Vamps 'N Gypsies interview

I first heard Vamps 'n Gypsies earlier this year on their ‘Wine Stains and Smashed Glass’ EP which is still getting played fairly often in my CD player. I recently got to interview them to learn more.



MM-Hello, please introduce the members of your band.


Vocals - Nikki


Lead Guitar - Stubio Henandez Lopez


Guitar - Flash Danny


Bass - Rich Elson


Drums - Jay 'The Big Dog'


MM-Tell us a little about how and when you formed.

Danny: Nikki wanted to start a band and I was the only one drunk enough to accept her offer.

Nikki: I come from a musical family and I've been singing for as long as I can remember! In 2003 I finally got to start a band! I had the name Vamps and Gypsies since school and I knew Danny from clubs where I used to hang out and he looked like Michael from the lost boys and I thought 'right, I'll have him' and the rest went on from there!



Rich: I met Danny when he gate crashed a house party I was having….his display of trying to crush ice by diving on top of it was so impressive that I thought I’d hang out with him more often! I bumped into him and Nikki at a club one night, started talking bands and if I’d be interested in playing bass for them. I went round to Danny’s place a few days later and listened to the 2 of them run through a couple of tracks and thought ‘Hell Yeah! I gotta get me some of this!’. The other 2 took a bit more time to find….after various line up’s we decided to call in some friends of Danny’s. Stubio had played with Danny in another band before, so we drafted him in and tried out some drummers…lots of drummers! Jay came along one night whilst we where trying out this one particular drummer, just to hang out and have a few beers, and we persuaded him to give the drums a bash. It’s not like he hadn’t done it before…more that he’d sold his kit and given up on playing! The next day Nikki made him go and get a kit…..and the rest as they say is history!Jay: I wasn't happy about being dragged away from my mistress at4am by some long haired rockers…..


MM-So what are you currently up to?

Nikki: …. watching Ghostbusters!

Danny: Just looking at getting a Video done cos we haven't done one yet and it's about time we started hassling TV. It'd be a shame to let such unquenchable beauty not be seen by everyone.

Rich: We’ve just recorded a live set and are hopefully going to release a few of the tracks on a new EP…with a couple of new studio tracks to go with it! Nothing finalised just yet, but that’s the way we tend to work….no organisation, just do it! Hoping to go back out on the road again soon, but with time pressing on this year is looking like a non starter! We’ve been taking it easy this year on the gig’s front, trying to play less often but at better dates. We spent the last 2 years gigging every week in every little venue we could….costing us loads of money and quite often the place was half empty! It’s not our fault….we’d love to play every day of the week, but the venues don’t like you doing to many shows in the same area, and if we kept doing things the way we where people would stop booking us for the bigger shows!

MM-Who are your musical influences?

Rich: I think it’s best if we all drop some names in here….we all like so many different bands it’s kinda difficult to name just a few! Maiden, GnR, Velvet Revolver, Rainbow, Bowie, Queen, Blondie, The Clash, AC/DC….etc,etc!

Nikki: Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Toto, Richard Marx, Fleetwood Mac, Motley Crue,Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, The Darkness, David Bowie, Bon Jovi....

Danny: I love punk bands like the Queers and Screeching Weasel, Rancid, Rocket from the Crypt, The misfits and blend that with pop rock like Belinda Carlisle and Roxette with the touch of Bryan Adams and my favourite band of all time time Terrorvision! But I could go on for days.

Jay: Backyard Babies, Rancid, Motley Crue, Skid Row, and a wild one Dropkick Murphy's

Stubio: LIT are my biggest musical influence, and I love AC/DC and loads of stuff no-one would expect that creeps in when none of the other guys are looking.


MM-What has been the response to your ‘Wine Stains and Smashed Glass’ EP so far?

Jay: Well its made us millions so can't complain haha

Nikki: Not too sure, people seem to like it. But then, most people are weird anyway!


Danny: It's got a wider style of songs on there compared to the first, but put it with the 1st EP and you've got a near perfect album!

