Ep 40: Shame

spend the summer in Ibetha with Craig. So I'm glad that that's got a happy ending. Check out that conversation wherever you're listening to this right now if you haven't listened already, and do subscribe whilst you're there. It sounds like Craig has got a very exciting life, and my guest on Midnight Chats this time has just come off the back of a very exciting week a very exciting weekend to be honest. Last Sunday I was pretty thrilled

to get through three loads of dirty washing. That felt good, That was the highlight of my weekend. But my guest scored a top forty position in the UK charts with his band's debut album. Right now, as I look, Songs of Praise is nestled between David Bowie and Stormsy up there, so excited he should be. He is Charlie Steen, the twenty year old frontman of South London band Shame. They're the group you've probably heard about that are here to save British guitar music, or at the very least to

make it a bit more exciting. That's what people have been saying about them anyway. Their success certainly isn't an overnight thing. Some of Shane met when they were just eight years old and they went to school together classmates, and the band formed primarily when they're in their mid teens around a pub called the Queen's Head in South London, where some of their first shows took place at three am and they got up and still made it to the geography class or whatever it was the next day

on time. They are an amazing live band and the five of them played an exhausting amount of shows in twenty seventeen, roughly one hundred and fifty and the damaging effects of that. Charlie goes into in detail in the chat that you were about to hear. Now, Charlie came to our offices just a couple of days ago, knocked back a couple of strong coffees and smoked a couple

of rollies before recording this. I certainly caught up with him in a memorable moment, because, as older artists will tell you, you only ever get the chance to experience the feeling of releasing your debut album once in your career, and Shame, by the sounds of it, have been enjoying

every second of that, and so they should do. Just finally, as I sit here with the news channel on my TV scrolling silently in the background, the death of one of music's great mavericks, one of the great antagonists and unapologetic innovators, Markie Smith from The Fall. His death was announced just a few hours ago, So tonight I'll pour a drink for Mark. That seems apt. As one uncompromising band exits the world in music, hopefully it's just the

start for another. So enjoy this. This is Charlie Steen from Shame on Midnight Chats. Charlie, welcome to Midnight Chats.

You know, we've said this before, and we always want to have this underlying humor to the band and sort of the image and when we're on stage, and just the fact that we charted in the top forty was just so sort of funny and surreal to us, you know, especially you know, three years ago, we would have been upstairs at the Queen's Head to sort of like where

we are now. I wasn't really nervous about putting out the album, and I don't think many of the people in the band were either, because it's it's been such a strange period of time leading up to it, and we've had these songs for what seems like a while, and you know, the last year played like one hundred and fifty gigs and forty seven festivals in three months, and they've been just playing these songs over and over.

But it's just nice to have like it's I think the most satisfying thing is to just have like a piece of work just out there available to the public. And it does feel like quite exposed. You know, you do feel quite exposed, But then again, you know that means you're probably doing something right.

really crossed our mind. I can't say why, Like probably just because of what popular music is at the moment and the sort of like state this in we just thought it wouldn't have been achieved. But it's weird that it's happened, and it just sort of like felt really

surreal and it was a good night. But that whole week, I mean, you know, like it was just one abnormality after the other, like when we got on the front page of the Guardian and like, you know, all these different things happened, and the response has just been amazing as well.

For anyone, you can sort of get so wrapped up in your own wall and the world and just sort of be like, you know, staring at the painting too close, and it's important to sort of like take a step back and just sort of like, you know, seeing our mates who just sort of like do not you know, like you know, have jobs or go to UNI or whatever. It makes you feel a bit more like human and realizes that, you know, what you're doing is very much its own little world.

in a week. And I think that's changed. You know, I said it before, I've said it before in an interview, but that isn't this like preconceived image of like a rock star lifestyle anymore. You know, we're not being driven around No, people aren't getting in limos and lights, staying in five star hotels less of like the Arctic monkeys

or food fires or whatever. So I think it's I think that's good because you're sort of so close to reality at the same time, and I think that's the most important thing.

