I don’t know about you, but music to me means a lot.

I can easily relate to what the lyrics say and it can bring back loads of memories from child-hood. I’m always listen-ing to something when I’m on my own, whether

it’s on the bus or while lying in bed. I’ve always got something playing in the background.

Teenagers today are probably one of the gen-erations that are very into music. They like to use the lyrics to live their life by, and enjoy listening to some-thing while with their mates. In some circum-

Music can mean a lot to many young people, but why

stances, it is a way of starting a conversa-tion. It is immediate-ly easy to get on with somebody that is into the same band or style of music as

you are. Memories can also

come out of certain songs. That morning after the night before, you could hear a song that would instantly take you back to a situation that might have been highly amusing or that some-thing big happened that would then stay in your mind for years to come.

Or listening to a song by one of your favourite bands that you had seen and by listening to it takes you straight back to the atmosphere of being in a crowd of people just like you. I get this feeling all the time.

Music can also play with teenag-

er’s feelings. By listening to a sad, slow song it can make them stop

and think about their life. Or a happy and loud song would make them jump around and dance like nobody is actually watching. They could also listen to some lyrics that they can relate to, or

agree with, that would then make the song appeal even more to them. What some teenag-ers would agree to, is the fact that sometimes when they listen to a good soundtrack to a movie, it can take them to that ‘place’ or ‘time’ that the movie is set in.

Playing music can mean a lot to a young person as well. A musi-cian can say a lot when he or she is saying it though song lyrics or music.

For example, Adele with her songs are very strong and emotional, but its one was she man-ages to get her emotions across. It’s a good way for a lot of teenagers to get their feelings out whether they are good

or bad, happy or

sad. And plus it’s a good hobby. Playing an instru-ment or writing songs can then increase skills, which could even lead to a pro-fessional career.

So how did your band come together? How did you meet each other?“Well, sort of formed in December of 2009,” Matt stated, “Basically five guys who were involved in differ-ent music projects originally. We had a very specific idea with what we wanted to do as a band, i.e. modern, indie, rock music because there was a market for it, so we kind of got together, did a jam and it just kind of worked.“And we had a big list didn’t we,” Pete added.“Yeah, wrote a long list with what we wanted to do,” said Matt.“And then about four months later we did our first gig?” Pete continued.“Yeah, March 2010 we did our fist gig,” Matt agreed.“Met over the internet,” James added quickly.

“Met through a musician website, came together,” ex-plained Matt.“And the rest is history! And we’ve been pretty busy since then,” Pete added quickly.“Indeed we are, and we are just coming up to our third year” James agreed.

You mentioned that you played a bit of indie, a bit of rock, and a bit of anything else. But if you had to put one word to it, what would you call the type of music you play?Pete had to think for a while, but came up with “Indie rock, I would say. Modern indie rock.”“Yeah,” Matt agreed, “I would say modern indie rock. Well, lets just say that the majority of our songs are from 2000 up to 2006. There is a bit of 90s in there. Our oldest song is from 1984, and that’s the one song that still really goes down well. Otherwise its all modern.”“There all classics really aren’t they,” Pete added.“Yeah! That’s what they are really,” Said by Matt, “Crowd pleasers really, but without being cheesy crowd pleas-ers, y’know? So there is Foo

Local band to Maidstone, Reptilia are made up of

five young men who are very eager to play music. So I went down to meet the guys and see what they are all about:

Hello and how are you all?“We are very well thanks” Matt spoke for the band.

Good! So, to start off with, do you want to introduce your-self to the readers?“Well, I’m James Blunt and I am the drummer for Reptilia” “I’m Gaz, play the lead guitar, jump around a lot and sweat a lot”“Hi I’m Matt, Rhythm guitar”“Pete, lead vocals”“And we do have Chris who is our bass player, but he isn’t here at the moment” James said, talking for Chris.

