The Teenagers are a London-based indie band of Frenchies who make us laugh with silly pop songs like “Starlett Johnansson”; frontman Quentin Delafon calls their sound “French sleazy pop,” and explains that their name comes from the fact that, “that’s where we are stuck in our minds, you know. We don’t want to grow up ’cause it sucks.”
Need visual proof? Delafon has an awesome photoblog called What Really Happened that chronicles the band’s adventures on the road in a Vice Magazine-meets-your-backpacking-best-friend’s-Flickr-stream way. After the jump we talk to Delafon about what inspired him to get into the blogging game and why he had to stop referring to his work as “visual diarrhea.”
Flavorwire: How did you get into photography? Does it tap into the same part of your brain as making music?
Quentin Delafon: I started when I was a real teenager. My dad is a photographer, so we always had loads of pictures, diapositives, and cameras in the house. It must have influenced me seeing photography as something normal and casual even before digital came up. Basically, I have always been taking pictures of my friends, landscapes or myself from high school until now. With the band I am more involved with the lyrics and the visuals than the music, but yeah writing and taking picture are similar as both are about projecting and creating some sort of reality. What’s different is the process as writing is more of an effort when taking pictures is constant and compulsive.
FW: Do you think people have a big misconception of what life is like on the road? Do you think these images tell it like it is?
QD: Aside from the fact that I am having the best time I ever had — playing our songs on stage, visiting so many places, meeting so many cool people — what people don’t realize from the outside is that there is A LOT of time in between the shows where we don’t really do anything constructive. Like the whole traveling process or waiting at venues. It’s boring to death but I don’t care because it’s really worth it. I imagine that it’s all this spare time that pushed me into doing my blog. That and all the crazy things that happen on tour, and that’s what my blog is all about: what really happened before, during, after.
FW: You have photos of some high profile names on your site — has anyone ever refused to have their photograph taken by you?
QD: No, usually they are all drunk ’cause it’s a concert or a party. Ha! Good for me.
FW: What’s the weirdest image you’ve captured? Your favorite on the blog?
QD: It’s hard for me to single out any image, as the point of this project is the visual overload. It’s an overwhelming ensemble. I used to call it visual diarrhea but I realized that’s really gross, so I tamed it down to visual diary — at least when I am sober — because it still makes sense and it’s almost the same phonetically.