I'll put both hands up for the first person to ask for a sceptic in the crowd. I am by nature suspicious. I think this is a by-product of all that misplaced trust gubbins that I went through in school. Oh yes. My fingers were burned, and now I am mardy and bitter and scorched to the marrow.

No longer am I taken in by a nice smile and strangely appealing sensibilities. No longer will a flutter of the eyelashes and breathy rant on hardcore post-modernism sway me from my post. I can spot a faker a mile off.

Or at least I thought I could. Before "faking" got all complicated.
You! With the legwarmers and the mullet - I know you're not hip. You! With the list of hip bands reeling off your tongue like a cash register - I know you're not cool. You! With the catchy political rock music and embracing idealism - you... I am unsure of.
Oh sorrow filled day. Doubt has entered by heart and my vocabulary simultaneously and I fear my life will be changed forever... or could be, anyway.

Cat On Form.
Champions of soap-box entertainment, or, a bunch of people using the stage to gain control on their otherwise tormented and wayward lives..? Its tricky to judge from the passenger seat.
Sometimes I suspect that it wouldn't matter if the audience were there or not - that the whole "writhing on stage, screaming 'til blue" thing is a simple and selfish act, like self harm or group therapy dressed up as something more morally enriching and entertaining.

On other occasions I've concluded that primarily, its about them, but in addition there is a message for us. The message? Well... "Be Good To Each Other" of course and uh, "Unite" in an anarchic uprising, or a Marxist meeting of minds, or a socialist tea party...

Sometimes I've thought that its entirely likely to be about all of the above. About their fucked up issues, and our fucked up issues, and about what is happening between us and them. About the absence of unity - the line between the stage and the audience, between PEOPLE, about the interaction or lack thereof - the energy - the value of that energy.

I've seen the band a whole fistfull of times now, and as much as I've peeled my lids, waiting for the slip that's gonna unravel the whole subplot, its not happened yet.
Carbon copy pop-idols are easier to place in the jigsaw of intentions than a band who talk about taking control and losing it at the same time.

With one eyebrow suspiciously arched, I wrote to Steve and asked him to speak for the band and tell me what they were REALLY about.
This is how [they] replied.


What does being on stage mean to you vs. recording? Is public interaction important and why?

being on stage is a totally different medium to making a record. there are radically different possibilities within each and it's good to explore both. i don't like the idea of trying to do on record precisely what you do live or vice versa, simply because i don't think it's totally possible and i think it limits the scope of both.

the important elements to being on stage are the temporality of it - it happens once then it's gone. so all you have is that time to convey what you want, so you have to convey it as intensely as you can. another important element is that it is a group thing. the audience is a group. with records, a lot of people listen individually. this makes a difference as well because with a live thing it's important not only to establish a relationship between band and audience but also amongst the audience. (sorry, these terms are shite because they draw a line between performer and audience which hides the fact that the two cannot exist without each other, -but they are the only terms i have). the public interaction is incredibly important because to us that is the point. music is language, communication. language doesn't exist without other people, you have to communicate TO and WITH other people. with live shows that is often physical - dancing, clapping, but also vocal. at some shows people have directly spoken to us and asked questions - we have a song about the use of womens' bodies in adverts and at one brighton show a woman said "how can you say that, you're a boy!", so we had a (limited) discussion. publi c interaction in all forms is so fucking valuable.

on a way simpler level, public interaction just makes everything more FUN. you play better and enjoy yourself more when you feel like everyone else is enjoying themselves (this seems to be a common thread in lots of social situations). again it's like a conversation, communication. when you talk to someone and they just go "uh okay" then the conversation stops pretty soon. when they react, get excited, talk back, argue, agree whatever, then things really move. you get more said, and you come away feeling more satisfied and more complete than you did before. when i come away from a good conversation i feel like i HAVE something with the person, like we have built something and understand each other better. well it's exactly like that for a gig with lots of audience interaction. everyone comes away feeling good, feeling like they have gained something, understood something. not just between us but also the people in the audience feel more at home around each other. it's also very important that people walk away with this attitude because that way they feel like they can DO SOMETHING, whatever that something may be. dunno about you but i'm always way more likely to do things i want to when i feel comfortable, confident, happy. if people can walk away from a show feeling like they CAN say "fuck you" to some dickhead male or say "NO" to a teacher, or tell their boss where to go, or anything, anything at all, - then as a group something really positive has happened at the show. and it all happens because its a 2way thing, not just us being in charge but everyone loosening up and starting to break some walls down and open possibilities.


You are very physical on stage - some people use performance as a physical and public vent for more personal frustrations... do you feel that this applies to you?
If not, do you think that physical activity is important to your performance? Why?

"i don't care if i sing out of tune all i want is liberation for this room", nation of ulysses
"it's common, but we don't talk about it", bratmobile

these are two lines that are very important to cat on form.

yes both apply to us. our physical approach is a vent and it is important to our performance. being on stage is a rare space, it's a space where you can break more rules than any other space (or at least it's like that for us). if you start dancing like that in a supermarket then bad shit happens. but on stage we can start to form our own rules, and so can the people there with us. for us, playing can be the only time where we can truly get out of our systems all the shit that we feel each day, all the frustration, all the anger, but also all the beauty and hope. all of these are restricted in a lot of daily life. you can't get too angry in public or people run a mile. you can't harp on about how beautiful something is because the same thing happens. but onstage these things become okay, it's OUR space and OUR rules. if we want to do it, we can (we don't all want to all of the time of course). again it comes back to the thing about possibilities. in live shows you can open up possibilities to do things that you're not allowed to do in any other situation, and in doing so you can raise the issue, you can make others feel like "hey, it's okay to be like this, everyone is like it". it's not just YOU there in the audience that has a world inside your head that you can't express to other people, WE feel like that too: EVERYONE feels like that. it would be pretty amazing if people could leave shows feeling that much more comfortable about expressing themselves to others, would it not?

second, physical activity is important to us as part of our art. for us we want to communicate as intensely as possible, we want to smash the walls....well putting your whole body into what you do just adds to that, it's another mode of communication on top of the words and the instruments. when we see a band that put their all into what they do, their whole bodes, we FEEL more intense. it makes you go "woah", you get excited, you loosen up. you feel like the people making the noise are really trying to say something, to reach out, they're not just standing there playing nice songs to entertain you like a tv set. of course this is related to the first point, the two kinda go together. as a vent for what we feel we want to connect with the audience, we want to convey as intensely as possible, and doing it with your body is part of this. of course this isn't the case with all bands, but i think it's crucial to OUR band as a whole.

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