Hijak Oscar

Hijak Oscar

Not one but (count 'em!) TWO Good Blades music features in the same month - lovely! For more on the Good Blades check em out here...

Words - Lloyd Brown, Good Blades
Charlie Smith - Pictures

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A dark venue, a bottle of JD and a blues band that would scare the devil, this isn’t any ordinary band of the noughties, this is Hijak Oscar.

The Joiners in Southampton mirrored the band, its dark, debauched, unpretentious and located in a pretty hard up area, a resident gave me a speech after I said the area wasn’t so bad, mind you him making it out to be a war zone is more than a tad over the top. This venue with its barmaids that look like they shoot for Goth magazines in their spare time a sound guy who could double as a doorman and absolutely no amenities, damn you should see the backstage dressing room, It’s a cellar come toilet, nice.

So firstly tell me a bit about yourselves?

Well were a group of six shenanigan people from York

Has that influenced you at all?

No … not at all, otherwise we’d all be playing flutes

How did you start out?

It was just a matter of us all hanging out really, getting drunk and then one day deciding to form a band.

What made you want to get involved in the Channel 4 Unsigned Act?

All turn and look at Mark the bassist,
Mark – well I felt like everyone in the band needed punishing for a couple of months of hell

Did you feel cheated; the judges clearly and even stated that they chose marketability over talent?

Well we know basically from the start what it was all about and that we weren’t going to win it, so we knew we’d be using it as a medium to promote ourselves really. Were just trying to get away from that now, there’s no point in winning a record deal straight away from winning a shit competition that’s not what we wanted.

Do you feel the whole process has benefited you?

I told us a lot about the media, how to handle it. It’s helped a lot more people hear our music and get to know us so that’s good, a lot of people say it was a shit program but really liked the band.

I asked about rivalries with any of the judges, Mark replied ‘well I make better cheese than Alex James, but it’s from my scrotum.

How has the tour been going? Has it been eventful?

Yeah it’s been going really well, had a good response from loads of different people. Were playing to lots of different crowds there’s those that stand there and listen and then there’s those that go crazy, we actually had a moshpit in Cambridge of all places. We got bumped up at the Liverpool Barfly the other night which was good, I remarked they maybe they should have taken up One Night Only’s slot that night but they were quick to defend the band, not their music but they liked the lads.

The tours been more popular than we thought it would be.

The band then show me some pictures of their mobile of a man with a sun defender on his nose asleep in a car park nicknamed dog meat and a black swan.

Do you enjoy life on the road?

Were still crashing in peoples floors but enjoying it, the highs are much higher than the lows

Mr Fox - ‘This tour has been like 4 days of intense chemo, I feel like I’ve shat a tumour.’

This band knows how to work a stage, their presence is overpowering, your literally wary of approaching the stage but know you have to get closer to that sound. If you like the blues, and frankly you should then this is for you, watching them let alone hearing them is an experience. They’re throw back to the band that never happened but should have, there playing at the crossroads rocking out to the skills dished out to them by the devil. And this is no gimmick, this band with two brilliant vocalists, a succinct well put together band who still work as individuals, this may be the greatest blues rock band ever, and they’re just starting out, hungry for the road and on the way to victory. Don’t expect these in the charts though, I’m a realist and know that this genre and style isn’t mainstream, perhaps they’ll gather enough followers as they tour but it’s an uphill struggle and to be honest I think these guys would be happy to be playing dirty little venues like this and making enough to keep them going.

When we reviewed them last year we called them strange beasts, I haven’t changed my mind, these are a rare breed and I don’t think I’ll see another band like them for a very long time if ever.

For fans of Hijak Oscar I recommend, Multicoloured Green, The Blue screen of Death and The Blues Flames, this is the sound of the voodoo blues.

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