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July Talk’s Ian Docherty On Why Retweeting Insults Is A Good Thing

Does getting insulted on Twitter mean that you've finally made it? We find out.

Those who have experienced it know that July Talk has one of the most outrageous, volatile and engrossing live shows in the history of live music. When the Toronto-based quintet performed at Ottawa’s Ritual Nightclub it was the most disturbing, frenzied, and sexually charged performance that I had ever seen in my life up until that point. Front-duo Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay, in animalistic displays of aggression, pounced viciously upon each other before drawing back and forth, beckoning the other with a smirk. Bassist Josh Warburton, drummer Danny Miles, and guitarist Ian Docherty righted the ship while Leah and Peter were busy ripping up its planks. It was, in the words of a YouTube commentator, like “a stick of dynamite with a ribbon wrapped around it.”

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Like any band worth their salty sweat, July Talk’s live interaction is getting enough notice around the world that they’re now garnering what any band big enough would probably say is a normal part of their career: baseless, hateful, and flat out ludicrous insults. But where bands 40 years ago only had to worry about Lester Bangs’ cough syrup-fuelled rants, bands of this century now face the tirades of this dark and evil thing we call social media. Hordes of disgruntled keyboard-wielding assholes spewing vitriolic insults left and right at artists have caught the attention of Docherty, and rather than letting the rude comments slip, he does what a number of artists do now; he spreads them across the web. As Docherty explains, it’s not such a bad thing; it’s actually pretty funny, and it’s probably a sign that you’re a kick-ass live rock ‘n’ roll band.

Noisey: What do you think the thought process is behind tweeting shitty things about bands, and then those bands directing it back?
Ian Docherty: That’s what I’ve always thought was really funny about it. There’s plenty of music and stuff that I dislike, but I would never go on Twitter and blast it and tag that band. Not even for fear of them seeing it, but just because there’s no point. I kind of grew up on that like: ‘Don’t have anything nice to say, ya don’t say it,’ and that sort of translates on Twitter. I’m not going to go and blast somebody, because who gives a shit? Nobody cares about my opinion. [Laughs] But there’s people on there that just love writing the most heinous things.

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Yeah, it’s crazy. When you retweet those things are you trying to make people realize their words have consequences?
Sometimes. There’s definitely been ones where it's just like, ‘It’s so ridiculous what you just wrote,’ I’m retweeting it, and then I’ll get like an apology tweet back, being like ‘Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have wrote that.” I guess maybe it is like sort of an accountability thing, but it was never like an intention to call people out. It was just like, ‘Well, if you’re going to write that, I think that’s pretty fuckin’ hilarious, so I may as well let other people read this.’

After this year’s JUNO ceremony, people we’re really digging at Matt Mays over his performance at the, and you seemed pretty upset by that. What went on there?
That one was a funny one for me too because we were there, in person, and he was one of the only ones that actually performed. Like “Walk Off The Earth,” that was a track. There wasn’t a single thing about what they did that was real, but they’re the ones getting all the praise, and it was just kind of like a sad statement almost. We were watching people go from, ‘This is a great rock ‘n’ roll performance that we just witnessed,’ to, ‘It sounds like shit.’ Well no, it's just it doesn’t sound like a CD. They actually fucking did it. Yeah, maybe they sang a little bit out of tune, but he was actually singing, it wasn’t just like fraud that we saw with a bunch of the other performances.

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I don’t think people know, I think people actually see these performances and believe that it’s all real. They just don’t know. Fair enough, if you’re not in the industry and not performing all the time, you probably wouldn’t notice it, like, ‘Oh, that guy’s mouth is really far away from the mic, there’s absolutely no way that that’s real.’ It’s just shitty nowadays, people are so accustomed to that kind of perfection that [when they see] a real performance happen, half the time they say, ‘That was so shitty.’ Go back and watch other old bands, like a Zeppelin show and it sounds the same. That’s like what real performance is. You get the feel of whatever that night was, cause sometimes you could be fucking it all up, but its just so gnarly that its like, ‘This is amazing.'

Jack White’s homepage used to be a list of pull quotes from disparaging reviews and comments from media, and I think Hulk Hogan, too. What do you think of that approach?
I guess just accountability for people might be his statement, but I really couldn’t speak on what he’s trying to get across. Maybe it is like a sense of humour thing, where it's just kind of laughing at these opinions. They’re sort of nonsense most of the time, cause generally the most negative stuff, there’s no actual criticism involved in it, it's just like a negative thing to say. It’s just a nonsense thing to do.

Right, and that must be frustrating.
Especially with music journalism nowadays, I see a lot of people who are supposed to be critics, but really all they’re doing is writing that they don’t like that style of music or they just don’t like that band. They don’t ever give you a real reason why, which is nonsense. Nobody gives a shit about that. It [should be], was the performance good? Did they play songs from their album? What went on? Like, I wouldn’t be enthused about going to a Nickelback concert, but I could probably go and be like, ‘Their performance was great, everything was on par, if I were a Nickelback fan this would’ve been a great thing to watch.’ It just seems like I read a lot of negative reviews that are basically the people being like, ‘I just don’t like this music,’ which is nonsense. That’s not journalism.

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In an interview the singer from British band, The Vaccines said he can’t read comments online anymore cause it hurts his feelings too much, which must be a shitty way to feel.
It depends on who you are in a band, like I generally don’t get anything directed at me personally. Saying it’s easy to laugh at, I don’t know what it would be like if it was people personally attacking me that could be hurtful. But at the same time I would probably just laugh. There’s not a whole lot that people could really say that I’d buy into. Most of the time anything that’s supposed to be this hurtful comment is kind of like hilarious, childish nonsense.

Exactly. It’s more a statement on them than on you, which kind of flips their intention.
It’s just like name-calling essentially. It’s like being in a bar, and some guy’s too drunk and says something shitty to you, like you wouldn’t even think about responding. You just laugh at it, you know?

In some weird ways, does having online ‘haters’ make you feel validated as a band?
I don’t know if validation is the right word, but absolutely it’s kind of like, ‘Okay, cool, there’s enough people listening that I’m getting negative responses,’ which is kind of cool cause generally when you’re starting out, you’re only going to hear positive stuff. We’re by no means a big band or anything like that, but we’re doing enough now that I guess there are people who have the opinion that they fuckin’ hate our band, so that’s cool. [Laughs]

True. I guess it must be a sign that you’re doing something right. Most great art is divisive anyway.
To be honest, I feel like most bands that get the worst shit written about them are doing the best. That’s the thing, is if they’re really big and have a ton of lovers, then there’s also going to be a ton of people who hate it.

Luke Ottenhof only retweets good news - @lukeottenhof