Triumph of the Nerds...
Interview by Ruth

Bristol three-piece Grebo have bagged a support slot with The Ataris after two EPs and barely a year and a half together. With a new CD of teen pop punk anthems drenched in promise and charm, and on the cusp of playing a sold-out night at the Astoria 2, Seething Little Monsters caught up with them backstage in Liverpool as their biggest ever tour begins. "We wet ourselves," they tell us...

It's after midnight in the centre of town, and wandering around the L2, looking for a cheap bar are a small group of non-descript lads from Bristol. This being Liverpool, it shouldn't surprise us to learn that they're also members of some unsigned band. In fact, it's practically a given in the home of Lennon and John Power. Yet another band coasting on hopes and dreams today, and living off the dole tomorrow. Though not for much longer. For this is Grebo, the bouncing punk trio supporting the Ataris on their latest UK tour. The band hand-picked by Kris Roe after being handed one of their demos at a gig. The band who are first on for the last leg of this British jaunt, four days which climax in a sold-out night at the Astoria 2. No pressure, lads...

"These guys were shitting themselves earlier," laughs bass player Joe 90. "I wasn't shitting myself," protests innocent-faced singer-songwriter and guitarist Ben. "We wanted to go out for a walk around Liverpool," continues Joe, "and we went to the pub, got some food, went to the bank, and these guys," he turns back to Ben and you-wouldn't-like-to-meet-him-down-a-dark-alley drummer, Blake, "sat in the van! They didn't dare move! You were shaking!" "Well, we were a little bit nervous earlier," Ben will eventually admit, "but I think we've calmed down a bit. We've met the Ataris and Fabulous Disaster now, and they're both really cool bands. And nice guys as well."
So how did you end with this gig?
"It happened when we went to see The Ataris at Newport, last October," begins Ben,
"We had a gig ourselves in Bristol," adds Joe. "We played our set superfast."
"Yeah, so we could just get there," continues Ben. "Our friend gave us a lift. We ended up missing them, but I gave Kris a CD and he was like, he seemed quite interested. I never thought we'd hear anything back, but I got an email at the beginning of this year, and he was like "yeah, I thought your CD was really cool, and you guys could perhaps play some shows with us sometime". And we wet ourselves. Then we stayed in touch and pretty much just emailed back and forth for a while, until they sorted out the dates. We went to watch them in Newport the other night, and when Kris was soundchecking his guitar, he was playing 'One Step Behind' off our demo, He was playing my riffs. It was unreal. He was kind of miming the words as well. So I think they might genuinely like it. Maybe."

It's not as if Grebo have just emerged out the woodwork. Back in Bristol, they've already proved they can sell out the venues in their hometown, and have already bagged support slots with bands such as King Prawn ("King Prawn were really nice, weren't they?"), The Crocketts ("They were nice guys. They passed the bifta. That's all that matters.") and Leatherface. As well as playing with the odd band you really wouldn't expect a punk band like Grebo to be playing with...
"We played with Bellatrix," recalls Ben. "Are we allowed to slag bands off? Bellatrix were really annoying. They were so stuck up themselves..."
"And they were crap as well," adds Blake.
"It was a really weird festival," continues Joe. "It was billed really big, wasn't it? There was a huge marquee set up, massive. And there was about 12 Latvian girls, just dancing at the front to Bellatrix. We just stood there looking like 'where's the festival, people?'."
"We played above Bellatrix, which was quite odd," adds Ben. "They didn't like that, but they wouldn't even take a flyer, or they wouldn't take a CD, they snubbed us totally. Usually bands are really cool. We haven't had problems with anyone we've played with."
"T-Recstasy, the T-Rex cover band," points out Joe. "They had a support band pull out and we got asked to come down and play for them. We got kicked out the dressing room. The manager came into the dressing room, and we were all just sat there having a beer, and he walked in and said "Guys, guys, you can't be here tonight. When T-Rextasy play the Fleece they have the dressing room all to themselves."
"It's not even a dressing room," adds Blake "it's an attic."
"It's not even as big as this room, it's not even as big as this!" Joe makes size gestures with his hands to roughly the size of a toilet cubicle. "And it's for like all the bands to share. It's horrible, isn't it? It's a proper little stinky dive. But we love it. We're limited in venues now. There's another big venue called Louisiana. We got banned from playing there, because we had a big gig there, we do like nights where we hire out the room ourselves, put on a big punk night and charge like a quid. And I think it's about 150 capacity and we had like 250 people turn up."
"They were ok with that, but it was when..." starts Ben.
"...The crowdsurfers," finishes Joe. "There's a big fan above the moshpit, and the crowdsurfers just grab onto it and spin round and they think it's a laugh. And one guy went up there, grabbed the fan, someone let go and he snapped it off the wall. And the guy went ballistic."
"Yeah, he just turned everything off," continues Ben. "We were playing second head set. The headlining band didn't get on. So we got banned from there. We got some good press out of that one, though, didn't we? It made us a little bit more popular, I guess."

