Sam & Jim from Pizzatramp play “Do You Feel Lucky Punk” the Devolution random question generator at Rebellion Festival and Sam’s luck is certainly in as they answer questions on their favourite video games and why it’s never a good idea to use the phrase “I’m not racist but” even when you aren’t being racist.
Sam “What are we hoping for? What are the good ones?”
All of them.
Sam “Three threes and a four, that’s alright. Do you know what we should do? We should write it down and then whatever it lands on that should be the time signatures of the next songs that we write”
Jim “We’ll spring it on another drummer we’ve never met”
Sam “By the way, this is 3,3,3,4. Alright, go on.”
Do you have any plans for next year?
Jim “We’re going to be the biggest band in Europe next year, because we’re better than all the other bands”
Sam “We’re just going to tour our nuts off next year, hit Europe, hopefully hit America. Yeah, just keep doing what we’re doing already.”
I suppose if your touring America the drummer can’t escape
Jim “No, once we’ve got him over into America he’s got to do the gigs no matter what”
Two and thirteen, when you write an album do you have a main songwriter or is it a collaboration?
Sam “All of us chip in. Like obviously me and Jim mainly write the vocals for it, but music wise”
Jim “Our drummer plays guitar as well so he writes all the songs.”
Sam “Yeah, it’s a group effort. Once the songs are written we basically figure out who can sing over what, and then”
Jim “If it’s hard I make Sam do it, if it’s easy then I’ll sing over it. Because I’m not very good at my instruments.”
Sam “Six, I got a six. Ten”
Call Of Duty, Need For Speed, or Zelda?
Jim “Zelda”
Sam “Zelda, yeah, Zelda. Car games are shit ain’t they?”
Jim “All games are shit if it’s not Zelda, fuck it. Ocarina Of Time, the best game ever. I got it on Christmas Eve when it came out.”
Sam “Mario’s the one though innit? So yeah, I know you’re going to comment on this, but my friend Julie, she’s really bad at Mario and she told me that she was really bad at Mario, so I just want to make a point of saying that she’s really bad at Mario.”
Jim “Fuck Judith then she wants to learn how to play Mario.”
Sam “Fuck Judith (laughs)”
(Rolls dice)
We’re on a theme here, Neverwinter, Fallout, or Skyrim?
Jim “Fallout, every day. Basically at some point in the future everyone should have played Fallout because we’re all going to be dying in the nuclear winter.”
Sam “So prepare yourself type of thing.”
Jim “Yeah, basically it’s a roleplaying game where the world’s fucked, and there’s been a nuclear war so, and that is going to happen pretty soon, isn’t it to be fair.”
Sam “Yeah, if the fucking Tories stay in”
Jim “(laughs) If the Tories stay in.”
Sam “Fuck the Tories”
Jim “The Tories are going to make it.”
Sam “Look at that time signature. Damn.”
Jim “You should play dice for a living.”
Sam “I’m not bad am I?”
If you could remake any classic game which one is it?
Sam “Fucking hell.”
Jim “Any classic game? Like video game?”
Sam “Alex the Kid, but have it as you.”
Jim “It’s not Alex the Kid, it’s Alex Kid. There’s no ‘the’. Everyone says it’s Alex the Kid, it’s Alex Kid.”
Sam “Calm down, fucking hell.”
Jim “He’s not a kid, well he’s 12, 13 in that game. He has a hard time of it.”
Sam “Alex Lad then.”
Jim “(laughs) Alex Lad. We’ll remake Alex Kid in Miracle World but we’ll make it easier, because it’s really fucking hard that game.”
Jim “Come on, not a video game thing.”
Sam “If you get four sixes I’ll suck you off.”
Jim “I’ve got two, you can take half a length.”
Sam “I’ll lick your balls for that.”
For the instruments that you play, who are your favourite musicians?
Sam “Fuck, like favourite musicians at the moment?”
Jim “No, of all time isn’t it.”
Sam “Of all time? Oh man, I don’t fucking know, there’s too many. There’s so many good fucking players.”
Jim “Shit, that’s a cop out.”
Sam “Well no, there is though innit?”
Jim “It’s any musician in Bad Brains or Minor Threat innit. Ian Mackay, that’s the one. Do you say Ian McKay or Ian McKie?”
Sam “Who gives a fuck, he’s not Irish so.”
Jim “He’s not Irish (laughs), He’s American.”
Sam “So McKay then.”
Jim “If anyone has ever been in any 80’s hardcore band, he’s a hero.”
Sam “I just like anyone who actually plays like they’re fucking enjoying themselves. I hate bass players that just stand there, just going through the motions. It’s like fucking play it man. It’s not like you’re fucking jerking off or anything.”
Sam “That’s another fucking quarter inch.”
Jim “In the rest of this interview if you get two more sixes I’ll suck you off, and it’ll be the best blow job.”
Favourite film and why?
Sam “Ohhh, I’ve got two. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because of obvious reasons. It’s massively about drugs. And Pulp Fiction, again because it’s massively about drugs. No, just good films.”
