Jake Lilley
I am involved at Radio Control and I have enjoyed doing stuff related to the music scene, or just going to shows and stuff for years. And yea.
Cool, so from what I know you’re up at Control, and you’ve got your band Sweater, and then general all round supporting the arts gnarlynes. Yea, other things I do is sort of just trying to help out people who don’t know much about the arts scene but might be interested. Sort of, know about things coming up so that they have the ability to attend. Yea, I like to help some people by spreading information every now and then, just because it should happen. Other towns seem to have it way better.
What’s the deal with your band? We’d been talking for ages about forming a band, me and Tommy, had tried to form a band with Dev, and finally one day we had a good jam and it just went from there. Um, and just really enjoyed a whole lot of similar artists and shared music, and then that sort of just came out in jams. Um, made really easy by living in Palmy in particular I think. We also practise out at Tommy’s house in Martin which is really cool because noise control is not a problem, and then we usually end up getting two practices a week because we’ve got the Stomach as well to utilise, and yea, just something awesome to do in spare time.
I’ve heard you’ve recorded recently? Yea we just got the mix back yesterday, and just got a few things tweaked as we speak probably, and then hopefully it’ll be out and there will be an EP release or something in the next month or so, put on a show at a house or something. We were talking about this the other day actually, we were thinking about having a show in the hallway, like not a house show in a living room, but in a hallway, would be just really weird and fun to do. Sort of that crampedness of house shows is the best.
It’s funny because it’ll be the reverse of normal house shows I’ve been to, where everyone is stuck in the hallway trying to see. Yea, it’ll be other people in the other rooms, trying to get into the hallway. Our house has a pretty big hall way but I don’t know, hopefully noise control... we’ve got pretty militant neighbours in terms of noise control but hopefully we’ll be able to negotiate something at some point.
Well you’re always welcome to my house, but we don’t really have a hallway. Stairwell show. People sitting at the bottom trying to see up.
How do you see involvement in the arts going in Palmy? Yea, I think there’s a lot of potential as always, and at the moment there’s a fair few passionate people and support from other organisations that are coming together and allowing it to grow, but I reckon all of these things come in waves. Like, I remember when I first went to the Stomach, say, as an example, probably 2006 or 2007 there was a huge amount of people going to The Stomach at that time, and then it died a bit with the renovations and the funding, and then it came back, like right now I think it’s going great. I’m not sure what’s happening in terms of funding. That’s to be decided soon, and that may not help it again. The most powerful thing is word of mouth, so it culminates as people are more informed. Sites out there such as Lowcools, have made it easier for those sorts of people who are on the edge of going to a show or don’t know enough about it, maybe find out more and be more confident to go somewhere. Seeing reviews with that, hopefully they understand what happens so they know. Because you know, the first time you go to a gig ever, you don’t know how to act, you sort of, you know, it’s a space and there’s rules sort of, in a way, but not really, and you feel uncomfortable. You need probably a friend or something, you know that was the first time I went to The Stomach, something like that, to me that’s just helping things a little bit more. Yea, it just seems like a good time at the moment because there’s a lot of people but, whether it’ll last, I don’t know. At the same time, we shouldn’t measure everything by numbers, I think. If one person enjoys the arts so much, and they get to see so much stuff, it’s more valuable than ten people who couldn’t care less, going to all the same things. It’s like if you’re in a band, and you play to like four people, I think it would be better than playing to a thousand people on their cellphones who didn’t really care, you know. It’s qualitative not quantitative, at the same time. I think there’s a lot of people enjoying things at the movement, so maybe it is getting better.
That’s a cool way to think of it. About how we can enrich-en the experience of those already involved, instead of focusing on drawing in the masses. Yea, I think it’s all information. Like, if someone sees a really noisy band for the first time, they’ll probably just be like ‘my ears hurt’. Where as if they’ve seen a whole lot of history behind these bands, and sort of, have got time to listen to them, like that band, and sort of work out how it fits and why it’s cool, then they’ll understand it, or, you know. It’s the same with any genre, they need some sort of understanding sometimes. That or, it might just hit them in the face, like ‘this is the best thing ever’ and then they go the other way around. But yea, that’s sort of where I see it. It’ll go up and down, in terms of Palmy arts participation, but like, I think there will always be people who really enjoy it. Those are the people who are the core of the whole thing. Yea.
What are your plans for your band, and control and Palmy? I think I’ll go traveling for a bit. I’ve been here since I was a kid but I wouldn’t, like, I always thought like with Palmy, people bag it too hard. There’s so much going on here that they just don’t give a shot and I’d recommend it to anyone. I remember last week there was a band that came, and we played with them, and they said this is amazing, like, an all ages venue like this, no where else in the country is as good as this for this type of thing, but you know, people just have no idea that we’re in such luxury. I always just though there was an all ages venue in every town, and then suddenly found out one day that, hang on, we’ve actually got the best facility around. And then theres all these other things, like the library, and all that. I pretty much grew up at the library, it’s really cool, and they’re doing lots of like ground breaking, they’re a leader in the library world. Other things as well, the sculptures around town I think are really cool but get bagged on all the time. I reckon it’d be cool if there were more like, what I’d call, more grass roots sculptures getting more of their stuff on there, it’d probably cost less and we’d get more around. It’s still awesome that we invest in art like that all around.
The future of Radio Control is, I mean VSM was a big thing for Radio Control and it’s meant in some ways, you can look at it from the bright side and it’s forced us to look at what we are, basically, and that’s a radio station that’s run by a whole lot of young volunteers, mostly, or people who aren’t young but still hold onto idea like young people, and doing it for the love of it, and being really passionate about awesome music, local music, New Zealand music in particular, being reasonably critical of other things, not having really unintelligent radio, or if it is, being deliberately that way. Cool topics on the air, people how are studying, you know talking about what they’re doing can be really interesting, or just talking about their day can be funny or yea. And not so serious like other radio stations, I think that’s cool. I mean, that’s Controls direction I think, but I mean I’m only one person in Control, there’s like a hundred volunteers and there’s another staff member, and there’s all the staff members and all the volunteers from the past as well that make it what it is, and hopefully it’ll continue going like that.
What’s VSM? VSM is voluntary student membership. Which basically made it a lot harder for student associations like MUSA, who owns us, to get funding from students or get money basically to do things. Which is a shame because they contribute so much even to the wider community without people realising it. You know, the channels for various amounts of funding to come through, and putting on various events and stuff like that.
Anything else? I don’t think so, um, yea. I just hope people who really enjoy things go out to everything they can sort of in Palmy, because there’s nothing better than that really good vibe. You’ll know that really good vibe at a show when everyone’s just having an awesome show and it’s a good time and it’s the best thing that happens here really, yea, in terms of music. Then getting more into things like theatre and art exhibitions and stuff like that, it’s cool to see that as well.
Where can people hear your band? There’ll be something on bandcamp, hopefully for free, I hope we can do it for free, I think we’ll do it for free because free music is all good and there should be a physical copy as well floating around yea.
Where would you suggest people go to, to find out about what’s happening? Lowcools, Radio Control, Facebook usually has a fair but of stuff going through, there’s a site called Event Finder as well, which is more professional and runs a lot more stuff through, papers have the odd good thing show casing what’s happened. I’ve heard of a magazine that’s going to pop up soon, like a digital magazine.
Swampland? Swamp Thing, I’ve had a look at the format for that and it looks really cool. Hopefully it’ll just mean that more people get to know more stuff.
Cool. Cool.
Illustration by Tim Hamilton.
