Black Kids ‘Who’s Next?’ Performance & Interview
Yahoo! Music’s ‘Who’s Next?’ features Black Kids in an exclusive performance of ‘I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You’ and an interview.
Reggie Youngblood and Owen Holmes talked about forming the group, comparisons to The Cure, the story behind their breakout single, getting a bid annoyed by people thinking they’re overnight successes, how they came up with Black Kids as their name, and the musical tennis match played by British and American artists.
“The origin of this group goes back about a decade,” Reggie said about the group’s origins. “We played in various groups in Jacksonville over the years. It started getting kind of stale, so we invited Ali, my sister, and her best friend Dawn (Watley) to join because they’re all about partying.”
“I could see how there might be a part of a song that resembled The Cure, but they’re just so much better than we are,” Reggie confessed.
“I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You’, like a lot of our songs are about a love triangle,” Reggie explained in regards to their song with the mouthful title. “There’s a guy and he has this very specific relationship with this woman. They get along famously on the dance floor but that’s about it. It’s somewhat biographical.”
As for the perception they are an “overnight success”, Reggie responded, “I don’t know about overnight, maybe a fortnight.” Owen continued, “As we’ve said, we’ve been at it for 10 years. It is kind of annoying people think we just picked up instruments. It sounds like that obviously.”
As for the group’s name, Reggie said, “The name Black Kids came into being.. it started when Owen here came across an email that was sent from this woman to the mayor of Jacksonville. In this email, she was complaining about these kids who played basketball. It was obviously a euphemism for young black men, and she said the sound of them at play is more than I can stand. Someone said the sound of us at play is gonna be more than people can bare, so why don’t we call ourselves Black Kids That Play Basketball? My sister said that’s lame, why don’t we just call ourselves Black Kids, so we took the hint from the universe. Also it sounds bitchin’.”
Video of the performance and interview at Yahoo.com has since been removed.