whole week since our album came out. I mean, we basically celebrated every single day that week, but that yeah, that Friday was like the heaviest we sort of got and it got pretty messy, but yeah, it's a great I mean, we got kicked out of the Spoons that night because we turned up at the Crown and Steps, which is on Brixton Hill, and we thought it would be funny to like post on our Instagram story that you know, like our table number and the Spoons were

in and see if anyone. So this guy comes over with like he comes over, what do you come over? With first a pot of peas, and then he came back over with a Friday Egg and he's all right, listen, mates, I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, but this isn't funny. And we were like what and he was like, I've got fifteen orders to roch a sauce, four pints of milk, and like three bud light and seven more pots of tea and this has all happened

in four minutes. He was like, I'm gonna bring you beers, but that's it. And then he brought us like a bud Light or something like that, and he was like, I've just had twenty more orders through for milk, and he was like, get the fuck out of the pub, and we were just kind of, you know, we were already pretty fucked and we were like, you know, just couldn't be wanted to argue and probably being a bit unfair. On that guy's Friday night.

I've done, I don't care because I'm happy with it. But you know, if everyone's saying your album's shit, it's probably gonna get you down a bit. But no, I mean, it was just I mean, that was happening in sort of like the weeks the week's like the week or weeks leading up to the album coming out, and it

was just fucking weird. I mean. We also we got a grant fifty grand, which we didn't have to pay back, so we were able to put up like billboards and Chube posters and like all the central stations like Waterloo and stuff like that. I think that was fucking weird because it's.

we're not sparking a new fucking genre of music. That for some reason nobody else has been capable of doing for the past thousands of years. So, like I think the difference is is like at the moment, all the music you could argue in this sort of like incestuous London scene at the moment, or you know, further out

across America and UK and European Europe. It's so like unique in how derivative it is because it's so influenced by we have such a large amount of like background of music to draw from and you know, loads of other things and you know, sort of shape it into what it is at the moment. And for you know, for all this type of music we can you know, being this age that I'm twenty, Like I can listen to the Stooges, I can listen to Bowie, but I'll

never live through it like ever. And so you know, for us to be able to go to gigs and experience like a simile similar level of like passion and like you know, heightened adrenaline is you know, it feels

new to us. Like you know, I remember seeing I remember seeing Fat White Family for the first time when I was fifteen, and I was just like a stone of kid I was actually just walking through to leave, like because I went there to see King Crawl at the Queen's Head and it was just like, you don't you almost don't think that music like that can exist anymore because of how sort of like driven out it is.

But that's why it's so interesting, you know, it's fascinating, you know, the psychology behind nobody who starts a guitar band depending on their ego. I don't think, certainly for us sort of imagined like financial stability or like success or all of the things that came along with the image of like the seventies. But you still do it because you know, you're driven by passion and by interest

and and that sort of like speaks for itself. Like there are a lot of bands we know who do like amazing music and still have like a Saturday job and stuff like that, like you know, weekend job and still work and still struggle to pay the rent. And for that for that reason, it's you know, it's fucking horrible.

And that's sort of another subject to go into that there's no funding from like the UK for the majority of artists in comparison to Europe, and I think, you know, I think that's a major problem because like UK.

sleep deprived. But and we sort of walked in and they took us to a green room and we were like, oh, you know, is there like any chance like a beer And they were like, yeah, yeah, it's in the fridge. And we were like, oh cool, so do we get like tickets or is it shared whatever? They were like no, no, that the fridge is yours. And it just sort of like you can't believe it because it's all like it's

taxed in across like France and European countries. They all have a different percentage of tax that will be taken out of the band's pay and go back into funding independent venues and making sure that you know, they can get artists that they want to be there, and making sure the rider's good and that you can pay for hotels for the bands to be in and it doesn't you know, you can't understand why that hasn't happened in the UK, but you know, there might be something to

be said about the fact that even though that's never happened, the UK has like undeniably had the most amazing music come out of it.

