Interview taken from HermAphrodite #4?

And after that delightful interlude, Gaz appears. Highly chipper. And is good for conversation for about a minute, before he’s lost to HermAphrodite #2. Though he does spend some considerable time waving it about, pointing from his actual self to his ( far smaller 2D ) jumping self on the cover, to all about him... Which prompts the wondering…

me - “ Is the ceiling high enough for you to jump around downstairs ?”

Jamie - “ It is yeah, but I don’t know if I will do, I’m full of flu...”

me - “ And were you two good at the high jump at school ?”

Gaz - “ No...”

Jamie - “ I was shit at everything.”

Gaz - “ And if you’re shit at everything, and you’re American, you reinvent punk-rock.”

Jamie - “ I was better at high-jump than at any of the others. But I could never do the Fosby (?) Flop...”

me - “ What was that ?”

Jamie - “ It’s that one where you go backwards, and I don’t like going backwards over anything, I don’t like being upside-down. But I wasn’t really a sporty kind of person.”

me - “ So you excelled in the creative things ?”

Jamie - “ I started playing the drums dead early; and then when it came to doing the options at school it was kind of like - ‘I’ve got a choice here, I could stand on the hockey field getting a ball whacked against my knees in the pissing rain or sit in rehearsal in the music-rooms just makin’ noise’ and that won anyday. No contest.”

me - “ So where you the small child with array of pots and pans as drums, pissing off your mother ?”

Jamie “ Yeah ! I used to use a pouffe as a bass-drum, and pillows, and bits of the settee. I never used to actually hit them, they just looked good. And I could never get the cymbals right - I used to get tea-trays and try and balance them on things...”

me - “ How far back can you remember then, were you always been like that ?”

Jamie - “ Um... The earliest memory I’ve got is where I’ve just got out of the bath. My mum sat me in front of the telly, I can talk, and I was just asking me mum when Playschool was going to be on. And she was like ‘in a bit’, and I was like ‘aaw... that means it’s ages’.”

me - “ You didn’t play the drums along to the Playschool theme music ?”

Jamie - “ Naah...”

me - “ Were you trying to be anybody with that, knowing how the drum-kit was set up?”

Jamie - “ I always used to watch Top of The Pops... ( he contemplates the question for a moment ) I think that some kids play with cars, some kids want to be firemen, and I kicked pouffes around. ( thinks about it some more ) S’better than kicking poofs around innit?”

me - “ Possibly yes... So this is positively all that you’ve wanted to do?”

Jamie - “ Pretty much, yes. I think it’s the kind of thing that if you’re half decent, you may as well have a crack at it, otherwise you’ll never know. With me, it just happened to be music. It could’ve been brain surgery... I wish it was...”

me - “ Can you see yourself doing anything else ?”

Jamie - “ Not at the moment, cos I just haven’t had chance to think about it - we’re still climbing...”

me - “ But in ten years time, if you are still playing Wembley Stadiums and stuff, would you want to quit and have a book-shop...?”

Jamie - “Ooh, ah [ thinking noises ] - they bar me from bookshops, I can never go in them. ( returns to question speedily ) I think once you get to that level you don’t really have to try as much. It’s like ‘I’m bored, let’s go on a world tour’...”

They don’t wanna stop pushing themselves. They don’t really want it to become routine.

And Jamie probably isn’t really the type to just settle. Probably.

So…

me - “ Do you make enough out of this to not have dayjobs ?”

Jamie - “ We don’t have dayjobs.”

Gaz - “ We don’t make enough out of it but we don’t have dayjobs. But you know, we’ve got our shop-liftin’.”

Jamie - “ Yeah, we’ve got our shop-liftin’...”

Which would keep them happily occupied in their fair home-town…

me - “ And how did you all end up in a band together ? Did you kind of grow to each other?”

Jamie - “ There’s nothing to do in Derby really apart from join bands...”

me - “ So are these the coolest people around?”

Gaz - “ You say it like that’s not possible !”

I defend myself. Jamie continues his explanation.

Jamie - “ If a band splits up in Derby...”

Gaz - “ Then they have to join us !”

Jamie - “...people just go off and join other bands so it’s kind of like this big incestuous thing. But I dunno: we just ended up together. We’d known each other a fair few years before...”

me - “ So is there a big music scene in Derby ?”

