Oz the Wizard and his awesome Daffodils.

The Old Blue Last.

Oz the Wizard and his awesome Daffodils.

Review of Daffodils

Neo-Skiffle ( Not garage punk rock…)

More photographs of the event are available on @arykuphoto.

Overview:

Entering the Old Blue Last for the first time; I felt as if I was entering a movie scene, warm tones of the pub made me sense an air of calamity, sort of if time has ever stopped its here, on the set of this particular movie.

As the evening closed in closer and closer towards the main event of the night; the music, people of all kinds started pouring into the room upstairs, where a gig is held nearly daily, which is an amazing platform for independent artists, this particular even was sponsored by BBC-4, therefore my tickets were free, although that’s not always the case for this kind of event.

The set began by an opening band called Man et-Al, a quiet start to an evening to remember….

As the Daffodils poured into the room, you could instantly sense their presence, the crowd began to flood the room as if they were waiting just outside for the last hour or so, all of a sudden I found myself in a room full of people who were chanting song lyrics, and knew their songs word for word.

The only way I can describe the solist of the Daffodils is raw, simple but yet catching. Honest; with his great range he is able to bring a low tone punk quality to the songs, with bass and guitar overbearingly fullfilling his voice to make no space for us as the audience to breathe, between their lyrics, with many songs also using a trombone, something I did not expect but which ultimately mesmorised me when I realised how intricate its use was for the band. Later on I found out why this was the case…

Oz, Solist of the Daffodils, spits a lot of feeling in his song, unlike their spotify the songs are a lot more uncontrolled, filled with deeper and louder scenes on stage, almost showing how important playing live is important to the Daffodils, each member being integral on how the band sounds as a whole.

Each of them filled with intense personality, as a band should be, loud and intense.

Interview with “some” of the band members:

( The rest were busy getting pissed or packing up, not quite sure, but then somehow everyone joined in at the end )

After seeing the guys inside the pub I instantly ran over and threw the question of an interview, with no hesitation, Oz who I later confirmed to be one of the bands soloist; said an instant “Yes, of course man!” But there was one thing he had to sort out beforehand, find some “fags”.

I instantly pulled my pack of Lucky Strikes and my trusty “Krakow” branded lighter (I have never been to Krakow) offering the guys to bum a smoke they suddenly glow with ecstatic energy to go outside and begin the interview.

Location: The Old Blue Last Smoking Area

Standing outside smoking cigs, having a lovely chat with the Daffodils about who I am and what my name is, who I work for, a couple of jokes about me being an undercover BBC Journalist, which I wish was true, but this interview is unfortunately is about the amazing Daffodils, not my mistaken identity as a BBC-4 Journalist.

Having set up the microphone and a couple of comments after how professional everything felt despite us smoking Lucky Strikes after a couple of beers at a gig night Wednesday. I called it preferable, the guys agreed with a little laugh.

The guys began introducing themselves to me and my assistant:

Oz, Tom and Daniel sitting aside for the first part of the interview, having had not finished his pint yet, and later on will join in, so will some other band members, who’ve I not had a pleasure of meeting at that point.

I had began with the simple questions of who does what in the band to which both Oscar (Oz) and Tom replied:

- Well I play guitar and I sing.

 -This is going to be a really boring interview. If we start doing that because we do exactly the same. We do?

-Yep. I also sing, play guitar.

Having confirmed that both in fact are in the band and both sing and play guitar I decided to skip the pre-marital flirting and jumped straight into the deep end.

You say you’re garage rock? Why garage rock?

Because garage rock is the root of messy fucking rock and roll nonsense.

Is it something you grew up on?

 It is. It's something that's sort of. Yeah, we both grew up on a bit of punk, a bit of rock, a bit of, you know, this and that and all. It's good that it's like just a bunch of kids making music in their own home.

The guys then had a little chat about Link Wray’s guitar sound, talking about how the rough mellow beat of his hand inspired them to replicate bits and parts of it in their own way.

