How long have you been together?
Ben Larsen (guitar and vocals) - The whole story huh? OK, Me and Niko (drummer) first started playing together about two years ago after meeting in the Enterprise (our home away from home). Our first rehearsal together was at Scar studios, just next to the Hawley Arms in Camden Town, which had power cables strung across the room at waist height, nice electric shocks when you got too close to the mics, half a drum kit, that sort of thing! We bashed around with a bass player for a while, but it just wasn’t working, and we really wanted to be a four piece, so as there are no bass players in London, I switched to bass for a while and we got Carlos in on lead. We gigged like that from the start of this year, and then we finally convinced our mate Phil, who used to front a band called The Saturday’s, to switch to bass and join us. After that I switched back to guitar and there you have it!
What made you want to form a band?
BL - All of us grew up in very different places but we’ve all always played in bands from as soon as we were able to pick up instruments and have a bash, and none of us are from London but all came here to play, so we all came here for the same purpose, and marvellously, all ended up drinking in the same pub! It’s pretty serendipitous really, but we are four guys who just want to play music more than anything. It’s all we think about day and night, so we didn’t really have much choice about forming a band, we’re just bloody happy it was this one!
Who are your influences?
BL - Ask each one of us and you’ll get different answers no doubt, we’re a contentious bunch when it comes to our influences. We have settled on a few combined ones that we’re happy with though – The Clash, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Police, Blondie and The Jam.
What have you been up to before the competition?
BL - We’d actually had a really good six months before the whole TV show thing kicked off, and when we had to sign the continuation agreement to do the show we had a big battle of conscience about whether it was the right thing to do or not as we’d already had a few labels sniffing around. We’d been Steve Lamacq’s Unsigned Band of the Week on BBC Radio 6, we’d been Triple J’s Unearthed Band of the Week, getting national radio play in Australia, we’d headlined the Barfly in Camden twice, once for a Sony Vaio launch thing, we’d opened for The Bravery at Proud in Camden (and blew them off the stage if you believe the rumours,), we’d just been selected to play Canadian Music Week 2008 and had been the featured artist on their site and we’d been running a hugely successful club night at The Enterprise in Camden. We’d been busy, to be fair!
What made you decided to enter?
BL - We had never entered a competition before this one, and had always been dead against them, as so many of them are just about popularity contests over any substance, which is bullshit regardless of how popular or not your band is. A friend of ours flagged this up to us and got us to look into it and we thought it couldn’t hurt to go to the wildcard audition. We were stoked to get through that, and then immediately sceptical about what the show was about and what Simon Gavin’s motives were for being involved, but after he spoke to the last 19 bands we felt pretty happy to just go along with it and have a laugh. We made a few rules for ourselves at the outset – them being to just be ourselves, which for The Bad Robots means to have a laugh, play damn well and see what the hell happens, and to not take the 'tv show’ side of it too seriously. I mean, what band that wants to make a career in
music doesn’t want their music heard by heads of A&R and prominent radio DJ’s?
You’ve been the under dogs for much of the way through, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
BL - It’s just a thing for us. We made it into the semi-final while being the only band to go into the bottom two twice on the tour dates. They keep slagging us, moving the bar for us and generally confusing us – whether it be genuine or for the sake of the show we don’t know – but we’re still there and still smiling, so we’re doing something right. In fact I reckon we could safely say that we’ve been doing at least a couple of things right. And besides, we saw Alex James the other day and he’s growing a beard – surely that’s a good sign.
What do you make of the other bands in the competition?
BL - They’re all good fun. None of the last few bands are really my cup of tea musically, but I don’t expect we are to them either, but I can still appreciate that they are good writers and damn good players. And good drinkers too. We’ve had a lot of beers with the Revenue lads and Tim and Dave from Hijak are always up for some mischief, so we get along just fine. It’s a weird situation because no-one starts a band to compete, and then here we are kind of being encouraged to compete. And how the hell do you compete with music? Unless we beat the shit out of each other with our instruments, in which case even though we’d be outnumbered, I’d still back us to win!
The judges haven’t always been very nice to you, what do you think of them?
BL - We’ve just been taking their comments with increasingly large pinches of salt. As we go on we’ve had to try harder to stay focussed on being The Bad Robots, what it means to be us and what we’re about. We respect their opinions and have always demonstrated that we’re willing to take their ideas on board if we think we’re valid, but we’re not prepared to change who we fundamentally are as a band for the sake of a tv show. And the fact that we’re in the semi-final kind of justifies us taking that stance all along. And also, the judges get to see 3 minutes of you a week, and if they came to see us play a floor-shaking set at The Enterprise they’d be left in no doubt about who we are and what we do, and why on every tour date their negative comments were booed by the crowds – though of course that didn’t make the show edit!
