Interview taken ( & edited ) from HermAphrodite #6 - Part1.

The Dream City Film Club are now just Michael J. Sheehy.

Waiting for Becca at the station, in Leeds, a werewolf tried to chat me up. ( By asking, initially, if I had any glue with which he could mend the protuberances of his prosthetic head. ) And as we went through the ticket barrier, we passed a couple who were ball-room dancing in front of the time-tables. And when we finally get to Manchester, we end up doing the interview in a restaurant as the band eat their dinner in front of a wall-length mirror. Thinking about it afterwards, neither of us could remember seeing the band’s reflections in it. That about set the tone for the night…

me - “Your new material seems to have got more sordid, if that is in fact possible...”

Andrew - “It is possible.”

me - “Is that intentional ?”

Lawrence - “You should wait for the next fuckin’ single...”

( ‘Nerveshot’. Ltd edition pure white 7”. Sample line - ‘I’m pissing broken glass and razor-blades...’ Clatteringly beatific. )

Michael rambles off on a tirade against bands who claim not to write sub-standard material for their b-sides

( Michael - “if it’s that good put it on the LP...” )

before coming back to inform me...

Michael - “I think our album isn’t sordid at all - it points out a few sordid things, but we’re not kind of like celebrating it. Or anything like that.”

They aren’t to be biting the heads off bats, I am assured. Which prompts the ‘bunny’s-head-on-a-stick’ remembrance.

Lawrence - “It wasn’t our choice.”

Michael - “We went for it, we thought it was going to be a good idea, and ur...”

The ‘bunny’s-head-on-a-stick’ incident was a part of the video for ‘If I die’. Which also featured bodily organs nailed to bits of wood, and the band themselves being killed off in a variety of ways.

me - “How would you feel if there was a rabbit video with loads of rabbits singing, and your head was on a stick?!”

I had hoped for an immediate apology to all rabbit-kind after this mental image was presented, but instead the band just get the giggles at the thought of The Revenge of Watership Down. Which is now what they say they want for their next video.

Michael - “That’s it! A computer-generated image of me with my head impaled on a stick and a rabbit molesting me. Forcing stuffing into my legs and body.”

me - “It wouldn’t be very nice, would it ?”

Andrew - “Ah, we’re into human mutilation.”

me - “And trapping people in oubliettes...”

But they don’t still have the rabbit ( not even on the front of their van, as a flesh take on the leaping Jaguar motif ). And are far happier with their new video.

Michael - “The video that we’ve just done for ‘Billy Chic’ was quite successful, we were quite pleased with that. I didn’t think I would be... but it’s good. It was cheap.”

Andrew - “But it looks good.”

Lawrence - “You should get Beggars to send you one.”

me ( warily ) - “I am squeamish.”

Michael - “Oh no, there are no dead animals in this one.”

Though...

Andrew - “I get run over by a car...”

Lawrence - “Spinal Tap. That’s what we want to do - they always get rid of the drummer. That’s the game. My final one was when the drummer fell off his stool when he was stood on it and impaled himself on the high-hat stand.”

Becca - “Niiice.”

Lawrence ( perking up considerably with this line of conversation ) - “And there was another one where he just spontaneously combusted.”

And it’s at this point that one starts wondering just what exactly has happened to the band’s old guitarist.

This is Alex. He’s no longer with the band. They say they kicked him out for ‘cuntish’ behaviour. Some might say they drank his blood and then under cover of a vicious night-storm left his limp body sagging into the gutter of a murky sidestreet, his last remaining juices slowly leeching out into the cold washed mix of refuse and rainwater that flowed around his drained form.

But then, that would be libellous.

And something of a stereotype in keeping with their ‘moody pervy weirdos’ image. Still, most of the premiered new material, as well as the evening’s conversation was in keeping with their ‘moody pervy weirdos’ image. But in an engaging way - if that’s possible. ( It was an accessible kind of weird. Not just a ‘laughing like a loon’ / Stephen King’s ‘It’/ ‘I’m in Satellite Beach’ kind of weird... )

Still, the vampire reasoning’d be a good rumour to spread, wouldn’t it...?

But they gave me no explanation of that nature…

Though the subject did come up when I questioned them on the release of their Peel Sessions EP. Was it down to sheer laziness ( ‘eek, we haven’t done any new material but we need to put out a single, guys...’ ) or a simple desire to share?

Michael - “Since we were interviewed with you last, our guitarist Alex is no longer in the band. We sacked him. And basically the Peel sessions was just a way of saying ‘well that’s that phase out of the way, this is all that we’ve got left.’”

They’ve severed.

Michael - “A lot of people got it, listened to it, and said ‘well that was fuckin’ pointless’... nice sleeve though, I think it had a wonderful sleeve.”

Mmm. Good use of lightbulbs. S’very pretty. Though I don’t really understand it. S’probably the point.

me - “So was the new stuff written without him, completely?”

Michael - “Yeah. He didn’t write anything anyway.”

me - “He never even put any chords in?”

Michael - “No.”

Andrew - “He wasn’t really a guitarist at all, just a holographic image that was projected onstage.”

