I N T E R V I E W : B A S E M E N T  J A X X

Back on 11^th November 1999, Dance Nation went along to Leicester Students Union to check out the phenomena known as Basement Jaxx. They were playing a one off warm up date to prepare for their upcoming UK tour. Dance Nation caught up with Felix Buxton, one half of the Jaxx……

Dance Nation - Apart from you and Simon, who else is touring with you?

Felix - Well we’ve got the singers from most of the album, Slarter John who sings on ‘Jump ‘n’ Shout’, Blue James from ‘Red Alert’, Alma who sings ‘Yo-Yo’

D.N. - We can see that you’ve also got a set of bongo’s out there.

F - Yep, that’s George’s Bongo set, he’s from Brazil and I met him quite a few years ago now. There’s also Dee Dee who’s from Brazil, she’s one of the dancers. I actually met her at her wedding a couple of years ago. The first video we did was Fly Life and it had a lot of Brazilians in it, and we made a lot of friends when we went over there, and that’s the great thing about doing what we’re doing the fact that we’ve been all over the world and met loads of different people, all from different backgrounds and it gives you more of a picture of the world and you can see if you’re opinions of the world that you’ve made up from what you’ve seen on television, is true.

D.N. - Did you always want to be famous?

F - Oh yeah, when I was young I wanted to be a pop star and I think a lot of kids that age do.

D.N. - What would you be doing if you weren’t part of the Basement Jaxx?

F - I went to Exeter Uni to study Engineering, and then I gave up on that really, because it didn’t really interest me, so I went down to London and I started working in PR, and at Uni, I had always DJ-ed, and I was once asked to DJ for someone’s party, but I hadn’t got any records so I had to borrow things off people, and all night I ended up playing a tape, then a records, tape then records. I actually DJ-ed with Thom Yorke from Radiohead, and he was playing all the indie stuff and I was playing all the dance music, nd it was a charity event so I do think we got paid for it. People knew how into music I was but I never really had any money or records, so then I started to DJ more and pick up records……..but at about 15 or something I remember this music teacher……..Mr Moore…..Jo Spare we used to call him, he really used to lose it, and we really used to wind him up, like most people, but I never really took an interest in music at school because of the way that it was approached, it all seemed irrelevant.

D.N. - Your videos are great because they’re so original and you star in them yourselves, and aren’t very high budget…..

F - Well actually Rendez-Vous cost us £90,000 to make which is completely ridiculous

D.N. - What has been your favourite video to make?

F - I think probably ‘Fly Life’, because it was the first video we’d ever done, but we’ve just made a video for ‘Jump ‘N’ Shout’ which was made with a couple of friends around Camberwell in Brixton, London. That was great because we had such a great time making it.

D.N. - Have you ever been starstruck?

F - Well we’ve been to loads of awards ceremonies and parties and we’ve met Jerry Springer, and we went to the MOBO’s and we met Chris Eubank, Tina Turner and I met Jazzy B, who did ‘Soul2Soul’ and for me that was really cool because he’s a hero of mine and it was really exciting meeting someone who meant something to me. A lot of those things look really exciting from the outside and it’s like wow! But on the inside, it’s not that great.

D.N. - I read somewhere that you hated coming out of these parties and events because of all the cameras and press waiting outside

F - Well yeah, but I think that we’re used to it now, people in the industry are doing their business and they want pictures taken with certain people, so it can go with their story, and it’s all very manipulated and most of them just want to make money.

D.N. - What about nerves for tonight?

F - I’m not very nervous. We’ve done so many DJ gigs that it’s not so bad, and one time in Belgium, 8,000 people were all singing ‘Red Alert’ back to us, which was really great.