Jamie - “ Yeah, it’s gettin’ better. We’ve got Cable, Gorilla, White Town of course... and then a lot of up and coming bands that are close to getting signed. So yeah, it’s getting really good, healthy competition.”

me - “ Do you play weddings and parties ?”

Jamie - “ I don’t know.”

me - “ Would you want to ?”

Gaz - “ I’d like to play at someone’s wedding and do a cover of ‘D*I*V*O*R*C*E’, that’s always been one of my ambitions. I don’t think you’d get to do many songs after it but...”

me ( thoughtfully ) - “ No. You’d get covered in croutons.”

Anyway. Back to Derby.

me - “ Can you give me three good things about Derby ?”

Jamie - “ Ur...”

( big pause )

Gaz - “ The A 52 going out of there.”

Jamie - “ Yeah.”

Gaz - “ And it has a nice ram statue.”

me - “ A ram.”

Gaz - “ Yeah.”

me ( warily ) - “ How big ?”

Gaz - “ Huge.”

Jamie - “ It’s a big stone thing, it’s fucking huge. And it was unveiled the day before Comic Relief. So it was like, there for one day, and then twenty-four hours later some punter got pissed and painted a red nose on the front of it... That’s what Derby people are like though, give them anything like that... It didn’t happen this year but the past two years the big bonfire [ for November 5th ] is always set alight the night before. So more people end up going the night before...”

me - “ So is that it, the A52 and a big ram ?”

Gaz - “ There’s a big water-fountain as well. Which is made out of these tiling things...”

Jamie - “ ...like a waterfall...”

Gaz - “ ...and it’s down on a slope, so in the winter it freezes over and all these old ladies break their legs and they get sued for a fortune every year. ( grins ) That’s good.”

( Sadistic bastard. )

Jamie - “ And it cost them summat ridiculous - 150 grand to like plan it and build it and stuff. And then 6 month after that they realised that they’d made it out of limestone or something like that so all the water just soaked right into it, ( giggles ) so they had to fucking rebuild it... Twats. So that’s Derby, it never quite hits the mark. It always just misses it by an inch. ”

me - “ But you’re happy there, you wouldn’t want to move to London and do the whole ‘London thing’ ?”

Jamie - “ I would want to move to London, but not to necessarily further meself. It’s not a great necessity to move there and get in with the scene...”

me - “ You don’t wanna be media whores then ?”

Jamie ( instantly ) - “ I’d love to be a media whore. ( thinks about it ) I’d like to be in the media, just wouldn’t like to sell my body for it.”

me - “ Whaddaya want from ‘98 ?”

Gaz - “ I want to remember more...”

me - “ Only drink Tango, that’d help.”

Jamie - “ I’d like all the good bits of from 1997 but better.”

Gaz - “ All in the first month.”

Jamie - “ Yeah. Just all the high-points we’ve had, like the Chart Show, and the Phoenix, and...”

Gaz - “ And all the others...”

Jamie - “ And Single of the Week [ Melody Maker, for ‘Do You Behave Like That At Home ?’ ]... Just gettin’ up the ladder. Just the same, but more.”

And they don’t want world domination. Just yet.

Or to be Alanis Morrissette.

Gaz - “ I’d like to be able to play harmonica like her...”

(cue VERY scary buzzing noises - like Rory Bremner’s cat being a chainsaw - into my dictaphone)

me - “ You’d probably need horrible hair.”

Gaz - “ I do have horrible hair.”

me - “ No, longer horrible hair that you can whack the drummer with. ( and then, travelling at the speed of light on a dual train of thought... ) Where’s Tree’s hair gone ?”

Jamie - “ Uh, it’s a actually been wrapped in clingfilm, and buried in a field in Whitley.”

me - “ Are you going to dig it up at all ?”

Jamie - “ Well what we’d like to do is a competition in the fanzine where we grid the field...”

Gaz - “ And have a Spot The Hair Competition.”

Sadly, it never happened. Sadly.

And then that’s it for the interview proper. After this, conversation descends into, well, conversation. Mostly led by Tree, truth be told. Though I did keep trying to steer it back to my Quickfire Questions Round. ( Cos it was fun. And interesting. And new. And better than hearing about dangleberries. Forest-bunnies. Etc. You soooo do not want to know... ) So yeah. That’s it. Go about your merry day. Go on with you. Go on.

>>> To Quickfire Round

Last revised: 26/07/01