Beat Route 62
By Dave SugdenDave Sugden gets five minutes with Beat Route 62 in the Cockpit dressing room
After moving from the Rocket bar section of the venue due to the excess noise coming from the jukebox, we are lodged in the dressing room, about to discuss what is Beat Route 62. I am informed initially that this is their second recent interview after having talks with Radio Sheffield...
What did they ask at Radio Sheffield then?
We found it really boring actually, they just talked to us about what our name was, why we'd chosen that name and what we were up to. That was it. Nothing about what we were interested in, what bands we liked, what we sounded like.
They asked you about Futuresound?
Yeah, just what it was like and what the aim of it was, nothing about us really.
So what did it feel like being one of the chosen 30 out of 250 entries?
It was very exciting, and was our actually our first major gig in around three months...really since Ben (drummer) joined.
[a discussion begins as to when Ben actually joined the band]
Were you selected off the back of your CD then [pointing at CD on the table] ?
Yeah, we did that one a long time ago really, and we did a remix. We then sent it around a few record labels. That was around the time when we used to be known as Alter-Ego.
[another date problem as the band discuss whether the CD was produced as Beat Route 62 or as Alter-Ego]
We got a good response from the labels though, they said "Great music", in fact SMJ said that they liked the music but they'd already got a few similar bands on their books in our style. They said they'd be interested for the future mind should they lose interest in them, which is good. They asked what our gimmick was - I think we were a bit too jeans and t-shirt for them.
[Referring to their 60s look at Futuresound, and their brightly coloured dress tonight] Is it a theme for you at gigs?
Yeah, we've got a 60's feel, a hippy look, though it seems to change from gig to gig.
I enjoyed the Futuresound look you had.
Well, we like the hippy look and all that, the whole 60's kind of thing. We'd actually gone down to the Corn Exchange that day to try and find all of these shirts and the gear and stuff. My mum was a bit of a whizz on the fashion side, kind of did Paul a bit of a waistcoat. We'd gone through some old pictures of The Beatles and Stones, basically we wanted to get away from the old look of indie bands who all look the same. Really we wanted people to come away remembering what we looked like at least, because you rarely remember more than the odd song or two. We wanted people to remember us.
Yeah, out of the thirty bands who played I think you stood out as the band who made an effort on their appearance.
I think you find now though, especially with the indie scene that it's a very casual, couldn't give a toss look. You don't want to make complete arses of yourself, but I think you've got to make a bit of an effort, haven't you? All the best bands have done something different.
[pause]
Shall we make up some stories now about fighting and throwing TVs out of hotel windows now? Let's start up a rivalry with another Leeds band! Or, how about "Paul threatens to kill Robbie Williams - If you are out there Robbie!?"
Any plans for the future?
Yeah, we've got an acoustic gig next week at the Grove.
For John Keenan?
Yeah, it should be a good laugh. And we are playing at the Strychnine Lounge on the 20th October. Apparently that might be with a band who have supported Paul Weller, The 05 or something. Let's hope they're not all wearing lederhosen, I had enough of that when I was travelling around The Alps. Yet again, they could all look like Arnie. I'd cry.
Any more CDs?
We're planning one to come out around Christmas, Ben is feeling a little bit left out 'cos we did that one with our previous drummer. It's about time we recorded with Ben. I mean that CD there, we like it and all that, but we've progressed such a lot since. It's also very watered down, not quite as raw as we are live. It's just vocals, bass, drums and guitar and was really for the labels.
[they discuss Alter-Ego days again and old drummers]
I think we did it around our first gig down here for John Trueman, in fact we had an earlier CD done around then too.
Yeah, John was asking how come I'd got hold of a shiny new CD.
Oh he can have one - we'd given Mick a copy to run them off for us and he did the wrong version of it so John ended up with that. And so did Radio Aire! They played the wrong version of a song on air, we were all listening and those first few notes came in and we all thought, "Oh My God!"
Was that whilst you were Beat Route 62?
Yeah, we'd played a few local gigs in Garforth but about then we tried to play around a bit and Radio Aire was one of the steps.
[for some reason we get back to Futuresound]
All of the bands had something about them, though we thought that we should have been much higher than we were - though all bands are going to say that aren't they?
I personally didn't feel that the top 6 were the ...
... actual top six? I agree. Coasta were good and they were definitely a top six band. But it did produce some strange results.
Coasta were helped also by bringing in 88 people weren't they? An extra 8.8 points.
Yeah, unfortunately we were never told it was a numbers contest otherwise we'd have brought down all of our family and relatives. I think it minimalised the importance of the whole competition with that rule, because it sort of said that it matters more how many people you can bring than how good you are. I mean who cares at the festival, when there are 45,000 people that you can pull 25 of them? It makes no difference. It should have been on the quality of the bands alone. And there was also the backline issue, as we didn't realise we had to share the same backline until the last minute, the Friday before.
[pause]
It did good for us though, it wasn't a futile exercise and at least a few people know who we are. Like John Keenan's picked us up now, which is a great complement and he's generally used to dealing with the signed bands. And we've got a number of contacts now with other bands, which is also good.
It's good also at the moment in the band as things are coming quite easy for us. Generally we're getting a few ideas, a melody then we've got another new song. We're playing one tonight and have a few new ones to come.
So to close, what happened with Alter-Ego then, why the name change?
Well we lost our lead singer, and Paul came along. Then we found out that a number of other bands had the same name. In fact one guy came up to us and said they'd heard of us, and we thought it was strange because we'd never played anywhere near them. So we thought of a new name.
And that produced Beat Route 62?
Yeah, well we were always into beat music, The Beatles and all that. And Route 66 became Route 62, as in M62, so that was that. In fact we also thought of Beetroot.
I've seen you listed as that before. Beetroot 62!
You have to sit there with people and say "No, not the vegetable". It's memorable though, a good play on it.
We had to call it a day at that point as we all went to watch Baseborn play in the Rocket.
