|
First band interviewed for this
fanzine, so I thought it’d be nice to name this mag after half of
one of their album titles. You guess which one.
I am the only person I know with all the Fuck albums, so
when I was asked if I was up for a trip to the smoke to meet the
band it didn’t take muck arm twisting. They’re quietly renowned
for simple songs like a primary school Palace Brothers or Unrest,
and you can’t say their name on the radio. Two albums on their own
label (Pretty...Slow and Baby Loves a Funny Bunny)
have now led to the obligatory small-money deal with The Man –
in this case Matador – and the next Pardon My French
is one of the great secret albums of 1997. We met on the park behind
the Highbury Garage and I tried to keep my rabid fandom at bay.
Is this your first trip to Europe?
Ted (Bass. Loves Al Green and
Talk Talk): Yeah, we did two festival shows about two weeks
ago in the Netherlands and in Holland (eh?). Then we had
a week off to see Europe cos we’ve never been over here before.
We went to Sweden for three wonderful shows; Denmark; and in Amsterdam
we had a radio show two days ago.
How come there’s only one show
over here?
T: I think it’s all they could have
gotten for us as it’s our first time here. We would love to do more
but it’s such a huge expense to come over here. There’s lots of
factors first time.
A lot of your songs are about loss/
girlfriends leaving etc. Does it help to play that stuff repeatedly,
or does it make you worse?
Geoff (Drums/guitar. Practically inaudible.
Loves sleeping. Hates poetry and art): None of my songs are
really about girlfriends. I have one about a one-night stand that
goes really bad...
T: I think playing the same stuff every night is not like
a cathartic experience y’know, sometimes it is but it’s rare. Emotions
don’t come back that you feel when you’re originally doing the stuff.
I hope I don’t burst anyone’s bubble.
G: Why bother?
A lot of your songs are written like
nursery rhymes or lullabies. Are you childish or child-like?
G: We really try to be child-like
rather than childish.
T: We like to appeal to as large a group of people as possible;
that is the very young and the very old, so a lot of times those
songs will really hit home with those age groups. And Tim’s just
a big baby in many ways.
But surely with a name like yours
you cut down the kind of audience you’d attract.
T: That’s true, we can’t really
play for nursery schools or anything, but we played a couple of
days ago in a radio station and there were a couple of kids there
and they really seemed to almost join in on the music, some of the
more kiddie songs. Not too many old people come to see us but that’s
their fault, not ours.
Are you always so quiet? There’s the
odd noisy ending, but you seem pretty mild-mannered.
G: We get a little louder when we
play live but I guess what’s loud to us is probably not loud to
most people. I think in general our volume has increased recently
– the last album is a little more rocking than the first two.
T: I think that when I go see bands that just play one thing,
like all quiet slow music, I get really bored and it’s really hard
to keep my interest and attention for that long and I think we’re
all pretty conscious of that... it’s not the reason we’re writing
faster songs, but it helps it.
Your CDs have wonderful packaging –
do you feel confident about your music, which seems to be found
by accident.
G: Yeah I think people get drawn
in by the packaging (like a matchbook or a box with sweets and
a colouring book in) and the name and all that but people wouldn’t
be interested just by packaging.
T: I think that we try and look at all aspects of being in
a band with the same amount of creativity as the music because with
most bands it’s already predetermined that the CDs gonna be put
out in a jewel box.
G: ...and somebody else does the artwork. Ted went to art
school; he does some of the art. We all have different interests
and we get to explore those interests through the whole thing.
It seems you’re better known here than
in America.
T: That may have something to do
with the name. We’ve only been here for two short weeks but from
what I can tell most people don’t really have a hang-up, except
for this club tonight.
G: And the customs agents at the ferry, they had a big problem
– “You shouldn’t be allowed to play in our country under obscenity
laws. You can’t say that name. You’ll never support Oasis.”
I’d compare you to bands like Unrest/Air
Miami or Eggs. Who makes you tick?
T: (blank faced) I don’t
know either of those bands, Tim’s really into bubblegum pop –
‘Yummy Yummy Yummy’ – that kinda stuff. Kyle is a huge
Beatles fan, so we all listen to different things and I don’t know
how all that stuff gets worked into our sound, but somehow it must.
Us Europeans know more obscure American
bands than you do, don’t we?
