RS: Listening to the CD, I can imagine how hard it would be to
clear everything that was on there.
Sonny J: It was a freaking nightmare. It was a cut and paste made as
a bit of fun for my mates, to be honest. It was like here you are,
check this tune out. All of a sudden my tunes are over the radio in
bloody England every few minutes and I didn't know it was going to go
that far. So everyone's on my case going like what's this, what's
that? I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I was trying to like just have a
laugh. I didn't really want to offend anybody – these were basically
all those records that no one really cared about in some bargain
basement shop. I was trying to give them some love and attention,
like they can grow again and recycle the planet in a musical sense.
It just sounds really hippy and groovy but the managers don't see it
that way. The managers grab you by the balls and say screw you, I
want money. So I'm like OK. Have my money, I made a good album.
RS: Well what inspired the Tango track?
Sonny J: That was quite funny, that one. It was a record by this
French guy, Paul Merigié, a ten inch record, not a twelve inch. I was
in Spain and I thought wow that looks cool, ten inch, take that home.
It was OK, was a big jiggle-eee-eee-ohh. Alright, I said Latino, I
fancy a bit of Latino, so I kept the cow bells up. I thought, I'll
have the instrumental of it all but I've got to get a vocal. I
remember down at my local charity shop seeing this Shirley Bassey
record. I didn't know what vocals would fit but I could hear Bassey
on the record. So I went down the record shop and went through over
300 records in three piles and couldn't find it. Honestly, this
sounds like an exaggeration and it's not at all – the last record of
the three piles was the Shirley Bassey one. I took it home, went
through it and after all that I went through it and found a tune
called "Please Mr Jones" from 1957. At one point it went 'doing the
tango right now', and there was also a bit that went 'I'm on the
dance, there's a time and a place for It was a little bit weird and
it didn't really match up but I just cut it in. I saved that 'doing
the tango right now' because the rest of it didn't really fit, so I
made a whole song out of it.
RS: When you're doing your editing and cutting up, what computer
software and programs do you use?
Sonny J: I use ProTools and sometimes do it in Logic. To be honest
I'm a bit slack, I do some really bad sampling with Dictaphones and I
have to get a friend to come and help me because I'm a bit of an
invalid when it comes to a lot of it. This might come as shock to a
lot of people but I'm really bad at sitting in front of the computer
and making it all happen. My tip is basically music and hearing and
idea and doing it really badly on a sampler. I cannot finish a record
myself on my own and I have to get like really talented people in and
say take that bit there, don't repeat it, just cut it, get funky. So
that's what I'm good at, knowing musically what the song should sound
like but I'm not particularly technical at kind of making it, sitting
there with a mouse on a laptop. I just sit behind them ordering
people around basically.
RS: Do you have a page on your website where you list each song
and every sample that's in it?
Sonny J: I think you can probably find it on the album. At one point
when I had my MySpace first put up, I was going to list under
influences, all the people that I'd sampled. Then I thought I can't
be typing it all out so I just put zzz-zzz-zzz-zzz.
RS: What would you like to say to all of your fans out there?
Sonny J: My fans? I don't know if I've even got any fans. I don't
really think in that kind of way, sending messages to people. I'm
really thankful if anyone likes my music, so thank you. I'm just like
a lad who sits there making music and it's a bit mad, when its being
spun in to the limelight, it's all a bit mental. Especially in
England, it's all kicking off and I'm like hello? I don't know what's
going on in America but in England it seems there's lots of indie
generic bands that sound the same. I'm not saying that's wrong or
anything, but at least I'm trying to do something that's a little bit
different from what's going on these days. I'm glad that people are
open-minded enough to listen to that, so that's cool.
Posted September 15, 2008
