Ben Jolliffe Young Guns Interview
I did an interview with the drummer of the band Young Guns Ben Jolliffe. I typed up a log of the above interview if anyone’s interested. He was a really cool guy and I enjoyed talking to him :)
(Bold is me)
How are you?
Yeah I’m alright – very tired actually, just got back from America last night so the jet-lag is pretty bad but apart from that I’m good thanks.
Yeah Jesus, America yesterday, I feel sorry for you.
Yeah we’re all tired – today to rest and tomorrow get ready for our tour which we leave on Sunday for, so it’s a day of rest for us.
So it’s alright if I ask you a couple of questions?
Yeah, of course go for it.
You joined the band in 2007?
Yeah that sounds about right.
Do you have any idea where the band name came from?
Well it was our old guitarist- he suggested it I think just before I joined the band, he suggested it one night and the guys hated it and said ‘that sucks’ and then it was suggested again that same night and they said ‘yeah let’s have it’, and from there onwards it’s been young guns. We weren’t too fond of the name – we’re not too fond of it now – but we never got round to changing it, and now it’s just a name, so we’ve just kind of put up with it.
Well now there’s the question of if you last into your 30’s or 40’s you won’t really be young guns any more, you’ll be more like the ‘middle-aged guns’
Yeah I know, it’s kind of ironic – we did say that we’d be called ‘the guns’ but there’s already a band called that, so I think we’ll just have to have an ironic name.
Since ‘all our kings are dead’ came outin 2008, you’ve had a lot of success in what seems like a small amount of time, has that been hard to handle at all?
I don’t think it’s been difficult – it’s difficult in the sense that you’re never around, we’re so so busy. You’re in a band because you want to do well – and we’ve been so lucky to tour almost everywhere in the world, it’s been amazing. But I don’t find it difficult, you know it’s exhausting when you haven’t been home in a few months and it’s that time when you find it hard with loved ones and stuff, but in the grand scheme of things it’s a bit of a breeze, we work very hard, we’re constantly on the go and we absolutely love touring – we knew that when we left our jobs a few years ago and made sure we wanted to do this properly and not as a hobby – you know there’s no point touring for a little bit of the year and then doing other stuff. You need to go 100% into it which is exactly what we’ve done and it seems to be paying off hopefully, so we’re all very happy.
Yeah definitely. Obviously you’ve done a lot of big venues here and like you said you’ve just come back from America yesterday, supporting Seether?
Yeah that’s right.
Is gigging in the US any different to here?
It actually was yeah, in the sense of venues and how you’re treated is quite similar. But the type of bands we played with – Seether are very much kind of radio rock kind of band and in America the audience are a lot older. We weren’t so much worried as wondering what it was going to be like for us – in the UK, not just our fans, but rock fans seem to be quite a lot younger, and in America you still have young fans, but at the same time it’s weird seeing everyone from 15 to 60 rocking out to our music. We’d get big biker dudes with huge beards and tattoos coming up and asking for an autograph – now that is quite different. In America you don’t know who’s gonna turn up to a gig. When standing at the merch stands you get kids, you get mums, rock dudes, men in business suits…
So the audiences are a lot different there.
Yeah it is, but the shows themselves, we absolutely loved them, but it seems to be the crowds that are the big difference.
What’s been your favourite venue or concert so far in either the US or the UK?
Ooh, probably best show ever for us would be either one of the Reading fest dates over here. In America the first show we did was a radio show in Madison, and it was our first America show – beautiful venue, it was outside with a big council building opposite us, and that was a massive bonus for us –when you grow up one of your dreams as a kid is to tour America and play over there, and that was one of the big things for me. But best venue would be either Reading festivals we’ve done or any of our headline London shows which have always been amazing, and been one of our best markets for us.
Has a fan ever done something particularly weird or crazy while you were playing?
Nothing too crazy – we get a lot of crazy gifts, and it’s quite amazing when people fly from Japan to Glasgow to see our shows for one day. That kind of thing happens a lot from country to country and it’s amazing that people do that and spend that amount of money. We sometimes get fans that will tour around Europe with us, fans that will actually follow our bus. They’ll sleep in their cars and to get that is a really amazing feeling. Though, in terms of playing, other than a couple of girls flashing their boobs, we’ve been quite lucky and not had any crazy fans getting on stage. We’ve done a couple stage invasions on smaller shows, getting the whole crowd on stage and that was great – our techs weren’t too happy as all our equipment was getting stood on but we’re quite lucky we don’t have any crazy fans.
Well I guess the fans following you on tour, that’s fan dedication for you.
