Dun 2 Def Interview

21/11/2006

It was formed following a request by a local promotor, sick of booking run of the mill Rock acts at his club, to put together a Punk covers band. This was formed by Ferret (vocals) and Twig (guitar) and they were called '77.
The band did well, with loads of gigs geting booked, including some good support slots with the likes of UK Subs & Vibrators etc. But the band soon tired of doing covers and began to write their own material and such began to look for a new band name.

We've learnt be prepared to gig a hell of a lot, expect to be at the bottom of the bill a lot (even if you're better than the preceeding bands) and don't expect to make any money!! In fact, be prepared to lose plenty of money!

Don't trust promotor's and try to do as much as possible off your own back (organise your own gigs etc).

To bands starting out.. be prepared to spend a lot of money and only do this if it's for the love of being a Punk band! Also, NEVER do any gig that involves you having to sell a set number of tickets just to support some headline act. You WILL be ripped off!

Also, make sure you have a van driver and a manager!

Well it's good to see a lot of the young kids finally getting to attend and hear "real" Punk bands for a change.

Apart from that, as with ourselves, our audience and the Punk scene in general appears older, fatter and balder!

As mentioned earlier, the name was changed as the band moved away from Punk covers to writing original material.

The name was thought up as a result of agreeing that every original sounding Punk band name we came up with, didn't ever actually sound original and sounded like it had been done to death. From that Dun 2 Def was born!

On first impressons, some people seem to really like the name, but other's, especialy in a few reviews we've had, have likened to the name to that of a hip hop band! We can't really see that ourselves, but I guess it's cos it's got the word "Def" in it I guess? But whatever.

As for other band names, we all agreed that we don't really care what name a band has.. it's what the music's like that they are putting out that counts at the end of the day. In the early days we may all have been guilty of buying singles based on a bands name (cos no-one knew who any of the bands were, cos the whole scene was new), but I don't think anyone does that nowadays.. especially with the internet and such like. If you don't know a band then look them up, it's that simple.

So far the reaction to the CD seems to be excellent. We have some fantastic reviews and I believe, so far only one negative review (by someone who admitted they didn't understand this type of music!!). It's selling really well at gigs. Not so sure who it's doing in shops and online etc, cos we've not had any feedback from Plastic Head yet.

It's very difficult to pick a favourite from your own album as we like all the tracks! In all honesty, we put this album together to try and eliminate the need for "filler" tracks. We wanted every track to stand out and have it's own merits.. not to go on the album because we needed to fill the space. About 5 tracks we recorded never made it to the album as we felt they weren't good enough. I think this decisions reflects in the reviews published so far.

The lyrics are inspired by everything tha affects us really.. life / death / wars / drinking / fighting / relationships / friends / drugs etc.

The typical process of writing a Dun 2 Def song begin with someone bringing a riff and some lyrics to a rehearsal, then we start jamming through it, all adding individual ideas, until a song is formed. It's a pretty simple process really.

Definitely something to celebrate cos it's quite a miracle it's all still going and has such a healthy scene, not just in the Uk, but the world over. I think it's a scene that will never die as there will always be those who live for this music and always new bands to replace the one's we lose.

It's great that bands like Dun 2 Def can form later into Punk's life cycle and still find a respectable audience who come to gig's and buy our cd's. I think the embarrassing commercialism comes from those bands who have the audacity to call themselves Punk, only play huge stadiums or the biggest venues and charge the Earth to get in to see them! That's not a Punk band.
There's also way to much of this kiddie Pop Punk nonesense as well. The charts are full of this kinda crap that claims to be Punk.

We also think there are too many of the older original bands reforming just to cash in. Their ethics are no longer there.. it's just a synical ploy to rake in a few quid based on a name that was once good. That doesn't count for the majority of the good name bands still playing the circuit though. I think everyone can tell the genuine from the fake.

Still plenty of gigs to do in 2006 and the band have already started booking gigs in 2007 - including Punk Aid 2007 and a slot at the 30 Years of Punk Festival.

Dun 2 Def plan to start work on a new album in early 2007 with a view to release it around the summer time.

There is also talk of doing a split EP with Demob

Hopefully 2007 will be the year Dun 2 Def begin to get the recognition they deserve. It's been a hard slog and we've been held up by a few idiots trying their best to put us down and prevent us from being seen by decent audiences. But we won't let those people ruin anything for the band, no matter how hard they try.

I think we may also try to find a van driver and a manager!

The bands favourite animal is the giraffe.