Go! your own way
Just because you share the same name as someone, doesn’t mean that you share the same idea of fun. ‘No, ballet isn’t my idea of a good time’, mutters The Go! Team’s bassist Jamie Bell, namesake of Billy Elliott’s lead. Not tempted to try out a few pirouettes, then? You are after all quite graceful onstage. A guffaw escapes, ‘Gangly, more like’.
When it comes to bands, The Go! Team are about as fun as it gets. With a sound that’s like a group of B-girls on an E-number fuelled rampage through the Early Learning Centre’s instrument section, a listen to them’s always guaranteed to brighten your day. Whether or not they like being pigeonholed like this.
‘We don’t want to be a fun band’, protests Bell when we put this to him. ‘We want to be an exciting band.’ That’s as may be, fella, but the music that band of yours makes is fun, fun, fun ‘til daddy takes the T-bird away. ‘Well, we’re not trying to cheer everyone up. We’re trying to be interesting, but it does end up being fun.’ There you go – like it or not, The Go! Team just can’t help but be the kind of people that put a smile on your face.
Which presumably makes them pretty good to hang out with. ‘Mainly I like to mooch about. When the sun’s shining I like having barbecues on the Brighton seafront, hanging around the beach and doing fairly relaxed stuff.’ That’s it? Gentle drifting in the sunshine? What about the crazy, high-energy parties? We thought life in The Go! Team would be a non-stop cavalcade of high jinks. ‘Well, the four of us that live down here in Brighton do tend to knock about. We go out drinking and hang out.’
All the action must take place on tour, then. We bet that bus is a hotbed of double-dutch skipping, jelly-baby vodka drinking, and furious breakdancing. ‘Well, I do quite often complain’, offers Jamie. That’s more like it: some good rock ‘n’ roll tantrums. Have the odd stand-off over who picks the tunes on the road, too, do you? ‘Erm, actually, we don’t tend to have too many DJ stand-offs on the tour bus. We’ve all got different tastes, but there are plenty of places where we all meet. We’re not exactly gonna stick Keane on the stereo.’
Oh well, maybe life in The Go! Team’s not quite the non-stop party we’d thought, but given the high-octane jollity on new album Proof Of Youth, clearly the music’s where they let out all their rambunctious joy for life. Lolloping Motown bass grooves underpin wistful Littlest Hobo horns, and a veritable cheerleader squad’s worth of upbeat, female vocals. Except for the collaboration with Washington DC’s Frederick Douglas All Star Cheer Team, when they have an actual cheerleader squad’s-worth of upbeat female vocals. Despite Jamie’s assertion that the album’s ‘pretty aggro’, it makes Itchy feel less capable of controlling its bouncing than someone superglued to a Space Hopper.
Still, there’s one more thing we want to know. You absolutely sure you have no interest in doing a little ballet for (ahem) kicks, Jamie? ‘Not at the moment. Give me a couple of years ‘til I’ve learnt a couple of moves’. Maybe there’s more in a name than we thought.
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