Dig the Now Sound (Thursdays at 10:00 pm eastern on Turn Me On, Dead Man Radio) plays standout recent garage/punk/psych. The featured track this week is “I Don’t Wanna Go” by Crisis Warning, based in Brighton, England, from their 2013 EP Technical Difficulties. Though Crisis Warning draws on a variety of influences, their most obvious point of reference is 1977-era punk. Reaching back 37 years (Jesus, has it been that long?) is extraordinary given that all of Crisis Warning’s members are 16 and 17 years old. They play like the seasoned band they are, though. A quick glance at their Facebook, tumblr and Twitter pages reveal them to be a hardworking band that’s already had a number of noteworthy gigs. I recently corresponded with guitarist Jack Goring (I think). Or it might have been bassist Scott Holder–the name on the email account is Jack Holder, and he signed his emails “Jack”. On drums is Arthur James, and Oshen Dee is the vocalist.
Turn Me On, Dead Man: How did you get started and how long have you been together?
Jack Goring: The band initially started in late 2011 when Scott (bass) and Arthur (drums) were in metal bands and wanted to do something else, first of all going for a sort of grungey/stoner rock thing. They asked me to join about a week later and after one practice we ended up changing our minds and going for more of a punk rock sound. We didn’t actually end up practicing again until early 2012 when we found a singer and songs were written. The lineup now with our singer Oshen has been together since January 2013.
Turn Me On, Dead Man: Are you all 16 or 17 years old? Has your age been a barrier to getting gigs? Or do you think it has helped you?
Jack Goring: Yeah, three of us are 17 and one of us is 16 and it’s been the most annoying thing when it comes to booking shows. Very few venues in Brighton are interested in booking underage bands to play, they seem to think that they’re all going to either suck or try and buy alcohol. To us playing the show is more important than getting drunk so even if a venue would let us in, we wouldn’t risk the gig by attempting to buy the stuff. I also think that venues don’t take younger bands seriously most of the time, which is a shame, we’ve seen underage bands 10x better than overage bands and we’ve still managed to gig more than a lot of older bands that we know. Music should be for everyone, regardless of age.
Turn Me On, Dead Man: You mention a number of influences on your Bandcamp page. Is there any one artist that is a particular inspiration for you?
Jack Goring: I wouldn’t say there’s one artist in-particular that inspires us because we all have our own favorites, but as band we all love the old punk stuff, that was (and kind of still is) the original idea behind the band, to mix the old punk sound with the more modern stuff because it sometimes seems to either be hardcore punk, street punk or emo without much in between. My favorite bands for example are the Clash and Rise Against, both of which play a huge part in our sound but it varies, we love lots of styles from punk to reggae to metal.
Turn Me On, Dead Man: So what were the technical difficulties you encountered with your EP?
Jack Goring: The name of the EP actually comes from the fact that our (specifically mine) equipment tended to die onstage a lot when we were getting EP together, I can’t tell you how many guitars or leads I’ve had to borrow from other bands, we’re cursed!!
Turn Me On, Dead Man: Here’s hoping things go more smoothly for you in the future. What are your plans for the future? Any chance you’ll be coming to the United States anytime soon?
Jack Goring: We have got plans for a new EP to come out before summer. As far as playing shows in the USA goes, it’s not in the pipeline at the moment, it’s definitely something we’d love to do in the future though. The plans at the moment are to get some UK tours going and play as many shows as we can here in England, then see what happens from there.
Technical Difficulties is available as a name your price on Bandcamp.