By the end of 1997, I was playing with a group of pure Rhythm & Blues. It was a trio, one keyboardist, a guitar player and I was playing the drum machine. We all came from the same city called Salou. We released a record with Dindi Records, which worked quite well, but the guitar player left us so we disbanded. After playing for many years in several bands, even in some bands of prog-rock and thinking about it very much, I decided to form a progressive band, which is the thing that I’ve always liked. I put an advert on the newspaper looking for musicians who were into this style and that’s when I contacted Conrad Dubé. An experimental bass player from Barcelona, who’s living in Reus right now, and who loved the progressive rock. From there and with a clear common target we began to build Dr.NO.

No, we never thought about it, and we never had any doubt about the idiom we should use. Our language is Catalan and with this language we want to be known. Of course we know that singing in English we could reach a wider market, but we also know that having international success applies for great skills on music. You also have to be much over the rest of the bands, and we also know that to make that come true, we need a great deal with a big international record company and a lot of promotion. If that does not occur, you are just one more on the English-singing bands list going towards nowhere. Singing in Catalan we can perform in many European countries in which there are no problems with foreign languages and have fans there. As some of our best groups have done such us Sau, Brams and the master Lluis Llach.

I think that the musical moment that we are living in Catalonia is perfect for us. A lot of bands have reached their musical peak and some others have disappeared, leaving an unfettered way to some others with different musical proposals. There we are, among all these bands that offer something else. Of course there are those bands that re based on the same old structure of rock and party music that are so boring. I think Dr.NO can offer something interesting to those who search for a different kind of thing inside the rock world and which is constantly moving in Catalonia and elsewhere.

- The Jester is an image full of a strong and sometimes a hidden message, which announces or defines a style of music. What does the Jester means to you? It’s something that can be used from the musical point of view and also used as a protest sign. What do you think?

From a very beginning when I was thinking about what sleeve we could use for the record I was very sure that it had to be a visual element that the public that didn’t know about this kind of music could think about fantasy, magic, illusion and tenderness. All that is summarized on the Jester’s image. The Jester on the cover applies for love and sadness at the same time. We must not forget about the sad job that Jesters had in the medieval age, and which we have watched many time on the films. He always had to make the court laugh even though he was upset. In future works this image could be a whole design idea for the covers, but all this has to arrive yet.

When Dr.NO got together I was the only one who knew Marillion, the other musicians came from different styles of music, only Conrad (the bass player) knew a bit about the old classics from the seventies but he didn’t even heard a thing about Marillion, IQ, Jadis, etc… However I would say that though I lived the golden days of Marilion with Fish, it has not been a main influence for us. With Dr.NO we would like to resucitate the old Genesis spirit from the early seventies, without being the costumes any main feature as Peter Gabriel did many year ago. To that spirit we try to add some Marillion freshness and take it into modern times style. It’s very clear that there are some Marillion influences, maybe for the make up or the things that happens to our friend the Jester, but I think in general we are more influenced by some other bands from the seventies such us Yes, Genesis or even Camel or King Crimson. Peter, the guitarist, is crazy about bands like AC/DC or Van Halen and he also likes David Gilmour a lot. I think this is the positive thing, the mixture of tastes that get together to go for a common target, and as a result we have Dr.NO.

The actual Marillion deserves all our respect, as they are all very good musicians. They have changed their style but that doesn’t mean they are bad musicians, the thing is Marillion have already had their time, with Fish and with Hogarth. What they did with Fish was wonderful, but we don’t know what had happened if Fish wouldn’t have left the band, then Hogarth arrived and gave us several good albums.

I think that Marillion has already done everything as a progressive band, and now they’re simply experimenting, they’re adding new kinds of music to their style, new influences that gives them a full satisfaction as musicians at this moment. I don’t like them at all right now, and I start reminding the Fish period and the concert in Barcelona in 1985 at the Cibeles saloon (a former discotheque also used for concerts in Barcelona), I got very nostalgic. But overall we have to respect the actual Marillion. Maybe they will surprise us in the future with a Misplaced Childhood II.

