In Conversation with Getdown Services

On Friday 16th February, Dutch indie band Pip Blom played for a sold-out crowd in Bristol, with genre-defying duo Getdown Services set to open the night with satirical jeers at capitalism, landlordism and Jamie Oliver rattled over electronic-pop disco beats. And yet, when the time came, only one man took to the stage: Bristolian Josh Law shmoozed the crowd alone, rallying against Yard Act for copying their song and stripping his t-shirt off only a few songs in. Where was his partner in crime, Ben Sadler? Still Listening interviewed the man himself about mums on merch tables, radio six dads, the inevitability of a solo career and one man lost to the allure of a Kim Petras concert.

Nice to meet you, Josh! What’s it like playing for your hometown, Bristol?

On the whole, good! We played in Bristol a lot, but tonight was weird as it was a load of people who'd never heard of us. I mean, you get a lot of people talking about radio six music dads and stuff, and maybe it's that. The mix is great, though! A mixed crowd is one thing, but when one half of the mix is being knobheads is when it becomes a problem. It becomes bad press for the rest of them as well – we do get a lot of radio six music types, and they're lovely. But then you get a few that they come and they just they have this force field around them… like, don't come near me, don't make any noise. It’s weird.

Yeah, I get that – we were singing along to your songs and got shushed, which was definitely a first. Not to state, the obvious, but there’s only one of you tonight. What’s up with that?

Uh, yeah. Ben has gone to see Kim Petras in Manchester tonight. 

Wow! So, he values that above opening for Pip Blom?

Yeah, I guess he does! Anyway, we've done three other dates with Pip Blom. And, fair enough, he wasn’t willing to give up Kim Petras in Manchester. Clearly, I can do it without him… So maybe I need to lose the dead wood.

Haha, you smashed it! Well, that's next question: what's happening with your solo career after tonight?

Well, I honestly physically can't do that. It's the sweating in your eyes, man, it happens all the time. I need to work on my breathing full time. I've done it a couple of times on my own before, but…

You don't like it?

I don't. I mean, tonight was really fun, but it's hard work. Hopefully Kim Petras fizzles out, and then that wouldn’t be a risk. Having said that, she has put out some stuff that she’s released herself which is really good… But she's not good enough to miss doing this.

Your latest album, ‘Crisps’, was released in November 2023 – it’s great, by the way. How does it feel to hit the depletion of the album, in the sense that now you're moving away from the release and towards other things?

That's a great question. It's nice because some of the songs on the album were made two weeks before we submitted it. While some of them were made two years before… So some of them we were quite sick of. But releasing them rather than just playing them live and having a track as a complete thing breathes a new life into it. It's been good because we were just starting to get sick of it, and now we are excited to play the songs again, even though they're exactly the same. That's been the main takeaway.

So tonight is your last night with Pip Blom! How has it been?

It's been so good. I mean… it's an odd match, I would say. We aren’t quite in the same neck of the woods. But it's been really fun. They're really lovely people; they're a really good band live and the new album is so great. How has it been for us? Well, it’s hard to know, really... People enjoyed it. It's kind of like you just get asked to do it and then we do it, and hope it goes down well. It's been really fun to go to some new places. I’ve been to Glasgow a lot as my dad's from there, but we’ve never played there as a band, so that was great. And your headline is: they're the loveliest band I've ever met. They’ve even got their mum doing merch!

You can buy Getdown Services latest album, Crisps, here.