Michael - “He was crap.”

me - “So you don’t really regret the decision ?”

Andrew - “No, not at all. And it really freed us up, we started to get a lot more focused. It was almost like we had to make room in the music for him to toss off all over it. And we just thought ‘no we don’t wanna do that’. So we sacked him.”

me - “D’you still talk to him ?”

Andrew - “The weird thing is, is that even when he was in the band he wasn’t a good communicator, he didn’t really like talking very much. I probably speak to him as much now as I did when he was in the band. When I see him I say hello. That was the extent of our conversation, all the time.”

And now, the band have a ‘spare guitarist’ playing with them.

me - “How spare?”

Michael - “Patrick’s my brother.”

me - “So kind of integral then.”

And they both have the same hair. Or lack of.

Michael - “We’ve got another brother with a bald head. We’ve seen the trials and tribulations of our father getting bald, and the trouble he went to, to maintain what little hair he had left, and we all vowed unconsciously never to let ourselves go through that sort of trauma.”

Apparently it looked like a brillo pad.

me - “Did he have that ‘three strands’ thing going on?”

Michael - “He had a lot of strands, but the thing was was that you could stick your hand UNDER his hair. He had this kind of wicker-basket weave growth on top of his head. Which was quite an amazing thing.”

I start telling him about the man one of my friends had seen in Midlesbrough, whose bryl-creemed slab of hair had been forced upwards by the wind, lending his head the look of an open box.

Michael - “Ah now you see I just don’t understand that. It looks very undignified.”

And then we trawl through various hair-related topics. Like Right Said Fred. Lawrence’s ability for big hair ( me - “you should just then go and sit in the cinema all day” ). And the Prodigy’s Keith Flint now taking Michael’s ‘look’.

me - “He looks like a cross between you and Uncle Fester.”

Michael - “Yeah, he did look like Uncle Fester, he really did.”

And that is a style that Michael is not heading towards.

Michael - “I don’t wear make-up any more, so maybe that should help.”

me - “It suited you.”

Michael - “We’re still trying to establish ourselves. And we don’t really want to get lost in a lot of the actual rumpus going on. Placebo as well. It was probably a bit of a mistake to do a B-side with Brian...”

me - “But wearing eyeliner doesn’t mean that you are ‘a bit of a girl’, it just makes the wearer look quite pretty...”

There shouldn’t have to be a statement of intent that accompanies that one. Maybe if the band member in question took to wearing a chicken on his head, or something. But eyeliner isn’t that unusual in the world of music. Even for boys.

Food arrives. The band tuck in. Conversation shifts. We contemplate the levitating beer ( on the beer-mats ). When it arrives, it doesn’t levitate. But is in very fat glasses. Which makes the drinker look German. And we just start nattering.

Andrew wants to know what good gigs I’ve been to recently. ( My mind blanks. I can’t even remember what I did the day before. And that was Placebo. )

I remember myself, and enthuse after The Divine Comedy’s rendition of Kum By Yah.

From where Lawrence pipes up that he’s got a gospel song on the new album.

Lawrence - “On the new album there’s a song called ‘Steal Away To Jesus’ and it’s a gospel song... It’s a good funeral song...”

me - “So it’s not that you’ve found Jesus?”

Lawrence - “No, I’ve always had Jesus.”

me - “Have you ever been asked to play at a funeral ”

Michael - “Yeah. I did this song at a funeral, I’ve done it for two. And that was why I wanted to do it for the LP, it’s a song I’ve been asked to do a couple of times. it’s very dear to me.”

Though no, if they’re doing funerals they don’t mostly do their own material.

( Though the prospect tickles Michael. )

Michael - “We’ve done a few weddings as well. You know that John Lennon song ‘Love’ off the Plastic Ono album? ( he starts singing ) ‘Love is real, real is love...’ - I’ve done that at about three weddings.”

But there wasn’t really any sort of ridiculous costuming involved. Alas.

me - “I was thinking, if you had the hat, and the dreadlocks, you could look like Boy George, could run around being Culture Club...”

Becca - “Talk about coming in at the end of a conversation...”

Michael - “I saw him on telly the other day - he looks remarkably well. And he’s got some GOOD HATS as well man, he’s got some really COOL hats.”

He could never contemplate doing a tribute to Culture Club though...

unless he could find himself a worthy hat.

Michael - “Actually you look like the dark haired geezer he was having an affair with.”

Andrew - “The drummer ?”

Michael - “Yeah.”

Becca - “Oooh yeah.”

Andrew ( dryly ) - “ I look like any ‘dark-haired geezer’. It’s because of my hair.”

Further conversation throws up the divulgence that not only was Jon Moss also possibly a one-time member of Blondie, but also positively Adam And The Ants. And The Clash.

me - “Bit of a jump...”

Andrew - “Oh, The Clash went through loads of drummers.”

But to kind of go back to the original question... No, the Dream City Film Club don’t have yearnings to tribute. Maybe to be tributed.

Michael - “I really wanted to see The Australian Stooges, like The Australian Doors. But they weren’t Australian at all. ‘Sreally funny...”

>>> Part 2

Last revised: 26/07/01