MEET THE BAND
Common Decency is a Ska band. We've stated that our aim is to bring back Ska music to the current generation, after building a passion for the genre and realising that younger people were not familiar with this type of music. Our band want to introduce a more unique style to the current music culture, which addresses issues in a more humorous and entertaining way. Our target audience is fairly young, which is ironic considering our old fashioned style and look. This audience feels as if they can relate to our urban band, as we portray our humorous outlooks on issues that are important to us. Our band is made up of 3 members, Zack Newman, Kevin Baxter , Elliot Hunter, all 19 years old. Zack and Kevin met at 15 and had a naive dream of starting a band together. They lost contact for a few years before Zack, the current lead singer of Common Decency was asked to be the supporting act for Oasis at Birmingham. After this, Kevin -who was studying music at University at the time-, and Zack revisited the dream of starting a band and asked Elliot who was, at the time studying with Kevin at the same university, to join. They created their first mixtape, which we named 'Midnight on the street', which included the song 'Right side'. This mixtape was sent to (record label name), where we were picked up and began to organise small gigs and shows.
We gradually started to gain recognition with a younger audience, with a few mentions on social media from bigger artists/bands including Lily Allen and and The Specials. From this, a demand for a first album started to grow. We are currently very close to releasing our debut album, 'Lost Art', with the record label (record label name). Zack and Kevin come from Leeds, Elliot from Manchester. Our band have decided to stay in their home town of Leeds, as this is where they feel they can relate their music to our surroundings and the culture we grew up in. When we first started writing songs, the lyrics were based on a lot of the general views of our friends, families and neighbours, which makes the songs more personal to us as a group. Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combines elements of caribbean mento and calypso with America jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterised by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Some suggest Ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 60's, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads. In the 1980's, ska experienced a minor comeback, and we plan to bring Ska back into the spotlight again.