Pint of bitter

>> Fila Brazillia's Steve Cobby says fuck the majors, mate

by KRISTA

Born in the town of Hull (England, not Quebec, but I gather the two are pretty similar), and named after a breed of Brasilian dog that was to be banned from Britain some years ago, Fila Brazillia are probably one of the only bands to have prospered by hiding in their studio and avoiding all media contact. Obsessed with remaining as far from the limelight as possible, Fila's Steve Cobby and Dave McSherry have recently left Pork recordings to start a new label, Tritonic. But, irony of ironies, earlier this year the two also embarked on tour for the first time in eight years. I recently spoke with Steve Cobby about making it underground.

Mirror: So give me a little bit of history then. What are you all about?

Steve Cobby: I started out in the '80s with a soul band called Ashley & Jackson. We were signed to a major label, Big Life, which was tedious and soul-destroying, basically.

M: Why?

SC: Well, the suits couldn't give a fuck about me, and so eventually we said fuck off to the whole thing, or they said fuck off to us. But we got a studio out of it, and started up Pork to prove that you can do it small.

M: So how do you do it small?

SC: We believe there's a way to make and sell music without watering it down. The majors don't understand that. They're all about putting the cart before the horse. They just want to see numbers. Majors are the way to get killed by businessmen. Majors just want to reduce music down to the lowest common denominator to get it to the masses, but that's kind of an insult isn't it? To say that all music has to be formulaic and easy in order for it to be sellable.

M: I guess, yes..

SC: It's like saying that we're all stupid! The perfect example of the typical pop theory is a Bond film. You know, selling the same exact thing over and over, but just changing it slightly so that people think it's different. The end result is it's still shit.

M: So you've suffered for your art?

SC: For the first year we were living in the studio and eating toast and jam every day. But our goal wasn't to sell a million fucking copies of everything and live like royalty, our goal was to sell enough music to keep on making music, which is actually possible. Independents make perfect sense, but nobody tells you that. It's actually so much easier to do it yourself. There's no one breathing down your neck telling you to finish your album by Christmas. I mean, what a fucking novelty.

M: You have to admit that you guys have been helped by the fact that you make really great music.

SC: Not really. We'd have been dropped after a year, had we been on EMI. It took us a year to sell 1,000 copies of the first album. But we've never advertised. It's all been word of mouth, and I think we're doing it right. You can't buy word of mouth, and that keeps us from getting sloppy and formulaic. I like that friction of it--smooth and deadly, ya.

Fila Brazillia's Steve Cobby plays at Jingxi on Thursday, November 25, 9pm, $12