Push to Fire: The Famous Class Interview

Push to Fire Interview: The Famous Class
by Steve O'Gallagher

The Famous Class are a very new band on the scene having only been going for about a year, but already they’re becoming something of a buzz name in the UK pop-punk world. Push To Fire chatted to Ben, Stoo, Justin, and Joe at a recent London gig about what they’ve been up to in that time.
Joe revealed that the band formed from the ashes of a previous one. “We met up because Ben and I were in a previous band together. We decided to start a pop-punk band together and we then met Stoo, and Stoo brought Justin along.” The lads found that their common musical influence was pop-punk which inspired their music from the start. “I’ve always been into rock bands like incubus,” said Justin, “but I started getting more into pop-punk bands like NFG and blink182.” “The influence in the band is definitely bands like that because we all grew up listening to that and thought that’s what we wanted to do,” Joe explained. “We looked at what we liked about their songs and then tried to do our version of it. We wanted it to be happy pop-punk though, not the emo pop-punk, but we also wanted it to sound English as well. You can certainly tell that we’ve been influenced by American bands but we have an English twist to it.”
The band maintains that their pop-punk sound came about naturally however and wasn’t pre-determined. “I think generally what comes out is what comes out,” Justin furthered. “It’s not contrived. Whatever sounds good and sounds fun happens. I want a band to personify the way I am. I’ve been in bands before like metal bands and after a while it just gets a bit monotonous because that’s not the way anyone is really.” Their priority to have fun and enjoy the band does come out in their live show with plenty of banter between the members. “We do try to work hard in the band and take it seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. I think that comes across in the banter on stage. We want people to listen to it and enjoy it but we want it to be fun as well,” Stoo added.
The band have managed to be featured in Kerrang and on Scuzz TV already, without having been on a single tour yet. Joe described that as the highlight of the band’s career so far for him saying, “considering we have no management and no label it’s pretty amazing, so I’d say that’s the highlight for me so far. We’ve got our first tour coming up in august though. We have a few more gigs to book for it, but it should be good. We’re really excited about it.” Their lack of touring thus far doesn’t mean they’re strangers to the live scene though as Justin says they’ve “been able to play some good venues that we didn’t think we’d get to play already like Scala, O2 Academy and Barfly all in like half a year. That was pretty sweet.”
The Famous Class are such a new band that despite the growing media interest have yet to take the plunge into full time musician status as they each still work day jobs to pay for the band. They are keen to keep in touch with their fans as much as possible though and spend as much time as they can on the social networks Myspace and Twitter as Ben explained, “It works pretty well, twitter and stuff. We’ve got literally about 20,000 people on our myspace and like 2,000 people on our twitter following us. We’re always on it, always talking to people and sending out tweets. You can get in touch with people so personally.”

Thanks to Owen for organising this for us and to Ben, Joe, Stoo, and Justin from The Famous Class for speaking to Steve. Photo from band's myspace. Find more info and music clips on their MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thefamousclass.

Push to Fire Interview: The Famous Class by Steve O'Gallagher The Famous Class are a very new band on the scene having only been going for about a year, but already they’re becoming something of a buzz name in the UK pop-punk world. Push To Fire chatted to Ben, Stoo, Justin, and Joe at a recent London gig about what they’ve been up to in that time. Joe revealed that the band formed from the ashes of a previous one. “We met up because Ben and I were in a previous band together. We decided to start a pop-punk band together and we then met Stoo, and Stoo brought Justin along.” The lads found that their common musical influence was pop-punk which inspired their music from the start. “I’ve always been into rock bands like incubus,” said Justin, “but I started getting more into pop-punk bands like NFG and blink182.” “The influence in the band is definitely bands like that because we all grew up listening to that and thought that’s what we wanted to do,” Joe explained. “We looked at what we liked about their songs and then tried to do our version of it. We wanted it to be happy pop-punk though, not the emo pop-punk, but we also wanted it to sound English as well. You can certainly tell that we’ve been influenced by American bands but we have an English twist to it.” The band maintains that their pop-punk sound came about naturally however and wasn’t pre-determined. “I think generally what comes out is what comes out,” Justin furthered. “It’s not contrived. Whatever sounds good and sounds fun happens. I want a band to personify the way I am. I’ve been in bands before like metal bands and after a while it just gets a bit monotonous because that’s not the way anyone is really.” Their priority to have fun and enjoy the band does come out in their live show with plenty of banter between the members. “We do try to work hard in the band and take it seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. I think that comes across in the banter on stage. We want people to listen to it and enjoy it but we want it to be fun as well,” Stoo added. The band have managed to be featured in Kerrang and on Scuzz TV already, without having been on a single tour yet. Joe described that as the highlight of the band’s career so far for him saying, “considering we have no management and no label it’s pretty amazing, so I’d say that’s the highlight for me so far. We’ve got our first tour coming up in august though. We have a few more gigs to book for it, but it should be good. We’re really excited about it.” Their lack of touring thus far doesn’t mean they’re strangers to the live scene though as Justin says they’ve “been able to play some good venues that we didn’t think we’d get to play already like Scala, O2 Academy and Barfly all in like half a year. That was pretty sweet.” The Famous Class are such a new band that despite the growing media interest have yet to take the plunge into full time musician status as they each still work day jobs to pay for the band. They are keen to keep in touch with their fans as much as possible though and spend as much time as they can on the social networks Myspace and Twitter as Ben explained, “It works pretty well, twitter and stuff. We’ve got literally about 20,000 people on our myspace and like 2,000 people on our twitter following us. We’re always on it, always talking to people and sending out tweets. You can get in touch with people so personally.”
Thanks to Owen for organising this for us and to Ben, Joe, Stoo, and Justin from The Famous Class for speaking to Steve. Photo from band's myspace. Find more info and music clips on their MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thefamousclass.