How do you feel about streaming sites such as Spotify? How do these sites affect bands and artistes?

 

Naturally I would prefer if it was you know, how it was back in the old days, where you could sell a lot of records, mainly because there was more money in the business. I think if we were around in that time we probably would have been able to live way easier off music than the way it is now, but as it is now I think that streaming is the best legal alternative to music these days and I actually use spotify my self as its good. There was a time in-between the CD sales and the emerging of sites such as spotify where basically you couldn’t make any money off your music because it was downloaded illegally so I feel that the legal alternative is way better now than it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

 

Some people will buy an album, then upload the whole thing to youtube for people to watch and download for free. How does this affect musicians? Has this affected Crazy Lixx?

 

Well naturally it’s not the best thing but in this day and age we are quite used to it, you know, stuff leaking before hand and stuff being uploaded. I think its just part of being a musician today where the value of your music is way less than it used to be since the emergence of the internet. So how does this affect musicians?  Well it affects them in a way that there is not as much money to be made from selling CDs anymore. The physical product, the value of that has diminished and with that its way harder to live from recorded music as a musician. 

 

 

What is the story behind ‘If It’s Love’? The main chorus is:

 

‘If its love,

How come I feel no fire,

If its love,

Why can I feel no pain

 

When will it break this hold of mine’

 

Well it’s basically about a break up where I guess you should feel a lot of emotions, but the person in this song doesn’t feel this fire, he doesn’t feel this pain. If its love shouldn’t he be really emotional about this and I think this can mean 2 things. Either it wasn’t love in the first place obviously, but it can also mean that sometimes when you’re very deeply invested in a person and that person leaves, you are left almost emotionless because of the sheer emotional shock from it. So the person in the song is asking if its love then how can he not feel anything now, not even pain, not even the fire of a break up. He should be feeling something so I guess it is quite emotional and an emotional lyric to that one.

 

 

You are Swedish but all your songs are written in English, have you ever been tempted to record a song for an album in your native language?

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No not really, most of the songs that I listen to, most of the music that I listen to is in English, I rarely listen to Swedish music. In the genre that we play there are none that I know of that have had any success in the Swedish language and seeing as our audience is outside of Sweden mainly I don’t think it would be a very good decision to do something like that so I haven’t been tempted.

 

Andreas and Christian both left in 2015, why did both guitarists leave and how was it trying to find two new guitar players at the same time?

 

Well I guess the reason that they left was that we were at a place in the band where the situation wasn’t very good. Nothing was really happening for a while for us and I think that they both wanted to move on. In the case of Andreas he joined Inglorious, which he has now left but he’s still in the music industry. When it comes to Ed Christian he moved home and basically left the music scene all together.

 

We were lucky to find two new guitarists quite quickly. One of which we had already been working with (Jens), he’d been a stand in guitarist and also a sound engineer for us in the past so we knew of him. Chrisse came in quite quickly afterwards so it was actually quite easy to find them which was lucky I think because we were at a point where we didn’t know if we were to continue or not.  

 

How did Jens Anderson come to join the band?

                    

Well he joined after we recorded Riot Avenue back in 2012. During that recording our old bass player left and so when we started rehearsing after the album we released we knew we needed a bass player and I think it was Ed who knew him from another local band that played. I didn’t know him before, and he asked him to come over basically so we started to jam together.

 

Who owned the car on the “Ruff Justice” album cover and what made you guys decide to use that car in particular?

 

Ooo I can’t remember his name. Well we wanted a cool car basically and I’m not sure who knew him but someone in the band knew of this guy who had this car and we asked politely if we could use it on the album cover and he was happy to bring it. We just wanted something to look retro, not a modern car but something that looked a bit older and it fit perfectly.

 

In 2017 you guys released “Ruff Justice”, that album included the song “XIII”. “XIII” was one of three songs used in the game “Friday the 13th”. How did the band get the opportunity to write for the game, and what was your initial reaction when you were asked to write for it?

 

Well I’ve had this question quite a few times and I used to say it was pure luck actually. It turned out that one of the people working on the game (one of the programmers), he was a fan of Crazy Lixx and when they set out to find some music for the game they wanted something to sound like it was made in the 80s, because the setting of the game was in the 80s. So he recommended us and they contacted us and asked if we were interested. Once I found out it was going to actually be an official licensed Friday the 13th product I couldn’t really resist. I think my younger self would probably kill me if he knew I turned down something like that. So it was really a good opportunity for us and there was never any question about it.

 

After the game was released did you notice a sudden rise in album sales, streams and video plays?

 

Yeah I did and especially in the US. We’ve had a whole new audience in the US, I would say a younger audience that I think probably found us through that game. We’ve seen a lot of plays on youtube and comments where people say they came because of the game. So we’ve noticed definitely especially for the US.

 

I first discovered Crazy Lixx by flicking through videos on YouTube, to which “Call to Action” and “Hell Raising Women” came up. Can you describe how important you think music videos are for artistes these days, as well as the impact a good music video may have on overall album and ticket sales?

 

Well I think back in the day you had MTV and stuff like that and naturally that was the real outlet for a band. A promotion channel like that is impossible anymore, but I think a music video is still very important for a band. To be honest if we had the budget, had the chance and had the time I think we would make a video for each and every song on every album, but that just isn’t possible for various reasons. I think that a video is a very important thing, as you said you found us just by clicking youtube.  I know a lot of bands I have found that way and I know people sometimes just out of boredom kind of look through youtube and see what they have recommended to them and it’s a very good way to actually get seen. The visual of a video tells a lot about how the band will look when performing live, apart from how they sound of course and the songs so I think its an important thing definitely, but you know seeing that there is not as much money in the business anymore, the overall budget for the videos has gone down a lot so you kind of have to do what you can with the means you have.

 

Being a successful musician who has released albums and toured the world, if you had one piece of advice for young people who want to be full time musicians, what would your advice be?

 

Well I would advise that you not be in it for the money. I would advise them not to be in it for the fame because I think often times people think that once your signed you’ve got it all set up for you and the truth is there is a lot of hard work behind it. You have to be prepared to put in that hard work and be really be dedicated otherwise you won’t get very far so I would advise everyone who is interested, to just go for it. You will regret it deeply if you never try it. But don’t think it will come easy, it’s hard work really.