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THE STORY SO FAR… In May 1999, me (Nick P) & Chris decided to go to New York City to tout around a CD of a few demo tunes we'd put together with our friends Craig & Woody. We'd been writing together for a while in various forms (see Remember Jealousy or Flush for more details on our dark history), and gigging here and there under the name Hooper. But for the trip we decided that we needed something more final and official with which to label our music so, one night at Craig's countryside flat in Warnham just prior to the trip, we christened ourselves The Indigo Sunrise and set to work on getting as many people as possible to hear our music. As it happened, the trip to the US wasn't very productive in the long run - we met up with ASCAP and checked out the disappointing Phantom Menace film… and that was about it! But we're still here, creating the music we want in the style we want without regard for the whims of the music industry (in other words… we haven't got a record deal! Was it that obvious?!). Not having a big record company watching over our every move has actually worked out well for us thus far. It's meant that we've focused our attentions on turning our humble little band into a completely self-sufficient cottage industry. Proof - well, with some help from a few close friends we've recorded and released a debut album and filmed a promotional video for one of the songs contained therein. The album, Sonic Graffiti, was recorded over 2 years with our friends Jesse & Chris from LA. Jesse had been in bands stateside for about 20 years and has a great producers ear (check out www.thetrend.com for more info on him). Chris is a sound engineer of some repute, and has worked with loads of bigwig people over the last few years. Great, huh? Anyway, we were pretty restrained on sending the finished album out to all these evilyuckyandnasty record companies, as it signifies so much hard work and expense for us that sending out free copies of a CD to people who won't give it a full listen is just plain ridiculous! That said, when Steve Beebee from Kerrang! gave us a 4 K review in May 2001 we had to change our minds. Off the back of that review, Sony, V2 and… err… Fresh Ear (? who !) Records all showed an interest in what we were about. Steve's comparison to Sonic Graffiti with that of Feeder probably started the £ signs appearing on a few industry people's eyelids, but when we did get around to sending the album the interest pretty much stopped there. A contributing factor to this may be the fact that we thought the album might be our only chance to get all our songs recorded in one go, and this makes the album rather a confused listen to some people… but having said that, we wouldn't have it any other way! Albums with diversity of content rule! (so THAT's where the Ramones were going wrong!). A small victory for a cottage industry such as ourselves would be the fact that Our Price agreed to stock it and, via their branch, we shift 100 copies which I gather is a pretty good show for an unsigned band. The album's also been for sale over this very site and has shifted around a further 50 copies which is more than enough to make us smile and gives us another interesting fact to bore and annoy people with on articles such as these. Self righteous musos take over the world hu hu hurr! As it stands, we're still here doing our stuff and writing our cheeky/crazy tunes. If someone appears who's willing to give us cash, chicks, cuban cigars and pink Limos for signing on the dotted line, we'd sure have to go for it of course. But if that don't happen, you can count on us to continue to appear on the bill on a cold October Tuesday at The Garage (Hibury or Fishers - we make no distinction). What else? Well, we've helped to create a yearly Rock Festival in our backward and conservative West Sussex home town of Horsham. Entitled Miffstock, the gig seems to be growing in ideas and content for 2002. Last year's Miffstock was our first go at any kind of Karma-increasing charity work (until then we were your average, lazy, good for nothing, Q reading rock lotharios… actually somewhere along the line we turned back into that, hmm). As it turned out - we couldn't believe how stressful it was! The two gigs that made up the festival both turned out great though… and we ended up with a cheque for £2,500 for Sargent Cancer Care For Children on behalf of our mate Dean Herridge who has called on their services throughout his life. Anything else? Err… well, we've regularly played the infamous venues that make up the London "scene" (The Garage, The Underworld, The Backyard Club, etc). The best example of this has to be last years Underworld show where we pretty much packed the place out and played a really great show. We've played The Cavern a few times now too… this doesn't really have the credibility it did back in the 60's of course, but a trip to Liverpool every 6 months is just great fun! In the local area, you're bound to catch us about twice a year playing in our hometown sports bar (strangely, this is more fun than the uninitiated could possibly imagine… give it a try sometime) or in our favourite bar Piries… but this slot could be on the way out if we don't play some songs by Live at our next appearance, by royal decree from Candy who's in charge there! Most importantly we've done everything up 'til now exactly the way we've set out to. We don't have people to tell us how to live, people to tell us how to act, people to tell us what we can say and what we can't say - we personally don't need that (which is why I just got away with a cheesey pseudo Axl Rose quote! Tee hee!). With us - what you get is 100% organic, home grown stuff. Accept no substitute! We symbolise the thinking persons true alternative to the current pop "thing". If your hormones are settled enough that Punk ain't your thing, and if you need a bit of emotional content in music… well you need to check us! Now, yo. Other plus points of being in this band include… being in our mid-twenties and still being able to attend a youth club twice a week (band practise is sort of like Byker Grove without the Geordie lasses for us).. or getting our album reviewed in Kerrang! (will we EVER stop going on about that?!) or getting free coffee in the Horsham branch of Costa, just for being great! Splendid. The down side of being self sufficient means that the things we involve ourselves with don't always get delivered with the timing and grace of more well financed Companies & Corporations (just ask the people who waited 18 months or more for the album!), and everything we do costs us hard cash direct from source (so this is the reason we're not driving around in Toyota Supras by now… oh, hold on a minute!)… but the up side means that, when we do finally get things delivered, the sense of achievement is truly great! So now
as we begin our adventures for 2002, we can set our sights on somehow
following up last year's album and continuing to play in venues throughout
the kingdom. May will also involve another dose of fund raising which
is fair play I guess, seeing as last year's Miffstock turned into one
of the best music events Horsham has ever seen (though when you think
of it there isn't that much competition for that honour!). Keep visiting
our message board and leaving us your thoughts and opinions on what
we do, play and say. We like that… lots.
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