Black Kids: Hype Survival

It turns out that in among the hundred or so people who turned out were a couple of prominent Uni bloggers. “They raved about our live performance and they said the recording was shit, and so everyone was like ‘oh, these guys must be badass live!’” says Reggie with a nostalgic smile, “and then we played at CMJ and everyone was like, ‘the recording was good but live they’re shit!”

The hype has spiralled from there. “I think we’re just too provincial to recognise that we should feel pressure,” smiles Reggie, shrinking a little at the suggestion that they are even under pressure. “It’s daydreams all of it, we’re just like ‘fucking eh! We’re doing it’. I just can’t see us failing… oh man, it’s gonna be such a hard blow when it happens.”

He sounds a bit like a Big Brother winner peeping through the doors back in to the real world; all full of belief that the nation has voted for them, but still aware that the bottom could drop out at any moment. “Obviously we want to be around for a while, we’ve got a load of great songs,” says Reggie. Perhaps this is why they’ve signed to Almost Gold records rather than any of the others vying for their names on the dotted line. “They just seemed to get us from the get go: we want to be around for a while and they see that, cos you know, we don’t want to be a flash in the pan.”

They speak with a similar trepidation about their band name. Black Kids is both an innocent nod to a lyric in Reggie’s favourite Hefner song (The Baggage Reclaim Song), and a statement about white folks who avoid the truth. It’s a strong contrast, but then being called Black Kids in a town in deep-south Bible-belt America somehow has deeper connotations than if they were from Totnes.

Kevin explains that when bassist Owen worked for the local Alt Weekly he found an e-mail sent in to the Mayor of Jacksonville’s office. “She was complaining about these kids that were playing basketball and were being kind of loud. She just referred to them as ‘kids who play basketball’ but it was really clear she meant ‘young black males’.” Rather than call themselves ‘kids who play basketball’, “it’s just obviously not a good name,” asserts Reggie, “we thought let’s just call it like it is: ‘Black Kids’.”

Florida is responsible for sports metal pioneers Limp Bizkit, but if the Wizard Of Aaahs EP (their only release to date!) is anything to go by they have chosen not to tread in their peers’ footsteps. The EP drips with lovelorn wonderment and childlike hankering after girls.

When asked what they’re trying to say Kevin jumps in first, “It’s like ‘how Reggie tried to impress the girls and failed part one… part two… part three’,” and then sits back laughing. Reggie takes the bait to defend his libido, “No! hey I don’t want to give the wrong impression, I do [get girls] okay. There are a lot of angry husbands looking for me.”

They’re heading into the studio with ex-Pulper, and thorough Brit, Bernard Butler, “We did our first two singles with him and he’s a real pleasure to work with,” says Pulp fan Kevin. “The album will be good if ten singles makes a good album,” harps Reggie with nervous defiance, “There’s this supposed hype that we have to survive and then we’re gonna be around for a long time.”