Fighters, they would prob-ably be our favorite band to play. Also The Black Keyes, they’ve come into our set.”“The Vaccines, The Beatles,” Pete started to list.“Yeah, so its not all rock, but its not all indie,” Matt stated, “It is definitely indie rock, because there is a good mixture in there going from tender stuff like The Vac-cines, right to the heavy stuff like by Foo Fighters.”“So basically, it would have to be indie rock,” Pete sum-marized.

So you’ve talked about a few bands that you cover. As well as doing the covers; do you do your own stuff too? Do you write songs?“Been working on it haven’t we,” James said.“We keep talking about it…” Pete started to say.“We came up with two pos-sible ideas, but we are just waiting for our singers to put some lyrics to them,” James explained. The whole band looked at Pete who was look-ing guilty, laughing at him.“Yeah, whatever!” Pete said defending himself. After James had stopped laughing, he added, “But it is something we would like to do. Just for personal interest basically, if it was for any-thing.”“Its not a problem, but the biggest issue is that we are

with agents, and some of the venues are very modern,” Matt started to explain, “ like Molly Malones in Brighton, it is just full of stag and hen parties every time you play it. So what we have to do is keep the sets varied, but changing. So your constant-ly looking at what you can learn. Which then means, if you’re not gigging, which we generally are twice a week, then rehearsing every Wednesday, but then in-be-tween those times, we have to learn something else to get into the set, so the next

time you hit that venue, you’ve got something new that you can play in your set. Our own stuff is something we have looked at, we have spent a bit of time working on it, but nothing has come out finished yet. Our prior-ity is keeping our sets fresh, making sure that we can get as much bookings out of the venues as we can. So that means, constantly having to learn now covers almost as a full time job.”“We all work during the week as well,” Pete added.“We do!” Matt agreed, “But if we said to ourselves ‘alright, we are actually going to do it’, we would do it. We are a covers band, not an originals band. I’m sure we would all

love to get one or two of our own in there at some stage, but its not our main priority.”“I this it would go down the indie rock root as well,” Pete started, “it would actually fit into the set that we are doing. So we would be looking at the same kind of stuff, indie kind of rock.”

As a band, do you enjoy playing in the Maidstone area?“I think we all enjoy it,” Pete Said, “and we’ve all got day jobs. So for us, this is kind of the opportunity to get away

from that, y’know? And be-cause we enjoy it

so much, we do put a lot of effort into it as well. You mentioned Maidstone, I think that Maidstone is one of the best areas we play as far as venues go, y’know? The crowd you can get, I mean, when you get to play some-where, you are most proba-bly guaranteed to see familiar faces, and its getting more and more every time we play, so yeah. “I think we are lucky as well.” Matt added, “We’ve gone through a transition throughout the three years where we first started gigging and we would go to any ven-ue that advertised live music. And we went to some venues that we should have proba-bly never walked though the

ued, “we are doing ticket sales now. So people will pay to come see us play, rath-er than just coming to free events, open venues, and so forth. So in terms of what we play, it is getting more pro-fessional, more popular and yeah.”

So now we have the fifth and final member, hey Chris! What would you say your favorite venue to play is? For example, in a pub, at parties? Where?“I think we’ve all got our favorite venues for our own particular rea-sons,” Matt started, “But as a band, I think Molly Malones in Bright-on because it is just such a full vibrant venue that just is so into what we do, and we love playing it for

that reason. But I think that there are other mem-bers of the band that would have other venues because for them it’s a better expe-rience, you know what I mean? I don’t think there is one venue, well, there might be one venue that we all love, because you might have a lot of space to play, to be able to

jump around, then be able to put on a better show for the audience, so then you can re-ally get more of what we are about really. But individually, its probably different venues. “Yeah,” Pete agreed, “I think you mentioned it earlier though, we are kind of tai-lored now, our list of venues to what is suitable to us for different reasons. I mean some may not have the most fantastic audience, but I think all the venues we play now are brilliant.”“If they don’t suit us all, and they are not what we are all

