![]() By summer 2002, they'd recorded an EP's worth of material that they intended to release themselves, but word of mouth about the band spread and Franz Ferdinand signed to Domino in the summer of 2003. ![]() The bandmembers needed a new rehearsal space once their illicit art parties were discovered by the police, and they found one in a Victorian courthouse and jail. The Chateau became Franz Ferdinand's headquarters, where they rehearsed and held rave-like events incorporating music and art (Hardy graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, and Thomson also posed as a life model there). Eventually, McCarthy and Thomson switched to guitar and drums, and the band switched practice spaces, moving to an abandoned warehouse that they named the Chateau. The trio had rehearsed at McCarthy's house for a while when they met and started playing with Paul Thomson, a former drummer for the Yummy Fur who felt like playing guitar instead. ![]() In late 2001, singer/guitarist Alex Kapranos and bassist Bob Hardy began working on music together when they met Nick McCarthy, a classically trained pianist and double bass player who originally played drums for the group despite no prior experience as a drummer. I hope you enjoy the rest of it.Named for the Austro-Hungarian Archduke whose murder sparked World War I, Glasgow's Franz Ferdinand helped define the sound of the 2000s and 2010s with their mix of arty rock, dance music, dub, and more. Don’t worry: I promise this is as lengthy as my posts will ever get. There’s a lot of reasons and I’m hoping, at the end of this week, that I can just rattle off the OWOB url and leave it at that. Most of the time, I’m stumbling over myself trying to concisely sum up what it is about the Glaswegian four-piece that makes them my one band. It leads to a certain qualification that I feel pressed to give once the band name comes up. “Franz Ferdinand? Really? Are they even still around? I mean their first album was good, but…” I’ve seen and heard it all, but usually that’s the gist of their response. Telling people (especially people who work in music) that I’m partial to them tends to yield raised eyebrows and fleeting glances of concern. I’m aware this is a lofty statement given the number of bands that have and continue to exist – but for me, it’s been Franz Ferdinand for a long time. ![]() This week has given me the excuse to reacquaint myself with Franz Ferdinand’s rather extensive back catalogue and it’s been a big reminder of why they’re my absolute favourite band in the history of any band to ever band. There will be a couple of deviations, but for the most part we’re going from the 2002 beginnings to the present.) (I’ll also note that I’m mostly going to run this chronologically because otherwise my linear brain can’t really make sense of it. There’s obviously more to Franz Ferdinand and their records that extends beyond my super simple summation of “pop music = good”, but that’s where we’ll start. It’s all played a role in legitimizing pop music, but I like to think Franz Ferdinand had something to do with it, too. Yes, interest and appreciation for pop has inevitably changed over the years as things like the Internet (hi!), song streaming, and diverse festival lineups have come in. They were the bridge between massive, catchy hooks and the idea that: “That band has guitars, they must know what they’re doing.” You didn’t really have to think about what they were doing to be able to respond to it, and that was and still is this music’s strength. I say this because Franz Ferdinand, for me, came about as the band that made pop music for people who weren’t sure that liking pop music was okay. With my time on OWOB, I get to try and use all of the words I’ve ever learned to sum up the still-ongoing career of Franz Ferdinand and contextualize it in the great sweeping theme of: It’s okay to like pop music. I’m lucky to do it.īut back to this, and my hope that at least a small fraction of you will enjoy the upcoming week. It’s equal parts exhausting and the best thing in the world. Occasionally people let me take photos and write things about said shows. I work in marketing and music by day and I go to as many shows as possible by night. My name is Sarah Rix and I’m from the fantastic city of Toronto. I think this is the part where I say hello to everyone on the Internet. Thank you for the introduction, Hendrik, and thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the wonderful One Week // One Band.
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