At the risk of sounding cheesy/nostalgic/a bit of a prat, I do actually remember the first time I heard The Go! Team. Back in 2004 I was messing about in a mates pool with a load of friends and someone put on this album by a band I’d never heard and I remember thinking how perfectly the music encapsulated the moment. For a moment to stick in the mind so clearly after seven years you can imagine how highly we rate this band and how much we were looking forward to meeting them for the first time.

So, with their UK tour nearing its end and just before he took to the stage to play, which was to be, a barnstorming gig at Leicester’s O2 Academy, The Monograph managed to get a quick sit down with Go! Team founder Ian Parton to talk about touring China, Coldplay stylists and err… The Fan Club.

Well firstly thanks for your time today, is this your first time in Leicester?
No actually I went to University here, it was DMU I went to, it was last a minute thing. It was good. I used to go Fan Club, is it still there? I used live there and go to the Polly (polytechnic) every Friday, they were main things which were really cool.

So you have got this new album out which is sounding great. What are your plans after this tour? a bit of quiet time or back into the studio?
Ah no its nuts at the minute. After the UK tour we are off to Ireland then Europe and America. Then it’s onto Australia and Japan. Then after that we have got all the fucking summer festivals and what not.

We saw that you had toured places like China and Russia, how does that compare to back home?
Generally crowds are the same where ever we go, like going for it, if we don’t have them from the beginning we have them by the end. But the actual experience of touring China was bonkers. We had to send through lyrics to get checked, I think we did change the lyrics but we never heard anything. I can’t really believe someone really does sit there and go through that shit. It’s really fucked up, literally no venues to play in, and no support bands. The whole music industry doesn’t really exist but it was still really cool. Generally wherever we go in the world we get good reactions.

Going back to your early gigs when you weren’t so well known, what was that like? Was it hard and were the crowds receptive?
Luckily we completely bypassed the whole back room and pub thing which was really good. The first gig we did was completely sold out. We’ve always had tour busses and have never had to do the whole thing of jumping into the back of a transit. We seemed to bypass the whole struggling route. I don’t know what it was, if it was the hype or the records were about before we had performed live as a band. We have never had to do the thing of playing to an empty room. We have been lucky like that really.

So, what advice would you give to a band looking to get to the next level?
I wouldn’t think of it about getting to the next level. The most important thing is to try carve out your own sound and make something which is unmistakably you.  That’s the challenge of being in a band. There so many identikit indie bands out there which sound the same it is hard identify them – just another bunch of blokes with guitars. That’s the challenge to put your stamp, so there is something there which wasn’t there before. That’s the way to think about and not getting to the next level.

Do you think image a bands image is important or is it purely just sound?
Err don’t know, it kind of is, but shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t get into the realms of stylists. I remember when Coldplay got a stylist on board and they had that bullshit military look. It’s like fuck off no, you’re just bunch of blokes, you can’t pull it off. If you have an image it needs to be genuine, it needs to be you and your personality coming through – but you shouldn’t be too much of a Nazi about it. I do it without realising, I look at a band and make a quick decision about whether I want to pursue my interest in them, do you know what I mean?

Going back to the band – you’ve got quite a few different instruments, was that always the plan?
If you’d have asked me before I started the band what I’d have wanted it to be like, it would have definitely have been to have lots of us – boys and girls, swapping instruments and for it to be chaotic basically and i think we’ve kind of done that. Part of the instrument swapping is a necessity because theirs six of us and even now we could do with more instruments on stage. We have samples and two drum kits but that was definitely the key to doing it live, to have people who can play a few different things – a recorder one minute and a banjo the next because the songs demand that and not every song is the same, each song is quite specific.

With playing live and touring, Leicester fans are renowned for being quite rowdy and having a few maniacs in the crowd, is that what you like?
You’d be amazed at how much of an impact the crowd has on the gig, just from the outset. We played in Sheffield last night and from the outset you could tell that they were with us and we get into it much more when that happens, it’s kind of like a spiral. We do have a tendency to bully the crowd, well Ninja does anyway. It is a massive deal for us you know, we almost try and make the crowd feel guilty in that if we’re putting energy into it, we expect it to come back. If I was at a gig and I saw someone just standing there going through the motions, and not getting into it I’d just think fuck them. Why should i if they’re not?

With that in mind The Monograph, planning to jump around like complete nutters, left Ian to do some last minute preparations before he and the rest of the Go! Team went on stage intent on bullying us all.

The new album Rolling Blackouts from The Go! Team is out now on general release and available on iTunes here. To read our full gig review at click here and to see our In Pictures special of the gig click here.

Words by Jon Dodd and Duncan Graham

Read all articles by Jon Dodd and Duncan Graham