Yellow Stripe Nine
There's a new club open in town. It's pretty exclusive and the house band is Leeds' Yellow Stripe Nine. Conveniently, Club DeccaDance's owner is the band's lead singer. In fact, it's his creation.
"Everyone's fairly dressed up and are, some would say, flamboyant, individual people," explains Pete Wurlitzer. "We have a French Madame who sings various songs when YSN aren't performing and there's a certain sort of faded glamour to her. She was an opera singer in France and is now passed her prime, although she doesn't realise it." I'm not sure what's more heartbreaking, the plight of the French Madame or the fact that Steve Brookstein and Anastacia are providing the soundtrack to this interview through the bar's speakers. "There are various attractive girls who like to be the centre of attention and gentlemen who think that with their money, they can have whatever they want. It's a fair old mixture of people".
And none much more than YSN themselves, what with their white suits and cravats, emulating a club with its own character and the characters within. "It is its own creation if you like with no contrived attempt to take off anything at all," Wurlitzer says. "With any club where there's singing and carousing, there's going to be serious comparisons to clubs such as the Moulin Rouge and Cabaret or anything of that sort. It's perhaps no different to any club that's around at the moment. It's just this place where people gather with ourselves playing songs."
Before Club DeccaDance was launched, YSN were just four lads aiming to make their mark on a tough music scene. And they did ok, blossoming into a live act with some very catchy tunes, although they never set the world on fire and didn't capture too much imagination. "I didn't like their singer to be honest," Wurlitzer reveals. "He had no sense of flamboyancy and no sense of glamour, so I casually suggested to the rest of the band that they should sack him and hire me as the lead singer and we haven't looked back since."
With the arrival of Wurlitzer along with Yonatan Collier, YSN are walking in a different musical direction and have found new inspiration by way of their club. "The band were frustrated," Wurlitzer says. "They were too constrained within the traditional boundaries of what rock and indie music was supposed to be about and felt that it was jarring. The heart and ambition of the band was in one place but this sense of trying to stick to an indie aesthetic was cramping it.
"The fundamental point is to do a show that's entertaining and share it with other people and bring a bit of glamour to the grotty indie venues and I think now that the more we play the more it seems to bring people in. There's more substance to it. There's a story being told."
The band has already released two singles, Trouble With Girls and One Look (It's Love!), from Conquests, the work-in-progress story about Club DeccaDance. As singles, they are isolated in contrast to the greater picture. "The ambition is to take this story I'm writing and allow it to be a huge performance with colour and spectacle.
"The material is drawn from the people who come to the club and the experiences in the club. Not everyone has been fortunate to be able to come along to the club and see what it's like and experience it for themselves, so I suppose that's why, in essence, we take it on the road with us.
"There's a certain amount of storytelling in the songs that are written," Wurlitzer continues. "But the way the songs are performed inside the club, it merely flatters the vanity of some of the patrons. It feeds back on itself because people may be more inspired to dress up and interact with each other. Outside the club, the songs could be seen as a description of the club and the characters in it and, we hope, as an advertisement for the club so more people will come along."
Wurlitzer speaks as if the worry of YSN as a band that need to work tirelessly to integrate themselves into a fixed genre of music has scarpered with their former singer. And it's refreshing because he doesn't care how he puts his thoughts, music or stories forward or by what aspects of the world influence him. They are a band who has finally found some comfort.
"Some of the songs have got more of an R&B and hip hop influence in them and I'm very conscious of this because it's in danger of sounding naff. Y'know, white boy guitar band talking about these influences often sound contrived and cringy, but it is out of a genuine love for that style of music. It's not YSN do R&B but more of an attempt to nail those ideals to more of a rock background.
"There's no intention to become some kind of museum piece or an exhibition of old rock'n'roll styles. There's a sense of it being modern and nothing is sacred or too naff to be explored. YSN is pop music for the 21st century. I don't know whether we'd ever be seen as credible. I hope not. I don't want it to be weighed down by any sense of rock'n'roll convention. It's just thrown up in the air with no shadows cast and I just want to enjoy it."
YSN have thrown down the gauntlet to challenge their own history and music scenes as we've come to know them. They are a band out to take risks, even to get mocked. But this doesn't bother them because they are also a band out to entertain and enjoy entertaining their audience. And they'll be damned if they don't take the rest of us along with them.
"I believe YSN are the band that everyone would love to be in if only they'd stop worrying about what their mothers would think. People stand in the corner of indie clubs and check each other's clothes out. Rather than allowing that, YSN have stepped out of that shadow and said 'right, we're going to take anything from anywhere we want and put it together in an entertaining show. We're going to make you dance, we're going to make you laugh at us but you're going to be entertained', it's as simple as that."
