“THIS IS WHAT WAS GOING ON IN MY LIFE” GEN AND THE DEGENERATES
GEN CHATS DEBUT ALBUM, GOING TO AMERICA AND THEIR WEIRD & WILD CROWDS
Marshall Records alt-punk band Gen and The Degenerates are currently one of the most exciting emerging alternative live acts to be coming out of the North of England. Expressing their emotions about the present world through their music, they recently released their latest single, ‘Kids Wanna Dance‘ which will be featured on their debut album Anti-Fun Propaganda. On the track they said,
“it is for everyone who’s trying to build a future while they’re terrified of it. For everyone who (like me) is riddled with climate anxiety. For everyone who is just looking for the moments of joy they can hold onto amongst the chaos.”
Their debut album Anti-Fun Propaganda is out everywhere on 23rd February. It features fan-favourites such as ‘Famous‘ and ‘BIG HIT SINGLE‘. PRE-ORDER HERE
Due to join legendary punk band Flogging Molly on their extensive upcoming North American tour in a few weeks, I got to sit down and chat with Gen (she/they) before their more intimate hometown show at The Ferret in Preston.
How did the band start?
“So, the boys all kind of grew up together in the Preston area. And then I met Jake and Sean, the two guitarists, at Uni and then we just kind of started writing songs for fun in our uni halls ’cause we all lived in the city. Like, me, Jake and Sean all lived in the same uni halls and then we graduated, well, me and Sean graduated, Jake dropped out. By the end of all that, we were like ‘oh, should we actually do like a proper band?’ We had been friends for a few years at this point and so they called up Jay and Evan.”
What’s your favourite band?
“My favourite band… I don’t know. That’s so hard. I really like The B-52’s, LCD Soundsystem, Idols, Wet Leg. It’ll be one of them.”
What is your guilty pleasure song or artist?
“There’s a song from the Bratz movie soundtrack that came out ages ago and it’s like ‘I’m a rockstar, a rockstar, a pretty little problem’ and it’s just such a banger.” [The song is Rock Star by Prima J]
What’s your favourite moment of 2023?
“Hmm, that was last year. What happened last year? We got to play this show in Italy in this seaside town/city called Bari where they barely ever get live bands coming down ’cause it’s kinda out of the way. There was a thunderstorm before we went on and it was still raining and because they don’t have bands there that often they were going absolutely nuts. They probably had no fucking clue who we were but there was about 400 Italians who were just so hyped that there was a band playing and there was something to do. That was really fun.”
What’s your favourite song to perform live?
“I really like doing Post-Cool, which is a song where we all put sunglasses on because it’s funny. It’s a fun little moment.”
What’s your least favourite song to perform live?
“Any where I have to sing properly [Gen laughs]. No, actually some of those are really fun but I’ve gotten so used to predominantly doing the talk-y ones that when I actually have to sing I’m like, ‘urgh, effort’ [Gen laughs].
Describe your new album in one word.
“Silly.”
What inspired the album?
“I think it’s just a bit of what was happening at the time as so often albums are. Especially first albums. It’s just kind of ‘this is what was going on in my life’.
I noticed that one of the songs on the album has Uninvited collaborating. How did that collaboration come about?
“The whole song ‘Girls’ was inspired by a TikTok and I tweeted the phrase ‘I love it when girls’ which is the chorus hook and they commented underneath saying ‘same’. I told them we’ve actually written a song and if they wanna hear it? So, we sent them the demo and they said they loved it. I asked them if they wanted to be on it and they were like yeah!!”
What’s your favourite song from the album?
“I think my favourite song is Jude’s Song, which is the song about my auntie who passed away. It did a lot for me in terms of emotional processing so I think it will always be an important song for me.”
What are you looking forward to this year?
“Well, we’re going to America so that’s going to be really fun and weird and that will be crazy. I can’t wait to see what their service stations are like. We’ve done a lot of UK service stations so I’ll be interested to see what the US has to offer in that department.”
It’ll be a nice change because most of them round here have the same things.
“Greggs. Yeah. There’s been arguments on tour because of some people not wanting to stop at the Gregg’s and some people wanting to stop at the Gregg’s services. It’s a point of contention.”
What is the weirdest thing that’s happened on tour?
“I feel like weird shit happens all the time on tour to the point that you kind of stop labelling it as weird. I don’t know, just general chaos at all times. Do you know what was weird, Southampton. It was very, very quiet when we played in Southampton. For the whole line-up we played with Spyres and they were all just really non responsive for the whole show. It was strange and to be honest, I probably made it worse. I started trying to wind them up and I think it just made them more scared and not good. Apparently, one of the venue staff literally heard someone say ‘she’s really scary’. [Gen laughs] So, yeah, I guess that was weird, like, what’s going on with Southampton? Are they okay? Should we check on them?
I’ve actually thought of something. So, this wasn’t on tour but it was for a festival we played in the Netherlands and we just had the worst journey there and it involved a lot. There was traffic on the way to the airport, I left my passport on the plane so I had to go back around which took about 2 hours, the train to get to where we were going to was cancelled because there had been multiple suicides on the tracks. We got to Groningen late, which is where we’re going to and by then we couldn’t get a taxi for around an hour. We finally got a taxi and we were on our way to the Airbnb which was out of the way and the taxi took a wrong turn and then when it was trying to turn around, it got stuck in the mud and buried itself in the mud. We all got out and we had to try and push but we couldn’t get it out. In the end we had to just leave our taxi driver and walk for half an hour at around 3 in the morning through a woods in the Netherlands.”
What is the wildest crowd that you’ve ever had?
“Probably those Italians in Bari who don’t know who we were. They were the wildest crowd I’ve ever had just because they were just so excited. They were crowd surfing, they were going absolutely nuts. I’m sure 2 weeks before they’d never heard of us.”
The last question is, if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it on the radio, does it make a sound?
“Yes, it does. I am deciding now that it does. [Gen laughs]”
Pre-order Anti-Fun Propaganda HERE
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