever. But in college, you could go one or two weeks without setting foot in the place – though I guess that’s not a good idea if you really want to do well! You can take the day off and put in a seven- or eight-hour rehearsal. And they often have rehearsal spaces on-campus, so you’re not paying ridiculous money for a space in Temple Bar.”
Another approach is to take a gap year to devote to your band if you think you have a real chance of breaking through. While in college, you’ll also be presented with lots of gigging opportunities
“Hooking up with the Ents Officers is a great idea,” Gaz says, “because it just gets you so many cool gigs. They’ll get you playing to hundreds and hundreds of guys and girls from different colleges who are into it in the same way as you are, and they’re all just new heads. If you’re playing good gigs, your profile can just jump.
“There’s a huge market – even within your own college. There are 6,000 people in UCD, and if you’re playing a gig and handing out flyers, you’re going to get a lot of them in. The age and interest group is so concentrated that you can leave college with a really strong fanbase.
“You’re also going to have a lot more free time to get people’s numbers, send them in your demos and invite them to gigs. And the Ents Officers know people who know people – you can just build a network.”
I ask him if college makes it easier to get into an A&R man’s Rolodex. “I don’t know why it wouldn’t. It’s a fantastic place to pick up raw talent. You could get five or six young bands in a night, so you invariably get a lot of them in.
“Besides that, in college, you’re surrounded by all this music and you actually have time to listen to it!” he says, switching the subject to the ‘all-round education’ college can provide for musicians.
“You’re surrounded by these long-haired guys who could tell you what guitar Dave Gilmour used on a Pink Floyd B-Side. iPods weren’t out when I was in college, but mix Minidiscs were a big thing – I’d get a Tim Buckley mix off my folkie friend, another off my punk friend... It’s all cross-pollination.
“Also, because you don’t have to worry about rent or whatever, you’ve got a huge amount of disposable income that you wouldn’t have otherwise. I’d be going into HMV and buying six CDs a week. Whenever I’d read the Top 10, I’d be able to just go out and buy three or four of them!”
Of course, that does bring its own challenges. “My Mum’d go mad. I’d just come home and my bag’d be bulging every week, because I’d see ‘Three for €15’ offers, buy eight and suddenly it’s not such a great bargain anymore! I’d have no money left to go out, but it’s all for the greater good!”
College can become a time of total immersion in music: “You get to leech off people with better taste in music than you, while-away the hours in a guitar shop and rehearse your ass off. And as well as that, they used to do lunchtime concerts in UCD. You’d be eating your lunch in the canteen and you’d hear the strains of ‘Norwegian Wood’ and there’d be a really great Beatles tribute act playing a two or three hour set outside. Plus you’d actually get time to listen to it!”
So, Gaz, before we finish up – what words of encouragement can you pass on to aspiring college bands?
“You just have to capitalise on the opportunities that are presented to you. You’ll be out of college before you know it – don’t waste all your time in the student bar! The most important thing for a college band is your profile, and things like the NSMAs are a great way of getting the name out there.
“A lot of people who are in the know go to those gigs, and it’s a great thing to hear something like, ‘You’ve got something there,’ from them. That keeps you going.’”
While he values the confidence boost, Gaz also has this to pass on: “Don’t put too much stock in it. If you’re not getting asked it’s not the end of the world – your CD could just land at the bottom of a pile somewhere. Battles of the Bands are rife in college – get involved in that and don’t be worried if you get knocked out. That’s par for the course – besides, there might be some guy in the crowd who thinks you’re the next Syd Barrett! Even though we lost the NSMAs, we still had people contacting our manager. You can get onto the foot of a bill somewhere, and once you’re in, you’re in. You can land support slots with bigger bands like Director or The Blizzards, and other gigs can come off the foot of that.”
The Kinetiks are the perfect example of how the university experience can turn you into a tight, successful outfit. They follow up their appearance with Neosupervital on September 5th with a slot at Clare’s Cois Fharraige Festival on September 8th – where they’ll be sharing a bill with Paddy Casey and Ocean Colour Scene. Their Gareth Mannix-produced single ‘A Smile’d Crack Your Face’ scored major airplay, and they’ll be following it up with ‘Shuffle Your Feet’ on October 12th.
Who knows? Follow his advice, and you could be the one imparting wisdom from these pages in years to come.