Our series interviewing the folks behind the scenes continues, this time with hardcore and screamo promoter Real Life Presents!
If you’re based around London and are into hardcore and screamo, then you really ought to be following Real Life Presents, who put on shows of both genres (and more besides) mostly at the New Cross Inn. We caught up with main man Theo shortly before the recent Psychomosher show at the Inn….
How are you, and how has 2026 been for you so far?
I feel like this year, we’ve really levelled up! I jokingly say to people “I’m really quite good at this now!”, but it feels like we’ve now got a really good community who follows what we’re doing, and takes the time to check out new bands if they don’t already know them. And that’s the kind of trust that you really want from your audience; to be able to put on not just great bands that they’re familiar with, but also newer – perhaps weirder – bands, and have people show up for all of them.
Recently, we had Febuary come through, on June 21st; I’d been working on that show since last August, which meant it took more time to make happen than an actual human baby! But over the course of a day they sold almost 600 tickets, and for a band I found on a niche screamo blog – with no social media at that time – that was very special. We’ve also had packed shows from Contention and Shai Hulud recently, so it’s been quite a powerful summer, really!
Going right back to the beginning, how did you originally get into this kind of music?
Well, my first exposure to underground music was when I bought an issue of Rock Sound magazine on the way out on holiday with my family in about 2007, there was a ska-core song on the CD on the front, and later that year my dad took me to see the band at Islington Academy 2. My first ever stagedive and wall of death was to the support band that night, The Flaming Tsunamis, to a song where they shout about bombing the White House! So the ska-core scene was very much my gateway to the underground, then there were also bands like Rolo Tomassi happening, bands like Trash Talk – heavier and deeper stuff – and it just kind of went from there.
And how did you originally get into promoting shows?
I’d had quite a lot of dull jobs, and I lost my office job during Covid. Paul (of Be Sharp Promotions) who runs the ska shows here sent me an email saying something like “you know more bands than me, I think you’d be really good at this – do you want a job?”. So I got into this very much thanks to Paul taking a chance on me, and I built up Real Life Presents from there. Because it happened around Covid, it meant that I started out promoting seated gigs – which was really weird! – and we were putting on a completely different style of music back then. Luckily one of my less exciting jobs had been styling jewellery for hip hop artists, so I got to work on a few seated hip hop gigs, which was cool in its own way.
What would you say have been some of your favourite gigs that you’ve put on, over the years?
There are a few different answers to that! So I spoke about the Febuary gig before, but really the one that makes me wish I could go back in time and tell 15-year-old me about is getting The Fall Of Troy to play their smallest ever UK gig! They played here, and I came down early to watch them soundcheck – I watched a very sleepy man get out of his tourbus, get onstage and basically say “We’re going to play this 10-minute-long song, and I’m going to tell you what I need in every monitor during the song!”. So I heard The Fall Of Troy play ‘Act 2’ to just me and the soundman…it was just amazing!
I’m also very proud of what we’ve done with Punks For Palestine; we’ve been doing that for about six years now, and in that time, we’ve raised just under £20,000. I’ve grown up very much attached to that cause, to supporting it; my family historically has roots in that culture, and I was very proud to be able to bring it to what I’m doing in New Cross. It’s something that’s grown as we’ve grown, and this year, we raised more than £4000…it really fills my heart to think that it’s possible to do something tangibly beneficial with this, as well as putting on cool bands.
On that same note, I’m also exploring helping the local community – taking a chance on younger bands, some of whom have played their first or second show at the New Cross Inn. Yesterday, CrashCat played their second ever gig in front of 80 people yesterday, at only 7pm, and it was amazing! For some reason, kids are listening to screamo again, and it’s such a dynamic scene – it feels like there’s a great new band every month, and they’ve all got dedicated fans who are loving it. So it’s very rewarding to be able to help out with that, too.
How’s the state of live music in the UK, as you see it?
Well, I don’t want to downplay the fact that there are a lot of spaces closing, and a lot of spaces choosing to do other things instead of live music, but I do think there have never been so many opportunities to go and see things. If you really want to engage with it all, it’s still there – I often find I have gig clashes across different genres in six parts of London! It has got more expensive for people; when I was around 19-23 years old, there were so many free gigs, and it did sometimes make me wonder “how is this happening?”, who’s making this work? And ultimately that bubble burst, because it just wasn’t sustainable.
So it is difficult, and it’s on people like me to try and keep costs down as much as possible; there are other London venues about the same size as the New Cross Inn, putting on similar-sized bands, but charging about two or three times as much. There are bands who played here for about £25 last year who have played elsewhere for about £40 recently. I understand that everyone’s trying to make a tour work, to keep the train rolling, but at the end of the day, the bottom line is the people who are buying the tickets. So we have a responsibility to at least try to keep it affordable, and know what the audience is able to give.
Is there anything in particular that you wish people knew about promoting gigs? The first gig of yours that I ever attended was GEL/Cold Brats here in early 2023 – you had a few issues with that one, didn’t you?
Yeah, GEL arrived at the venue definitely under an hour before they were due to play, and it was a similar story for Cold Brats – both bands sadly no longer with us! It was very much a case of “we have 350 folks in a room, plus support bands, plus guestlist, and we don’t have who they’ve come here to see!”. So it was a very stressful moment, but it all worked out in the end.
I guess that nervousness, that suspense is part of the experience – it’s like when I used to go to see bands like Clawmarks in east London a decade ago, and you’d think “ok, is this band going to rip the disco ball off the ceiling?”. I think, especially with grassroots shows, that’s part of the appeal. The air-con broke at the end of Shai Hulud last week, in 30-degree heat, and I don’t just mean that it was suddenly very hot in there – I mean there was suddenly a downpour on one side of the room! I think if you’d been going crazy in the pit for that show, you’d have been quite happy about it, but it’s an example of that feeling of precariousness – the idea that everything is just about held together.
Finally, how’s the near future looking for Real Life Presents?
Well, we’ve got the sold-out Merauder show in early August; we’ve got a sold-out show pretty much every month now, including Locked Shut in September. I Promised The World – in October – hasn’t sold out yet, but it will do! And it’s crazy that I haven’t mentioned it yet, but we’ve got Youth Of Today and Shelter in November, taking the party to north London [the Tufnell Park Dome]! I can’t believe I’m putting on a Walter Schriefels band; I bought a Rival Schools album from a car boot sale in around 2007, and now look at what’s happening all these years later!
There’ll also be news on Reality Unfolds festival soon enough. It’s a very busy year – I love that there’s a screamo resurgence; I love that the classic hardcore bands are trusting us; I love that we’re in a place to work with new bands breaking through, and that people are getting into them just from watching a video online or something like that. So far, so good!
Main Photo Credit: ALEX GOOSE
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I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
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