In February, Gen and the Degenerates released their debut album, Anti-Fun Propaganda, which received huge praise from fans and press alike. Now, the band are moving forward, preparing new music, new live shows, and so much more to bring to the music industry. In this interview, I spoke with Gen Glynn-Reeves (vocals) on Anti-Fun Propaganda, what’s coming from the band, and Gen’s proudest moments.
On Anti-Fun Propaganda’s name…
It’s the name of one of the songs. The whole song is basically like, ‘This is really dumb.’ So, the urban myth of, if you cut a worm in half, it just becomes two worms. I was thinking about that one day and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s just anti-worm propaganda that was spread by birds so that they could eat more worms easier.’ And I just then started calling everything ‘anti-something propaganda’ as just a little joke in my head. I realised just so much of the messaging in the world, by doing that joke, I was like, ‘This is all just anti-fun propaganda. All of this marketing is just trying to make us not have fun so they can sell us things.’
The song is just really silly. It just kind of comes from that kind of super silly place.
On the influences behind Anti-Fun Propaganda…
It ended up quite rock-y, but we’re also into a lot of 70s New York punk and things like that. But yeah, there’s a real range of influences. Some of us listen quite widely… our rhythm section are kind-of like thrash dads, to be honest. They just listen to Metallica. But the other three of us listen to a lot of different stuff. I definitely think there’s a lot of songwriting influences, lyrically, that maybe aren’t quite there. I just love good songwriters. I love pop music, I love country music. I just love people who write really good songs. And I like to bring that kind of sensibility to kind-of punk and alternative stuff.
On the success and positive feedback to Anti-Fun Propaganda…
It’s nice that people get it for sure. It’s a bit of a big swing. What we do is a bit of a big swing, because it’s very silly, and super fun, but about difficult topics a lot of the time, because it’s so influenced what’s going on in our lives. So I guess I’m glad that people got it, and they didn’t just go, ‘What the fuck is this?’ But equally, we’d probably do it anyway. It doesn’t matter that much. But it’s, it’s super nice. We keep making the same music, whether people like it or not, I think.
On Gen’s favourite tracks from the album…
I love ‘Girls!’, we loved having Uninvited on that. We’re about to make a music video for it, next Monday, which is gonna be so much fun. We did a call out for extras, and one of the videos that Uninvited did went viral. Our poor directors got over 100 emails. I think we needed, at minimum, like 45 people. He had like 62 last night or something. I just saw a message from him that said, ‘Please get everyone to take their posts down, because I’ve got like 100 emails in my inbox. I need to stop.’ So that’s really funny.
And, well, Jude is like a special, ‘Jude’s Song’ is a special song for me. Because, you know, grief.
I like them all. ‘Kids Wanna Dance’… I like that song. I really like ‘Big Hit Single’ because it’s just so dumb. So yeah, I’d say ‘Big Hit Single’, ‘Girls!’ and ‘Jude’s Song’ are my current faves.
On the ‘Girls!’ music video…
It had definitely been a conversation we’ve had, just because when we’d been playing it live before it was out, some fans have really resonated with that. And then, we need to be in the music video. I’d kind of forgotten about that, to be honest. The director for this video, he did our last video. And I think we’re in it for the long haul now; I just think he’s just going to do all our videos now, to be honest, because he just did such a good job on the first one. But he’s, honestly, so talented, like such a great director. He came up with this whole concept of this one-shot video that’s going to go through like a bar or through a pub. He just wanted to have loads of girls from all different walks of life and celebrate loads of different versions of girls and women from different angles. And so that was kind of his concept.
On the band’s upcoming tour…
It should be really fun… I’m excited. It’s always great to play to new audiences, but I’m super excited to play our own headline shows, because it’s people who really get the silliness. We’ve got our inflatable sharks that we’re bringing, so it’s gonna be really fun. I got five of them, but I did not expect them to be as big as they are. They’re like, they’re really big. I thought they were kids’ ride-on ones, so they were gonna be like, maybe, an arm’s length. We tried them out at this festival. We had one at Sound City, but then we played this other all-day thing the day after in Cheltenham, and the venue had a projector on the ceiling. The shark was in the audience, and it knocked the projector off the ceiling. It smashed on the ground. Apparently, it had gotten bumped a couple of times, but we couldn’t see because obviously, the projector is projecting onto the wall behind us, and we can’t see that it’s wobbling. So it got bumped a couple of times, and it kind-of dropped and was hanging. and it would have been okay. But apparently, someone at the back of the crowd literally picked up the shark and beamed it straight at the projector. The projector just smashed on the floor. I was literally performing our last song, like with my hand over my mouth. But they were really nice about it. So I can’t wait to see what else the sharks destroy. We’re gonna have to do a ceiling survey of each venue when we arrive.
