The Twang - A Guide|The end of 2006 saw one of those moments in the UK music scene. Unheard of until October of the year, by December, a five piece band called The Twang were the subject of discussion in the pages of the NME, the message boards of a hundred band sites, the A & R departments of pretty much every record label of size in the UK whilst their demos were being played on BBC Radio One in the middle of the day. After some very nice free dinners and compiling an address book filled with the names of the movers and shakers in British music, The Twang signed with B-Unique in December of 2006 and began to record tracks for their debut album. “He’s got the attitude of Liam Gallagher and the charm of Tom Meighan. Now Phil Etheridge and his band The Twang, are all set to be one of 2007’s rising stars” THE SUN When Phil Etheridge and Jon Watkin were growing up in Quinton, Birmingham they fell in love with music from an early age. As dance music swept the UK in their early teens the pair turned away from guitars until a band with a similar background to theirs, routed in community, passionate about football, in love with the idea of rock ‘n’ roll and removed from the ‘high art’ of a London centric music scene came along. When the pair heard Oasis for the first time, the idea of forming their own band took hold. Saunders was drafted into this dream via friends as the idea started to take shape, followed by Matty Clinton, a great drummer and a great potential rock’n’roll star. Things still didn’t really make sense until Stu Hartland, a man with a unique ability to make one guitar sound like many, came into the fold two or so years ago. Thus were The Twang born in 2004 and this new five piece band, with two vocalists, set about gigging in their local area. With literally fuck all else to focus on, no other options of making a living available, The Twang managed to mix a fierce dedication to each other and their band with a tendency to squeeze as much fun out of every show as possible. “If there’s one name to remember from all those January new band lists, make sure it’s The Twang: five baggy loving hooligans from Birmingham who’ve got the swaggering terrace anthems, 24 hour party poetry and the Gallaghers godly melodic touch down pat” UNCUT From that initial burst of music industry madness the rollercoaster ride continued into 2007. Whilst the band were laying down tracks for their debut album with long term producer Gavin Monaghan in a studio on an industrial estate in Wolverhampton, the media were proclaiming them one of the bands for 2007, the cover of The Sun’s entertainment section blending neatly into the pages in Q and NME and the tunes still in demo form coming out of Radio One. Debut single, ‘Wide Awake’ punctured the charts and follow up ‘Either Way’ not only crashed the Top Ten but became an almost instant classic, the pay off line being heard as increasing numbers of fans poured out of sold out shows and the band kept themselves on the road and in the public eye. By the release of a Top 3 charting debut in the form of ‘Love It When I Feel Like This’ The Twang were one of the best known bands in Britain from a standing start in a little over six months. Such exposure in the UK always leads to a backlash and the five lads were no more immune than anyone before or since. Some critics suggested thuggery on the part of the band, failing or deciding to ignore the lyrical content of the likes of ‘Either Way’, ‘Two Lovers’, ‘Got Me Sussed’ and a host more or the behavior and words of the men themselves. Some critics saw the hand of evil corporations manipulating the consumer, ignoring the band’s five year struggle to even get noticed by a label and others saw the band’s growing popularity and the ordinary people who came to their shows as a sign that this was not ‘art’. Not that The Twang ever said it was though it fit neatly into a UK music heritage that includes The Who, The Jam and The Stone Roses to name but three. All through this the band kept growing. Shows across the summer at first a rain sodden Glastonbury 2007 and then full to busting second stages at Reading and Leeds showed where the public stood and the gold disc for that debut album that had been the dream of Jon and Phil as children was on their wall before 2007, the year that changed everything, had closed. The Twang are currently in the studio recording tracks for their second album. They come out to play for V Festival in August with no doubt that the field will be full, ‘Wide Awake’ will bring the house down and, who knows, we may get a sneaky preview of what’s next from a band that sum up everything that matters about the concept of working class British bands. |
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