Page 11 - Black Velvet Issue 96

BV96 pg10-13 wayward sons_BV96 pg11 06/03/2018 16:25 Page 2

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in this way Toby tells Black Velvet, “It was re- at the system at a very difficult time. these kind of like schlocky horror movies but
ally my own desire to try and do things a lit- “Because we are now living in a very they were also making a point”.
tle bit differently to how I had done them similar period in my opinion with the Trump Toby continues, “These movies were
before. I’m a massive film fan and I had such in the White House and Farage and his ways of talking about the difficulties in soci-
a concept of the album and a lot of it came cronies on the warpath, I believe we are re- ety at the time without actually saying any-
from the artwork of the album and from my visiting that sort of sense of paranoia in the thing too political, so that to me was the
thought process for the album. world at the moment, so the whole record is draw. And zombies are just cool! Zombies
“To cut a long story short, I used to col- really written about that. The album sleeve is are stupid! Because we had such a low
lect comics as a kid, but they were very spe- about that and so, to me I wanted to find a budget for the videos, I sat down with the di-
cialist comics. They were repos from 1950s way to talk about that, pictorially and from a rector Jay, who is a brilliant young lad, and I
American comics which were things like visual point of view and again because I’m said I wanted to make four and he said, “Re-
Amazing Tales, Weird Stories, these kind of such a huge movie fan, I looked at the films ally? OK, let’s go! They’re going to be great”.
things. They were at the period of one of like ‘Night Of The Dead’ and I just thought He is just one of those guys who wants to do
America’s most difficult times. It was post- ‘that’s cool’. I love zombies so I’ll just tell my anything he can. It was a bunch of clothes
war, it was the McCarthy era, it was all that story through that, so it’s 50 per cent fun, but from second hand stores, it was a brilliant
house of un-American activities etc, etc. it’s also 50 per cent very serious in the sense stage set because it was set in an area of in-
Those comics were used by and large by, I of what it’s about.” dustrial dereliction in Leicester which was
guess, left-wing commentators because you Given that none of the aforementioned about to be completely knocked down. We
could be arrested for even having any kind four songs, on the surface at least, cry out got there about a month before they started
of social view of America at that time, cer- ‘zombie film’, Toby admitted the inspiration knocking it down and they had already
tainly from a left-wing point of view, so those for the theme of the videos came very much started partially knocking it down, so all the
comics became incredibly popular because from his “utter love of b-movies and my utter ducks kind of lined up in a row for us. I don’t
the powers that be could not put a comic in love of film-makers like George Romero and think if we hadn’t had that location, if we had-
jail, so they represented people kicking back John Carpenter and these guys who made n’t had a director who was so ‘we can do

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