Each of us has different influences. For instance, my work as a drummer has been influenced by people that I’ve always admired such as Simon Phillips, Terry Bozzio, Stewart Copeland, Billy Cobham, Ian Mosley and Bill Bruford, musically a like the classics from the seventies and the neoprogressive from the eighties. I also like the new progressive rock. As a singer I admire Jon Anderson, I love the Peter Gabriel’s voice, Adrian Belew’s, John Wetton’s. I like from the jazz-fusion to bands such as A-ha, Led Zeppelin or The Police. But the group that I love above all others is Yes. I don’t think people find any hint of Yes in our record. I just hope that people could appreciate a work that is the fruit of many years playing music, listening to other bands, and your own feelings are at the end the responsible to let the music out.

In our country there’s a culture focused on the fact that when young people goes to a concert it has to be something that they could dance and party a lot, and on the other side we have also many people that just want to sit down, listen and enjoy the music without dancing. We’ve been in festivals which offered from Hip-Hop, Ska or Hard Rock, and we also were among them and people have accepted us because we have come on stage to offer our work, without thinking if it was going to like or not. One has to have faith in what he is doing, he does it because he is sure about it he likes it and enjoys doing it. From there you can cheer the crowd up. I insist in leaving the brand names, if you are sure of what you do and put all your soul in it, you’re gonna connect with an audience that can apreciate the music. The idea that we have from ourselves is that we are one more group inside the rock that is done in Catalonia, and we simply offer something different. Something that most of the young people don’t know, but I think the natural status of Dr.NO is the pure rock.

The process of composition of the songs has been very relaxed, no rush at all, I worked on the new ideas which came by on the piano and after a transferred all that to the computer to give them a more defined structure. Depending on the moment your are living, you implant ideas into the texts and music, in some other cases you have a pre conceived idea and you workout that idea to give it the right shape. When I had all the themes structured Conrad and I started to work them with the rest of the band. We would like to say that all the record was recorded with musicians who are our friends at the same time, among them Jaume Montcusí, keyboardist and sound technician that also was a part of the Jazz-progressive band called Metamorfosis, pioneers of Spanish prog-rock in the seventies together with Iceberg and Pegasus. So they gave us a hand and wanted to be a part of this project as temporary collaborators as they couldn’t get into it completely, because of their work and family affairs. It was after the recording that some other musicians came in to be a full-time part of the band. The record was recorded at the Entrepins studios in Tarragona, owned by Jaume and took us a couple of months to complete it. We had to produce ourselves as we hadn’t any budget from any record company, but we are very proud of the results. It’s very obvious that you can get it better and better each time but that applies for investing more money, and we are very satisfied by now.

Nowadays, if you fancy entering the world of music and you want to get some minimum benefits that allow you to enjoy the music that you try to do, I think that you have to find the right formula to grab the media’s interest which in the end is what is going to promote your music Dr.NO is a progressive band but we know that we are in 2002 and the seventies are gone.

I think is primarial to get advantage of the new technology and ways of communication like Internet. We want to reach as many people as we can, to show them that something else exists. I have met people that doesn’t about the existence of this music and what they only know is about disco music, or any other kind of dance and easy music. To get to all these people you have to do it progressively, putting on some "Kayleigh" and with some patience you can end putting on "Gates of Delirium". The other side is not wanting to enter all this media stuff and betting for alternative record companies, which can promote and distribute your work to a very specific and small market. I think that is good doing that easy stuff that can open the doors to something more complicated. I’m sure that progressive rock is not for a minority, is like a kind of cliché that we all have created, but what we have to do is to adapt to the new times and take this music to the people in a more natural way.