door. But we suffered it, and what we did then was go to venues that we know, that when we play, it will be well received. And knowing that, now we manage to book out certain venues, it is quite an accomplishment for us, we have all achieved that and get the joy out of it.”“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say, we’ve now got to a stage where we are playing a lot of venues, that we come in and enjoy-” James started to explain before Chris interrupts him by walking in late. He con-tinued, “and this is our bass player, thanks for turning up mate!” He said jokingly.“Shut your face!” Chris re-plied with the rest of the band laughing. “Hey, I’m Chris,” he said once everyone was quiet again. “So anyway,” Chris contin-

about, and we don’t enjoy it, then we don’t play there. That is basically the bottom line.” Matt explained, “But now, we do fill up the kind of venues that we want to play. So 9 times out of 10, we don’t think ‘oh I don’t like this venue’. Normally we are there and we are really up for what we want to do.”

You mentioned earlier that you don’t just play in the Maidstone and Kent area, but you travel around. What parts of the country do you go to?“Furthest up north is North-ampton, I think, as far as we’ve gone isn’t it?” James said.

“Yeah, we’ve played up there,” Pete confirmed. “Then we’ve been to Bright-on, and Bristol,” James con-tinued. “Yeah,” Matt started, “we tend to concentrate on Kent, and parts of East Sussex, be-cause that is where we want to go. We are with a couple of agents that get bookings for us, though people who might be having parties, so we do go to Bristol quite a bit. We have got a gig com-

ing up at Colchester Football Club, then a gig in Brans Hatch. But they tend to be good venues, they might play bigger and better, but they might not be better gigs for us personally because they can be quite restrictive in what you have to do. But basic rule of thumb, we will go anywhere.”“If the moneys right!” Gaz quickly added.

Do you all enjoy playing to-gether? Do you get on well?“Nah,” Gaz said immediately.“Can’t stand any of them,” Pete carried on the joke,

making the rest of the band laugh. “No, we are quite fortunate, I mean we are all so similar, but also dissimilar, know what I mean? We all have our own lives and stuff like that, but ultimately, that kind of thing works in our favor, all of us having our own personalities and stuff.”“I think we do get a few clashes from time to time, but y’know, who doesn’t?” James confessed. “We are full on, we gig twice

think that when we play, we bounce off the energy from each other. There is a lot of eye contact, a lot of laughter, but everybody at the same time is switched on about what they are doing, and that kind of works. So I think its fair to say that we all really do enjoy what we do and we all do get on.”“Yeah,” Pete agreed, “I think also, looking to improve it as well, y’know, we do it well, but we always go back and be

a week and we do talk out-side the band as well, about what’s going on, and so we do kind of live inside each others pockets,” Matt started to explain, “and seeing that we are not a full time band, I think that is quite rare. But it does sort of work because we are very focused with what we do and we market ourselves very heavily, we push the band very heavily, y’know? And we do actual-ly look at other bands and think ‘why are you not doing this?’ and nobody is, be-cause they don’t want to or because they have no time, I don’t know. But it certainly worked for us over the three years because we’ve seen our gigs improve, our venues improve, the money improve and the audience improve ul-timately. I mean we are now getting good crowds. And I

think you have to be. If you feel like something is not right, then you’ve got to be big enough to stand up and say ‘I don’t think that’s right’, and they have to be prepared to accept it and we all do that quite well.” Upcoming gigs: Friday 15th March, Earls Maidstone, 9pm.Friday 22nd March, Ye Old Crown Inn, Edenbridge.Saturday 13th April, Druids Arms, Maidstone.Saturday 20th April, Crow-borough Social Club.Saturday 27th April, The Cherry Tree, Maidstone.

Facebook: facebook.com/reptiliathebandWebsite: www.reptiliathe-band.com

quite honest with each oth-er, y’know? I