Dan Coop is Ready for Crowd Surfing: Does It Offend You?

"...the band has progressed into something a bit harder and more serious."

Dan Coop masters the synthesizer for British dance rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah? (DIOYY), as well as being one of the founding members along with lead vocalist/bassist James Rushent. The band name comes from a line overheard from The Office UK (one of the very first things David Brent said to the receptionist, I've watched it too many times - Ed.). Three years later, these Reading-based synth rockers have released their debut You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into (2006), and currently working on a second album called Don't Say We Didn't Warn You. We talk to him ahead their tale of three Chinese cities (Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu) in May.

the Beijinger: At first I thought that was an exclamation mark after “yeah”, so I felt your band name sounded like a conversation in one’s own head, do that ever happen to you, or even quite often?
Dan Coop: Not really, maybe if I was drunk, maybe!

tbj: Now I just found out it was a question mark, so it made sense then…
DC: Good it's meant to be read more as a question.

tbj: Since you got the band name from The Office, so The Office or Little Britain? Ricky Gervais or Matt Lucas?
DC: Little Britain is pretty crap. All the jokes are just catchphrases repeated ad nauseam. The show got very boring very quickly. Whereas The Office is more true to life and you can genuinely meet people like that in offices all over England. The writing is so much better than anything Matt Lucas could come up with!

tbj: “You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into”, what am I getting into?
DC: You'll get a good taste of where are heads were at about three years ago. We've moved on quite away since then and the band has progressed into something a bit harder and more serious.

tbj: “Don't Say We Didn't Warn You”, what will happen if I ignore your warnings?
DC: You'll miss out on hearing what it sounds like! We're very excited about it and I hope that the album is out later this summer!

tbj: What is it like to be living in Reading?
DC: Reading is a pretty sleepy place and only has the main festival as it's big event in the calender. There are nice areas and not so nice areas like all towns. But thankfully the good areas are more prevalent.

tbj: What have been you been growing up listening to?
DC: We all really like bands such as Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana, The Prodigy and Portishead. But we all like all manner of different types of music. We don't limit ourselves into just listening to the same stuff all the time.

tbj: I read that James Rushent broke his ankle after a gig in LA in 2008, how did that happen?
DC: We were getting towards the end of the set, and James stood on a monitor speaker and then he stumbled and twisted his leg in between a microphone stand. I think he may have had too many beers.

tbj: Is true that you still played the encore after that?
DC: Well, I convinced him that he had only twisted his ankle and he thought he was fine to go back on, so we got him a stool to sit on for the last song!

tbj: Anything you have done differently after that incident?
DC: No we still rock out on stage, I go crowd surfing quite a lot if the crowd are up for it.

DIOYY rock Beijing on Stawberry Music Festival on May 1 (more festival details here). RMB 80. 7pm (Strawberry Stage). Tongzhou Canal Park. Then they will fly to Chengdu for Zebra Music Festival on May 2 (more festival detals here). RMB 80. 10pm (Earth Stage). Poly 198 Park.