Go! Team's Ian Parton: The New Gay Interview

Ian Parton (3rd from left) leads The Go! Team to the 9:30 club tonight. (Photo by Jaime Beeden)

It's hard to think of The Go! Team, the Brighton-based sextet playing the 9:30 club tonight, as having a leader. Their music is such a cacophony of horns, drums, samples and cheerleader vocals that it seems to have been born whole from the tie-dyed fires of Mordor, not the mind of a single individual.

So that’s why I had so much trouble thinking of questions for Go! Team founder Ian Parton. Based on his music, I figured that the process would be more akin to interviewing an epileptic seizure than an actual person. Ian was remarkably focused on the phone, but just enough of a dick for me to really want to be his friend. Think high school.

I couldn't exactly ask if lyrics like "We're here to rock the microphone" were based on personal experience, so I thought that instead I'd just focus on the music. Go! Team has the seemingly paradoxical ability to make you hum along to songs with very few discernable lyrics. After a couple listenings of "Doing It Right," you'll find yourself walking down the street singing "You got a mouth..dum dum dum dum…uhh…burger king?" And then you'll sing it again.

The sheer force of the Go! Team sound makes it hard to listen to them too much at home, but it's that same aural blast that gives its live shows their hallowed reputation. Tonight's performance will be my first live Go! Team experience and I hope a lot of our new gay readers will be there to share it with me.

The Go! Team will be playing tonight at the 9:30 club. Doors open at 10. As of publication, there are still tickets available.



The New Gay Zack: Here's the first thing I need to know: do you guys party as hard as your music does?

IP: [laughing.] We do. To be honest, there's a couple of non-drinkers in the band, so some of us do, some of us don't. You can't really speak about the band as a band, its six individuals. That's what I think makes us more interesting, we're not exactly frat boys on tour.

TNG: But you've toured through DC before. What did you think of it?

IP: We played the Black Cat about two years ago. It was brilliant. The one thing I remember about that gig is that there was a really mixed audience. There were lots of black and white folks there, which is unusual for our UK concerts.

TNG: What kind of crowd do you usually get at your shows?

IP: I can't tell you who the The Go! Team's fans are. We get school kids, forty-year-old ex-punks, hipsters, office girls. Every night is different.

TNG: Is there a big difference between your British audiences and American ones?

IP: We're kind of lucky, it seems we always get good people. I think maybe the Americans are more whoopy, like "whooooo," but UK audiences can be lunatics. Glasgow and Ireland have always been the most agro crowds for us, in a good way. In [cities like] New York and London, the bigger the city the more starchy they are. We played New York last night and crowds were properly warmed up, it didn't feel like New York.


TNG: Then does the success of your show depend on the audience's reaction to you?

IP: It does. We measure things in energy more than other bands might. We're not super hard on tech skills and wanky guitar solos, we don't really think that skill shown is a measure of the gig. It's more about how much we thrash and how much they thrash. We'd consider a gig a failure if we didn't get people to get down. We're not a dance act but... I don't know what we are.

TNG: How close are the shows to the album?

IP: We try and play just like the album, but sometimes its impossible to do. We couldn't get Chuck D along to every gig, but like I say we play every gig like it's our last, particularly Ninja. Its almost like she's run a marathon. When she comes off, she's a wreck.

TNG: Ninja has sort of become the face of Go! Team- people tend to thing of the band and her as synonymous. Do you mind this?

IP: Not really, everyone has different roles and that's how a band should work. She brings the focal point, she ties the live show together and leads the audience, she grabs them by the bollocks. I'm more interested in ideas and originality and stuff like that, I'm not particularly interested in being the face of the band.

TNG: I'm glad you mentioned that, because Go! Team songs are so muddled and crazy that it's hard to think of a person actually creating them. How much of your character goes into your music versus just having songs that make people wanna dance and cheer?

IP: Its almost like the music is not about personal experiences, its more about favorite things that come along in your life. Its not autobiographical like a singer/songwriter might be, I think the depth of it comes from the ideas going on, and the production and the weirdness of the songs. I don't like when people call us a party band, I like to thing there's other weird, original things going on.

TNG: So a song like "Doing It Right" leaves people singing along, but they have no idea what words they're actually singing. How can you be so catchy and so unintelligible at the same time?

IP: I dunno. I do put more stress on melody and catchiness than lyrics, I'm not superbly concerned about lyrics, I like them to kick ass and not be shit, but I think songs can be a bit cringy if there's a clear narrative to them. I don't like it to literal, I like it to be a bit mysterious.

TNG: Is that why you keep the vocals mixed in so low?

IP: I don't think they are low, but everyone else does.

TNG: Do you think you could ever be headed toward more verse-chorus-verse songs like "Huddle Formation?"

IP: God knows. I'm not interested in that, each song happens as it happens. Some songs do fit in the classic pop song mold, others are a left turn.

TNG: How do you respond to criticism saying that your new album doesn't mix it up much from the old one?

IP: I don't really believe in responding to critics, I think you just do what you do and people either listen or they don't, but I was quite surprised because in the UK we're drowning in these bullshit identical indie bands. They all sound the same and look the same, four blokes with guitars, and even four years out I don't think there's any contemporaries to us. You still hear a song and know its Go! Team. I think its lazy journalism in a way, you just hear the drums and trumpets and chanting and assume it's the same, but it's all in the details for me.

TNG: So what's next for The Go! Team?

IP: Lots of touring, Japan and (South) American and France and Italy. I never try to look too far ahead, but I'm always hustling for the next song. I'm singing into my phone and pouring through the soundtrack section of second hand shops. I can't really say there'll be an album three, but I hope so.