You mentioned the London scene, the kind of South London scene that has been pointed towards in various press, and I'm sure you get asked about it in interviews a lot. How real and how like tangible is that? Do you know a lot of the bands does it feel like a genuine, like real community, Because often these things are scenes can be created in a press world to effectively just group like minded artists that are close together into one place. But genuine thing is that, right?

from North and East, like everyone is just friends. And I think the difference with other like quote unquote scenes you know in the past, is that every band in this category has their own like different unique sounds, you know, going from like happy Meal to Sorry to Goat gol and so I think the only thing that links us

together is our age. You know, when we started their bands, like Childhood, the Fat White Family, like they were still like new when we were when we were young, but we weren't the same age as some when we were experiencing like different things because when we were seventeen, they were off touring, you know, like they were doing the

festival circuits and stuff like that. And when we found you know, we started this night at the women are called Chimney Shitters when we were when we were like it must have been like seventeen or eighteen, and that was when we just decided to get like all of our mates down like and you know, like majority of

our friends don't like I'm music. But we started meeting bands like Shark Dentists, Monk Goat Girl played like go Gogley that played our first night, our second night, and it was just it then became this thing of we've known each other, all of us. Everyone everyone doing music around sort of like the Wimmill area that's now moved to the Five Bells in New Cross, like that's where

the new bands are coming, like Peeping Drexels, like everyone. Yeah, everyone's just good mates and we've kind of like grown, you know, like grown through this period together. You know. We started out playing those same nights and now everyone's like doing an album or touring or like doing the

same festivals. So it's good, you know. I think the nicest thing is when you can turn up to a festival and you actually have like friends there that you know and you can like share something with them rather than like you know, with your mates, back home in London.

the lyrics. But everyone has to be in the same room at the same time writing together and sort of like you know, Sean is the one who probably brings in like the most ideas, but like you'll start off and like Sean or Eddie or Josh playing something and it always has been the same. And I think that's you know, like the strongest and weakest point of the band.

How long we've known each other for it's sort of I know this might sound cheesy and like, and it might be, you know, for lack of belt, for lack of a better expression, but it kind of has gone beyond friendship now, and it's sort of like at that stage where we're just like, you know, you can say whatever you want to each other and you don't even need to speak to sort of be able to communicate.

Of course, we fucking like argue, and of course they are like sometimes we're getting fist fights and stuff like that, but like that's only natural when you're on the road as much as we were last year. You know, the music industry is sort of like the like keeping mental illness alive. You know, you're just like always like sleep deprived, like always like hungry, like always drinking, like and obviously

this is a choice of like immaturity. You might drink to sort of like get over it or do other things to like sort of deal with it, but you know, obviously you're gonna go a bit mental. But it always you know, we've never we've never had an argument so bad we can't resolve it, and it wouldn't be you know what. I was with Larry Love, the lead singer of the Alabama Free, the other day in the pub and he said the best line, he said, never trust a happy band.

old school fucking characters. They can handle more than any you know, you think the fucking you think like bands like you know, fat Whites or whatever, like do a lot of drugs and have a lot of heavy nights, or nobody can do as much as a nobody, nobody can touch it. Like they are old school hard and fucking like musicians and workers and like they they definitely like gave a lot of insight and they were also characters.

And also they've been a band for twenty years and are still playing and you have to, you know, like the amount of respect to have to anyone who still drives that passion and still works at it. And they were doing you know, like they were doing stuff like they blend in electronic music with guitar music and country music, which was quite for at that time. Like I might be speaking ill informed, but something that's quite new you

and like you know, genius. But the yeah, there was definitely a load of but I'd say it was like people like Larry Love was the person we saw the most, but there was also Segs who was in the Ruts.

He was the basis for the Ruts. There was me and Sean once had a night with the basis for Stiff Little Fingers okay, who we used to which was so surreal for us because we used to listen to Stiff Little Things when me and Sean were ten in his room and then we you know, we just had a night with him with the queens in the kitchen and just could sort of like chat and chat and chat.

And yeah, there were there were like other characters, but yeah, it was you got a lot of insight into the dark wide world of the music industry.

But you know, like I was saying, it's weird because it's the only job where this was you know, it's the only job where you can be sort of like crying in a corner, like pale in Germany in the darkness, and like hungry, and you've thrown up twelve times that day and a promoter comes over and like pokes you in the chest, like move monkey, like get on stage, like you know, it's kind of like what are you doing?

Like so I think, you know, like I was saying towards the end of we had to we had to cut that tour to like cut that tour short because I started having panic attacks. And then I came back and I just sort of like it took me a little while to get back into you know, getting my mental health back and sort of like feeling human again. But I think it's just more. I think that was necessary to happen so that it can be prevented in the future, you know. I mean, I'd rather know more.

