The Rayguns
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The Rayguns are a British/Danish pop garage band formed in 2003 by two former members of the late eighties cult band: Hidden Hits. Even with a fairly traditional setup, their music is hard to categorize. The songs are in the singer/songwriter tradition with a few folk elements, but played as modern rock songs. The music can with some justification be said to be inspired by the British Psychedelic music of the 60's, the punk music of the 70's and the New Wave of the 80's
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[edit] History
The Rayguns was the result of a two-year long search for a proper constellation and band name by the two originators Ray Marvel and Dull Raygun. Early in 2003 they finally put the band together and started an intense month long rehearsal, only playing covers of psychedelic 60's tunes. At this time the band was called The Kumbayas. This was done to properly focus all the band members, and find a mutual starting-point. "Something to progress from," in Dull Raygun's words. The other musical genre that influenced the early rehearsals was folk music. When the band began arranging their own songs - they employed the energy end urgency of nugget-style garage rock and the narrative structure, vocal harmonies
[edit] Band members
The band consists of five members:
The lead singer calls himself Ray Marvel, though his real name is Hauge R. Marple - the R. assumingly standing for Ray. He was born and raised in Sheffield in Yorkshire by a British architect and a Danish nurse. He formed his first band when still a young teenager with a couple of friends. The Band - The Yayas - attained fair popularity in Sheffield, playing among others with Jarvis Cocker in his at that time completely unknown art-group: Pulp.
The bassist and second vocalist, Keld Marple, known as Dull Raygun, was born in Århus (Aarhus) in Denmark into a strict Christian family, where joy of life was viewed as potentially dangerous, as it could be the seducing work of the devil. When he was 17 he moved to the capital of Denmark (Copenhagen), where he began to play in different underground groups, even though he didn't know much about playing technique. The only band which made it far enough even to get a name, was "Coming Nowhere" - which they did.
The keyboard player is Christian K.Larsen, known in the Raygonian community as "C3:16", presumably because he insisted, that all songs should have a duration of 3 minutes and 16 seconds. His musical background is mostly from the gospel choirs of the local church he attended, he took piano lessons but taught himself to play the guitar and the Hammond organ. His greatest inspiration has been the black soul music of the United States, where he lived for a few years of his youth.
The guitarist uses the name Strunggun (reason not known), but his real name is Bjørn Olesen. He is also from Århus, but never met Dull until a few weeks before they started the band. According to legend, they met at a stag night for a mutual friend, and Dull asked Mr. Olesen if he would renovate his bathroom and play in the band, in that order.
The drummer is Th.S. Spelling, who is sometimes called the choirboy. The alias apparently refers to his christian belief and the fact that he is ten years younger than the rest of the band members. But this is not entirely clear.
[edit] Earlier projects
The two originators Mr. Ray Marvel and Mr. Dull Raygun have had a long tradition of creating music together, playing together in different underground bands since the late eighties. Their first band, Hidden Hits, shared some interest with the squatters community of Copenhagen. Their second hook up, Doc. and Duck Dandy, only made a few tape publications before it was abandoned. Then they formed The Hootenanny Sextet, which was a jazz/swing party band, in which they only played cover-numbers. They achieved status as a house band at "Kulcafeen" (a culture project cafe in Copenhagen), and participated in the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 1992. Later they returned to doing their own original material in the band The Subterrainians. In 1995 they split up doing different projects on their own, but in 2001 they went back together, forming a plan for their latest band The Rayguns.
[edit] The Community
A certain underground community has evolved around The Rayguns based on their lively and hard-to-categorize concerts - often at obscure places.
[edit] Dead Pigeon
Together with a group of other musicians The Rayguns have formed The Dead Pigeon society, which strives to promote music with experimental and non-mainstream characteristics. As such, it is a non-genre society - welcoming all genres, but with a clear demand for personal and honest expression.
[edit] Quotes
Ray Marvel: "Diversity - that's the thing."
Dull Raygun: "If it is easy, it is almost always not worth doing. Easy as in 'expected'"
C3:16: "I'm easy , I'm almost not worth doing, but you would have expected that."
Strunggun: "I like it when it's fragile and unsecure. Even if it's almost not there... That's when it gets exciting."
Choir Boy: "My dream is to play drums for The Rayguns."
[edit] The Project
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[edit] Lyrics
Here are a few samples of their lyrics:
"I'm an Alien out of inner space, I've travelled for many thoughts to bring you a message on the mind maze."
[the first two lines in "Alien")
[edit] Raygonia
According to their publicity material they are connected with UFO's and aliens. They even claim themselves to be aliens from the planet Raygonia. They state to be on a rescue mission to earth to liberate the Choirboy from his earthly life - the story being, that he is really a raygonian. The full story can be found in [1].
