Interview - Goldspot

I hadn't heard of Goldspot before either, but that was part of the fun of the job. You never knew who you were suddenly going to get an interview with. Everyone has interesting stories to tell though.

Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in July 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd

GOLDSPOT

Not, not Goldfrapp; Goldspot. You may have picked up one of their songs after iTunes made it their free track of the week. They’re a band of mellow pop playing, California-based musicians who have named themselves after a fizzy drink, who have been played on The OC, who are playing the iTunes Festival with The Maccabees and who are heavily influenced by old Bollywood tracks. We called singer Siddhartha Khosla for a chat.

Hi Sidd, you all right?
Yeah, how are you?

I’m good thank you. You having a nice day?
Yeah I’m having a lovely day. I woke up this morning at 8’o’clock and I went to the gym for an hour and a half, and when I do that I feel great, so I’m having a lovely day. It’s a good way to start the day and you feel like you can accomplish anything.

Some random questions to start. What have you got in your pockets?
I have my Oyster Card which I just got the other day after realising there was something called an Oyster Card after being here for a month.

Next random question – what was the last film you saw?
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. [It was] completely overrated. I thought it was going to be great although the lead actor in that movie was phenomenal, it’s just like I didn’t like how it was directed.

We’ll have that in our Sidd Film Review Section, which we’re just starting today.
Seriously I can talk for hours about films. I would love to do that. If I could quit my music career and become a film critic I think I would do that. If the record flops and I get dropped from the label completely, then I’m going to call Native.tv.

You’re from LA aren’t you?
Originally I’m from New Jersey, but I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the last eight years. What’s so beautiful about Los Angeles is that you have that beautiful weather and then it’s ruined by this layer of smog that sits above the city because pollution is so bad.

Every cloud has some smog beneath it. That kind of thing.
There’s something there, I don’t know what it is but there is definitely a great line to be said about that.

I hear your band is named after a fizzy drink?
When I was a kid I lived in India for a few years and I used to go back every summer for like the first ten years and live with my grandparents and drink their cold Goldspot, and it was this orange bubbly soda. It was my favourite drink and then they discontinued it.

What!
Yeah (sighs) I’m actually glad they discontinued it, because if they didn’t I would probably be in trademark infringement on some level or something, I don’t know.

And your teeth wouldn’t be too good either.
Exactly!

You were touring the UK last month weren’t you? How did it go?
It was really amazing. First of all, we’re a Los Angeles based band so we’ve been established there for a number of years, and when we go to shows, you know, we do really well and people sing to the songs. And then we came here and it was a really different environment ‘cause we were almost starting from scratch. But we found that when we played in different cities there were people were singing along to the songs and coming to the gigs and it was really cool. On top of it, England is by far my favourite country on the planet, by far.

You don’t have to suck up, it’s all right!
I actually started my music career in London. After I graduated college I moved out to London for six months because I just love it so much here, and so it felt really good flying here.

Were there any particular gigs which stood out?
Our performance at Glastonbury was the highlight. We played on Thursday night, and ‘cause all the headlining bands were playing on Friday and Saturday night, our stage [The Queen’s Head] happened to be the main stage. And so we played to thousands of people, it was awesome.

And then right as we started the second to last song, which was a song called ‘Friday’, the power generator blew, and everyone in the audience started booing the sound, or the lack of it, and instinctively I just got off the stage and brought my guitar. I went into the audience and I told the crowd to ‘Shut the fuck up’ and three and a half thousand people got really quiet, and I played just like that in the crowd and by the end of it everyone was singing along. It was hands down, one of the most special moments in my musical career.

Did you get to see many other bands at the festivals?
Yeah, at Glastonbury we saw Arcade Fire and Bjork. Those are two of my favourite bands and that was really exciting cos I’d never seen either of them live. Although I met Bjork a month and a half ago at her hotel in London…

Were you a bit starstruck?
I’m normally extremely starstruck. There was like a barricade of her friends at her hotel lobby and she was in the middle of it. I walked through and I put my hand out to her and I’m like ‘Hi, Bjork, my name is Siddhartha’ and she shook my hand and she goes ‘Hi’ and at that moment I literally just got chills as she is so cool. I said ‘Listen I know this sounds awful and I know this sounds so lame for me to do but I’m a huge fan of yours, I think you’re beautiful, I think your music is beautiful, and I really want you to listen to my album’ and I gave her a copy of our album and all her friends started clapping. Bjork looks at me and she goes ‘Siddhartha, thank you’ and she started singing to me. And she sings to me ‘Celebrate good times… come on!’ I was literally in shock. So that was really special.

That album, that’s ‘Tally Of The Yes Men’ isn’t it? When did you record that?
We recorded that about two and a half years ago in the States, and it was released on an indie label in the States. Like any musician out there, or most musicians out there trying to make it, you have to look for another job to sustain you. And so I worked in a cubicle at AT&T Wireless where I was responsible for taking care of the permitting to put up wireless antennae across the city.

It sounds fascinating.
And if you want, we can talk in depth about it because I know everything about it.

You know, we’ll give that a miss today.
So I had this day job and I sat in my cubicle for like 35-40 hours a week. And then after work every day, I’d go in the studio to record the record with our producer and our drummer Ramy Antoun. A lot of the lyrics are inspired by being like a subordinate in an office environment and it was great because I’d work there or pretend to work and I would sit in my cubicle and write the lyrics of songs. I should now say that we were actually signed to AT&T Wireless. They paid me to write.

Any favourite tracks on there?
‘Rewind’ and ‘Time Bomb’ are my two favourites.

A bit about your influences. You’re probably bored of telling everyone about the songs you listened to in your childhood and how they affected your style?
I’m an American-born Indian, and as most Indian kids growing up in the US, first generation, a lot of us were exposed to music our parents listened to. There was no way in hell my parents would listen to the Rolling Stones or The Beatles or anything, they didn’t know who they were. So we listened to old Indian music like 1950s and 60s Bollywood films. So that really shaped the way I approached music.

I used to sing Indian music growing up, I would sing at temple, then at age 13 or 14 I finally discovered that if you flip the switch on a cassette deck from tape to radio, you could actually hear something other than what was on the tapes. And then the first thing I listened to, there was a song off of ‘Document’ from REM and every since then I’ve loved REM and other bands like the Smiths, The Cure and Depeche Mode. Ramy is Egyptian, so he grew up listening to that music as well.

Can you tell me a fact about the others in the band?
Derek [Horst, guitar] – Derek is a diabetic, and he thinks that eating Snickers bars are good for him. The more refined sugar he puts in his diet, the more he believes he’s actually helping his diabetic condition. Ramy is a great golfer, and he’s got the biggest hair I’ve ever seen on a human being. Sergio [Andrade, bass] looks really good with a full grown beard. And Seth [McLain] has just recently engineered the Robbers On High Street album.

Your first name, I looked it up and apparently it means ‘he who has attained his goals’. Would you say that you’ve attained them yet?
Part of the way I’m wired is that I can never be happy with what I have. I have not attained any of my goals as yet. But if you asked me seven years ago if I were in this situation now I would have been more than delighted and thrilled and I have achieved my goals. The goal is ultimately to be happy, and that I am, on many levels, but because by virtue of it being a goal it is always evolving and changing. I don’t know what else to say!

Goldspot