20 Questions with… XX Teens

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Momentum is gathering. Our 20 Questions are once again the talk of the land. This week we got the cheaky XX Teens to answer those questions, frontmen Richard Cash and Anthony Silvester giving us the most insightful answer to our Stoat / Goat question yet…

1. Describe your sound in 3 words.
Richard: Modern
Anthony: Pop
Richard: Music

2. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
Richard: Michael Jackson, BAD on tape, I can’t remember where from.
Anthony: George Harrison, ‘Got My Mind Set On You’ on 7” from ASDA

3. What’s the best cure for a hangover?
Richard: Digging
Anthony: Riding

4. What’s on your rider?
Richard: A butterfly, a pair of sunglasses and a harmonica
Anthony: An atlas of Britain, an oil painting, selection of cheeses.

5. How do you get ready for a live show?
Anthony: Extremely violent stretching
Richard: I’m always ready

6. What’s your favourite song to play live?
Richard: Round
Anthony: Only You

7. What’s your guilty pleasure?
Anthony: William Morrow
Richard: Jorgen Raa

8. Who would win in a fight, a stoat or a goat and why?
Richard: A goat. What’s the difference between a stoat and a weasel?
Anthony: A weasel is weasely recognised and a stoat is stoatily different

9. Who’s your favourite new band at the moment? Tell us a bit about them.
Anthony: I rather like The Irrepressibles. They’re just a very very talented bunch.
Richard: I quite like John and Jehn, they’re a French couple from France, their album’s good but if you see them live you sort of fall in love with them, they’re beguiling.

10. Who would play you in a film based upon your life?
Anthony: We can’t say
Richard: Until it’s confirmed

11. Dead or alive, what 5 acts would you have play with you at a festival?
Richard: If I was dead, Howlin’ Wolf, Leigh Bowery, Edith Piaf, Paul Robeson and the Ziegfeld dancers. If I was alive, Harry Belafonte, Cat Stevens, Kraftwerk, Bjork and Smokey Robinson.
Anthony: If I was dead, Captain Beefheart, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, Run DMC, Ian Dury & The Blockheads. If I was alive Talking Heads, Parliament, Bruce Springsteen, Public Enemy, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

12. If push comes to shove, what is your all-time favourite album?
Anthony: Frank Zappa -We’re only in it for the money
Richard: Dr John -Babylon

13. What’s your most memorable on the road story?
Richard: We once got all our stuff stolen in Sheffield…
Anthony: Then we met Alan.

14. If your life flashed before your eyes, what would be the highlights?
Richard: All the bits I can’t remember now.

15. What’s the best piece of advice someone has ever given you and did you take notice?
Richard: Just be yourself.
Anthony: No.

16. If you had to leave a body part to science, what would it be?
Richard: I want to leave all my body to science, before I die, so I can get transferred into an acrobat.

17. What’s the best book you’ve read and film you’ve seen in the last 6 months?
Richard: Enid Starkie’s biography of Arthur Rimbaud, I haven’t finished it yet, but I know what’s going to happen. He was a bit like Peter Doherty when he was younger, but everything he did was to get better words. He believed in this idea that no one really owns thoughts or ideas, you just conduct them, so he’d get out of his mind all the time to break down the normal restraints and receive ‘the voices’. Then he gave it all up to become a pirate and a gun runner. I went to see Brian De Palma’s film about Iraq, Redacted, a friend told me to go and see it, he said it was like being punched in the stomach, it was.

18. What three things could you not live without?
Anthony: Love
Richard: Bread
Anthony: Sunshine

19. Tell us a fact about yourself we probably don’t already know.
Richard: I’ve got two false eyes
Anthony: I’m 68th in line to the throne

20. And finally, we’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
Anthony: We’ll do better than that, we’ll give you a 10 track mix tape called ‘Welcome To Goon Island’
Richard: And we’ll give it to you on the 28th July.

The debut album by XX Teens Welcome To Goon Island is out 28th July on Mute Records.

Links
XX Teens [official site] [myspace]