Not that they've had much chance to be screwed over by the press, being that their grand total of interview so far is one.
"We tend to shy away from interviews," Joe says. "Noone likes doing them. I remember we were at college once. Some guy phoned up to do an interview with us and we were all like.. "bye"."
"We offered to do something on the radio, offers Ben. "None of us turned up for that one."
Hardly surprising coming from someone who confesses to be "really scared" of our tape recorder, and then halfway through the interview attempts to smash the microphone.

Grebo first got together a year and a half ago on their Access To Music course in Bristol.
"It's just a bunch of musos, about fifty of us, we just go down there and jam," says Joe.
"Blake followed me from the bus station. He didn't know where the bus stop was, and I went and asked, and he followed me. The whole way there, there was this big man following me. I was like 'oh God!'"
"And I didn't like him at first," laughs Blake.
"No, I didn't like you either."
"We didn't like the look of him," admits Ben. "It was the stupid glasses."
"The way he wants to look like Joe 90," agrees Blake.
Ah, Joe 90. Bass player and puppet look-a-like. And possibly the most enigmatic (if not he's certainly the least likely member to ever require liposuction) member of the band.
"Nobody knows his real name," says Ben mysteriously.
"I was chatting to some guy," starts Joe, "and he was saying I looked like Joe 90. And when this other kid came up and asked me what my name was, and I said Joe. We had a laugh about it. He walked off and told everyone else my name was Joe."
Joe, along with Blake, also represents the more depraved element of the band...
"It was the first night of touring last night, and we hit the road, and we crashed at my Dad's place in Manchester, and we all went out and got pissed up. Shared sexual experiences, we came home, I passed out. I think Blake put his ass in my face..."
He turns to the drummer. "Did you spit in my ear?"
"I tipped beer in your ear, didn't I?" asks Blake.
"I got him back this morning," Joe grins "...when he went and crashed out this morning, and I tipped a spoonful of catfood down his ear."
"Waking up with catfood in your ear is not pleasant," Blake notes seriously. "It really isn't."
"Quote that!" Ben jumps in "I want it in big letters."
...As well as the, erm, well...
"Joe's got this problem," confides Blake. "Whenever he jumps up in the mid-set, when he's playing a song, when he comes down, without fail he'll hit the wrong note."
"I'll have a problem hitting the right note anyway! I haven't been playing that long. I still don't know what all the strings are called yet. I don't know any chords. I remember the first practise we ever had, we went in and I was really excited, and thought "oh yeah, we'll go in and play a song". And he goes "Right Joe, this one's in the key of C", and he started playing and I was like "Erm... which one's C? 'Scuse me a minute..." I haven't quite gotten him for that yet. Maybe one day I'll learn. If I actually start turning up to bass lessons. Someone asked me for bass lessons once... We're not the most accomplished of musicians." "Yeah, we suggested professional tutors, ones that can play more than three chords."
To be honest, they could've fooled me...

Grebo recorded their latest EP ("It's our second CD, but the first one isn't really worth mentioning," adds Joe) in two days last October, in the tiny White House Studio in Weston Supermare.
"We had the campest producer ever..." remembers Joe.
"Jolly nice guy, though…" interrupts Ben.
"...No shit," continues Joe. "Touching our legs all the time, he was. It was scary. Blake was loving every minute of it. Blake was touching his legs back. In fact, Blake stayed on like hours after we went home. Blake was like 'oh I'm gonna stay here a bit longer'. Why did you do that Blake?"
"I did notice him copping a feel as well," adds Ben.
"Yeah, they were sat in the control room together all the time."
"He took a long time moving drums, didn't he?"
"He gave us a discount as well, didn't he Blake?"
"I think he made it sound extra good for Blake. Yeah, that's what he did."
"It was very cold anyway," Joe gets back to the subject in hand. "And I was spending most of my time sat on his roof smoking cigarettes cos I was so bored in the control room."
So what's the new CD like?
"Crap," deadpans Blake.
"It's as close to The Ataris as we can possibly rip off," says Ben, tongue-in-cheek. "It's just like kind of recycled pop-punk emo."
"Bit of a mix of stuff," is Joe's summation. "Everyone says we sound like Green Day. It's going to haunt us for the rest of our lives." He later reconsiders it as "bad pop punk".
"It's cos we've got a fat singer, innit?" smiles Blake.
"Yeah, that's what it is. Fat singer, that's me," says Ben self-deprecatingly. "Yeah, it's pretty much, I dunno, make what you make of it, I guess. We have fun playing it so that's what we do."

