Ask Kazooee Part 3

What were your initial influences when you first started and how have they carried through to your current style of music?

JQ: My influences started with a lot of alternative bands like greenday, nirvana, silverchair and The offspring but then I discovered garbage and the whole riot girl scene containing the likes of Sleater Kinney and L7. My style of writing and playing is identifiably inclined to 90’s grunge but my influences expand as I find new music, people like the Dresden dolls, the gossip and Tegan and Sara.

Ben: I learnt to play Therapy's “Troublegum” almost in it's entirety. I think that album, along with Hole's “Live Thru This” and Green Day's “Dookie”, epitomizes the early/mid-90s rock sound that was a huge influence on me both musically and personally

Andy: Early influence was bands like nirvana, soundgarden and hole. I got wrapped up in the whole grunge scene. It was a way of life. You were only allowed to like one type of music! It’s like from then to now I've gone full circle. I’ve been into all types of music in between but I’ve ended up playing drums in a grunge band! Grunge is back!

What kind of thing frustrates you as a musician?

Ben: Other musicians!

Andy: the same things that would frustrate me if I wasn’t a musician, everything! (I’m a grumpy old goat!)

JQ: The idea that music is a route to fame and not a form of expression.

What are your top-five favorite books???

Andy: In no particular order, Michael Marshall Smith, spares. Banksy, Bruce parry, tribe. Chuck Palahniuk, fight club. John King, England away.

JQ: 1)The trick is to keep breathing by Janice Galloway, 2) The doctor and the soul by Viktor Frankl 3) And I don’t want to live this life by Deborah Spungeon 4)The heart is deceitful above all things by JT Leroy 5) Any music biography, ever.

Ben: To tell you the truth I find many books to be too bloated and I often don't finish them. Martin Millar tells a really good story and his books have many characters I'd actually like to meet. I'd recommend Good Fairies of New York or Dream of Sex and Stage Diving as a starting point.