Okereke concerned by non-essential press questioning

Aww someone get the poor dear a cup of tea...

Surely people have been asking him that for 2 years and he'd be glad of some different questions?

Kele is right

For some reason music journalists forget that a lot of bands and artists give a shit and that their music is an expression of that. Mainstream journalists treat artists as merely 'entertainers' and forget or are oblivious to the reason these people are artists - which is that they have something to say.

Whatever you think of Kele or Bloc Party he is 100% correct.

A friend of mine was being interviewed on the release of his second single here in Sweden and the interviewer asked;
So, when you go out drinking what's your cocktail of choice?

I mean really

Yeah but what does Kele actually want to SAY??

I remember when the (mainstream) music press had excellent journalists like Neil Kulkarni (he's currently completely wasted* on Kerrang) that were worth reading - intelligent but not pretentious. And there's not much of that writing in evidence now. So yes, I think he does have a point.

Someone tell me where I can go for incisive music writing at the minute that isn't a) boring and/or b) pretentious... I want to know.

* As in his talents are being underused, not he spends his life writing for them under the influence...

Drowned iin Sound. Sometimes :)

if he thinks he wants to be some sort of 'deep thinking literate pop intellectual' he should look at the fact that his band were signed off the back of the angular 'craze' and not for his vocal or lyrical contributions which really are bubbling below the Top 75 at about No87 in the Average Frontman Chart according to Music Week

or if someone asks a shit question, tell them to fuck off, like all good frontmen do!

What is 'this', exactly? Next question for Kele: 'Why do you not like moaning so much?' I like that one.

Hes a good drummer, but not a great one - seems to do that bloomin' roll fill all the time in every song ever

if people wanted to be asked proper questions they should not have their happy smiley faces all over the front of the NME and should be diplomats or politicians?

Um, that comment was in an interview in the Guardian on friday. Gitchor sources right!

Anyway, it just sounds like the lad's bored of interviews. Which is fair enough, really.

Whiney bitch.

stuck up posh cunt

Thankyou! I've been saying that for ages. Not necessarily on here, but there you go.

Just ignore the question and talk about what you want...you'll get a reputation for being outspoken and enigmatic...

That said, a seemingly trivial question can often be far more revealing than something self-conciously 'deep'...

Good thing that this article is about Bloc Party then.

ART BRUT TOP OF THE POPS.

I don't know if I want the guying spouting his random opinions about worthy issues - Yorke does enough of that with his CO2 emissions stuff.

Lets have Okereke telling us what his favourite colour is - hes got no charisma anyway.

I think it's a cycle though. A good interviewer tends to take a lead off things the lead singer says and Kele seems to have a reptuation for being difficult to talk to, clamming up and getting fiercely defensive over certain questions.

In many ways it's like people who complain that they never have interesting conversations with people; a conversation's a 2-way process and if you don't give you won't receive.

True the media can be banal and trivial but I'm guessing many of the questions are so bad because the interviewers cannot form a bond with their subject.

Completely disagree. I think half the problem is these entertainers acting like they're simply artists.

To be honest the disparaging "merely entertainers" comment in your post depresses me a little. I feel the value of entertainment is often sadly overlooked in favour of pseudo-intelletcual art posturing. The reason virtually any band is signed is primarily because of a belief that they can entertain an audience. Bands are obliged too entertain and too many acts forget this. The may or may not be artists (probably comes down to definition) but being an artist is NOT an excuse to not be an entertainer.

Lots of people have something to say (and many will be better-read than the lead singer of your average indie band) but they don't get interviewed - the reason being that they're not seen as entertaining.

I'm guessing the reason Kele doesn't get answered interesting questions is that he doesn't give much in interviews. Any accounts I've ever read of interviews with him suggest he is guarded, cagey and hard to talk to. The best interviews are natural conversations where the interviewer can pick up on a comment or direction of the conversation and follow this through to get interesting comments.

As anyone whose ever had a conversation with someone whose hard to talk to will attest, you find you can't make these leaps and start to make any kind of small talk to keep the conversation going i.e. "where are you going on your holidays this year?"

I'm guessing that if Kele was a better interview subject he'd see a dramatic improvement in the line of questions.

yeah but maybe this is the whole reason he's so difficult to talk to in interviews. Some people need to be warmed up with cosy, small talk questions. Maybe he'd open up a whole lot more if asked something a bit more meaningful.

In reality the coverage of bands treats them as entertainers first, celebrities second, scene players third, musicians fourth and artists maybe a poor fifth if at all. Or something like that. I think it is right to point out there is a skewed coverage of bands. Maybe the interviewers are just band hangers on and not people who know anything that in depth or technical about music so can't really write about ti properly.

what a load of shit. A ridiculous comparison to make. And can be challenged on so many fronts I don't know why I am bothering. Just one point on this: not only politicians have to think about 'serious' issues, in fact many of them just pretend to and are even more adept in 'populist' tendencies than some fucking band. Think about this - what would you actually say if he did stand for election? Probably something like he should stick to being in a band. The world isn't or shouldn't be as compartmentalised as you can only comment on the narrow parameters of your particular field.

I like the way that Bloc Party are disparaged here (DiS) for being NME poster boys and just scensters. But when they decide they might like to be *seen as/represented as* something more than that the opinion is they can't because they've already signed a deal with the devil just by being interviewed by NME. What an extreme over reaction.

Some people want to hear whathe has to say Lyle.

He's been forced into spokesman position for the band and it's no surprise after his words are twisted so much that he doesn't want to speak anymore. He should just do what some musicians do and start refusing interviews. Of course their record company work them like dogs so he probably wouldn't get away with it. Maybe it's time the others spoke. Does Russell have more than a big flap of hair?

He's also not posh really - that seems to be used alot to put someone down on this website - background is neither here nor there. If he's miserable and cold he has a right to be. The band generally get painted as miserbalists anyway. How many detractors have met them?

"Maybe it's time the others spoke. Does Russell have more than a big flap of hair?"

Matt and Gordon are usually quite good in interviews, I've read a few with them and they do seem to know their shit.
Russel's the only one who refuses interviews.

The fascinating aspect of this rather pedestrian story is how a series of journalists decide to re-interpret what the person being interviewed has said, and how in every iteration a little bit more information is lost.

First of all, the Guardian guy has to condense a one hour (?) long interview into a 1,500 word article, and putting emphasis on those exchanges he finds most interesting for his readers, i.e. concentrating on the relationship between band and press.

Then some dodgy bloke at contactmusic lifts a quote from said Guardian article (without proper reference), leaving out an essential part of what was said (“But I haven't a problem with doing interviews at all. I enjoy it.”) and giving it a pseudo sensationalist headline.

And finally the esteemed Mr. Driver comes along, lifts the mangled quote from the contactmusic website and gives it his own interpretation (“The singer is quoted as saying that the British press never question him about anything important”) which is wrong on a number of accounts, since Kele doesn’t mention the British press at all, he says “in the last few months” instead of “never” and he doesn’t refer to “anything important” per se but “anything I view important”, which is something quite different all together.

Conclusion: unless you trace the story back to its origins, you might as well not bother.

I think Alexis Petridis is one of the better music journalists out there; the original article does seem to get a good sense of what Bloc Party are like.

Diver, Driver, who cares?

I think Matt Tong is an excellent drummer - his drumming is one of the distinctibes of Bloc Party. And I'm a drummer, so I know about these things...