1) FIRST AND FOREMOST, THEIR MUSIC IS SO RAD AND THEY PUT ON THE MOST GENUINELY FUN SHOWS IN THE MOST ORDINARY WAYS!
 

Their music naively churns up everything you love in rock and roll and out sploshes Minneapolis' Tapes 'n Tapes lo-fi basics: tiny bit of punk-funk, a little Doors-y, some people say they're like Pavement meets Pixies. But the truth is whatever names you'd like to throw in, they are still hard to be pigeonholed.

They were the only non-headliners at this year's Great Escape in Brighton that the crowd went wild demanding an encore, "Yeah, it was funny," Josh Grier, the moustached singer/guitarist recaps with excitement. "We didn’t expect to be done so quickly, we had to play extra songs and the guy came onstage and he was like, 'You guys have 15 more minutes, you’re gonna need to play another song really.'" What makes them so good is their honesty and the friendly vibe that doesn't outcool their audience, "We’re pretty normal guys I think, without a doubt of ruining any mysteries, sadly," he laughs, "I think the principle in general is to do with what you have, get by with what you have and then try to make things as interesting as possible for us and then hopefully for the other people." Careful, this is just the beginning of their first ever overseas tour!

 


2) BEFORE THE BAND, IT WAS JUST THIS WEBSITE/BLOG THING CALLED WWW.TAPESNTAPES.COM.
 

Quite literally, it was Josh and his college friend Steve having late night impromptu sessions recording tapes and tapes and tapes of songs that unfortunately never made any recordings available right now. The idea of 'tapes and tapes' though stuck and got turned into a web domain. Later on when Josh finally gathered 3 members altogether, to save on buying another web address for the band, he stuck the band to the website. The title also dubbed as members' monikers: "Tapes", "'N" and "Tapes" were also their monikers. Cute and confusing, not many bands will have this kind of story to tell, eh?

 
 

3) WHICH MAKES THEM THE EPITOME OF TRUE DIY-ERS AT HEART.
 

There is a real DIY attitude within the band, through their sound and even in the air around them. They are very big on blogs and obviously Josh designed the website himself as he recounts, "Until a month ago we didn’t have a label or anything like that so we were doing everything on our own, it was kind of out of necessity. We want to hopefully have people hear our music, and we were doing it on the cheap too. We didn’t have a lot of money so we just had to do what we could.  I think some bands try to hold out like a big deal or something but for us it’s more important to let the people, let anybody who was able to hear the music in order to be able to go out and basically to play music. Doing it ourselves is the best way to do that and make sure it happens."

 


4) UNLIKE MOST BANDS, TNT AREN'T HYPED THROUGH PRESS.
 

Similarly to Arctic Monkeys who won fans over way way before the 'Domino' effect kicked in through MySpace (and with some help from their parents), TNT had the blogs. "How all this happened so quickly I have no idea. It just took on a life of its own more than anything.  I mean there’s something where Keri our manager sent out MP3’s to a few blogs and within a few days things started snowballing. It’s happened more quickly than any of us would have ever anticipated."
Josh continues positively, "I think things are so weird right now. It’s very democratic, because of blogs and MySpace and all that stuff, everybody is able to view bands really quickly and support them relatively quickly if they like them which is cool and it’s definitely helped us out. They get to make up their own mind if they like it or not, go look for it instead of waiting for someone to shove it in their face."

And before you know it, there's already that fantastic debut album The Loon turning up right before your eyes - no need to bore yourself to death with those 8 singles before (the slight chance of) finding out the album's really not that great either like how most bands go about these days. This is how it's really supposed to be done.

 

 
5) THEY HAVE TRIED AND TESTED VARIOUS DIFFERENT LINE-UPS TO FOLLOW THEIR DESTINY.
 

"I’m pretty excited right now," Josh enthuses. Just for the record, right now, his 3 other bandmates are: Matt Kretzmann (keyboard/tamberine/backing-vocals), Erik Appelwick (bass/backing-vocals) and the rather young Jeremy Hanson on drums. "I think this is the best line-up that we’ve had, for sure. When somebody moves on you can always make an improvement, I think we always have. It’s interesting because there are some bands who’re always like, 'These are the 4 people in the band and if it’s not these 4 people it won’t be the same.' For us it’s kind of always been like people have come and gone. Everybody has to make their own life decisions. These guys can decide for themselves but we’re not going to have like 50 members," he jokes. "It's not going to be like Broken Social Scene or anything like that," adds Matt, "I think this line-up is pretty much the line-up." Yippee!

 


6) THEY ARE ALSO VERY OPEN TO EMBRACE THE ARRIVALS (AND DEPARTURES) OF NON-HUMAN MEMBERS LIKE SONY 200XV (SEE 7, BELOW), BRUNO AND MUFFIN.
 