It taught me a lot about myself as well, because, like I was saying to you, in summer, I was having a period where when We're doing all of those festivals, I'd be throwing up like from four to fourteen times in one day, and I just couldn't digest in the thing and it wasn't due to acid reflux. It was just due to like nervous exhaustion and anxiety. And so I kind of like found that out about myself and

found ways to deal with it. I mean, you know, it gets to a point where we will drink a lot as a band and all sort of go out a lot, but you can't. You know, it's all well and good to sort of like have that image, but you can't do it, you know, you like, I don't know how you can do that for a year straight, like whilst you're on the road. It's fine if you can just sort of you know, like go back home and have a cup of tea and like go to

bed or whatever. You know, you'd be out. You know, you go in Bristol to lock in at a pub after your gig and be up until nine in the morning and then get straight in a van and drive to leads and then sound check and then play. And that's sort of like what our tours were like for a period, for like quite a long period of time until it came to that like moment where it's like okay, you know, and especially for me, I was just like

I just can't, like there's nothing I can do. I can't do the show, like I just can't like get up there. But you know, since then, like the show, you know, the shows have been doing in London and great and like it is, Yeah.

But also do you think that there should be more I don't know, understanding training from people that you know, if you're a tour manager or if you're a manager or press agent or whoever it might be that works directly with the band, just to be more aware that it can be incredibly full on and have a negative effect on the mental health.

to be home. But on that, you know, on the subject of mental health, like I was actually having I was talking about I was talking about this yesterday with my girlfriend about how at the moment it seems to be every second person you meique suffers from anxiety or suffers from depression. And it's whether or not this has always been the case and we're only starting to address it now or it generally is becoming a more increasing problem at the moment because of like you know, social media,

like likes on Instagram and this whole obsession. Ever have to be this, I have to be that, So I don't know, I mean, like I remember studying Missus Dallaway by Virginia Woolf when I was when I was in a levels and that was like that talks a lot

about like the stiff upper lip. It was just it set just after Second World War and because that was shell shock was when was when either England or the UK first acknowledged mental health like before that it wasn't a thing, you know, especially being this age like twenty. Like with the album, what we tried to do was like capture a moment of the three years of being from seventeen to twenty and as well as like the absurd things that we experienced through being in a band

and being you know, invited into this weird world. It's just all the things that happened to you anyway when you're going through that, you know, transition into sort of like being an adult or whatever, like you know, moving out or going through relationships and dealing with like different mental health problems. But I think, like now with the new music that we're writing, I think we just want to show the sort of like a sign of like

maturity because we're not that age anymore. I think when people like compare our music to sort of like first of all, like we hate the word like laddish or that sort of title, you know, we want to like dissolve any preconception of that. But we can understand completely where it comes from because we were teenage boys, so it's inevitable that that comparison is going to be made.

But now, I mean, like I guess you know, there's one new light, there's one new song that we're working on, like the lyric to its human sacrifice, because that's what I felt like in that period of Germany, Like you know, you're just people are coming to watch you sort of like almost destroy yourself. You know, people are so naturally drawn to that. I mean, I am guilty of this

as well. You're naturally drawn to in guitar music, you're drawn to the idea of chaos being controlled and sort of someone who looks like that on the brink and someone who, like you know, doesn't really have a place to sleep and as you know, are they going to collapse on stage while they going to do a backflip kind of thing? Like that whole thing is so provocative, and I can understand why. It's because you want to

live your life with someone else. You want to we want to hear the stories of what it's like to go on a four day bender in like La, like you know, with like models and celebrities. But that's not your reality. And the reality is it's probably something that's quite damaging. There's no way it couldn't be. But I think that that issue definitely is being addressed and I

think there's like there's a lot of issues. I know, like especially one person that we really like and support in the band as Princess Nokia, who addresses and like talks about load of a lot of issues that I think are important, and especially like with guitar music, it's such like a sort of certain demographic, it seems that a lot of issues might not be like talked about.

And we don't want to be the spokesperson for any issues that, you know, like we don't want to speak on behalf of women because that would be unjust, but we want to show our support as I sort of think there's like a difference there, like we will always support these cases of you know, you know, for the

fight for a quality. But yeah, I mean I think, yeah, I mean, getting back to the point, there is a lot of there's a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed and mental health, but that's not just for us. There's a great book if anyone listening is interested, called The Ascent of a Man by Grayson Perry, and definitely like being a guy like reading that, it's like a very important thing.