In the concerts I like to use make up and in some themes I also use some costume and masks, but I don’t want that to be the base of our performances, I’d like to find a balance between the musical and theatrical aspect. I’d like to be known for the music not for the costumes. Although, I can tell you that in all the gigs that we have made were plenty of Catalan pop rock fans, fans of bands that have a lot acceptance and success in Catalonia and bands which sell thousands of records, and who have got very impressed not only for the bizarre music totally different to which they have listened and finding songs that last ten minutes, but also for the make ups, costumes, masks that always have a gasp effect among the public.

I can say pridely that all those fifteen-year old girls that follow some other famous bands, have attended to a Dr.NO’s gig and they have stopped to dance to sit down and listen, and that’s a great thing when it happens.

Nowadays, and like in recent times, the musical market is very stuck and the record companies continue repeating the same formula to find a product that can make them earn a lot of money quickly. Now I think all the big record companies with big economic power only bet for something sure, maybe it’s a new group but a group that has already been heavily promoted by the company assuring their success in terms of selling's. I think that we can use some other companies, which are more discrete, independent record companies that focus all their efforts in a very different way. Nevertheless, it is not easy to get into these companies because all of them do it for a living and that’s a normal and logical thing, and if they don’t see it clear they won’t put any money on you. Today we have Internet in our hands that offer us a lot of possibilities to promote music and even to release records or sell them. We are not with our hands tied anymore; we are just to the mercy of companies. With Dr.NO we are studying all these possibilities.

In 1987 I formed the group Harnakis. We released one record with the famous record company called Musea. The record was called Numb Eyes, the Sowl Revelation and it had a good acceptance, among the specialised press we were compared with Yes (they should be mad). In countries such us Japan, Germany, Holland, the record was sold very well and we received a lot of got reviews. Maybe the most amazing thing was that in USA, in Dallas, our record was on the list of the best selling prog records upper than the Steve Howe’s record Turbulence. We also played at the Noche Mágica in Jerez de la Frontera (a southern town in Spain that hold a progressive fest in the past), along with Galadriel. We selected to record a song for the compilation album called Exposure, 88 that was issued in Holland and the theme was "Temps d’esser" in Catalan. We had a very good time and a have very good memories, but the lack of support from the media, the lack of concerts and festivals killed the group.

Above all we crave for promoting the record as much as we can, distributing it through the record shops or through Internet, and of course to do as much gigs as we can. In November the 8^th we made a performance in Reus for a contest called GamaRock, which is hold by a management agency called Gama2, TVE and the record company PicCap. We have another gig in a festival next year, and we also hope to play at the prog festivals that are organized in Catalonia and the in the rest of Europe every year. We also have a far away project, which is the release of a video with some of the best stagecraft of our life performances.

I’ve been hearing that since in 1986 I started to play in progressive. The future of progressive rock. I think that firstly we don’t have to label the music because that is something that takes us to a some kind of marginal status; we must sell the prog rock just as it is, as simple as music. Music is a universal language and it has to get all of us together. We are in 2002 and musicians like Mozart and Beethoven are still in our ears and I find stupid to intend convincing people about how worthy they were musically. It’s about the same with prog rock. In the seventies there were some bands that created and which became classics inside the same style. As the time passed by the style changed and there have been some other bands that had been very important, and I think it’s clear that each band has to reach its peak someday. There is music that lasts forever and some others that have its hey days and then last in a more dimly way. In Dr.NO we have it very clear, if we have been selected in some festivals is simply for that, because we have introduced ourselves as a rock band and because none at these festivals was banning a progressive band. And after the concert the crowd was stunt, because for most of them it was something new.

Thanks to all the fans, don’t loose the faith. This not about if prog rock is unfashionable or for a minority, we just have to focused it to the times we are living. What we don’t have to do is scratching our heads with a nostalgic past, there have always been people that aims at listening to good music, all these people is who maintain the progressive flame alive. Each time has its music what we have to do is adapt to each one without closing your mind to different things and music. If you have the opportunity to listen to our music or attend to any of our gigs I just wish you liked it. Don’t forget that we don’t copy or try to be better that any other band. We just want to give to the people the music that we carry inside our heart, the progressive rock, which is just that: MUSIC.

Jordi Costa – November 2002