"You wanna know about the tales?" Matt asks when SUPERSWEET tries their best to dig up some past relationships Heat-style with the tour vans. "Bruno was purchased in Southern Minnesota for 500 bucks..."
"And a spaghetti dinner," reminds Josh.
"Cash and a spaghetti dinner," Matt nods, "And it lasted about as long as, or longer than it should have but it was a piece of crap and then it died on the way back from our East Coast tour in January in cold Indiana, really far away from everything and we got it towed and made it back home and then it was time to…" He pauses and sighs, "We left Bruno for dead in Indiana actually then Muffin came along and it’s much cushier. It’s not fancy by any means but at least it’s not going to break down."
"That's because it wasn’t built in the 80s!" Josh chuckles, "So we’re happy to have Muffin be a part of our lives now." When prompted to spill the beans on who's prettier, all quickly yell, "Muffin! It’s Muffin!"
"Muffin is the prettiest van in the world." And that's their bottom line!

 
 

7) THE OTHER NON-HUMAN EX-DRUMMER, SONY 200XV, WAS A GENIUS.
 

In the recently discovered journal of Sony 200XV - the CD Walkman that played their drum tracks during the absence of replacement drummer - record shows how the fall out began:
January 16, 2003:
I swear that’s it, no more of this bullshit. I barely even have a role in this band anymore. Tapes, ‘N, and Tapes refuse to speak to me. They just shove shit in me and press play.
Well, what the fuck? Don’t they want to hear my ideas? Like, listen to this shit: 01010101010101010101001010101010101010100101010100101010101001010
Or this:
11010110010010101111111111’11111010101010010101010101010101010001010101011010100
1101101010101010010101010101001010101010101010101011010101010011
I’m gonna take this stuff on my own; a solo album, something to free me from the shackles of being in Tapes ‘N Tapes. Except that I can’t move.
How many CD Walkmen can write hits like him these days? Perhaps none.


 

8) THEIR HOT DEBUT ALBUM THE LOON  ISN'T A REFERENCE TO THEMSELVES, (GASP!)
 

No, no. But funnily enough the loon happens to be the state bird of Minnesota where they come from, but it's not that either. "It was intended to be the deli [called The Loon] right around the corner and it’s also like somebody who’s a little loony." Josh continues, "[The album] was definitely a collection of songs that we had at the time being more than anything, though there was definitely an effort with the song placement to have it be more like an album. The songs being put in order to be on side A and side B on the vinyls was the original idea so we were very happy that all that worked out."

 


9) YOU'RE PROMISED A LOT OF FUN. THERE'S NO NEED FOR ANYONE TO RUN OFF AND DO THE FASHIONABLY-TERMED 'SIDE PROJECTS' IF YOU ARE IN TNT.
 

The idea of ever-changing band members and people going off to do side projects are almost like second nature to American bands, even though it’s becoming quite normal now too in England.

"I think it’s got something to do with people being genre-specific too." Erik casually explains, "We all know certain examples from where we’re from where you almost have the compartments - like if The Strokes did their country songs on their album along with their pop-rock songs, that wouldn’t really work now, would it? I think that’s a new attitude because it used to be like whatever you want. Now people are like, 'What if I'd like to write country songs, too? I’ve got a side project for it,' you know?"

"Like The Beatles did The White Album, it's pretty much every single type of music," Josh interrupts, "I think for us though, I think one of the things that’s always been stressed in the band is we can pretty much... it’s open to do whatever, I think pretty much any ideas are accepted. Who knows maybe the next record could be like an alt-country record or something. There are definitely songs that are country enough in our minds, we're like, 'Maybe we should do an alt-country record and that would be quite cool.' Maybe Jeremy will do a dance record like a Tapes 'n Tapes dance record, you never know! Whatever’s fun!"
 

 

10) IF THAT'S NOT ENOUGH, THEY STILL HAVE LOTS TO BE DESIRED AND IDOLISED, TNT ARE YOUR REAL BRUTAL, VIOLENT ROCK HEROES - YOUR MOST DELICIOUS NIGHTMARE COME TRUE.
 

Here's another extract from Sony 200XV's journal that reads, "Tapes hit me last night. I skipped and he slapped me."

The band guffaw at the in-band dirt discovery, Josh is quick to find an alibi, "Yeah, that was actually Steve, the guy who me and Matt started the band with. We used to be bored at work 'cos before we had the band, we only had the website really. So we’d do things to entertain each other. He wrote that up one day at work and sent it to me and I posted it up the next day. Which Tapes hit him? I don’t know, both of them I think!"






Photography: Krittiya Sriyabhandha