T: That’s so true! When we were
in Belgium they were asking about all these bands, playing stuff
and I loved it. Our tour manager is from Holland and he turned us
on to the Radar Brothers, really nice quiet music. But you know
they’re from California like we are and we’d never heard of them
before. There’s so many bands in the States.
I’ve noticed that American bands will
last as long as it takes to get the members through college and
then quit, but over here we form bands to avoid proper jobs –
what’s going on?
T: Like a phase. I think
a lot of families pressure their kids to live the American dream
– buy your house, do your career thing – so I think a
lot of people quit. There’s so much bullshit you have to deal with.
Do any of you have proper jobs?
T: I’m a teacher in elementary school.
G: I’m a computer technician...really!
T: Kyle is a recording engineer, he records all our stuff,
and Tim is unemployed. He does a lot of stuff for the band but he
doesn’t have a regular job.
Does being with Matador mean an end
to the home-made sleeves?
G: We can’t do them all obviously
but in our contract we agreed with them that we’d get a certain
amount of raw CD’s to put in our own packaging to sell at shows.
T: I think we’re up to about six or seven thousand of our
first two CD’s. That’d be a full time job pretty much because each
one of those things takes so much time, so in a way what can you
do?
SF/Oakland/New York – how do you
manage with living so far apart?
T: I think it helps us because we’re
only together for short periods of time so we’re forced to concentrate
and get a lot of work done. Whereas a lot of bands maybe practice
twice a week for an hour and then drink a couple of cases of beer,
we do a lot of work. Since we’re apart we have a lot more time to
reflect and analyse and talk about the things that we do –
so that distance is really good in a way. We all write music in
different ways with different methods, since we’re not together
all the time we’re not watching the same TV programmes or living
in the same house.
I hear you’re into toys in a big way.
T: In the States we’ve got quite
a few mechanical toys that move around and do things. Here we’ve
only got a suitcase-and-a-half-full because of the small amount
of space in our van. Our dream is to have huge amounts of mechanical
things operating on stage. But yeah, tonight we have some –
and fresh batteries too – so that’s a nice thing.
Do you think Let’s Stay Together
by Al Green is happy or sad?
T: I think it’s a very happy song.
You can tell that they have had some hard times and I’ve had some
hard times with my girlfriend but with that song you resolve to
make it work. The music of that song, just the way the band plays,
makes me happy every time I hear it.
To me it can be quite sad. A plea rather
than a positive statement – a last attempt to stop things falling
apart.
T: To stop the ship from sinking.
I can see that.
What’s your favourite expletive?
T: I don’t know – cocksucker?
I call a lot of people cocksuckers. I mean only when I’m driving.
That’s very harsh, maybe you shouldn’t put that in your magazine.
Do you notice people swear much
more in America than here?
T: We were here for three days two
months ago for a Peel session and we didn’t really meet that many
people but most people here I notice have a really broad command
of the English language, they use the right word in the right context
90% of the time; whereas Americans if there’s an entire vocabulary
they’ll use like this much of it (indicates small space between
finger and thumb) and the rest is cuss words. That’s the main
thing I really realised. It’s nice hearing people like yourselves
speak because you realise what else is out there.
Geoff wakes up and looks at my notes...
G: About this “I hate art” comment.
My girlfriend and I went to the Louvre on Paris about a week ago
and it totally changed my whole view of the whole art thing. I love
it, I’m really into the paintings and sculptures – it’s turned
me around again.
Did you go to the Pompidou? I find that
more modern art has a lot more appeal than classical works.
T: I’m the same way as you, I’m
more into that new stuff. I’m sorry, I’d have a lot more to say
if I wasn’t so hungry.
John Peel has been forced to call you
Feck – why is radio swearing such a big deal?
T: Our host from Matador told us
about the TV programme with that on, so that’s how people would
know. We also heard that after 9 o’clock on TV you can say “fuck”,
but not on the radio? We were in Sweden and I couldn’t believe the
station ID’s they were having us do, like one was “Fuck you motherfuckers
– we’re Fuck!” Something we would never dream of saying
on the radio.
But it’s less taboo to be known
as Fuck in mainland Europe, as an amusing second language thing.
T: But everyone knows what it is
and everyone uses it. I was really surprised. It comes up but it’s
not so much of a big deal. And we played on the national radio station
in the Netherlands as well.
Well there you have it. Swearing is the universal
language and it turns out that it is big and clever to do
so. These people were lovely, so buy their records and they might
come back.
|
