Medallist Interview - Part Two
By Jodie Humphries
At the moment, every band wants to be the one to put Bristol on the map, and of course, Medallist are no exception to this. “I really hope we can. There are loads of bands trying, like Fortune Drive, they’re really good, we’ve done a lot of gigs with them. We do want to put Bristol on the map, I’m the only local lad, the rest of the guys are from Liverpool and Winchester, and Kent respectively. We’ve lived here for six years, so we haven’t got the ownership of Bristol like other bands like Fortune Drive have, with their songs being about the river, and with them living in The Duke. We just want to draw attention to the fact that Bristol does have great musicians and the whole stigma of trip hop with Portishead and Massive Attack, I mean I love Massive Attack. I really hope that Bristol isn’t defined by that. I feel that there’s enough people like Tim Sensation, who is a great promoter and DJ, he’s getting some great bands into The Loui. I really hope that there’s enough people in Bristol who are going to put Bristol on the map, but hopefully we can kick start that by getting people to look. I hope that Bristol is looked at for being a place that is innovative in music.” Whilst on the subject of Bristol, Thom says, “You can’t talk about Bristol without talking about Jeff. He’s a top guy. He’s like a barometer for coolness.”
As Medallist prepare for their first recording, I wondered if there was ever a worry about the material not being as powerful recorded, as it is live, Thom says, “I think that’s been our experience in the past. I've heard that Medallist have this reputation of being this loud rock band. I think we’ve figured out how to make our sound transcribe on to record because we do our own stuff, Sparky is a great producer, and he’s probably going to co-produce the album, he’s absolutely brilliant, he’s got the technical abilities, but also the imagination. The reason we got a record deal, was because our demos were so good, that they shocked them. I’m really excited, because we’re looking at some great producers at the moment, we’re being really picky with who produces our album as we want it to sound as hard and as good as we deliver live.”
If you’ve taken any notice of the stage lately when Medallist play, you’ll notice there’s hardly any space from all the gadgets. “We’ve got the toys; we’ve got so many cool instruments. I looked on our stage just before we played The Croft the other day, and there’s so many flashing lights, it looks like a spaceship. We’re gear fanatics; we have about six or seven keyboards hanging around, which make the strangest, weirdest loud noises. We love it; it’s such a creative atmosphere.” Of course, being signed has helped the band to be able to afford all of this new equipment. “We’ve been given tools to make cool music since we’ve been signed. We’ve all given up or jobs, so music is full time which is bizarre. It can be great, it can be frustration, but I’m not going to complain. I heard the scariest statistic the other day on how many bands get signed, I think it’s something like 1% of bands in existence get signed, and then an even lesser percentage of them getting to release an album, they get signed by a major, and then dropped. We’re in a good position right now with an imminent release and all that and people are excited. We’ve been given money to live and buy some awesome stuff, there’s still a list of stuff we want to buy.”
The future of the music industry, at times is looking a bit shaky, so I wanted Thoms’ perspective as a musician on it. “I think that because there are so many bands, I think it’s harder to get noticed. For people buying music, they’re bombarded with the latest thing, so it’s quite hard to stick out. I think what you need to do from your website, to your merchandise design to your album tracks, all needs to be brilliant, the whole package. You can’t just have one or two great songs and the rest filler on your album. As far as an artist is concerned, it needs to be brilliant through out. Our album has to be brilliant, because it can’t be anything else, and we’re aware of that. I think that for someone who’s buying music, people want to feel part of it more. We’re trying to think of new ways for people to get involved in what we do. For example, we are thinking of using a simple computer program where people can remix one of our songs in their own way. It’s something that we’re really interested in, as it means that you can feel as much a part of Medallist, as I am. I don’t think it’s anything to do with being industry savvy; it’s about being excited and finding new ways of doing what you do. We’ve also been messing around with this Bluetooth thing; we tried it at The Louisiana of sending free tracks to people who had their Bluetooth on. I think the music industry is heading for a huge crash, and people won’t make money like they used to anymore. I’m not particularly worried about it from an artists perspective, because you don’t get into it for the money, if you want that, be a businessmen or work in a bank, you get into music, cos you love it. Watching Muse play at Wembley, inspired me, and I think as a band, we’re not happy to just survive, we want to reach for the highest thing we can and see what happens.”
For Thom, he would have to say that the bands biggest achievement to date, would be “Writing a few songs with Medallist that we’re collectively excited about and writing some songs that ‘we didn’t know if they were any good or not, but we believed in them and loved them’, and literally getting a record deal within four months. It was more or less instant. I think since then, the biggest achievement has been writing some songs that I fully love, like ‘The Music’ and ‘Communicate’ which were songs we wrote after being signed. I love playing them live, and they go down really well. I feel there’s a lot to achieve, but we haven’t done it yet as we haven’t done an album or gone out on tour. With everything, we want to try and do it a bit different from everyone else.
For most bands, Myspace has played an important role, according to Thom though, “I think Myspace is old news, I know there’s people that love Myspace, but it’s a few years old and with everything, its days are numbered. It has been really important, that’s the reason we got a record deal, because someone found us on Myspace. I think something better will come along. But Myspace is brilliant too, especially for the music industry. I think what is frustrating about Myspace is that it’s not a secret anymore, everyone and their mum is on it trying to promote what they’re doing now. It’s all a competition to see how many friends you can get on there, but Medallist personally aren’t bothered about having ten thousand friends because they’re not all going to go out and buy your record. I help to run the three sites we have, Myspace, Facebook, and Bebo, we try to spread different material over the three so it’s not just the same thing on each one. If the fans that we have on the sites go out and buy our album, that would be brilliant.”
On that note, I wanted to know, what was more important to Medallist, the number of people at a gig, or the number of album sales? “I think they’re both important. I think album sales are important as you can gauge how well things are going down, and it obviously means that you can carry on doing it for a while longer. We’ve never released anything, so I don’t know, but it’s the aim to sell lots of records. If there’s a lot of people at gigs, clearly enjoying themselves, then you know you’re denting their lives somehow. There’s nothing better than being on stage and knowing that people are enjoying it, that’s the reason I play drums, as you look around, and you’re enjoying it, and so is everyone else.”
And for Medallist in ten years? “Who knows! The music industry is so fickle, one minute everyone loves you, the next everyone is bored of you. The ideal scenario would be that we’ve released records that have progressively changed with us but also people have stuck with us too, and we’re all happy people living fulfilled lives, and still excited by music. The idea is to be successful, and be happy at the end of it, to not let the whole money game affect you. If we’re not excited about making music in ten years time, we won’t be doing it. We’ve all got other things we’re excited by, not just music. We’re not a money-motivated band. We look up to people who help other people.” It’s a long way off, but in ten years, we’ll have to see if Medallist have achieved this.
www.myspace.com/medallist