How nerve-racking is it performing now when you know what’s at stake?
BL - We really, really try not to think about it to be honest. As I said before, we’re just trying to stay true to who we are, and if they want us then we will be the happiest little robots in the world, and if not, then we’ll be that much closer to where we want to be anyway. I think if you focused about the album deal and the glitz of it all it’d be counting the eggs before they’ve hatched, and distracting to say the least.
What do you think your chances of winning are?
BL - At best, one in four. Haha! I know that’s such a cop-out, and if you look at the Mobile Act website we’re doing great with the fan count so based on that you’d have to say ok, but it’s all down to the judges as to whether or not we make the final in the first place, and then it comes down to the support of the public, who have been unbelievably good to us so far!
What do you hope to get from the competition whether or not you win?
BL - We’d love to be able to start making records and playing gigs every night of the year! Whether or not we win this thing or not that’s what we’d like to do. Hopefully this will at least give us a leg-up to being closer to that than we were when we started. I think the fact that we’ve always stuck to our guns through out might help us with that if we don’t win. We’d still bloody love to win it though, of course we would, but we want to win it by being The Bad Robots.
Will you keep in touch with the other bands?
BL - Definitely, we’ve gigged with loads of them away from the competition anyway, a couple of times with the Ginger Bread Men and Mancini, as well as with Out From Animals and You and What Army(?) which was ace. Plus the GBM live near us so we’re always on the lash with them and the Mentalists!
Have there been any ego clashes backstage?
BL - We’ve only ever had facial hair clashes, mostly where my beard gets ideas above its station and starts attacking everybody in the room. There’s no room for ego’s in our band, and we’re all unsigned bands you know? Just because we’ve been on a tv show for a couple of weeks doesn’t mean we can start acting like twats and expect to get away with it. It might all be over this time next week, and then we’d just be twats who aren’t on tv anymore.
What are your plans for 2008? What will you do if you don’t win?
BL - Well hopefully we will win, and if that’s the case then it’ll be recording an album through January and then touring the damn legs off it and us all year I reckon. Two of us are getting married next year – not to each other mind – so we’d have to stop along the way for them, but we would love to just be going hell for leather writing, recording and playing. It’s all we’ve ever wanted to do and to be at this stage when it looks like it might actually be possible is really exciting, so we want to make sure we at the very least get as close as we can to getting there.
How can people find out more about you?
BL - At this stage we’d love people’s support on the Mobile Act site, as if we do make the final it’ll come down to a public vote on the website, where everyone can vote once a day for a week, that decides the winner. We can be found on there at: http://mobileact.co.uk/bands/Bad-Robots And for general stuff about us you can find us at www.thebadrobots.com or www.myspace.com/thebadrobots
But to REALLY find out about The Bad Robots, you’ve got to see us live,
What made you want to form a band?
BL - All of us grew up in very different places but we’ve all always played in bands from as soon as we were able to pick up instruments and have a bash, and none of us are from London but all came here to play, so we all came here for the same purpose, and marvellously, all ended up drinking in the same pub! It’s pretty serendipitous really, but we are four guys who just want to play music more than anything. It’s all we think about day and night, so we didn’t really have much choice about forming a band, we’re just bloody happy it was this one!
Who are your influences?
BL - Ask each one of us and you’ll get different answers no doubt, we’re a contentious bunch when it comes to our influences. We have settled on a few combined ones that we’re happy with though – The Clash, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Police, Blondie and The Jam.
What have you been up to before the competition?
BL - We’d actually had a really good six months before the whole TV show thing kicked off, and when we had to sign the continuation agreement to do the show we had a big battle of conscience about whether it was the right thing to do or not as we’d already had a few labels sniffing around. We’d been Steve Lamacq’s Unsigned Band of the Week on BBC Radio 6, we’d been Triple J’s Unearthed Band of the Week, getting national radio play in Australia, we’d headlined the Barfly in Camden twice, once for a Sony Vaio launch thing, we’d opened for The Bravery at Proud in Camden (and blew them off the stage if you believe the rumours,), we’d just been selected to play Canadian Music Week 2008 and had been the featured artist on their site and we’d been running a hugely successful club night at The Enterprise in Camden. We’d been busy, to be fair!
What made you decided to enter?
BL - We had never entered a competition before this one, and had always been dead against them, as so many of them are just about popularity contests over any substance, which is bullshit regardless of how popular or not your band is. A friend of ours flagged this up to us and got us to look into it and we thought it couldn’t hurt to go to the wildcard audition. We were stoked to get through that, and then immediately sceptical about what the show was about and what Simon Gavin’s motives were for being involved, but after he spoke to the last 19 bands we felt pretty happy to just go along with it and have a laugh. We made a few rules for ourselves at the outset – them being to just be ourselves, which for The Bad Robots means to have a laugh, play damn well and see what the hell happens, and to not take the 'tv show’ side of it too seriously. I mean, what band that wants to make a career in
music doesn’t want their music heard by heads of A&R and prominent radio DJ’s?