Yeah it’s incredible – the lengths people go to. A bunch of people in France – all they do is collect flyers – if we’re playing a show over there they’ll flyer the whole place and we don’t ask for them to do it they just do it. They follow us around and it’s amazing when we play shows – like in Tokyo, they’ll spend hundreds of pounds on gifts and hand-make bowls and everything like our faces printed onto stuff. The effort people go to, we never take it for granted, we’ll always appreciate the effort and money they spend on us, it’s amazing to know that people care enough about our music.
You’ve got two albums out now, ‘all our kings are dead’ and ‘Bones’, was either one particularly fun or difficult to make?
Bones was a lot more enjoyable because we were a lot more prepared for it. With the first album ‘all our kings are dead’ we released our EP before, and we didn’t know what to expect, we just thought we’d write 4 songs, give it out to as many people as we could and try and get on some tours and see what happens. Obviously our dream was to make it, but at the time when we didn’t even have a song out we didn’t know what to expect. We started doing some great touring from just those 4 songs and we got so busy it suddenly clicked that we needed to write an album, we had 4 weeks to do it. It was all very rushed and we recorded it in East London. We’re really proud of it but it had a lot more of a stressful feel with a small recording studio and a long commute and long hours. We had borrow mics and our producer was getting death threats from people because he was keeping mics for longer than he was meant to and it was one of those… when we recorded Bones we got to go to Thailand for 5 weeks and record in this absolute paradise. It was probably the best time we’ve had as a band, recording in this amazing studio with maids, chefs, swimming pools – basically a hotel for us 5 idiots. It really helped – when you record an album, no matter how confident you are it’s still stressful. But when you’re somewhere like that if you’re stressed you can just go for a swim, all the distractions are gone.
I guess Thailand isn’t quite East London.
No that’s the thing – we somehow got it for nearly the same price, we were really lucky to get treated so well. Definitely recording Bones was a lot more of a personal experience. We got a little more time to write the album – still not enough, but that’s the thing with being in a band, you don’t have enough time for anything, whether it’s getting ready for tours or photo-shoots or video-shoots, you’re always kind of rushing.
Well you’ve just come back from America, and you’re now doing a UK tour with Vans.
Yeah it’s our headline tour and Vans are kindly sponsoring it. I just can’t wait, because while everything we’ve done this year has been incredible, this tour is the one everyone’s been looking forward to. The venues are great, ticket sales are great, and the bands we’re playing with – We are the In Crowd, Your Demise and The Marmozets – are three great, amazing different types of support bands. We start the first show on Monday so we’re just trying to get prepared. We’ve got boxes and boxes of stuff arriving – I’ve got a new drum kit and everyone’s got new guitars and cabs and we’re really trying to make sure we put everything into this set and make it sound great as well as look good visually. So we’ve got a fairly stressful weekend for hopefully a good tour.
Well definitely, awesome – thanks for your time; I’m actually going to your Wolverhampton show next week.
Oh excellent, awesome.
So yeah, I’ll see you there. I’ve been listening to the album bones a lot, and it’s really great.
I’m glad, you’ll have to come say hello and maybe we’ll have a beer or something after the show.
Student Paper: The Impact of Cultural Organizations and Resources on Black and Latina Academic Achievement at Wellesley College
docs.google.comOn Mezcla and Ethos, and their impact on the Wellesley College community (both today and yesterday).
IFLA LIS Student Paper Award 2012
IFLA LIS Student Paper Award 2012 announcement at the IFLA
Education & Training website
http://www.ifla.org/en/set/student-paper-award.
http://www.ifla.org—www.ifla.org/files/set/student-paper-award/lis-award-brochure-2012-en.pdf
Misogynist college male rants about birth control availability
theeastcarolinian.com“The simple fact of the matter is that people go to the doctor when they’re sick. However, if you’re a girl, sometimes you go to the doctor to get Pabst beer, or a pap smear, or something like that. What I find to be horrendously incongruous, however, is the fact that, all other health concerns aside, you shifty females would brave this contagious gauntlet for a meager prescription’s worth of birth control.
What girl have you ever heard of that goes to a doc-in-the-box or walk-in clinic for birth control? None of them. They go to their “gyno.” It’s a matter of efficiency, as well as personal safety. If you have a lung problem, you see a pulmonologist. If you have a heart problem, you see a cardiologist. If you have a lady problem, you see pest control or a gynecologist. Women, or rather all students, should seek help from specified professionals.”
The opinion piece centres on the fact that this guy had to wait for half an hour to see a doctor about his cold, while silly women got birth control. The piece is written poorly and attempts to be humorous, but fails miserably. At least the comments section is pure gold, with every single person calling him out.