-It's pre-punk. But there's something about the guitar sound that really, it's not even jazzy.

 It's rumbly, It's rumbly and It's disgusting.

 It's good that the legend goes that he poked a pencil through his guitar amp three times just to give it that rasp and, uh. I guess since then, everyone had that interest in that sort of sound replication.

It's nice for things to sound, uh, like, I don't know, there's nothing wrong with being kind of amateur, you know? You ever heard of the Cramps?

-Of course, I replied.

 Yeah. The cramps. Velvet Underground, we love the Velvet Underground, that kind of things. Ted Kennedy is great. I you know, I grew up, I grew up on, on Dead Kennedys back in the day when I was younger, I absolutely was obsessed.

They've got a bit of a surf sound to them.

Torn off from the interview, they saw one of the band members come out the pub;

Sorry. That's Stan. Stan, get down  here!

 They screamed in unison, this band really loves each other I thought to myself, and not only could I tell that from their interactions on stage but also off stage, they’re an absolute extraordinary bunch of musicians who connect through their act on stage.

Having seen that Stan is taking his time, Tom jumped back to his thought;

I have no idea what we're talking about. It doesn't matter. Just the sound.

-          About the sound. I replied. The monks, the cramps, The Fall, I don't know. Velvet Underground, Dead Kennedys.

After my question their faces changed as they looked at eachother, Tom and Oz both fell into the same conversation:

 Oh, yeah. It's a cliche to be like, oh, I love the Velvet, the cliches, uh, we love the Velvet Underground. We're a cliche now. We're a big, fat cliche. Lou Reed's a dickhead, but the Velvet Underground are insane.

After I confirmed that the Daffodils are in fact not a band but a fat cliché of a band proudly announced by the band members, I asked them for some further insight into their inspirations and how the band began their way, how did the most cliché not-garage rock band became what it is now:

Well, when we started the band, it was during Covid. Basically we were all stuck in a house together. We were listening to Velvets a lot. We listened to the Birthday Party.

 It was more it was more gothy to start with.

“It did start more gothy.” – Tom confirmed.

We wanted to start a goth band, and then it just became garage anyway. But you can't. You can't lose it. You've got to have your pedals. You've got to have all this and to have your dirty drums, your dirty guitars, your dirty everything.

It’s  really it's a lot easier. When you can't play an instrument.

- You know what? I agree with you. Same with me. But there is a simple sound that sounds great. I confirmed as me and Oz locked in a word tango that is hopefully going to give my lovely readers a stroke. (Please make sure to act out this conversation with yourself.)

 -Yeah. Simple.

- Good. Simple.

 -Simple. Simple.

- Good. Simple doesn't mean good.. Eh bad, nice simple good.

After confirming that Simple is fact the good, the bad and the simple. We continued with our simple dialogue.

- As long as there's a rhythm, that you can shake your ass to.

I confirmed the fact:

- I can feel we love shaking our ass I felt it, we have been shaken.

-Shake. We were shaking our asses on stage today, so hopefully we'll see it in photos.

Then as professional journalist I decided to poke fun at the guys, and asked them the three magic words…

-Are you indie?

- Oh my God, that hurts. Not happy with that? It's not even a genre.

- In the lower gut that hurts a little bit.

I admitted that I know it's a it's a low punch to generalise them like that but they are in fact an independent band, like it or not, the connotation of indie has become a derigotory term used to upset young successful bands.

Tom confirmed;

-But it is essentially guitars and drums and what has become known as indie.

-Yeah, but the dirty sounds, the beautiful sounds.

“Indie is dead, man. Fucking. If anything comes out of the corpse that indie’s left behind”

Such a strong quote. I thought to myself.

 I would love to agree with that statement, but unfortunately I could not, I had in fact seen several indie bands the last couple of weeks and felt incredibly sorry for all of them, as the Depop and Vinted, Coquette Warriors have proclaimed everything remotely not Pop, indie.

If you are reading this and you’re a band, you’re allowed a compensation of £1000, please email me your bank details and the code on the back of your card.

