The band were
Matt Upchuck: Guitar & Vocals
Alex Upchuck: Bass & Vocals
Dom Upchuck: Drums
The Demonic Upchucks, after a period of inertia, played their last gig on 14th August 2010 at Champions in Bournemouth, just over thirteen years after they first took to a stage together.
Formed in July '97, the Upchucks (then made up of Alex, Matt, Dom and "Smash" Adams) played their first show in front of a group of angry students who had paid money to watch "Blue Monday", an indie band who pulled out upon learning of the Demonic Upchucks debut. Three songs into the set the power to the stage was cut, the bouncers circled the Upchucks, the police were called and they were banned from their first venue. "Smash" left the band soon afterwards. Undettered, the Upchucks soldiered on and were banned from loads more venues.
More gigs followed and soon the band had 4 songs released on Helen of Oi's "Punks Skins And Herberts Vol5". Crowned "The Worlds Laziest Rock n' Roll Band" the Upchucks hit back at accusations by recording more songs in October 2004 and playing every now and again in Bournemouth, all over London, Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton and, in 2007, joined Dog-A-Dog for the 'They Stole Our Sperm Tour' in Sicily.
Currently Dom can be seen playing drums in C-30s, Alex is in Double Cross and Matt is now in Electromud.
Matt Upchuck: Guitar & Vocals
Alex Upchuck: Bass & Vocals
Dom Upchuck: Drums
The Demonic Upchucks, after a period of inertia, played their last gig on 14th August 2010 at Champions in Bournemouth, just over thirteen years after they first took to a stage together.
Formed in July '97, the Upchucks (then made up of Alex, Matt, Dom and "Smash" Adams) played their first show in front of a group of angry students who had paid money to watch "Blue Monday", an indie band who pulled out upon learning of the Demonic Upchucks debut. Three songs into the set the power to the stage was cut, the bouncers circled the Upchucks, the police were called and they were banned from their first venue. "Smash" left the band soon afterwards. Undettered, the Upchucks soldiered on and were banned from loads more venues.
More gigs followed and soon the band had 4 songs released on Helen of Oi's "Punks Skins And Herberts Vol5". Crowned "The Worlds Laziest Rock n' Roll Band" the Upchucks hit back at accusations by recording more songs in October 2004 and playing every now and again in Bournemouth, all over London, Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton and, in 2007, joined Dog-A-Dog for the 'They Stole Our Sperm Tour' in Sicily.
Currently Dom can be seen playing drums in C-30s, Alex is in Double Cross and Matt is now in Electromud.
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Live videos above from the bands last ever gig (on 14/08/2010
at Champions, Bournemouth). 'Nothing' video by Matt & Dom.
at Champions, Bournemouth). 'Nothing' video by Matt & Dom.
The following interview with Matt was posted on the bhone website by Tony Foster in August 2010. Like the C-30s album review i have posted the whole article, instead of just the link, due to uncertainty over whether the bhone website will remain online. At the moment the bhone website is still online and you can visit it on the link here.
After 13 years of “half remembered drunken nights, accidents, hectic pubs, angry doormen, scraps, sleeping rough, hot hung over days, miles in cars and vans and planes and trains”, the Demonic Upchucks are playing their last ever gig this Saturday at Champions. Matt Upchuck has always had loads to say, so we thought we’d give him an opportunity to ponder on the Upchucks and local music past and present. Just £2.50 will see you in on Saturday with doors at 8, first band 8.30 and Dave Bimble djing. We doubt very much if the Upchucks will leave quietly…
Q. Hiya Matt, how you doin’?
A. Good thanks Tony besides crippling toothache, but you don’t want to hear about that.
Q. 13 years of Demonic Upchucks, hundreds of shows, one last gig coming up. Why the end?
A. Well we never had any ambition or plans to do it forever, in fact we never had any ambition or plans at all. We had been dormant for a while and now I am living in Brighton and Dom is moving to London it will never be as easy as it is right now to do this final send off for the ‘Upchucks.
