LW Mag LW Magazine
Related Articles
It really is great to hear about a new Rock ‘n’ Roll band hitting the South African music scene. A band that it purely in it for the Rock ‘n’ Roll and the fun that comes along with it. EXPLOSION is that band. Wesley Davies (lead guitar), Liam Brown (vocals), Kyle Keegan (drums) and Sean Brydon (bass) started out as four mates who got together and played Rock ’n’ Roll covers over a few drinks on weekends. That has now progressed into EXPLOSION and the band has just released their first music video for their debut single Lover Boy. Watch the video here, which ROCKS, and get to know more about the band with our interview with them.
Lover Boy Music Video:
The Interview:
The band, Explosion – how, when, why?
EXPLOSION started out as a drinking club. Four mates that played instruments, got together on lazy weekends with a few cases of beer and one or two bottles of whiskey, and jammed some Rock ‘n’ Roll covers. All the Van Halen, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy and Led Zeppelin covers eventually led to original ideas and soon there was enough material to perform a gig on the 22nd of January 2011. EXPLOSION is a band that has no political agendas, or ideas. We’re not around to make a bold statement of any kind or anything of that sort. We just love Rock ‘n’ Roll and we love playing Rock ‘n’ Roll and all we want to do is have a good time!
What would you say the energy is like when you guys are together and performing?
The fact that we’re all good mates really contributes to the energy on stage. Obviously we feed of the energy of the crowd, but a large portion comes from feeding of the energy of each other. When we’re performing we’re all in the moment and just going along with each other. You can see us having a laugh with each other or something of that nature as we’re performing, because we’re all really enjoying what we’re creating on stage. As we’ve said before, we love playing Rock ‘n’ Roll and having a good time, so being able to do that with your mates is an amazing experience. You could view it as 4 energies combining to create a 5th energy.
You have just released your first music video for your debut single called Lover Boy. Tell us about the single and how it came about?
Lover Boy is basically a Rock ‘n’ Roll love song. There’s no real big story behind the song, like Smoke on the Water for example, unfortunately. As soon as we’ve finished working on a new song and we’re happy with it, we like to get straight in to the next one. Wes threw out the riff at one of the rehearsals and once the music was arranged and we’d felt the vibe of it we knew what direction we wanted to go with the lyrics. And as always the ideas were conceived amongst clouds of smoke and a few drinks.
What is the single about and what did you want to capture in the music video?
It’s about a guy that’s lusting after a girl. He wants this girl real bad. But the thing is this girl is sort of bad news. She’s like a gorgeous, high class, rich, bitchy, badass, man eater, and she doesn’t care whose heart she breaks. But the guy in the song is just rock ‘n’ roll and he accepts the challenge. One night is all he needs to show her a good time. So with the video we wanted to keep things fairly simple, and we decided that the best way was to portray the girl in the song as a sort of stripper, and as you can tell from the video, as it goes on she has less and less clothes on.
“Her moves were…sassy! The stuff that she was able to do up and down the pole was simply amazing and somewhat terrifying to the common observer.”
Who’s the model used in the video and what did you guys think of her dancing skills?
The model in the video is a lovely lass by the name of Chanel Bennie, whom we found through connections with Nouveau Dance Studio. Her moves were…sassy! The stuff that she was able to do up and down the pole was simply amazing and somewhat terrifying to the common observer. We took some turns on the pole and nearly had to take a trip to the emergency room. What was even more amazing was that she was able to make it look sexy at the same time.
Did anyone make a move on her?
No. Our manager strictly forbade it!
When can we expect to hear more singles from Explosion?
Although we’ve just released the music video for “Lover Boy” now, we’ve also got our second single “Make You Mine” doing the rounds on the campus and internet radio stations around the country. We’d like to get another video done for that one pretty soon too. After all that, we’ll probably only release another track once we’ve completed a full album.
Have you guys got any gigs lined up?
In the coming month or so we have a couple shows around KZN. The 28th June sees us heading further down the South Coast for a gig at the Rock Bottom Music Bistro. The following day we’re back in our hometown of Amanzimtoti to perform at the 2013 King of the Ramps Skate Fest. After that we’re performing with the Ard Matthews Affair at Cool Runnings on the 2nd of July and in the same week we take a trip a little way up the North Coast to perform at Beach Bums on the 4th. There’s a bit of a break before we hit up Live The Venue on the 19th of July. In addition there’s a tour to Cape Town being planned, which will include shows in Bloemfontein and Stellenbosch as well.
What’s next for Explosion?
Now that we’ve finally got our first music video out the way, we want to focus on touring more. As mentioned before, there’s a tour to Cape Town coming soon and following that we’ll most likely be back up in Gauteng again. We just want to tour as much as we can. Being on the road is a helluva-good time and of course we get to take our music to new audiences, so it’s a win win. Once we’ve had enough touring and hopefully gotten ourselves a bit more of a name across the country, then we’d like to take some time to work on an album.
