Pure Local Extra – The Ralities

The band consists of 5 members. Bongo, the lead vocalist, Jonathan, the bassist, Simon, the lead guitarist, Sally, the drummer and Sue, the backup singer.

To start the show, we discussed the band’s name. The band originally went by the name ‘Mind of Zebra’. The current name came from the band’s guitarist Simon. He thought that ralities was a real word, meaning to have a good time. The band chose to use it as the word isn’t a real thing, similar to music. By using it as their name, it became an actual word. 

The Ralities have recently released their debut album ‘The Pleasure’s Been All Ours’ and listened to a couple of songs from the album. Every song on the album sounds different to the last, it’s a mix of genres. The first we listened to was a song called ‘Evangeline’ written by Simon, this song being our record of the week which will be played throughout the week on our shows, namely the breakfast show. Evangeline is a song inspired by Simon’s daughter. Bongo explained that she faced many adversities throughout life and the song is about overcoming those adversities. The next song we listened to is a song called ‘Shadows’. It was very different to the previous song, as mentioned before that the album is a real mixture of genres and sounds. 

During the show, a game of Rugby between Wales and Irelands was being played. During the show, Sue got a message that the moment Evangeline started to play, Wales scored a try. When Shadows started playing, the same thing happened: The Ralities should start playing live at Wales Rugby matches, they seem to have an effect on how well we score.

We discussed the musical backgrounds of both Sue and Bongo and how they came to get into music. Sue’s father was a saxophonist and played in multiple different bands. When she was a teenager, Sue played clarinet and piano in her school orchestra. She went through many different genres of music. She played in a covers band briefly 4 years ago but other than that, she never really expected to play in a band. Now, she likes experiencing with all kinds of music. 

As for Bongo, music started for him as a child. He told us that he would sneak into his older sister’s bedroom to listen to her records. While growing up, there was a family centre which hosted disco’s, particularly with lots of northern soul music. He really liked the contrast of the music and the dancing.

Sue and Bongo are both interested in travelling. As they are finishing work soon, they are both planning to travel across the country in their camper vans. Bongo intends to start travelling throughout Wales and then move onto Europe in the future. He also hopes to play live while out. Sue has so many places in the UK that she hasn’t seen which interests her. She wants to go on a trip around Scotland.

The Ralities have some events coming up in the next few months. They are doing a live session at Bath University and a gig in Le Pub around the end of April. They hope to do festivals in the future as they love playing live.

As always, this is only a little bit of the show, you can listen to the full show on our website at the listen again menu.