WELSH band Feeder are about half way through their campaign for the band’s eighth album, Generation Freakshow. Feeder’s mainman Grant Nicholas talked to Limerick Post about the new single, playing the festival circuit and the two massive hits that nearly never happened for the band. Idaho is the new single from Generation Freakshow. Grant explains, “the video is gonna be a bit different, we are going to use an actor in it. its not an obvious performance video, we have done so many of those over the years we wanted to do something a bit different.”
Among Feeder’s best known anthems are ‘Just A Day’ and ‘Buck Rogers’ both hit singles that may never have happened for the band. The punk/pop cracker ‘Just A Day’ is perhaps best remembered in this country as the theme music used for Ireland’s highlights package for the 2002 World Cup, which was rescreened many times on RTE.
“It was a forgotten about song, that came about to be one of our most popular tracks”, says Grant. “I wrote that song at the end of making the second album, Echo Park. The A&R at the label really loved the track. We thought it was one of those singles we would put out just in America, It ended up on the b-side of Seven Days in The Sun.
What made it become a single is that it ended up on the Gran Turismo game. It was the lead track and that was such a massive game we decided to release it as a single. We made a video using fans performing it in a You’ve Been Framed style. The video was as much of a hit as the song.
‘Buck Rogers’ charted at number five in 2002, becoming the band’s first top 10 entry in the singles chart. Grant wrote ‘Buck Rogers’ for another band named “Radio Star”, only for producer Gil Norton and A&R staff of Echo to convince the band they they could have a hit with it themselves, after hearing a demo recorded by Feeder themselves. The song featured in Kerrang! Magazine’s ‘666 Songs You Must Own’ in 2004.
Feeder are set to headline Indiependence 2012 in Mitchlestown this weekend. The band are festival veterans. Grant reflects, “Well festivals can go either way. The good thing is when they work, when they connect, it is great when you are playing to people who haven’t heard the band before live. I’ve seen a lot of bands at festivals that I would have missed before and after seeing them live went on to buy their records.
The band will be doing a “festival set” and won’t be just playing the new record. “That wouldn’t work in a festival environment”, Grant concludes. Expect the Indie 2012 crowd to give Feeder a warm welcome this Saturday August 4 when the band play all the hits at Indiependance 2012.
Taka Hirose and Grant Nicholas of Feeder.
