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

…And back to the new album. It will be out in February. Be patient my child, it shall prove worthy.

Michael - “If we bring it out now it would be pointless, because every fucker is going to put out their album just before Christmas so they can clean up in the Christmas market. We’d just get buried.”

Becca - “Are you big in the Christmas market?”

Andrew - “It depends how cold you like your turkey.”

And so begins our festive conversation. Which lasted for even longer’n the one on politics and censorship.

Lawrence - “Christmas is really depressing... trying to rekindle the feeling of being a child... pathetic... people just get pissed... people are on their own... Christmas is all about nostalgia... commercialism... all these rich people get in their cars and do the whole soup-kitchen thing for a ten-day period where they take it seriously...”

I have a feeling these people’d get on well with Max Decharne...

Lawrence - “The solo people in life, the absolute lonely people who just want to gently go to work. They haven’t got it sussed out in their relationships, they don’t have anyone in their lives and they are there being told every single second that they don’t have anyone else that cares, so what do you do but slit your fucking wrists?”

Michael - “It’s either that or your Uncle Johnny who gets invited to stuff up your Christmas dinner, and the only way that he can actually feel comfortable about being there is to get absolutely hammered and he’s an absolute pain in the arse all day... I despise people who have a happy Christmas.”

Andrew - “The thing about Christmas is that it used to be, you get together and eat a lot and get absolutely rat-arsed because it’s the darkest point of the year, you need to have a focus for it. Everyone gets together with their families, spends lots of money, because they feel guilty. They should just give it to charity.”

Michael - “It’s quite funny when you think about it that Christianity does actually keep all the Pagan festivals. And Rowntrees afloat, the card manufacturers...”

Yeah. But... It’s a time to make a fuss of people. To say thankyou if you haven’t had time to or shown your appreciation during the year. Which is also what Mother’s Day has become, although it does have traditions in the last century, young girls getting a day off work to visit their mums. By contrast, Father’s Day is just a twentieth century creation for the sake of equality and sales.

Becca - “Have you noticed how they now have Grandparents Day, the card industry just makes up these days... Secretary Day?”

Andrew - “That is well dodgy.”

Lawrence - “If Mother’s Day is about the florists then Secretary Day is about hosiery.”

me - “So what would you rather? You’re sounding like The Levellers.”

And that paused the flow. Momentarily.

The band aren’t about to set up an new world order on their own dictats, they aren’t setting out to overthrow the government and have us live in chirpy communes. They have no solutions, they just want us to see the problems.

Lawrence - “We don’t have an agenda. Beyond getting people to talk about the shitty corners of life which nobody in normal society wants to address.”

Such as...? Commercialism superceding all else. Politics. Youth disaffection. Marxism. Rock The Vote. Huge rambling arguments taking in any number of huge rambling points. And then Lawrence starts on The Internet. Freedom of speech. Global communications. Porn. Equality. Distribution. Record company culls. Living through your computer or television. Occupational injuries. London’s over-population. The wholly terrifying Grace Jones. Oh, and telephone sex.

Lawrence - “Didn’t you do one of those sex-lines and try to get inside the person’s mind...?”

Andrew - “I couldn’t be arsed talking about sex, I wanted to know why she was doing it, whether it was remotely erotic. She was like ‘you really want to put the phone down now, this is costing you money...’ When my phone-bill came through, I was phoning up Ghania. In West Africa. I was talking to this woman - she was in Bethnal Green Road, and I’m ten minutes away...”

…And on the theme of paying for sex…

me - “Is the original Dream City Film Club building [ porn cinema ] still there ?”

Lawrence - “Yeah, we signed our record deal in it.”

Andrew - “It’s now a cafe called Carlos.”

Lawrence - “It was really sick that day. Somebody had a car accident...”

Andrew - “No, it was a shooting.”

Becca - “A shooting? Fuckin’ hell...”

Andrew - “Someone was hurt really badly in that alleyway...”

Lawrence - “Nonono, it was a murder. An older builder had a younger labourer who was taking the piss...”

me - “He pushed him off a building?”

Lawrence - “Nono, he punched him. And he died. And the helicopter was there, the police and everything. And we were tottering along to Carlos’ with the very sick concept of actually signing it within the place - it was about quarter to four, the cafe closes at four, the record company have this bottle of champagne. We go in, giggling away, signing bits of paper... I thought it was beautiful.”

Michael - “I don’t even remember.”

Figures.

And the on to…

me - “You’re still living on the underbelly of the ‘popular’ scene...”

Lawrence - “We certainly are...”

Me – “Are you happy with that, do you find yourselves frustrated…?”

