The Punk Archive: Introduce yourself for us?
Ben: Hi, I'm Ben from The First. Not the singing Ben, the guitar Ben. Singing Ben is otherwise engaged.
The Punk Archive: Doing what?
Ben: I'm not entirely sure. No-one ever knows where he goes.
The Punk Archive: Does he disappear a lot, then?!
Ben: He is an absolute moon man.
The Punk Archive: (Pointing at the bottle of red wine) So I see you're drinking wine…
Ben: Yeah, I brought it from home because it's cheaper than buying it from here.
The Punk Archive: Is it your drink of choice, then?Ben: I have to have a bottle of red wine before I play.
The Punk Archive: Is that true?
Ben: Yep, otherwise I don’t remember any of the chords. It's like my memory juice.
The Punk Archive: Are you excited to be playing today?
Ben: I am so excited. We've got loads of friends here, and it's good to have a catch up. We hardly ever come this far down the country, it's good.
The Punk Archive: You're from Cambridgeshire way, aren't you? The scene up there's doing really well at the moment, with Lonely The Brave, Mallory Knox, Deaf Havana…
Ben: All our local friends have made it big! We really love it there, it's a brilliant scene.
The Punk Archive: How would you describe your sound?
Ben: Ah, this is the question I can never answer. See, I always used to say we're like a cross between Lostprophets and Bon Jovi, but I don't like to say that anymore because of current affairs. We're sort of like… well, imagine Taking Back Sunday, but all of the things which make them Taking Back Sunday, take them away… put a bit of Bon Jovi in there still, and we play… generic party rock, there you go, generic party rock.
The Punk Archive: But with a bit of melody and a bit of harmony in there as well…?
Ben: Oh, there's some harmonies, there's some melodies, there's some guitar solos, there's some drums…
The Punk Archive: Some singing…
Ben: Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff!
The Punk Archive: You've just released your second album: how's that gone down?
Ben: We did a supporting tour of it, it was good, really good. We're actually writing now for the third. There's no plan in place of releasing that in the near future, we're just getting prepared. Reaction to the album has gone down really well, really well. We've had a lot of good things, like Single of the Week on iTunes and things like that; the video's been received well on YouTube, Facebook, Vevo and things like that.
The Punk Archive: So tell us a bit about your live show? What can we expect today?
Ben: Imagine a really small stage, filled with lots of big sweaty men that have no room and always bump into each other, and always fighting for the limelight… Our live show is just a big competition.
The Punk Archive: Who usually wins that competition?
Ben: Erm……..me. I get my foot on the monitor, and I won't be moved.
The Punk Archive: So who are you most looking forward to seeing today?
Ben: Heaven's Basement. We nearly went on tour with them, but had to make a personal decision not to, because of other commitments, which really upset us all. We would have loved to have done that, but yeah, really really looking forward to seeing them.
The Punk Archive: So other than writing, what are you going to be doing for the rest of the year?
Ben: We've just announced we’re going to be supporting Lostalone and Verses on their tour coming up in April, we've got Y Not Festival, and quite a bit of stuff coming up in Europe as well actually, with Jamrock Festival in the Czech Republic and a tour round there. Everything's still being booked at the minute but it's looking promising.
The Punk Archive: So do you find you prefer playing festivals or gigs?
Ben: Festivals. It's all about the festivals. You play your set, you see every band that you love, you walk around meeting amazing people, get really really drunk, and have the best party of your life.
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