Q. You’re still playing in other bands, how do they compare to the Upchucks, more in terms of attitude and their reason for being rather than musically…
A. The attitude has always been simple; “we do it as long as it is fun”, and that’s been the bottom line all the time. If you’re not enjoying it how can you expect anyone else to? We have never felt comfortable in a musical straightjacket, the Upchucks waded into psychobilly, doom, 70s style stuff, heavy rock stuff and that attitude, that need for musical freedom I think is clear in what we all do now.
Q. Are there any gigs which stick out as being particularly memorable? If so, which and why?
A. They were all memorable in their own ways, no two shows were the same. We played a skatepark in some bleak council estate where the locals felt that culture/music/skateboards was all so intellectually intimidating they started attacking anyone without cold sores, baseball caps and pregnant eleven year old girlfriends… the boat gigs were memorable! The Gillingham gigs were always fun, Risky Rich (Reknaw) always put on a good show for us in Dalston, Stockwell or where-ever else.
Q. How did the Upchucks come about in ’97? Hardly a golden era for punk music?
A. No it wasn’t, but it was a good era for whinging, slavish bed-wetting Brit-Pop which was all the motivation we needed. The Upchucks were simply a reaction to the pompous dinosaurs and boring middle-class, art-school, self absorbed guitar bands who were everywhere you turned. We just wanted to be the polar opposite of them.
Q. Your first gig got pulled, right? What happened?
A. We arrived at the Gardening Club (now Sound Circus) high as kites with a crate of beer and Smash Adams in tow. He couldn’t play guitar but we gave him a guitar with two B strings on it. The three of us had never practiced but planned on banging out some of our own stuff me and Alex wrote (Cult Of The Vampire) and some covers (Minor Threat/Exploited/Slaughter and the Dogs/Eater). Five or six other bands were supposed to play with us that night but they all pulled out leaving us playing to a handful of rather annoyed spotty ugly indie kids.
By our third song we had given up much of the pretence of being a band and were by now throwing pig’s trotters and other bits of butcher’s waste at the less than impressed audience. The power was cut to the stage and we were given en minutes to get all our stuff out before the Police were called. “You’ve had your five minutes of fame boys” patronised Conrad the sound man as we were being manhandled out. Back then opposite there was an overgrown waste ground where we set up a drumkit and got pissed without having to listen to the miserable DJ inside – the night had been a success. “Five minutes of fame” indeed…
Q. You were playing gigs before you started practising. Those early days must’ve been messy…
A. Well that was our first gig and the first few were fairly similar – it was at best performance art and at worse, terrorism and incitement to violence! They were messy, very quickly we couldn’t play in Bournemouth so we worked our way round getting banned from everywhere in Salisbury too but by then Jarvis (Roger of Self Abuse) had agreed to manage us and got things together for the first time. He bought us equipment, cider, cigarettes and anything else and hired a practice room to lock us in a couple of times a week, a recording session and then a gig with the UK Subs. He taught us how to play a bit better and drilled some important ideas into us…soon we were almost a real band. It changed when we started playing to people who actually wanted us to play – that took some getting used to. Once people you know and respect came to see us there wasn’t that need to simply just fuck everything up. We started sounding like a real band
Q. How have you changed as people since those days?
A. I don’t think we have an awful lot. We find ourselves in different situations than we were when we were seventeen but the same things make me mad, the same things make me feel life is worth living, the same things excite me. Best asking someone else who knows us really I guess!
Q. And how has the local punk scene changed?
A. There was no punk scene at all in ‘97. Nothing. The three of us would go and watch Poze, or Badpenny or Gash – all great Bournemouth bands but the turnout for those gigs weren’t usually great and there was no sense of a proper scene. I guess that once the people who had been at our initial gigs started coming to more gigs and putting their own bands together the scene blossomed from there. I hear people complain that the scene isn’t what it was three or four years ago but it doesn’t phase me too much as there is more of a scene and a healthier group of punk bands than there was in ‘97.