Stubio: It's all been good, but it's been a bit hesitant from reviewers etc! A lot of people that we gave the cd to when it was finished STILL haven't put goddamn reviews up, and they all deserve to burn in hell. Maybe they just haven't got anything nice to say, and they don't want to get beaten up next time we see them? Honestly, I don't care about them, getting reviews is good and all, but you don't make cds for the reviewers, you make them for people that like your band, and those are the important people to me, and they are the people that are loving the cd!

MM-Have you written any new material recently?

Nikki: We're always writing. I've got song buzzing round my head 24/7!

Stubio: Tons, I'm a songwriter, its not something you ever really stop doing! What

is nice now, is as a band, we are able to write much more together, where as for a couple of years, its been ‘I wrote this music’ and then I've had to teach it to everyone, now we've written from scratch as a band, which is very cool. The songwriting has become almost effortless now everyone is chipping in.

Danny: We've got a backlog of about 30 which we never got round to finishing…..


MM-Have you had any interested from any record labels yet?

Jay: Ask Rich he usually looses the information!

Rich: Not important ones anyway! We’ve spoken to a few people, but nothing really seriously….nobodies come up and offered us what we think we need! We want to record an album, go on tour, do some cool videos…stuff that costs serious money!


Stubio: We're a strange band, cause we're not metal, and we're not punk or emo and we're not sleeze and generally can't be put into a nice little industry labelled pigeon hole, so we have to do that old fashioned thing of winning people over with our ACTUAL music, which is risky for fast money corporate types who want ‘the next blah blah’ because we¹re not the next anything, we're the first Vamps n Gypsies theirs ever been, and the only one their will ever be.

MM-How important is to you to get signed at this point?

Jay: Nothing I'd rather do more......... well apart from doing a sky dive naked with no parachute whilst taking drugs and watching a stripper erm all the same time preferably.

Stubio: It depends, to me, anything that gets our songs and music into the public eye would be awesome, and signing a decent deal would be amazing, but we want it done properly, we don't want to pay some two bit net geek with a website and a ‘label’ our cash to do as much for us as we could do for ourselves. There’s so much bullshit flying around these days its getting dangerous to smile. I only want to sign a deal where we don't get fucked over, don't have to pay our own money to sign and we get some ACTUAL exposure for our music, REAL tour support, and somebody with some weight behind them fighting in our corner for us, you know????

Rich: It’s not the end of the world if we don’t….if we can make enough money to live off doing this full time, then I don’t see it as a negative point not having a label. But obviously a label can open many more doors than we can by ourselves!


MM-What is your band doing that sets you apart from other acts going to today?


Danny: Insulting interviewers! You knob faced, poo licking, snot picking, anal discharging, granny shagging gay stain!

Rich: Sorry about Danny…he gets a little bored after awhile!

Nikki: Well, I used to think it was cool that we we're different but now it's proving to be more of a problem as we are so different because people just don't know how to categorise us and people need that as music has to be so pre-packaged nowadays.


Stubio: We are authentic. We¹ll look you in the eye and you'll know we're not faking it. We write awesome songs that transcend genre and age groups and come into a genre of their own.

Jay: We've got the hooks in our songs. You go away singing them...


MM-What is the club scene like in your area? Any fantastic unsigned bands in your area that we should know about?

Nikki: Us of course!

Danny: Honestly I never go to local clubs anymore. All the new music coming out was just so bollocks it was making me mad just being in there! It was turning into a fucking fashion show! Who could dance the 'coolest' or who could have the most piercings. I always love rock cos it was so dumb! You get pissed with your mates and jump around like a dick head and who'd give a fuck what you did and what you wore. So fuck 'em! I am a dick head and proud!


Jay: A few good ones King Lizard, Disarm, Drugdealer Cheerleader but a lot of crap ones.....


