20 Questions With… Benjamin Blower

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1st September 2008 sees Benjamin Blower release his new album, ‘The Pillar of Smoke’, just a regular album of songs about running from a rhino and finding God in the wilderness. Benjamin sounded like an interesting sort of fellow, and so it would be rude not to pop round his house and fire 20 Questions at him until he shouted at us to leave. We are particularly frightened by the answer to Question 19. But any Sufjan Stevens fan will find a friend round here.

Enjoy his album, available from Zang Productions.

1. Describe your sound in 3 words
Apocalyptic cowboy music.

2. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
It was a live album by the Doors. Full of wickedness. Got it at the local record shop, which always smelled like banana skins.

3. What’s the best cure for a hangover?
Quit drinking. I had to stop when I was 14 years old. It was wrecking my marriage.

4. What’s on your rider?
Show business is falling apart. I can hardly get a dressing room these days. If its going, I like a good burger..

5. How do you get ready for a live show?
I lock myself in the toilet and pray.

6. What’s your favourite song to play live?
I like to play, I’m Ready to Climb the Mountain and Die. I mean it everytime.

7. What’s your guilty pleasure?
Real pleasure is never guilty.

8. Who would win in a fight, a stoat or a goat and why?
Everone knows its the stoat. Just because…

9. Who’s your favourite new band at the moment? Tell us a bit about them.
Sam Amidon. Check out his album, All Is Well. Delicate southern songs about death. He’ll blow your brains out.

10. Who would play you in a film based upon your life?
Samuel L Jackson.

11. Dead or alive, what 5 acts would you have play with you at a festival?
Tom Waits, The Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, The Shadows and… (why not?) Megadeth. I’d have to go on first, I suppose.

12. If push comes to shove, what is your all-time favourite album?
Seven Swans, by Sufjan Stevens.

13. What’s your most memorable on the road story?
Played in South America once to an audience of gorrilas. They paid up on the door so we let them in. It was a great show.

14. If your life flashed before your eyes, what would be the highlights?
I’ve loved all of it so far. I even love the bad parts in retrospect. I hope I don’t go before this weekend though. I’m going to see Tom Waits play, and that’ll definately be a highlight.

15. What’s the best piece of advice someone has ever given you and did you take notice?
Someone told me this: “real love has no fear of what it will cost.” I took notice.

16. If you had to leave a body part to science, what would it be?
I don’t know. Its already getting hard to find a part that’s still working properly.

17. What’s the best book you’ve read and film you’ve seen in the last 6 months?
Best book is The Great Divorce by C S Lewis. You should read that. Best film? Dumb and Dumber. I watch it at least every months.

18. What three things could you not live without?
The Goodbook, a notebook and a good black pen.

19. Tell us a fact about yourself we probably don’t already know.
I can choke you unconscious in 3 seconds. And I can hypnotise a chicken.

20. And finally, we’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
Ok. The 5 songs of the apocalypse
1. The Earth Died Screaming – Tom Waits
2. The Man Comes Around – Johnny Cash
3. Party Like its 1999 – Prince
4. The Four Horsemen – Metallica
5. Its Raining Men – The Weather Girl

Benjamin Blower on MySpace