Q. And the music ‘business’. What do you think of music’s digital revolution?
A. The music business is something that we have always steered clear of as much as possible – in fact the only people in the ‘music industry’ we ever had anything to do with were a handful of promoters we trusted and Helen of Oi! Records back in ’98. The music industry is a horrible horrible thing – a big ugly semi-crippled monster gobbling up whatever it cans to crap it out into shrink wrapped plastic for idiots without their own formed opinions to spend money on.
The digital revolution is not a revolution at all really. It has, or rather will ultimately (and hopefully) mean that we as the producers and consumers of music can bypass that unnecessary behemoth that is major labels and do things ourselves. Make no mistake though, those big ugly monsters are dying very painful and very slow deaths and have only themselves to blame at the end of the day…this “revolution” did not come out of the blue or happen overnight. Pissflaps to the music industry, they gave us everything we never needed.
Q. Give us your best Upchucks story…
A. This is a ridiculously difficult question… all the memories, half remembered drunken nights, accidents, hectic pubs, angry doormen, scraps, sleeping rough, hot hung over days, miles in cars and vans and planes and trains and what have you… anything I say could never do it all justice. Sorry to give such a shit answer but…
Q. What made the Upchucks special?
A. Special? Well the Upchucks were special to me as I was in them! I cannot speak for everyone else but if by special you mean ‘different’ it was perhaps the spirit in which we did everything in that we genuinely had no or very little ambition other than to enjoy each night as it came. The only thing that was ever important was enjoying it and I know that sounds like a stupid cliche but it was what we all agreed on. Nothing else mattered. Ever. Unlike a lot of bands fighting it out to be the next Discharge/Oi Polloi/Casualties/NOFX (now its the) Inner Terrestrials we always kept clear of fads. It always seemed so insincere to rip off another band because they are popular at the given moment… it dates overnight. We did whatever came to us at the time… whatever felt natural – no matter how shit or good it was.
Q. And will that be in evidence at Champions?
A. I refer you to the last sentence of the last answer
Q. You’ve got The Taxidermists and The Extinguishers supporting you for your final gig at Campions this Saturday. Why did you choose those bands?
A. Well, The Taxidermists were one of the first Bournemouth punk bands to spring up from the people who were coming to watch us play… I think I am correct in saying that both Steve and Adam were at the first ever Upchucks gig in 1997. Adam was a just little tadpole back then! We played a lot of shows with them and spent a lot of time hanging out together so it’s really nice they have agreed to reform for one night. I have to honest and say that the next first choice was Spitroast who were at the time the Upchuck’s girlfriends. Again, we played a lot of shows with them and had a lot of laughs. Unfortunately they were unable to do the gig so we asked The Extinguishers.
The Extinguishers formed during that period of time when it seemed every week another young punk band were playing their first gig. What made them different was their level of commitment and ability to progress musically and sell themselves beyond a small niche of people. They are a great bunch of guys who deserve all the success they get so it’ll be a pleasure having them on the bill with us.
Q. This isn’t one of those stupid ‘last ever gigs’, with the band playing more next year is it!?
A. Nope.
Q. Cheers for answering Matt, see you there.
A. Thank you Tony, thanks for helping us get off of our arses for this last gig and thanks for the work you put in to the local scene through bh one. See you there buddy!