Stubio: The club scene and music scene in my area is so small as to be almost nonexistent. There are a few pubs with live music, but usually they will only book boring covers band, and that's no way forward. With a few exceptions, low level live music promotion has killed off any scene here. Lazy promoters will book nine bands in one night that are all different and bring five people each who all fuck off when they've finished playing and its shit. There are a few exceptions to this, ‘Nervous endings’ are this awesome band I know that head up group of metal bands in my area that have clawed their way tooth and nail into making their own scene in the few places that are good enough to put on decent unsigned original bands. When Vamps started gigging we just went to London! On our adopted scene around London, my favourite band would be King Lizard, they are all wankers and I hate them,but they're a great band ;-P

Rich: London has some really cool venues, just they never seem to be able to pull a regular decent crowd….there’s not one specific place that everyone goes to hang out or see bands, there’s too much choice if anything! It’s nice to have an option when your heading out, but the scene would be so much stronger if it was just 1 or 2 shit hot venues who put on descent music every night of the week! A band I saw totally by accident one night…Heavens Basement, go check’em out…kicked ass!

MM-What should someone who comes to see you live expect? Do you play any cover songs live?
Jay: Wild and rawkus rock n Roll of and a Welshman in a cowboy hat.

Nikki: No, we fucking don't we play our own. Don't come to our shows if your expecting to see some shit like Coldplay or whatever fashionable indie bollocks that's sucking the life outta rock n roll! we're as far from that as you could possibly imagine!


Danny: Why play someone else’s songs when we can write better?


Stubio: Sweat and blood and spit- a good show, that's the bottom line. All we expect from you is an open mind and a few empty pints and we'll have an awesome time together!

MM-What do you think of the rock music scene in general today? Is it getting better or worse? What would help it?

Stubio: Bit of a broad question that! I could rant and rave (and probably have done already) but basically I'lll cut it to this.The rock scene needs Vamps n Gypsies to lead it into this next decade. All the bands from the last decade that were vital and awesome are either disappeared or lining their pockets writing making watered down versions of the music they used to make. They don¹t deserve to be where they are anymore. Kill the head, and the body will die, or replace the head with a new one, and the body will thrive. I think I speak for all of Vamps n Gypsies when I say, WE ARE READY.

MM-If you could only listen to three different albums over the next month then what would you pick?


Nikki: my Him box set!

Danny: Never get bored of 'Out come the Wolves' by Ranicid, Amy McDonald and 'RFTC'by Rocket from the Crypt. And the new Offspring album when I finally get it!

Jay: Transplants - Transplants,Pennywise - land of the free,Far from finished - living the fallout.
Stubio: Lit-atomic, AC/DC- Back in black, Alkaline Trio- From here to infirmary

Rich: High School Musical Soundtrack!We are a little over halfway through 2008.

MM-Do you feel like you have accomplished a lot so far this year? What do you hope to do in the remaining months of the year?


Nikki: Cut down on the booze!

Stubio: 2008 has gone so fast it's stupid, and well, I feel like I've wasted most of it to be honest! Spending too much time at work and not enough time out with the band, touring and shit. That's the trouble with being unsigned and actually poor, very little buck and their fore very little bang! We can't buy our way onto support slots, pay to play anywhere and we can't pay for publicity. Everyone always says this is a business about who you know, and we don't know anyone! Having said that we have been working hard, as we’ve always been! We've been all over the place gigging, released a new cd and just recorded a live album so it’s not that we haven't been busy, but my expectations are Far greater than where we are now with everything! I want to do this full time, all over the world!


Rich: This year has been quiet in comparison to the last few….we’re trying a different tac so to speak! Gigging every week is easy, what we wanted to do was play a better sort of gig….a gig that would get us noticed by more people! I’d really love to get back out on the road again, but with time ticking away this year is prob not going to happen! We’ve got plans….just not finalized!


MM-Is there anything else that you would like to say about your band or your music?


Nikki: I'd just like to say ain’t we great and ain’t we wasted!



Rich: If you’ve read this far then we’ve obviously caught your imagination……go listen to us on myspace etc. Come to a show and get fucked up with us!


Stubio: I don't know you, the person that's reading this, but I’m guessing you've read a lot of shit, said by a lot of people in your time. You've read it all, seen it all, heard it all and you know better, right? Wrong. Forget what you think you know and check out Vamps n Gypsies, come and watch us live or hear our music on our website or myspace. We are ready to take on the world, one person like you at a time!


http://www.myspace.com/vampsngypsies

vampsngypsies.com