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Spooks |
Phatmag: So it's gonna be a live band?
Spooks: Yeah. We roll with a live band man
Spooks: Spooks is a live band. It's just that the tour of the first album we don't get to bring them over here you know 'cos it's expensive. But if it was up to us, we'd always have a live band and a DJ every time
Phatmag: Do any of you guys play any instruments?
Spooks: Hypno knows a few instruments
Spooks: We play a lot of instruments but when it comes to recording or comes to a performance, we call in the professionals you know. Only instruments I would say I'm any good at at all is the hand instruments. I would actually say I can play that but there's people that are way better than that. We have a band of musicians who have been playing most of their lives and we've been working together. So we usually call them in as part of our production team or definitely when it comes to a live show.
Phatmag: Apart from having a live band, is there anything different that you guys do on stage when it comes to doing a live thing?
Spooks: Different! OK. I believe there's a lot of things different. One....ok by the way I'm Booka-T, AKA Bookaso. When you enter in to the safe house....that's what we call our domain when we perform, it's the safe house. It's a safe house because it's a place you can come to, be comfortable, feel at ease....you're one with the Spooks. You're part of the safe house family. Sometimes, we might make you get on stage to perform - that's one part of our show. Tow, we don't have people on stage standing in front of you in one place standing and being as tuff as possible. No that's not us. We'll be smiling at you. We have choreographed movements which is not necessarily like Black Street Boys dancing, but the way we work the stage, a lot of people have said they haven't seen that type of crew working the stage. Just like the Funky Four Plus One back in the early 80's you know, we work up a sweat. We work for you. Like I said before, we don't try to look angry and cool you know. There's a lot of movement. A lot of energy. A lot of spontaneous things happening. Sometimes we'll come up with new shit at that movement. So sometimes you'll come to a Spooks show and see something that you'll never ever see again COs something that happened in the crowd, we'll make a chorus out of it on the spot. It's just a lot of energy man....a whole lot of energy.
Spooks: 1994
Phatmag: How long did it take you guys to get your deal
Spooks: 1999
Spooks: End of 1999. No midyear 1999
Phatmag: How did it come about?
Spooks: How we got the deal, or how we came together?
Phatmag: How you got your deal
Spooks: Jo Davis who's Vengeance was on a telephone call to Thriller....Basically probably to contact another friend of ours who's a signed artist but we hadn't seen him in a while. So Jo Davis called up our ex-manager to contact this friend of ours but what happened....it was a 3 way call. Our ex-manager called this guy named Perry P who used to work for Jo Davis. Jo Davis used to own a club. So he called Perry up and our music was playing in the background. Perry was like who's that playing on the radio. Jo Davis said that's my group you know. He was like, 'your group?. I didn't know you were in a group.' He was like yeah, Spooks. Like that. He was like turn that shit up. He turned it up. It was like damn. Yo, I'm coming over right now for a copy of that tape. It was like 2.30am so we didn't understand. We were like damn, he heard it over the telephone, why he'd wanna come pick up this tape. So he really cam over. You know, we thought he was bullshitting. So he came over and picked the tape up and said 'yo, I'm an A&R in a record company.' We still didn't believe it COs you know when you've been search for a deal from 1994 to 19999, you just don't believe it's gonna happen like this. You know, you hit the pavement everyday and this was just a phone call. So he took the tape - he went back and the next day, he called everybody up and was like 'yo, you have a meeting with the record company. Can you be here in a couple of hours?'. We were like wo. We went there....the negotiations took like....damn how long? About 7 months but the negotiations had nothing to do with change. Change or trying to get the Spooks crew to conform to the type of music that was out at the time and was one of the reasons why we rolled with Antra. Because most of the meetings that we had prior to then, was all about 'ok, these guys are great. The music's incredible...can you do at least four songs on one side of the album that sounds like what's on the radio at the moment'. So that's when we were like, we didn't wanna roll with this label or that label. But when we met up with Antra & Artemis, it never came up. It was all about us getting a fair deal so we decided to roll with those guys.