After 13 years of “half remembered drunken nights, accidents, hectic pubs, angry doormen, scraps, sleeping rough, hot hung over days, miles in cars and vans and planes and trains”, the Demonic Upchucks are playing their last ever gig this Saturday at Champions. Matt Upchuck has always had loads to say, so we thought we’d give him an opportunity to ponder on the Upchucks and local music past and present. Just £2.50 will see you in on Saturday with doors at 8, first band 8.30 and Dave Bimble djing. We doubt very much if the Upchucks will leave quietly…
Q. Hiya Matt, how you doin’?
A. Good thanks Tony besides crippling toothache, but you don’t want to hear about that.
Q. 13 years of Demonic Upchucks, hundreds of shows, one last gig coming up. Why the end?
A. Well we never had any ambition or plans to do it forever, in fact we never had any ambition or plans at all. We had been dormant for a while and now I am living in Brighton and Dom is moving to London it will never be as easy as it is right now to do this final send off for the ‘Upchucks.
Q. You’re still playing in other bands, how do they compare to the Upchucks, more in terms of attitude and their reason for being rather than musically…
A. The attitude has always been simple; “we do it as long as it is fun”, and that’s been the bottom line all the time. If you’re not enjoying it how can you expect anyone else to? We have never felt comfortable in a musical straightjacket, the Upchucks waded into psychobilly, doom, 70s style stuff, heavy rock stuff and that attitude, that need for musical freedom I think is clear in what we all do now.
Q. Are there any gigs which stick out as being particularly memorable? If so, which and why?
A. They were all memorable in their own ways, no two shows were the same. We played a skatepark in some bleak council estate where the locals felt that culture/music/skateboards was all so intellectually intimidating they started attacking anyone without cold sores, baseball caps and pregnant eleven year old girlfriends… the boat gigs were memorable! The Gillingham gigs were always fun, Risky Rich (Reknaw) always put on a good show for us in Dalston, Stockwell or where-ever else.
Q. How did the Upchucks come about in ’97? Hardly a golden era for punk music?
A. No it wasn’t, but it was a good era for whinging, slavish bed-wetting Brit-Pop which was all the motivation we needed. The Upchucks were simply a reaction to the pompous dinosaurs and boring middle-class, art-school, self absorbed guitar bands who were everywhere you turned. We just wanted to be the polar opposite of them.
Q. Your first gig got pulled, right? What happened?
A. We arrived at the Gardening Club (now Sound Circus) high as kites with a crate of beer and Smash Adams in tow. He couldn’t play guitar but we gave him a guitar with two B strings on it. The three of us had never practiced but planned on banging out some of our own stuff me and Alex wrote (Cult Of The Vampire) and some covers (Minor Threat/Exploited/Slaughter and the Dogs/Eater). Five or six other bands were supposed to play with us that night but they all pulled out leaving us playing to a handful of rather annoyed spotty ugly indie kids.
By our third song we had given up much of the pretence of being a band and were by now throwing pig’s trotters and other bits of butcher’s waste at the less than impressed audience. The power was cut to the stage and we were given en minutes to get all our stuff out before the Police were called. “You’ve had your five minutes of fame boys” patronised Conrad the sound man as we were being manhandled out. Back then opposite there was an overgrown waste ground where we set up a drumkit and got pissed without having to listen to the miserable DJ inside – the night had been a success. “Five minutes of fame” indeed…
Q. You were playing gigs before you started practising. Those early days must’ve been messy…
A. Well that was our first gig and the first few were fairly similar – it was at best performance art and at worse, terrorism and incitement to violence! They were messy, very quickly we couldn’t play in Bournemouth so we worked our way round getting banned from everywhere in Salisbury too but by then Jarvis (Roger of Self Abuse) had agreed to manage us and got things together for the first time. He bought us equipment, cider, cigarettes and anything else and hired a practice room to lock us in a couple of times a week, a recording session and then a gig with the UK Subs. He taught us how to play a bit better and drilled some important ideas into us…soon we were almost a real band. It changed when we started playing to people who actually wanted us to play – that took some getting used to. Once people you know and respect came to see us there wasn’t that need to simply just fuck everything up. We started sounding like a real band
Q. How have you changed as people since those days?
A. I don’t think we have an awful lot. We find ourselves in different situations than we were when we were seventeen but the same things make me mad, the same things make me feel life is worth living, the same things excite me. Best asking someone else who knows us really I guess!