Lead singer and guitarist Ben is the least rock'n'roll of the three. While the picture on their website shows the other two clowning around and mooning the camera, Ben just stands there watching. An immensely talented songwriter, yet refreshingly down-to-earth and sweetly self-deprecating, instead of going out to the bar later, he'll stay and watch the van with his Dad.
"Ben doesn't drink," notes Joe. "Because we used to get absolutely pissed. I remember one gig at the Louisiana, mid-guitar solo, he went to put his foot on the guitar monitor, and he missed the monitor and fell off the stage, head first! It was hilarious. Then there was at the Ashton Court Festival. There was this huge massive nine foot stage, this big structure. He ran up to the front of the stagve to show off a bit and tripped over one of the wires and fell on his back."
"But he didn't fall over full pelt, did he?" points out Blake.
"No, no. I fell with grace, lets not forget this," Ben admits. "I fell, and it still looked good."
"Everyone thought he was being a rockstar and rolling on the floor in mid-solo," laughs Joe.

But despite all these rock'n'roll shenanigans, it's not quite bathing in champagne and caviar in their rider yet. They're travelling around for the next week in a multi-purpose economy transport vehicle - to wit, one VW Camper van into which they have to not only squeeze all their gear, but themselves and enough space for a decent night's sleep. And of course there's no hulking roadies, no coordinated and efficient tour manager. Unless you count Ben and Joe's Dads. So no traditional rock'n'roll debauchery for you guys, then?
"Well, they will, yeah!" laughs Ben. "We've found out things about our Dads that were quite disturbing!"
"Yeah, we all got drunk last night, and we were sharing sexual experiences. My Dad's a stud," grins Joe, proudly.
"Call me unusual, but I hate hearing about my Dad's sexual exploits," Ben shudders.
"I love hearing about your Dad's sexual exploits," grins Blake.
"Well, Blake's mum confessed to me the other day that her and his Dad were at it like rabbits all the time..." adds Joe. "Blake's face went annoyingly red."
Not that the presence of their parents isn't going to stop them completely...
"I'm going to try my hardest to fuck things up tonight, and at least smash something up. There's not a lot in here to smash really," Blake looks around the bare dressing room, "but I'm going to try and break something..."
"We walked in here, the first thing we said is "What can we smash first?"," says Joe. "Just for rock and roll's sake. We've been here half an hour, me and Ben are the only ones who've been in the toilet. And it reeks. It's not pretty."

The least talkative of the three, Blake is somewhat of the dark horse of Grebo. While Ben has his punk, and Joe his sixties and classic pop, the drummer has slightly heavier tendencies. When the subject of dream touring partners is brought up and names like Weezer and Green Day are bandied about, Blake has a more novel suggestion.
"Pantera, I'd like to tour with," he grins.
"We'd get like through half a song before we got killed," says Joe, incredulously.
"Blake wants to do it because they make people do things for money," notes Ben. "They stuck a guy in a gas mask and made like a gas mask bong, and they made him sit in it for an hour until he completely choked, and his whole face went red. And they just sat there laughing at him, but they gave him a hundred dollars. So we'd never go on tour with Pantera."
However, despite the fact that out of the three of them, Blake looks like the only one of them who if his musical career doesn't work out could find work as a bouncer, he's probably the most innocent one of the band. While Grebo were waiting outside for the venue to open this afternoon, someone tried to sell Blake a watch, much to his consternation.
"I hate it when people do that, cos I don't want to say no to them," he smiles confusedly.
"Yeah, Blake's too nice," laughs Ben, deadly serious. "He'll buy the lot. That guy would've picked up a shipping of fifty, and Blake'll be "well, yeah, I don't want to let them down" and he'll buy them all, just keep the guy happy."

So after this, how do Grebo see their future? What would they see in a crystal ball showing themselves in ten years time?
"Joe's going to be fat, and me and Blake'll lose weight!" laughs Ben.
Joe sees things a little differently...
"We'll have been multi-million rockstars," he predicts. "We'll have a number one hit. Ben'll have all the royalties, have a big white mansion, loads of kids, a pretty wide swimming pool. Me and Blake'll be living in the gutter, we'll be alcoholics." He suddenly brightens up. "I might have stubble by then. I might even have a beer gut. Blake's already got one, but it'll be podgier."
"Joe'll have a cute little beer gut, about that big," says Blake. "Just like a little football."
"I'll still look the same," Joe notes. "I'll probably still look like I'm 16 years old."
"And we'll just be drinking our lives away," sighs Blake.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Later that evening, as the group pass by a hotel window, Blake stops and taps Joe on the shoulder.
"Shall we?"
The Joe looks at him. Then looks at the plate glass window in front of them. They both run over, undo their trousers and press their bare cheeks against the window. Much to the consternation of the staff inside.
Well, at least we won't have to worry about fame changing them for the worse...