Now that that has been sorted out, we can continue to the rest of this amazing interview; several chugs from the flask of whiskey which was proudly filled up and provided to our crew by Stan which had filled up at the last gig with a bottle of the cheapest one litre of whiskey they could find. I was excited to continue.

-So you call yourself garage?

- Yeah, yeah, it's garage forever. New York's gift for punk

 Oz jumped in and exclaimed:

-It's neo skiffle. That's what it is.

“ Neo skiffle” I looked at him with interest and wit in my voice.

Looking at me with a proud  heart and chest Oz and Tom said to me

-          “Please. We're coining something.”

“I'll add it to the vocabulary. I'll call you neo skiffle.” - I said to them, proudly announcing that Neo-Skiffle is officially part of my vocabulary for this interview, and hopefully something that sticks not only with me but also you my reader. I was really interested in what they meant by this new term they were trying to claim.

After trying to confirm what Neo-Skiffle really meant we came to one conclusion on why they were not in fact a garage band, but more of a flat band;

-          So we don't have any garages here in London? No, no, it's all fucking flats for £800 a person. We're a bedroom band.

Bedroom, psych rock, bedroom psych rock, neo skiffle? I said in order to confirm what they wanted to be, in reality I don’t think they cared as much as I did, they just love music.

Neo skiffle. What does it mean?

“Skiffle bands were the old fucking bands before you had punk rock. Like the Beatles but it's beyond Protopunk.” After hearing that I made a comment that they do remind me of the Beatles, especially in their early tracks that are unfortunately not available online, or at least I struggled to find them, which really says a lot about the type of a journalist that I am, but the guys were definitely pleased with my remark about their ansamble.

-          No you don't. That's a lie.

Said Oz with a massive smile on his face, as if I just had offered the band a million pounds cash. I think I did my job as not only a journalist but a fan that night.

-          I'm complimenting it. I'm trying to get a good interview.

Although I am a type of person to say such remark to get a better interview, I promise you, my reader, I did in fact think they had the skiffle type of sound to their earlier tracks. That being said, I achieved the desired effect and had made the guys smile and joke about me calling them a Beatles Neo-Skiffle type development. Oz and Tom smiled and said:

-          We actually totally understand and think you're 100% right. Thank you.

Having put the guys in a good mood for the rest of the interview, by licking their ass, I continued with a question about their most interesting to me track, Jack’s On Crack.

The only way I can describe Jack’s on Crack as almost a ballade about said Jack. The song is about a certain character and his antics as he battle through his addiction. Talking about the struggles of addiction and seeing someone going through such an experience, the whole track is an upbeat almost satirical way of looking at someone in such a position such as Jack is. The track has a strong guitar backing to it, with smooth trombone progressing through the track and culminating somewhere in the middle of the song, loud drums which burst your eardrums like any good punk song should, and beautiful quiet but very important keyboard in the background in some sections, with harsh vocals of Oscar, who isn’t scared to rip his voice to express his feelings in this song, similar to mentioned before punk references the song has an almost surf sound to it, punk-surf if I were to categorise.

Oh sorry I meant, Neo-Skiffle… I’m glad I could correct myself before the guys get upset with me. Please remind me to change any other things I’ve decided to call it.

(I will forget)

That being said, listen to the track yourself, it is available on Spotify, or go to their gig and listen to the live version, which is heads better than any recording that could be done, the raw and pure performance of this track  it is an unbelievable thing to experience.

Here is what Oz had to say about this track:

“Jacks on Crack,  He's on… He's on crack.” Tom said with a smirk on his face.

-  That's something Oscar's gonna have to explain.

-  Years ago, I Had a good old friend, but, uh, his name, um, didn't rhyme with crack. So, uh, I wrote a song about him.

-  I see his name's now Jack.

But, that was that was an attempt to write a song before any of us could write songs, and we thought we'd throw it out into into the ether and see how it goes. We used to play with our old band, it's an oldie.