Campus (Re)Press(ed)
Its former office still has electricity, phone connection, and computer units although it was shut down more than a year ago. <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O />
The office, found on the second level of the main building of a learning institution with over 15, 000 students in its three campuses, was once occupied by the editorial staff of Today’s Carolinian (TC), the official student publication of the University of San Carlos (USC).
In July 2003, two months after the election of its new set of editors, the TC staff received a letter from then Vice President for Administration Rev. Fr. Vicente Uy.
Uy informed the paper that the school would stop collecting funds during the second semester unless the paper lets a representative from the administration sit in during their editorial board selection.
Uy cited a provision in the Republic Act 7079 or the Campus Journalism Act (CJA) of 1991 that said, “the selection of editor-in-chief and members of a tertiary student publication shall be…conducted and supervised by a committee composed of a representative from the administration, a faculty member, a mass media practitioner…”
According to Kaira Zoe Alburo, the TC editor-in-chief for school year 2002-2003, TC sent an invitation to the administration but no representative showed up for the selection. “They wanted to redo the selection,” according to Mary Troie Luna, TC correspondent.
TC then asked the administration to have its representative sit in during the next election since the new editors were already settled and that having another selection would be “impractical,” said Alburo.
The paper continued to negotiate to settle the issue with the administration. But during the second semester of 2003, the P22.00 publication fee was no longer in the students’ assessment of payment for enrolment.
According to the CJA of 1991, “funding for the student publication may include the savings of the respective school’s appropriations, student subscription, and other sources of funds.”
Therefore, according to College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) Deputy Secretary Karen Papellero, the collection of fees by the administration is non-mandatory.
Despite attempts by the writer to get the side of the administration, the office of the president of USC did not set an appointment for the interview.
Today, course-based publications are present, such as the Echoes of the Junior Philippine Institute of Accountants for Accountancy majors and the Oracle for Philosophy majors, but these papers discuss issues concerning their respective colleges only and get their funding from organizational membership fees.
In the case of the TC, since it was established in 1983, the administration had to collect the publication fee from students, with a collection charge of 10 percent.
But when the administration ceased to collect funds, it did not technically break the law. Or even if it did violate the law, “there is no penalty clause found in the legislation (referring to CJA of 1991),” added Papellero.
After the administration stopped collecting funds, TC still released an issue and reaffirmed its position that “even without the finances, your paper (TC) continues to serve” alongside its campaigns through pickets and other forms of mobilization for TC’s revival. It was the summer 2004 issue and it was TC’s last issue.
According to Luna, the paper was not officially closed but in essence, when the administration stopped collecting funds, it ceased circulation and eventually died. “Sadly, we don’t have a way out since what is used to justify these moves is a law enacted to uphold and protect press freedom at the campus level,” she added.
Fifteen thousand students attend USC in its three campuses. If a year ago, there was a Today’s Carolinian to expose and discuss the “textbook scam,” the “new uniform policy,” the “haircut policy for males” and other student issues, there is none today. Not even an underground paper that would serve to unite the large studentry.
All the students have is an office with electricity, phone connection and computer units. “Last month they fixed the leaking faucets, too,” Luna adds.
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CADMIUM: A Monthly Zine
Editor and Chief for a Month: 15h @ $11.50
We are currently looking for an editor to begin work on theAugust Issue
(To be released on August 1st, if you would prefer to do a different month just let us know.)
This year we are trying a new format moving away from 6 issues a year to 1 zine a month. The idea is to have a different theme each month and the content within the zine will be complimentary to the theme. This could be the perfect job for you or a small group of friends! Becoming a Cadmium editor and chief means you will be responsible for the zine’s content creation and presentation. The Student Union will take your creation, publish it and distribute it throughout the university.
Spill your passion. Get creative! Tell the world what you want to say.
Bring any ideas you have for themes, some rough sketches of what your potential zine could look like along with a copy of your resume the Student Union Office by June 22nd. If you have any questions come visit us in the office! We’ll be happy to see you. If you’d like to submit for a month later on in the year, stay tuned for additional calls for submission which will be occurring monthly.
Skills:
Time management, strong editing skills, and the ability to gather interesting and relevant material for your issue are all necessary. Proficiency in software is not necessary as issues can be created digitally or entirely by hand.
Specifications:
Each issue will be comprised of 1 double sided 11x17 black and white photocopy, zine style! It can be on white or colored paper and will be printed in black. Each edition must include at least 1 article, 1 comic/joke, 1 recipe, 1 creative/visual submission and an additive to the Cadmium Continuing Story. August’s editor will create the beginning of the story and each month’s edition will have a new ‘chapter’ written by the month’s editor.
The Theme, orientation, layout, folds and anything else you would like to include is entirely up to you!
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JUNE 22
OCADSU encourages applications from women, Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and persons of all sexual orientation or gender identity.
