Quick interview #9: Junkie Brush

Junkie Brush have supported punk legends Discharge at the Zodiac, headlined the Riverside Stage at Cornbury Festival and co-organised MusicInOxford.co.uk’s inaugural 5-a-side football tournament. Despite a Spinal Tap-esque revolving door of drummers, they finally found one alive and breathing after a 2two-year search and started gigging again at the end of 2008. They’re currently recording new material for a mini-album due for release in mid-2009.

1. What do you think you sound like?

Dragging an iron bath full of loose scrap metal uphill, while someone shouts obscenities and outrage at you. In musical terms I guess we’re loosely hardcore punk. Someone called us ‘secret prog rockers’ once. We didn’t like that.

2. What do you do when you’re not making music?

Create or recover from hangovers, wrangle computers, take pictures of light refracting through crystals.

3. Recommend us a good band or album and tell us what’s good about it.

Our musical spectrum of tastes and influences is too vast to sum up in a pithy one liner. The fact that we choose to ignore most of them and play nasty punk is neither here nor there. We’d never come to a consensus on one album: however Rabid would say ‘anything by the Ruts or Killing Joke’, Big Tim is a closet hippy and would probably say something by Primus or Frank Zappa, and Jim doesn’t care as long as it’s horrible, loud and aggressive – try Napalm Death’s Time Waits for no Slave.

4. Where did you get your band name from?

A misunderstanding that turned out to be better than the original idea.

5. What do you like and dislike about Oxford and its music?

Great scene, great bands, lots of diversity, but no-one seems to own their own gear and never asks, but assumes, they can use yours.

  • http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk stuart

    ‘‘anything by the Ruts or Killing Joke’’

    Does that include Outside The Gate? I hope not. It’s RUBBISH.

  • Big Tim

    I actually do own a copy of Outside the gate and can confirm that it is indeed absolutely terrible.

    Let me rephrase that then: Anything by Killing Joke that isn’t “Outside the Gate”.

  • Jay Rival

    5 a side football tournament, im loving the idea of this!

    Time will tell on Outside The Gate!

  • jamess

    …think the idea of the inter-bands 5 a side needs to be revived……
    *puts plotting head back on*

  • Jay Rival

    Girls in goal.

    only joking Clouds x

  • Big Tim

    > Girls in goal.

    You’d be surprised how many there were actually! Including ours – Pat from Smilex.

  • http://www.borderville.com joederville

    How about a tournament where the teams were comprised of particular musicians, like all singers in one team and all drummers in another etc.? Could settle some age-old debates…

    I’m not playing though.

  • Beaver Fuel

    Jamess – if this goes ahead you alone may have to represent Beaver Fuel for the following reasons: Rodger and I think it’s a shit game, and even if Russell was still in the band it’s not exactly yoga or salsa dancing.

  • Mark

    Well Jay there have been ‘discussions’ of an A.Backwards/Aeronauts/Gullivers/Minor Coles team…you heard it here first!!…always looking for one more to complete the line up!?

    Is there a tournament this year, if not our skills are wasted?

  • Clouds

    I’m too rough to play football…My temperament is more suited for rugby!
    But I’d give it a go!

  • Stuart

    Tim – if you want to make the footie tournament happen again, drop me and Simon an email and we can get onto it?

  • thin green fred.

    first round Thin green candles V the secret rivals…. Tournament abandoned due to rioting!

  • Mark

    YES, YES, YES!!Tim-email the man!!

  • Big Tim

    Problem is, we’re all fat and unfit, so we would be shown up in our own tourny by a bunch of kids!!!

    Same as as gig really. Ho hum…

    Yeah, I’ll haev a chat with the boys….

  • Jay Rival

    mark count me in!!

    you need a northern mid field machine like me!

  • Jay Rival

    The Gullivers sound like theyd be shit at football though haha (no offence you knows im your biggest fan)

    yea sign me and reece up to your team.

  • Clouds

    “first round Thin green candles V the secret rivals…. Tournament abandoned due to rioting!”
    Bloody hooligans, all of them! Probably alcohol induced…

  • Jay Rival

    ”first round Thin green candles V the secret rivals…. Tournament abandoned due to rioting!”

    Ha that would be a dirty ass game! i want Spiral 25 v The Rivals and we can finally settle the beef :)

  • Jay Rival

    MAKE THIS HAPPEN TIM! I BEG OF YOU.

  • Mark

    Jay how can you ‘sound’ like being shit at footy? Welcome to the team though. Funny you should say that we have been looking for a Northern playmaker!! This has simply got to happen now!

    What are the rules, not of football in general, simply this tournament?

  • http://www.last.fm/music/spiral+25 Joe

    I have no wish to take part in this thank you.

  • Beaver Fuel

    Streakers… we need streakers.

  • Clouds

    “Streakers… we need streakers.”
    Is that an offer???

  • http://www.last.fm/music/spiral+25 Joe

    Having said that I’m pretty sure that Sunny is a good footballer and possibly one or two of the others so I suspect if there was a game of football and we were in it we would win every time even with me as a non-footballer on the team. You’d all basically lose by default really.