-“ It really is catchy. Yeah. You saw me singing in the crowd.” I proudly exclaimed hoping for brownie points from anyone, as if me having done my job; of researching band before hand is something to be rewarded..

After this little short story on the originality of Jacks name, I was really interested to ask what Neo-Skiffle meant to the band, rather than a description of their style:

- Thing is, there's a mix of loads of different aspects there. We've got a bit of, we've got a bit of garage, a bit of psychedelic. There's a lot of psychedelic actually. We don't sit down like it needs to sound like this necessarily, but it's just what we it's what we come up with and then we just do it. Do I love the sound? Yeah.

“ Well, what's the fucking point of doing it if you don't love it? “ Said Oz having confirmed what Tom just said, they don’t give a single fuck, they just love they way their music sounds, and it does sound awesome, especially live, I have to give it to them.

-It's a it's an organic sound and something that I've always loved about it is this kind of the happy go lucky kind of unpretentiousness of like the whole situation of it. It's just a mess and it's a lovely mess.

After this Tom then proceeded to mouth the most amazing description of music I’ve ever heard in my life, I haven’t lived that long, but I could not describe a sound of band better, this is the peak of my interviewing career and I am happy to stop it after my first publication goes live. Here is how Tom described the bands sound:

“It's like a stew, you know, with lots of different kinds of meats and non-meats all mixed up with lots of sauce. It's vegan. It's not vegan. It's it's for everyone. It's it's a big mess. And you know if you if you drop your ladle in it and enjoy it, you probably will get something out of it. Nutritional. “

Having heard that I totally understood why they call themselves Neo, I still unfortunately don’t understand why they don’t coin the term Neo-Stew before I post this interview, and then all local London bands decide to christen themselves from Garage and Punk to Neo-Stew, I think Neo-Skiffle is a great way to describe their music, but Neo-Stew is something they really need to invest in.

Here is the guys explaining why its “Stew”:

- We grew up with we grew up with a lot of different, very interesting idols in our lives. And, you know, we're from different places. But we did we did have some weird fucking people in our lives growing up. And the music we play, it spans generations now, like maybe three generations worth, the music has a feeling, a generational one.

We write a lot based on the situations we've found ourselves in, the, the different kinds. And then we also write on what we're physically capable of actually playing.

- Yeah. After a couple of beers, we are terrible. There's definite like limitations to what we can do, which but that's quite fun. But luckily there's rhythm.

Having caught onto the fact the guys and me are a couple of beers in, I asked an obvious question we all have:

- How do you write? Substances? Alcohol?

- Oh, now you're asking the million dollar question. We used to get absolutely fucking wrecked. We used to write and write and write and play and do everything.

- Yeah. Maybe one thing we've been sober for.

- No. Thought we'd clean up a little bit and then we'd clean up a little bit. It didn't work too well? It's less like being absolutely destroyed and playing music like it’s the last time.

- That being said,  some of the band members are a bit more inclined to actually write a full song, where they sit down and they go like, no, I need to know the structure. And it's like, oh my God, there's no structure. This is terrible. And then the whole song goes, it goes haywire, and then we forget it and then pick it up again, and then it's nice. And, you know, did I mention stew? Like I love stew? Like. Yeah. Celery, onions…

With a massive smile on my face ashing the rest of my fag onto the floor, with with wit in my eyes I said;

“Can you repeat the recipe?”

- Oh my God. Stew. Yeah. Speaking of stew.

- It's great to jam and just come up with something absolutely fucking ridiculous and stupid. Are we allowed to swear on this?

After hearing that question from Oz I got really fucking scared. Am I allowed to swear on my own fucking article? I hope so because if not, what is the point.

- Of course. As you said, I'm not the fucking BBC. I'm not CNN.

Having joked about how I may be an undercover BBC journalist, a “dirty undie” as I have been lovingly proclaimed, which would be great, but we all know the BBC hates immigrants like me, so hopefully one day I will be working for a publication that actually appreciates its workers.