On Liverpool Sound City…
It was super fun. We saw this band called Welly, who were on next door, just before us. They were so good… I’d never seen them before.
But I think our friend Tash, who’s in Cows – they’re a Brighton band – had been like, ‘Oh, you guys need to check out Welly, they’re sick.’ And I hadn’t done it. Because when you’re in a band, you get told to check out so many bands. I just don’t do it until, well, actually, that’s a lie. I try to, but often they slip through the gaps as Welly had. But the set was so good.
It was so much fun. Really enjoyed that. And then yeah, our set was great. We had a great time. We squeezed definitely the legal amount of people into The Jac (Jacaranda) basement.
It was super fun, though. We used to play The Jac almost every month when we first started out as a band. We’d play The Jac every month because no one would put us on any shows, so we just put on our own shows at the Jack and then would have a house party afterwards. It was really funny being back in there. Because we’ve not played it for, obviously, for years because we don’t actually play in Liverpool that much. But yeah, it was really funny being back in there.
On Gen’s proudest moments in Gen and the Degenerates…
Proudest moments. I don’t know, just any time that people say it’s actually made an impact on their actual lives is my proudest moment, I think. Because it’s basically, it’s a silly cartoon job, really, isn’t it? Some people take music so seriously. I think it’s a super powerful tool for people to keep them company while they go out and do stuff in the real world. It’s a great resource for people.
We did a tour with this band called Skunk Anansie around three years ago. They’ve got an older fan base. On that tour, we were talking about being like non-binary and queer and stuff like that, and talking about trans issues. There were people who’d come with their younger kids, who are closer to our age, who were trans and, the parents, they hadn’t understood their kid until the show. It was really beneficial for both of them to have someone on stage talking about it, in a way. Sometimes it’s just easier to hear these things from a third party, where you can take the emotion out of it, you know, like if it’s your kid, and you’ve envisioned this one life for them, and then they’ve gone a different way. Or maybe like a name you gave them has a sentimental value, but it doesn’t fit them anymore. There can be a lot of stuff, emotional stuff, that sometimes it’s really helpful to have someone completely outside of it talking about it in a way that you can understand. And even members of the Skunks crew were like, ‘Oh my god, my kid’s trying to tell me about this, and I didn’t get it until you guys talked about it.’
And I think that’s the best thing, when something we’re doing actually makes a tangible effect. On our last headline, we raised money for my friend who is a tattoo artist, but they’re disabled, and so they need to use a wheelchair. The landlord had been being a shit, and hadn’t got the lift fixed, and so they hadn’t been able to work for months. So, we did fundraising at our shows, and it just makes me so proud that we’ve the kind of crowd who will donate money, and help other people out that they’ve never even met. I love that.
I’d say those are kind of my proudest moments… when something actually makes a tangible impact in the world.
On what’s coming next…
We’ve got this tour, and then we’ve got some festivals. I can’t remember what’s announced, so I’m not going to say, but some festivals. And then we’re at the moment, we’re writing albums too. We just don’t like slowing down. We want to get album two out next year. So we’re just kind of straight back on horse.
I don’t know if the label knows that that’s the plan, but it is the plan. So yeah, we’re just going to keep on writing new music, keep doing new stuff, keep having fun. That’s the plan.
Final notes…
Just to grab tickets to the headline tour, basically. Everyone has to bring sunglasses to the headline tour. Because during one of our songs, it’s called ‘Post-Cool’, one of the lines is, ‘I wear my sunglasses all of the time, even in the shower.’ So, we all wear sunglasses on stage, and some of our fans who’ve been coming for a while, they know to bring the sunglasses. But people who haven’t been fans for a while, they don’t know that they need sunglasses. People will need sunglasses.