Jim “The top three films counting down are number 3, Goodfellas, number is Scarface, and number 1 is Grease. Grease is better than any film ever made. And everyone in the cast is dead. Everyone either died or pretended to be dead. I think Olivia Newton John’s husband pretended to be dead for about twenty years, and he wasn’t. On a ranch in Arizona or something.”
Sam “For tax purposes.”
Jim “No, she thought he was dead.”
Sam “Oh, she thought he was dead. She thought he was knobbing some other bird?”
Jim “Why would you cheat on Olivia Newton John.”
Sam “I don’t know, have you seen his new bird?”
Jim “Why would you cheat on that man? You’d just go every night put on a catsuit and dance round.”
Sam “Have you seen his new bird?”
Jim “What? Is she hot?”
Sam “I dunno, that’s what I mean. So you can’t comment on it, yeah he left Olivia Newton John, but his new bird might be the fucking world.”
Jim “She’s definitely not as good as Olivia Newton John.”
Sam “Yeah, but how’d you know?”
Jim “I know she’s not.”
Sam “Google it.”
Jim “I don’t want to Google it.”
Sam “Google it.”
Jim “I’ll google it in a minute.”
Sam “Olivia Newton John’s husband’s new bird.”
Sam “Oh there you are, I got another one. One more you’re noshing me off.”
Biggest musical influences.
Sam “Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Municipal Waste, Snoop Dogg.@
Jim “(laughs) Snoop Dogg.”
Sam “Fleetwood Mac. I dunno, who else?”
Jim “Just Bad Brain, Minor Threat and Black Flag.”
Sam “Loads of bands, we all listen to loads of different styles of music, we’re not like strictly… we don’t jump in the van and go we need to listen to hardcore punk, man.”
Jim “Well I do, they make me listen to all this shit.”
Sam “Fuck off, you fucking love it. You fucking love it. What about Dead South”
Jim “Oh yeah, but, just put on Black Flag or Minor Threat. They’re just better than everything else.”
Jim “So one more six and what is it, you owe me twenty quid?”
Sam “No, you have to nosh me off. (laughs) Aha!”
Jim “Alright, I’ll do it, I don’t mind.”
Sam “Do you want to do it here, or do you want to go in the toilets.”
Jim “We’ll go in the toilets.”
What’s the dumbest act anyone’s ever done on stage?
Sam “It’s got to be something that you’ve done.”
Jim “What have I done that’s really dumb? Oh, I know, we’ve got a song called The Idiot’s Guide To The Internet and we did it in Southampton”
Sam “Be careful what you say now”
Jim “It’s an anti-racism song, it’s about the fact that everyone in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and whatever believed what the papers said. The Daily Mail told you to be a racist, because they’re fucking racist, which is still not acceptable, but everyone’s being influenced. But now everyone’s got a smartphone, no one’s got any reason to believe anything anyone says. You can just Google it and find out they’re lying. So we did a song about that, but somehow I managed to make an anti-racism song, I made a joke, and somehow I made it a racist song, and everyone’s what are you on about. And as I’m trying to bail out of it I said the line ‘I’m not racist, but’ and everyone going what are you on about and they’re looking at me, Jim, what are you raging about? I’m I’m like I’m trying to be anti-racist because I am, and somehow I’ve ended up turning into a Nazi. So that was the stupidest thing that ever happened so now we can’t play Southampton anymore because if we go down there loads of skinheads are going to show up going ‘fucking yeah, what you said last time’ but it was all…”
Sam “Fuck the skinners”
Jim “Fuck the skinners, oh that was another one wasn’t it. That’s a separate occasion, just as bad.”
Sam “Tell him about that one”
Jim “There’s a band called Skinners from Bath and Harry who’s the bassist in them, the bassist was in a gig we played in London, and he went do this song. So we did a song called Slamdance Suicide, so we went this song’s for Skinners, which is the name of their band. So we do this song and it starts ‘If you want to slamdance do it in front of a fucking train’. It turns out there’s a big skinhead contingent in there, not racist ones, good ones, and it turns out after we play everyone’s going to kill me because they think I’m slagging off the skinheads and telling them to jump in front of a train, when I was like no. But I didn’t know what they were on about, and they wanted to kill me, and I’m like I don’t know what you’re on about, and they’re like you were slagging us off on stage. Turns out I wasn’t, I just said this song is for the Skinners, a band. Everyone thought I’d said this song is for the skinheads and I wanted them to kill themselves in front of a train. So they all tried to kill me, but luckily they all had a massive fight with someone else and we got away.”
Sam “That was a fucking good scrap that was as well.”
Jim “It was a really good scrap wasn’t it. We just made fags and watched them.”
Sam “Last one, here we go, last one.”
Jim “No more sixes.”
Sam “If I get a six now…”
Jim “I’ll tickle your bollocks.”
Sam “I’ll jizz in your eye. Awwww, two, I get to jizz in both eyes! Yes!”
You’ve been asked to support a band, who would you want to be headlining?
Sam “Bad Brains.”
Jim “Band Brains?”
Sam “Without a doubt.”
Jim “We’d probably be better than them because he’s mental now, he’s fucking nuts.”
Sam “Yeah, but it’s still Bad Brains. Yeah Bad Brains, without a doubt.”
Interview by Mark Bestford. Photo by Gary Trueman.