I think that'll be amazing. I don't know. Also, it's going to be like it will be the hottest thing I've ever experienced, hottest places, bad we're like, we're like British to the bone, so like we never we never tan, we never, we only burn like as a band, and it's always that situation. You know, we burn like twenty four degrees in France, so I don't know how we're going to suffer in forty six degrees in Melbourne or whatever. But I'm excited to do that, and I'm excited to

also be on like a touring festival. And Australia also has some of the best fucking guitar music ever. Yeah, like ever, Like Eddy Current Suppression Ring are our band's favorite band.

Jason Playford, he's like a great fucking friend of ours, played us them when he played us that album Primary Colors, and since that we all just got hooked on that album. And I think the interest is is like the mystery behind it, which you know, That's why I'm sort of relating it to Rodriguez, because it's on the other side

of the world. There isn't actually like that many live videos or interviews or whatever, and loads of people from going around America and Europe, I've met loads of people who have sort of like a glimpse of insight into their into the context of the band, and every time you're kind of like finding out this gold. I mean, now they're obviously the guitarists went off and formed Total Control Productions. Well, yeah, you know, Primary Colors. The whole

of that was recorded and produced in one day. Really, yeah, so I think going over there and there's that new ban the Chats. You did that song Smoko. It went and it went like I hate saying this, but it went viral because it's the most Australian video and song you've ever seen in your life. But that's fucking great. I mean there are loads of other bands and like you know, it's quite a shame with Australia because so much of it never sort of makes it out because of just how far away it is.

You know, you'll be dry, You'll be on this highway, this like stretch of like unanimous American land, and you'll like stop off at service station and you'll drive for like three hours just stop off, and you're at the exact same fucking service station with the same people working there. It's all kind of a bit like disorientating. And we had we had a weird time there. But I really know what, like the place I'm most excited to go to is LA have been before, no, never been?

sort of like the history that it has. And I think the British, the British humor, I think sort of like, uh, it's quite attracted to the La personalities of that sort of like fakeness, you know, like that it's that it's like that they're so genuinely fake and that I'm stereotyping and generalizing now, but like from what I've heard in the stories and stuff like that, and I think it just I mean New York was New York was great, but like it was quite it was was just like

London on crack. Like it didn't it didn't feel like didn't feel like when we went to Austin and we were like for south By Southwest and we're like, whoa, We're in America. New York just kind of felt like, you know, you were just walking on a film set you've seen like a hundred times before. That's not to say I didn't like it, but apparently it's you know,

changed massively as well. But I mean, you know, for for us as a band, as individuals, it's our first time going to all these We'd never been to New York as people. You know, we've never been to La We've never been to so many other places. So we get to experience like all of these different things for

the first time. And I think, like definitely, like the truest thing is if you go as a tourist, you're gonna have a completely different experiences if you go as a band, yeah, because you just get sort of thrown into whatever you're doing, you know, like you get thrown into a different sort of side of the side of the city.

So you go on holiday, yeah, basically work. I mean, I don't know, I don't even know what the fucking description for being in a band is anymore, like some sort of like mutated work holiday.

Do you want the Mercury Prize nomination to top it all off or something like that.

than a band who's just started out. But that's what's quite like appealing to us as well, having this sort of like clean slate, Like when we toured America, it was literally like, you know, doing our first UK tour again apart from in New York. That's something that's quite attractive.

I think we just want to write. We just want to ensure that we have time to write new music as well, and we know that that's you know, the importance, so that we don't just want to you know, we'd be one of those bandsy tours a lot and release as a ship second album and maybe maybe that might happen, but you know, hope, hopefully we'll try and avoid it. But I think one of the goals as well is

just sort of like we've always wanted to do. Like an I think touring for us is like a is a great form of release because we are primarily a

live band. We've always been like that. And like the next the UK tour that are going on like is basically like all the dates are going to sell out by the time we get you know, we've already had loads have sold out three months in advance, so I think that will be like, I think that's like something that will sort of be like a moment where you're like, we're like, you know, a moment of joy in Yeah.