Q. And how has the local punk scene changed?
A. There was no punk scene at all in ‘97. Nothing. The three of us would go and watch Poze, or Badpenny or Gash – all great Bournemouth bands but the turnout for those gigs weren’t usually great and there was no sense of a proper scene. I guess that once the people who had been at our initial gigs started coming to more gigs and putting their own bands together the scene blossomed from there. I hear people complain that the scene isn’t what it was three or four years ago but it doesn’t phase me too much as there is more of a scene and a healthier group of punk bands than there was in ‘97.
Q. And the music ‘business’. What do you think of music’s digital revolution?
A. The music business is something that we have always steered clear of as much as possible – in fact the only people in the ‘music industry’ we ever had anything to do with were a handful of promoters we trusted and Helen of Oi! Records back in ’98. The music industry is a horrible horrible thing – a big ugly semi-crippled monster gobbling up whatever it cans to crap it out into shrink wrapped plastic for idiots without their own formed opinions to spend money on.
The digital revolution is not a revolution at all really. It has, or rather will ultimately (and hopefully) mean that we as the producers and consumers of music can bypass that unnecessary behemoth that is major labels and do things ourselves. Make no mistake though, those big ugly monsters are dying very painful and very slow deaths and have only themselves to blame at the end of the day…this “revolution” did not come out of the blue or happen overnight. Pissflaps to the music industry, they gave us everything we never needed.
Q. Give us your best Upchucks story…
A. This is a ridiculously difficult question… all the memories, half remembered drunken nights, accidents, hectic pubs, angry doormen, scraps, sleeping rough, hot hung over days, miles in cars and vans and planes and trains and what have you… anything I say could never do it all justice. Sorry to give such a shit answer but…
Q. What made the Upchucks special?
A. Special? Well the Upchucks were special to me as I was in them! I cannot speak for everyone else but if by special you mean ‘different’ it was perhaps the spirit in which we did everything in that we genuinely had no or very little ambition other than to enjoy each night as it came. The only thing that was ever important was enjoying it and I know that sounds like a stupid cliche but it was what we all agreed on. Nothing else mattered. Ever. Unlike a lot of bands fighting it out to be the next Discharge/Oi Polloi/Casualties/NOFX (now its the) Inner Terrestrials we always kept clear of fads. It always seemed so insincere to rip off another band because they are popular at the given moment… it dates overnight. We did whatever came to us at the time… whatever felt natural – no matter how shit or good it was.
Q. And will that be in evidence at Champions?
A. I refer you to the last sentence of the last answer
Q. You’ve got The Taxidermists and The Extinguishers supporting you for your final gig at Campions this Saturday. Why did you choose those bands?
A. Well, The Taxidermists were one of the first Bournemouth punk bands to spring up from the people who were coming to watch us play… I think I am correct in saying that both Steve and Adam were at the first ever Upchucks gig in 1997. Adam was a just little tadpole back then! We played a lot of shows with them and spent a lot of time hanging out together so it’s really nice they have agreed to reform for one night. I have to honest and say that the next first choice was Spitroast who were at the time the Upchuck’s girlfriends. Again, we played a lot of shows with them and had a lot of laughs. Unfortunately they were unable to do the gig so we asked The Extinguishers.
The Extinguishers formed during that period of time when it seemed every week another young punk band were playing their first gig. What made them different was their level of commitment and ability to progress musically and sell themselves beyond a small niche of people. They are a great bunch of guys who deserve all the success they get so it’ll be a pleasure having them on the bill with us.
Q. This isn’t one of those stupid ‘last ever gigs’, with the band playing more next year is it!?
A. Nope.
Q. Cheers for answering Matt, see you there.
A. Thank you Tony, thanks for helping us get off of our arses for this last gig and thanks for the work you put in to the local scene through bh one. See you there buddy!