Who’s Jack pinned down The Rapture‘s Vito Roccoforte for a chat at this years Parklife Weekender. You can listen to the title track from the band’s latest album In The Grace of Your Love on pop up station Reebok Radio which launched at the festival this weekend.
WJ: Have you been to Manchester before?
VR: Oh yeah, probably about ten times. I love Manchester, we’ve always really liked it here, I mean being huge music nerds there’s so much great music that’s come out of the city. For us with dance music we kind of revered The Hacienda and that whole scene and a lot of those bands.
WJ: Speaking of the fans are there any particular tunes that they really want to hear?
VR: We’ve only played here once this tour cycle but Get Myself Into It always goes over really well cos its kinda got that tempo, House of Jealous Lovers of course and W.A.Y.U.H goes over well. And now How Deep Is Your Love off the latest album it kinda closes our set now and that’s become our biggest song.
WJ: How bout Don Gon Do It?
VR: Don Gon Do It’s a weird one. We haven’t played it, people who love that song like really love it.
WJ: I’m one of those people.
VR: Yeah I love that song but it never resonated on the whole. I mean it opened the album Pieces (Of The People We Love) but it’s always the others that people go for. But we should work Don Gon Do It into the set again.
WJ: If only for me.
VR: Yeah! Let’s do it.
WJ: So you’re New York based, did you grow up there?
VR: No, like most New Yorkers I came from somewhere else. I was born and raised in San Diego.
WJ: Do you feel a part of that New York dance music scene in terms of coming up around LCD and people like that?
VR: Yeah I mean LCD wasn’t even a band when we met James but we had a lot in common musically so they wanted to start the label DFA and they saw our band and saw it could all work together. I think we kinda carved out a scene of our own back then with our own sound. It was like James and this guy called Tim Goldsworthy who was an English guy, we were huge anglophiles all of us and a lot of the stuff we liked was from England so there’s this heavy influence from some of that stuff.
WJ: You’ve licensed songs for a bunch of movies, TV shows and videogames like Rules of Attraction and Misfits how do you feel about that process and what’s your favourite?
VR: The first time it was offered was Rules of Attraction. We’re pretty picky, I mean we ask to read the script and try to get as much information as possible, but it’s been great. We got a tonne of attention from Rules of Attraction, you know we licensed our song Echoes for a show called Misfits, it’s the opening tune and it’s also in this movie Superbad and I love that movie. That was one of those ones where the management wasn’t sure, then I saw who was doing it and I was like dude we’re fucking doing this, it’s gonna be great! So it’s actually worked about to be a really beneficial thing for us.
WJ: Do you wear Reeboks?
VR: It’s funny and I don’t know if they make them anymore but my first pair of cool shoes when I was a sixth grader were Reeboks. They had the Reebok low tops and the Reebok high tops with the one Velcro strap. That was the shit when I was in sixth grade. So that was the first pair that I asked my parents for.
Reebok Radio are touring the UK this year with exclusive after parties at the following locations.
Friday July 6th -Liverpool – Shipping forecast in association with Chibuku
Saturday August 11th – Bristol – Crack Magazine at Motorcycle Showrooms
Friday September 7th – Glasgow – Chambre 69 – in association with Clash Magazine
Thursday October 11th- Leeds – presented by Sound Chanel at Leeds Uni and The Faversham
Thursday 8th November – London – Secret location featuring Special guests
