Download High Resolution Photo
Band Members
- Tim Parkhouse - Vocals / Guitar
- Rick Parkhouse - Vocals / Bass
- Craig Reynolds - Drums
- Jason Bowld - Drums
Discography
Albums
- Phoney Society
- Postcards From Hell
Singles
- Tyrannosaurus
- Reject & Sterlise
Tour Dates
You’ve all read a hundred and two biographies of young, newish bands whose music sounds great but whose words regarding the noise they make are routinely humble and – let’s call it what it is, shall we? – boring. Time, as they say, for a refreshing change. This is how bandmember Tim Parkhouse defines what three piece getAmped have going for them.
“I’ve always loved stadium rock,” he says. “Whether that be Metallica or Maiden, Queen or The Police. If you’re asking me, that’s where I want to take our music. My view of songwriting is that it should have balls, that it should be something that could be played in an arena or a stadium and have a sound that is big enough for the people listening and watching to get into. We’re definitely ready for that to happen to us. And I think our material is good enough for this to happen as well. Each band has an arrogant bastard within it, and maybe I’m that person.”
Or maybe not. Listening to the band’s forthcoming second album Postcards From Hell – a successor to 2003’s ‘Phoney Society’ – is to get a sense of what Parkhouse is saying. The Independent have already described getAmped as being good enough to ‘break the So.Cal stranglehold on the platinum-selling, pogo-friendly combos’, and with the release of album number two the acclaim can only grow. After all, this is great music, a band who combine the knack of writing an immediate tune with the imagination to stretch their sound and develop their ideas. getAmped take their cues from both these shores as well as those of California – kind of like The Police playing with NOFX on beaches awash with winking Pacific surf. And he’s right, you can imagine this sound filling up an arena.
Nowhere can this be better heard than on the band’s forthcoming single, featuring the tracks ‘Tyranosaurus’ and ‘Plug Me In’. A more confident and bigger sounding slab of high energy rock’n’roll you would be hard pushed to find.
The band’s story is DIY in a punk rock sense. Raised and formed in the south coastal county of Dorset, Tim and his brother Rick have been writing songs together since they were – count ‘em - three years old. Later when Tim went to university in Bordeaux to study French and Rick journeyed to Cambridge, the two continued writing songs together, sending email files of music, lyrics and ideas to one another. They sent a demo tape to a local battle of the bands competition and were immediately selected for the regional final. One problem, they didn’t have a drummer. To rectify this problem, the pair entered their local drum shop and asked the one person who looked like he might have a clue – this person being Dougal Leredde - to join their band. Tim Parkhouse did the asking, rightly figuring that this cool looking kid also had the chops to provide the beat for this band’s music.
“First of all, he said no,” laughs Rick Parkhouse. “Tim just walked up to him and asked him flat out to be in our band. Obviously he thought we were crazy psycho people. But we left him a CD and the next morning he called up and said he’ll do it. He’s a perfect fit, a fantastic player whose personality adds to the make-up of the band and injects an irrepressible energy and spark into our songs”
From this point, everything started going right; tipped as “serious challengers to the American Super league punk bands” (City Life) getAmped were voted No.2 in the BBC Radio One unsigned chart and this was followed by glowing reviews amongst the credible press world; “undeniably promising talent” (Big Cheese) “Very talented…I love this band and predict big things for them’” (Total Rock).
Since then getAmped, all keen surfers, have been the first European band to sign an endorsement deal with the Rip Curl clothing organisation and have seen their songs used on American surf and skateboard DVDs. Another strong indication of future success in the States is the heavy rotation on Fox TV, but first they want to break the UK and they know that live gigs are the only real way for a punk rock band to do that. The band have tirelessly toured the UK at times for charities they care about including Boarding Against Breast Cancer and Surfers Against Sewage and are touring throughout February and March 05.
Nodding once again to punk legends who’ve inspired them, everything they do begins and ends at home, from the songwriting to the recording. getAmped’s music is laid down at RNT Studios in Cranborne, a facility that the Parkhouse brothers both manage and operate.
“I think the record we’ve made is really something to be proud of,” says Rick. “We have done it all ourselves, the music, the recording, the artwork… everything. It’s an in-house operation run by a band who care deeply about everything they do. People will be able to sense that when they hear us, and I hope they’ll respond to the passion and attention to detail we put into getAmped. We’re very excited about what we’ve achieved here and I hope that people will feel that way about it too.”