Tag Archives: fists

FISTS: “ramshackley, lofi pop music”

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I first heard of the band FISTS in early 2009 when James Finlay wrote asking for permission to use one of my photos to cover a single they were releasing. They’ve used a couple more images since and we’ve stayed in touch by email.

Yesterday we had a nice chat covered lots of topics. I asked them about their infuences, aspirations, etc. They asked me about The Basement Diaries.

I rambled on a bit and the conversation stretched to about 30 minutes, so I put it on YouTube in three parts. [Part 2 | Part 3]

My interviewing skills were never very sharp and have only gotten rustier over the years, but that’s okay. It was fun to talk with the band (Pete Conway, Angie Fletcher, Theresa Wrigley, James Finley and David Bigg).

If we’d had the internet in 1963 or ’64, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles would have been doing chats like this and making videos and all the rest. What a treasure that would have been.

Who knows if FISTS will soar to such hights, or be one of thousands of “bedroom bands” who make their music for the sheer joy of it.

UPDATE: To call my Skype visit with James and his friends an interview was reaching a bit. Fortunately, they’ve been kind enough to provide some of the information I failed to get:

Fists are myself and Angi (long term partners), Theresa is our old friend who we’ve known forever. Angi, Theresa and myself all live together. Our bassist Dave is our most recent addition replacing our old bassist Joe Wrigley who is Theresa’s brother. Dave lives practically next door on the same street with his girlfriend Kiri. We have a fifth member Peter Conway but he was sadly unable to be there for the interview and we neglected to tell you this!? Sorry about that. Pete lives in a co-operative with his wife and two children about 10 minutes walk away.

Our jobs are pretty wide ranging. Angi is currently working as a freelance graphic designer for a software company called Serif, she’s also a lecturer and tutor at the local university teaching Design and Visual Culture amongst other stuff to undergraduates. Theresa also works at Nottingham Trent University as an administrator for the Fine Art Department. Dave is a postman for The Royal Mail. This was a major headache when we recently went on tour and Dave didn’t book the time off work. He was getting to bed at 3-4am after the shows and getting up at around 6:30am for work for the whole week. He was very tired! Pete runs and owns an ethical screenprinting business with his wife Hannah called I Dress Myself. They source their t-shirts from ethical fair trade suppliers. They are made from biodegradable bamboo and their inks are all waterbased. They are one of the very few companies doing this in the UK at the moment. His business is pretty handy for our own band T-shirts! I’m a PA to a Professor of Gastroenterology called Chris Hawkey at the local hospital (Queen’s Medical Centre).

This is where we rehearse.

This is a little video of us performing at the record launch party for our first single which had the gorilla boxer on the front.

Here we are at the Glastonbury Festival last year.

Here we are performing at our second record launch party for the EP with the cool group shot on the front. There’s a whole series of videos from this show on Youtube.

This is a video our friend Dan Toporowski did for us for the first single. Dan is a genius who makes these beautiful animations at home on his battered, old, PC. Dan’s day job was working in a factory until he got made redundant. I’m pretty sure there’s an excellent job out there for Dan doing this stuff professionally but he refuses to do it as a job! It’s also worth checking out his excellent Franklin’s Haunted House.

And there you have it!

Once again, massive thanks for all your support and kindness over the past couple of years. You have always been a very positive, enthusiastic and useful ally of the band and we are very grateful indeed.

Regards

James and all of Fists x

Fists getting airplay on BBC

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A few months ago I received an email from a young man in the UK, asking permission to use a photo he found on my flickr for the cover art for his band’s new single (Cockatoo). I said sure and please keep in touch. And he did.

“The vinyl version of the single’s out now and is doing really well. The photo has certainly done it’s job and intrigued people. We’ve had lots of national airplay from the BBC and lots of new opportunities have been popping up all the time which is obviously very exciting.

We did a single launch in this big DIY arts space called The Arts Organisation in Nottingham. There was talk of doing a Steve Mays photo reel featuring a whole raft of the photo’s to be projected on walls and stuff but we didn’t have enough time in the end and felt that we’d be taking the piss a bit in terms of permission to use them.

Here’s 23 seconds of that show that somebody took on a phone (I’m the short guy wearing the black jacket and white T-shirt btw):

We’d love to send you some copies of the single in the post if you’d like. Posterity and all that. Let me know where to send them and we will. That said we certainly wouldn’t be offended if you’d rather we didn’t. Once again thanks for everything.”

James and all of Fists

Ah, to have my life become the backdrop for an edgy British pub band…

I’ve added the Fists blog to the sidebar for wonderful passages like this:

“…if you want to go on a slightly wrong night out then you should go to Wildside which is this once monthly cock/sleaze/glam rock revivalist night at Junktion 7 in Nottingham. It’s mostly filled wall-to-wall with dysfunctional hard rockers who get crazy drunk whilst getting emotional about it not being 1986 before dropping to their knees for an Eddie Van Halen solo and then disappearing into the toilets to have sex and drink Jack Daniel’s and fall out with each other due to fringe scene claustrophobia. It’s like going to a special zoo that houses dying musical sub-cultures and is one of my favourite nights out.”

Okay, but I like to be home no later than ten p.m.

30 year old party pic selected for Fists cover

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“This is a bit of a strange request. My name is James Finlay and I’m in a band called ‘Fists’ who’re based in Nottingham, England. We make ramshackle-y, lo-fi pop music and are about to release our debut 7” single on a small independent record label (also based in Nottingham) called Hello Thor (not much on their web page at the moment unfortunately)

The reason I’m mailing you is because everybody in our band has become obsessed with your Flickr photo set for the Basement Diaries blog and we wanted to find out if you would be willing to grant us permission to use one of your photos for the cover of our single? We’re releasing the single as a download on iTunes and as a strictly limited edition vinyl pressing of 500 copies. Naturally we would credit you for the photo on the record, we would obviously send you over some copies too and we could also offer some money as well but are pretty limited financially as we’re a small DIY operation who is paying for almost everything ourselves from our day jobs.

The photo we’d love to use if possible is the one of the gorilla in boxing gloves taken at a Halloween Party in (1980). We love the grainy 35mm quality, the colour palette and the sense of fun and mystery. The song we’re releasing is called ‘Cockatoo’ (I’d be very happy to send you an MP3 of this so you can have a listen and decide if you think it’s appropriate). Thematically it’s about fantasies of freedom and escape as seen through the eyes of a caged bird (the ‘Cockatoo’ of the title). Obviously this doesn’t really have any obvious relationship with the photo particularly but I don’t think that matters too much. If you are happy to let us use it we’d obviously send you over the design before we got the covers made up for approval.

If you’re not interested then no worries and thanks so much for your time and also for sharing the photos in the first place. If there’s anything else you’d like to know first then please give me a shout.”

Kind regards,
James

This is what I love most about the web. The man behind the gorilla mask is Barb’s brother, Lew. Don’t recall who is sitting the chair. And I’m pretty sure the beer is a Stag (shudder).