Although I would an amazing journalist for a larger publication… Anyways, I wanted to talk about the structure of the music Daffodils have, and how their music is written from a theoretical perspective in the bedroom of their £800 single bedroom flat, where you’re not allowed to have sex past 11pm, the landlords are quite crazy these days, but here is what the guys had to say!

- Um, we are possibly the most musically illiterate band on your show, actually, generally bopping around at the moment. Um, it is definitely something we're proud of! Having confirmed neither of the guys have a proper musical education they jumped in to add an important detail;

- Oh, Daniel seems pretty well versed on the trumpet, but by god you don’t need a musical education for a bit of rock and roll.

- “There's no feel in it?”  Tom asked me.

-“It's absolute feel.” I proudly confirmed.

- I'd like to say one thing before we continue, the feel was there. There is a grasp on the audience, there's a grasp on the music. I felt it in my body and I loved it. I loved every second of it. And whenever the next gig is, I'm coming not to interview, just to listen.

After another round of ass licking on my behalf. (This is again a joke, I just really loved their performance and it left a lasting impression on me)

I had a really important thing to ask the guys, their lacking online presence, a thing that didn’t seem to bother them much. But something that really made me wonder, why are half of their tracks not online.

- So speaking of your Spotify. Do you release anywhere else and why do you do some songs only at gigs? Tell me about it.

- We have we have released on Bandcamp so you can get stuff on Bandcamp. But gigging, just if you're not doing that, then there's basically no fucking point in playing at all.

-Do you think online presence like Tiktok is important to a band like yours?

- There's no way. In TikTok, and I think TikTok is a thing that's existing right now, and it's very fun, but really, you're going to just live off reels for the rest of your life.

- Do you think you can promote yourself on the social media in general?

- “You came, didn't you? “ Despite this being a loaded question, I replied that I in fact did come. And I came because of my love of live music, but it was apparent from the get go, the guys did not in fact care for fame, but just for their music to be heard, be it live or accidentally on the web whenever they do decide to release a song..

Actually here I could of placed the reason I came, Dice, but because I didn’t get sponsored I’d like to say as much as I love Dice and how amazing that app is for finding gigs around London, fuck Dice, I hate Dice, if you want me to say something nice about that shit app, you’d have to pay me, but I’m quite hard to buy, so please sponsor me Dice if you’re reading this! I love Dice, really…

Anyways moving on, here is more of why live gigs are so important to The Daffodils:

-  If you're not playing live and playing any fucking gig, regardless of how shit they are, then there's no point being a musician anyway. You need to play to people. That's kind of the whole fucking point, isn't it?

- The basis of this band was the fact that we just enjoyed playing live and just having lots of fucking fun.

- And it's what's the most fun.

-  They're all a blur of absolute joy.

As previously mentioned, these guys absolutely love what they do, and this is why they are so pure and amazing at what they do. After such an honest answer I was lost for words, but I still wondered: “Where do you think you’ll find your fame?”

-“The bottom of a bottle.” Oz proudly announced.

-Do you want a fame?

- We're looking for a good time. I'm looking for a good way to make this to be the one job. That would be good.

-That's the most real musician thing I've heard tonight.

-It does suck living in London and not. It would be nice if this was my job all the time. I think that as far as fame goes, that would be fucking great. Fame would pay that bill. - - -- But, um. It's coming.

- My personal opinion is it doesn't matter where the fuck it goes. It's just good, good live music. And I can't imagine any of us existing outside of not playing on stages and entertaining people. The whole thing, the idea.

This was the concluding sentence of the interview, as a whole the Daffodils were a pleasure to attend to, outside the interview, I saw their dedication to the music even before I asked them all of my very serious questions about it, but despite this being a very hard and serious business, bands like the Daffodils, they just don’t care, they play music together to share their passion, their stories and their life with everyone around them.

As a conclusion, I would like to recommend you all go see the Daffodils, they are in fact on Dice and if you give them a follow you’ll know when their gigs are coming up, also go and follow them on Instagram @die_daffodils.

Thank you for reading and I will see you in my next article.