    But like I said, I don’t want to be part of it, haven’t got the time either, too busy fighting General Zod and the KKK to be bothering with some silly game.

  • Mark

    Sound to me like someone is warming to the idea??

  • Beaver Fuel

    “Streakers… we need streakers.”
    Is that an offer???
    Is THAT an offer?!!!

  • thin green fred.

    Leigh See if Verity is free she could fill that roll.

  • Clouds

    ” “Streakers… we need streakers.”
    Is that an offer???
    Is THAT an offer?!!!”
    Now I’m confused!…Anyway, if you get out your Beaver Fuel, we will get out our Secret Rivals…

  • Beaver Fuel

    We could encourage lots of ladies to streak for charity, but so as not to be sexist we could also arrange the male equivalent event, although in the dark, on a different day and when I’m not there!

  • thin green fred.

    is that encase you get a little bit aroused and get all them confused feeling from your teen years back?

  • jamess

    oh crap tim – looks like we’d better get our acts together.

    footy tourny/bloodbath, brought to you, sometime soonish, by Moshka/Rivet Gun Records….

  • matt scarlett

    scarletts and smilex mixed team, spurs fans together!!

  • Joe

    Scarletts and Smilex….. urggggg…… NEXT!!!!

  • Mark

    So it is agreed that this footy tournament is happening then yeah? I think it’s a resounding yes all round (Joe)…so how could it not!?

  • http://www.last.fm/music/spiral+25 Joe

    “Scarletts and Smilex….. urggggg…… NEXT!!!!”
    Not quite sure what you mean there, Joe.

  • Joe

    I meant that they both are terrible. The quicker we get them off their guitars the better

  • Big Tim

    OK, OK, we’ll sort summat out… :)

  • http://www.last.fm/music/spiral+25 Joe

    “I meant that they both are terrible. The quicker we get them off their guitars the better”
    Um.. they don’t all play guitar though!

    Besides, Smilex have one of the most attractive band members in town playing for them. The girl bass player’s not bad either.

  • http://www.last.fm/music/spiral+25 Joe

    Oh and I think both Scarletts and Smilex’s music is very good, although quite different from each other.

  • Jay Rival

    Right well we need to bump up our team if its 5 a side in team Rival we have Reece ‘touch like a rapist’ Chappers as a striker me Jay ‘i just broke your leg the f### in half’ Corckers in mid field, and Andrew ‘the reach’ Murton in whatever postion he feels like…we need 2 more…No reverby bands though as i stated earlier i suspect bands who use effects pedals to be rubbish at both football and pool haha.

    (Gullivers proove me wrong) :)

  • johnny moto

    as for the music ive seen junkie brush once and that was enough

  • johnny moto

    oops posted to soon ment to add

    to really enjoy the sound whens the next gig i love power trios with edge

  • Jay Rival

    Power trios with Edge…isnt that U2?

    hohoho

  • Big Tim

    Post 40: Jay, the format last time was that a team had 6 registered players, a minimum of 3 of whom had to come from an Oxfordshire-based band. However we had a bit of an issue with suspected ringers here and there (most bands entered into the spirit of it, although I guess they could just have happened to have been really talented footballers too…). So we might adjust that format this time, but it’s fine for bands to team up together if they don’t have enough for a team on their own (either through actual numbers or because band members don’t like footy etc).

    It was a brilliant day last time, so hopefully we can make this one just as good!

  • Jay Rival

    yay.

    Mark we will join your team if you dont have 6…Andrew will only play if it dosent involve him wearing shorts ‘that boy wont show knee for no one’ ….me and Reece on the other hand will be rocking the smallest pair of shorts youve seen in your life….think 1986 Argentina kit…its gonna be electric!

  • Big Tim

    You can wear what you like, but obviously some form of largely similar kit is recommended! And you might want to be careful with the tiny shorts – it’s likely to be on Astroturf and although we only had 3 injuries of note last time* there was also several skinned knees and you’re probably asking for trouble showing too much thigh!

    * One was fairly nasty actually, proper metatarsal & ligament damage, and the other two crocked both our drummer and Smilex’s drummer. Fear not, a nurse will be in attendance.

  • Jay Rival

    yikes!

  • Reece Rival

    Im Up For This. I will make sure rivals lift the cup.

  • jamess

    yay to the mixing of bands – the only way to get contenders, though i’d rather pretty much everyone who played was some kind of muso, rather than “mate who happened to trail for chelsea”
    we were Garden Phork – a lethal combination of people from Mary’s Garden, Fork, and Phyal. Glenda brought her favourite kicking boots, and Slasher Macinnon proved his worth as a fine goalie (in a couple of friendlies, after being knocked out of the tourny, where he refused to be on goal becasue he alleged he was crap)

  • thin green fred.

    I am up for a 25 thin green drunken junkie beaver team. I am not a bad goalie, Not good but not bad