I was interviewed by email recently about Twin Lizard Version 4 and Needle In The Groove netlabel by the excellent Johnny Markwell, who writes for the Lincolnshire Echo, and is involved with Lincoln Unsigned.
The piece that appeared in the paper was a heavily edited overview of this interview in 500 words, so I thought I’d post the original question and answer session here:
Tells us briefly about the history of the band?
I’ve been making rap music under this moniker on and off since 1996, when myself and an old friend decided we wanted to front a band but couldn’t sing.
Twin Lizard has been through proto-metal rap, laid back indie-rap, to straight UK hip hop rap, and up to the current version 4’s mish-mash of Black Grape style 90’s indie grooves and US weirdo-rap.
We’ve been through loads of members in all that time of course, some of whom have made such a significant contribution that I felt it was necessary to differentiate each ‘era’ of the band, hence the Version’s thing.
Where has the name come from?
It’s officially The Twin Tailed Lizard, because a guy I co-founded the band with 10 years ago found a lizard with two tails on holiday, took a photo of it, and that formed the basis of our first logo. There isn’t any such thing as a lizard with two tails, so we thought it represented something unique. That was a long time ago, and quite naieve of us, but I couldn’t change it now.
People get annoyed with me because it isn’t a David Icke conspiracy theory reference these days.
How is rap in Lincoln? Is it difficult to find a venue and a voice in Lincoln?
Not when you’re as used to making things happen here as me and my cohort’s are. We used to run a tiny indie label, and all the live music at The Falcon, and were the first people to bring the big names of UK hip hop to the city six or seven years ago, and now we run a netlabel and spend all our spare time either making or promoting music, so dealing with the problems people encounter in a small city like Lincoln is second nature to us now.
Lincoln has enough good voices of one form or another at any given time, and where there’s a will to make it happen, there’s a gig for those voices.
As for rap in Lincoln, Twin Lizard’s home studio has been the testing ground for three generations of Lincoln MC’s in the last ten years. There isn’t a ‘scene’ as such, but that’s because there isn’t a place where performers regularly get together and spar with each other, and scene’s grow out of that kind of thing. That’s because there aren’t enough performers here really though, fundamentally…For my part, I continue to help out anybody I can with recording, and Twin Lizard are always looking for collaborators.
Do you get a good reception?
In Lincoln? Yes, but mainly because I ruthlessly control our shows, making them small, invitation only, and free for those on our mailing list wherever I can. The music we make isn’t widely understood, and the easiest label for it – hip hop – is very misleading now, so it’s a hard-sell for those who aren’t already into it, especially in Lincoln.
How do you separate yourself from ‘ringtone rappers’?
We haven’t got anything to do with popular mainstream hip hop, ours is a totally different world to that. It’s a misleading marketing term now. Listen to Twin Lizard’s more caustic lyrics if you want my opinion on things like that.
How did the B Dolan gig come about?
We set it up, paid for it all, promoted it and made it happen firstly because I wanted to try and get an in-road with B and his label Strange Famous Records in a musical sense, and secondly because I wanted to be the first person to put the innovative US weirdo hip-hop underground I’ve been into for the last eight years on in our city. People should try and bring the music they love to the attention of local music lovers, and we are planning shows in a similar vein in the near future.
What do you make of current mainstream hip-hop?
I don’t and never have listened to it regularly, but last time I checked in it’s mostly absurd, irrelevant and devoid of anything interesting to say, which is weird for RAP MUSIC if you think about it. That’s a function of mainstream music fundamentally really though, not just hip hop. As I say, I have tunes about that kind of thing.
What made you want to set up the label?
A band is effectively it’s own record label, management and promotions team if it’s being run sensibly, so you could say I may as well have set one up. It legitimises what we get up to in a business sense and gives me a platform to try and spread the word about some of the awesome free music that’s everywhere online these days as a by-product. Great for promoing Twin Lizard’s many collaborators too.
What’s in the future for Needle in the Groove?
I want to make it less of a by-product of mine and my friends bands and more of a ‘regular’ netlabel by really developing and focussing it’s identity over the next six months, starting with a revamp to the basic website I’ve been using for years. Check out Black Lantern Music up in Edinburgh, they’re my blueprint for a quality netlabel. Great output, strong identity and loads of releases. Go and give them some money.
