“We wanted to be one of those 1940 mobsters, dressed in suits, walking into a bar blazing bullets…”
Eben Johnson gets carried away when he tells me the story behind All The Fat Children,
“Well basically in your face music, if you know what I mean?” One cannot easily say one does. Classified as fat rock, with some fat wit and fat sense of humour,
All The Fat Children are back after a hiatus and recently played at Hard Rock Café and to put in their own words, “We owned it!”
All The Fat Children are essentially Eben Johnson on vocals, Vickram Kiran on bass and Sachin Savio Dane on drums sometimes joined by guest artists, Naveen Thomas Joseph and Antony Antony.
The story behind the band
Eben wanted to start a band. “A bunch of attention seekers who wanted attention,” he says, and when he found Vickram who played bass, “I convinced him to join me with food and drinks, that’s how it works with fat people,” he says. At a urinal in Vellore he found a drummer who left, and is now replaced by Sachin. “He used to be around all the time in college; I think secretly stalked us.”
From your first gig
“We owned it! I’m serious, I’m boasting also, but I’m serious!” says Eben. Their first show was a week after forming and he remembers the smoke, the deep booming voice of the sound engineer, “It felt like God was talking to us.” And the standing ovation, “And we thought, this is it!”
Keeping it together
“The music is important but we connect over different things and the music just flows,” Eben says. He elaborates, “We bond over food and eating habits and I think fat people just attract each other.”
The name of the band
Because they were fat, “Also, it sounds mob-like,” Eben says.
Influences
The three members bring different influences, which begin with the music they used to listen to back in the day. “Like Boney M, listened to it a lot as a kid, and Sachin was more influenced by local music acts in Kerala like Motherjane and Avial, as compared to the international ones.”
Album
“We’re not interested in an album but keener on single releases, maybe five to six songs on EP,” Eben concludes.
Next gig
It’s in Kerala, next week either on February 16 or 18.
To follow All The Fat Children visit >http://www.facebook.com/allthefatchildren
(Bandstand, featuring Bangalore bands, appears on Mondays.)
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