Lawrence – “It’s getting harder to swallow.”

This is what I remember them being most bitter and twisted about last time we spoke; radio reluctance to give them airplay. Though calling one of their first singles for Beggars ‘Pissboy’ is kind of courting that reaction. Agreed.

Lawrence – “That’s our agenda, that’s fine. What’s been really difficult is actually having to swallow the fact that if you want to do this you cannot be yourself, you have to be something which fits into a box. You’re not allowed to do a range, it has to be one thing…”

Promoters have railed against them in the past for not being ‘Oasis or Sleeper’ and so not selling out so as to sell out the building.

Me – “But you can’t NOT wear eyeliner because you don’t want to be pigeonholed, if it’s something that you like doing…”

Michael – “It’s not really. The whole thing with that is that I really don’t want to do it any more. I might want to do it again in five years, I might look even more ridiculous. It’s just something that in this period I have… grown out of. Though that’s not to say that I look at people who wear eyeliner – particularly men – and think ‘god you look like a dick-head’. I don’t think that at all, some of them can do it very very well. Some people don’t know how to put their make-up on.”

Lawrence – “What about the McAlmont thing ?”

Michael – “I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the Jo Whiley Show – it’s APPALLINGLY bad…”

Me – “Yay ! ‘Ways to torture Jo Whiley’…”

Michael – “I mean, she’s useless…”

Becca – “Ah, put some SHOES on woman !”

Michael – “And every time…”

Lawrence - “Stop picking your toes !”

Michael – “…one of the guests starts…”

Me – “…saying something interesting, she’ll talk about Billie. Yeah.”

Michael – “And it’s boring. I saw David McAlmont on that the other night…”

Me – “He was really sweet…”

Michael – “Yeah, he was. But he’s completely revamped his image – which is fair enough again. But it was almost like he was apologising for it. Reading between the lines it’s like ‘this is something I have to do because I make really accessible pop music in my opinion, and maybe the

reason no-one’s buying it is because I’m a raving fucking queen, so I’ve got to tone it down a little bit’.”

Lawrence – “But the parody there is that he signed to Hut Records, and Placebo have signed to Hut Records, and Hut Records marketing obviously turned around and said ‘right McAlmont, we’ve tried you in a dress and it didn’t sell…’”

…Let’s try Mr. Molko ?

Andrew – “I think a lot of the problem with a lot of the labels is that there isn’t the space to actually have…”

Lawrence – “Integrity ?”

Andrew – “Well yeah, that’s one way of putting it – but just smaller acts…”

Me – “But don’t you get that at all…?”

A very loud chorus of no’s drowns me out around the table.

Michael – “That’s the amazing thing about Beggars…”

Lawrence – “It’s not corporate.”

Michael – “Beggars owns small independent labels while retaining their own independence – they haven’t sold onto EMI or Sony…”

Lawrence – “EVERY OTHER LABEL is subservient to a Coca-Cola mentality; multi-national company thinking…”

And they don’t have to be The Charlatans ( looks, songs, sales ) just because they’re a part of the Beggars Banquet family.

Lawrence – “We’ve got an A and R man who doesn’t turn up at the Mercury Music Awards because – guess what ? – only wankers do…”

Heh-heh.

Lawrence – “It makes us sound like self-defeating bastards but the truth of the matter is, we don’t swallow cock. And that’s the bottom line. We are ourselves and we make our own decisions. Unfortunately we almost hang ourselves with our own rope.”

But they love the freedoms they do have.

Lawrence – “I don’t think that we would be in this position with any other record label.”

Michael – “The record company recognise what we’re about. And it’s not that unique – it is very much a kind of character based thing. And just us doing what we really wanna do, instead of what we should do.”

Lawrence – “The next single is called ‘Nerveshot’, it’s about waking up in the morning with The Clap, and it contains the lyric ‘I’m pissin’ broken glass and razor blades’… Congratulations boys, we’ve done it again !”

And I see that as their being deliberately perverse. Obtuse.

Lawrence – “It’s just US !”

And for that I love them. Perverse or just perverted.

Michael – “We would like to live in a world where records like ours would get played on the radio.... It’s just that… it would be nice to have a few people there who just appreciated the music. Last night was a disaster, the night before that was a disaster. People in Nottingham are a disaster. I wait with bated breath to see what tonight has in store.”

Becca – “It’ll be us wigglin’.”

Michael – “That’ll be the most entertaining thing we’ve seen for a few days I think.”

And indeed it was.

Most enjoyable for us as well.

Go and wiggle at the Dream City Film Club. They deserve it.

And you might find you like it...

Last revised: 15/07/01