At a thursday evening in september three well dressed guys from Denmark, aka The Movement, play in Holland. Heavely influenced by early The Jam they blow a refreshing wind over the punk scene. The evening was the kick-off for a three-week tour through Europe to promote their last album 'Revolutionary Sympathies'. Although their drummer joined the band only six weeks before and the singer had the flu they played tight as hell. During almost one hour the band treated the audiance with hard mod or aggropop mixed with soul, punk and working class lyrics. After the gig i met Lukas Scherfig (guitar/vocals), a not so talkative, but friendly person... We talked about playing in a band, subcultures and politics.
September 2005 -
Author: Paul Benschop - band website
First published: Smashed Images issue 3 - november 2005
To start with a few boring questions... The usual one, can you shortly describe the band's history?
We are around since 2000. I started the band. In the beginning we had another drummer (Stefan Andersen, ed), but he got sick and collapsed on stage. Now we have a new drummer, Sir, he's completely new. I started the band because i wanted to make a band like this, that was inspired by The Jam and that kind of stuff, but also by soul.
You were in another band before (The Roosters), what's the difference between them? Is it only musically or also lyric-wise?
I've been in some other bands before, mostly rock'n'roll. I lived in London for one year where i played in some bands as well. Then i decided i want to make my own band where i could write the lyrics, and be the singer and play guitar.
You have a new drummer, what is his past and in which bands did he played before?
I didn't know him before, so i don't exactly know. He's been in the USA for five years at a drum school. But he couldn't get a work permission. So he had to get out of the country, and he came back... He did that a few times 'till he decided he want to go back home again, to Copenhagen. When we needed a drummer, he saw that, he phoned us and now he is in the band. He is with us for only one and a half month yet. We just went on tour with The Slackers and now we have our own tour. We get back home at the end of october. We have some weekend shows planned and then we'll write some new stuff and rehearse with our new drummer. I think we'll record a few demo's for a new album.
That's pretty fast...
There're two years in between the first and the second album. Those two albums created lots of groundwork for us, especially in Germany. We play a lot there and lots of people show up. I think it will be good if the next album will be released one year after our second album.
Your last album, Revolutionairy Sympathies, is less punk orientated, a bit slower and you also kicked out the ska influences. Does this influence your audience?
I think so. Especially in Germany. All the punks still come to the shows, but i can see there're more 'normal' people coming to our shows. That's good, because we don't want to be a subcultural band. We still want to be a political band, but we want to bring the political stuff into a more mainstream audience. Otherwise it's just preaching for the converted, which is still a good party of course. I think it will be better to be more mainstream, without losing our roots. With mainstream i don't mean more commercial, but reaching a wider audience with our politics. That's also why we don't identify ourself as being a punkband. We want to grow bigger than just the punk scene. Playing both in squats and clubs, we like to mix things.
The last album is also half political and half love songs. I like to mix that. We are a political band, but not only a political band. Sometimes political bands can't sing about love. Sometimes bands who only do love songs can't sing about society, while i see it as one thing. You can have a close releationship with your girlfriend or whoever, but there's a society around it. Both things are very important to our lives so it should be mixed.
I read a few reviews of your last album in non-political magazines. They wrote "The Movement are a radical left-wing band, but not in a preaching way". Is that why your last album has exactly the same amount of both political and love songs?
That's only on our last album. The political songs are for the 'love' people and the love songs are for the political people. We want to motivate political people to listen more to love songs. We also want to change their environment. There're normal people with a normal job, who are anti-facist, but who can't identify theirselves with the antifascist movement. Simply because it's too punk and everyone wears black clothes. So they don't go to the demonstrations, even though they are anti-fascist. Our goal is to make the anti-fascist movement more open to everybody. Otherwise the political movement is just a subculture and then it doesn't make any sense.
Ofcourse we're not preaching. We aren't a movement. That's why we say we support everybody who's on the left. Even people i personally don't sympathyse with. We play for anarchists, socialists and communists. In these times we can't just support one strong party. If there're some anarchists in Germany who do something against racism, then we come to support them. If there're communists who do something political or whatever, then we come to play there. The problem on the left-wing is there're so many fractions: if you don't agree with a party, you make another party... That's a stupid thing of the left. It makes so many fractions and we don't want to be part of that game. Ofcourse we have our own political ideas, but i can also support somebody i don't completely agree with. If they can reach more people that's ok, and hopefully in the end it all comes together.
For your last album you made a video for the song 'A Little Less Rain'. Did you get any airplay yet?
Yeah. I think about eight or nine TV-stations are playing it. They are just small stations, like Viva, which is some small station in Germany. Also the music channel plays it once in a while. But it's very low-budget. I'd like to make a video with a bigger budget, because there're lots of stations who don't want to airplay our video because it's so low-budget. There's also a video on the Revolutionairy Sympathies album. If you put the CD in your computer there's an old video of the song 'Losing You'.