You’ve been the under dogs for much of the way through, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
BL - It’s just a thing for us. We made it into the semi-final while being the only band to go into the bottom two twice on the tour dates. They keep slagging us, moving the bar for us and generally confusing us – whether it be genuine or for the sake of the show we don’t know – but we’re still there and still smiling, so we’re doing something right. In fact I reckon we could safely say that we’ve been doing at least a couple of things right. And besides, we saw Alex James the other day and he’s growing a beard – surely that’s a good sign.
What do you make of the other bands in the competition?
BL - They’re all good fun. None of the last few bands are really my cup of tea musically, but I don’t expect we are to them either, but I can still appreciate that they are good writers and damn good players. And good drinkers too. We’ve had a lot of beers with the Revenue lads and Tim and Dave from Hijak are always up for some mischief, so we get along just fine. It’s a weird situation because no-one starts a band to compete, and then here we are kind of being encouraged to compete. And how the hell do you compete with music? Unless we beat the shit out of each other with our instruments, in which case even though we’d be outnumbered, I’d still back us to win!
The judges haven’t always been very nice to you, what do you think of them?
BL - We’ve just been taking their comments with increasingly large pinches of salt. As we go on we’ve had to try harder to stay focussed on being The Bad Robots, what it means to be us and what we’re about. We respect their opinions and have always demonstrated that we’re willing to take their ideas on board if we think we’re valid, but we’re not prepared to change who we fundamentally are as a band for the sake of a tv show. And the fact that we’re in the semi-final kind of justifies us taking that stance all along. And also, the judges get to see 3 minutes of you a week, and if they came to see us play a floor-shaking set at The Enterprise they’d be left in no doubt about who we are and what we do, and why on every tour date their negative comments were booed by the crowds – though of course that didn’t make the show edit!
How nerve-racking is it performing now when you know what’s at stake?
BL - We really, really try not to think about it to be honest. As I said before, we’re just trying to stay true to who we are, and if they want us then we will be the happiest little robots in the world, and if not, then we’ll be that much closer to where we want to be anyway. I think if you focused about the album deal and the glitz of it all it’d be counting the eggs before they’ve hatched, and distracting to say the least.
What do you think your chances of winning are?
BL - At best, one in four. Haha! I know that’s such a cop-out, and if you look at the Mobile Act website we’re doing great with the fan count so based on that you’d have to say ok, but it’s all down to the judges as to whether or not we make the final in the first place, and then it comes down to the support of the public, who have been unbelievably good to us so far!
What do you hope to get from the competition whether or not you win?
BL - We’d love to be able to start making records and playing gigs every night of the year! Whether or not we win this thing or not that’s what we’d like to do. Hopefully this will at least give us a leg-up to being closer to that than we were when we started. I think the fact that we’ve always stuck to our guns through out might help us with that if we don’t win. We’d still bloody love to win it though, of course we would, but we want to win it by being The Bad Robots.
Will you keep in touch with the other bands?
BL - Definitely, we’ve gigged with loads of them away from the competition anyway, a couple of times with the Ginger Bread Men and Mancini, as well as with Out From Animals and You and What Army(?) which was ace. Plus the GBM live near us so we’re always on the lash with them and the Mentalists!
Have there been any ego clashes backstage?
BL - We’ve only ever had facial hair clashes, mostly where my beard gets ideas above its station and starts attacking everybody in the room. There’s no room for ego’s in our band, and we’re all unsigned bands you know? Just because we’ve been on a tv show for a couple of weeks doesn’t mean we can start acting like twats and expect to get away with it. It might all be over this time next week, and then we’d just be twats who aren’t on tv anymore.
What are your plans for 2008? What will you do if you don’t win?
BL - Well hopefully we will win, and if that’s the case then it’ll be recording an album through January and then touring the damn legs off it and us all year I reckon. Two of us are getting married next year – not to each other mind – so we’d have to stop along the way for them, but we would love to just be going hell for leather writing, recording and playing. It’s all we’ve ever wanted to do and to be at this stage when it looks like it might actually be possible is really exciting, so we want to make sure we at the very least get as close as we can to getting there.
How can people find out more about you?
BL - At this stage we’d love people’s support on the Mobile Act site, as if we do make the final it’ll come down to a public vote on the website, where everyone can vote once a day for a week, that decides the winner. We can be found on there at: http://mobileact.co.uk/bands/Bad-Robots And for general stuff about us you can find us at www.thebadrobots.com or www.myspace.com/thebadrobots
But to REALLY find out about The Bad Robots, you’ve got to see us live,
