Interview taken ( & edited ) from HermAphrodite #8.

They are most beloved of John Peel. Blur liked their demo so much Graham Coxon’s label released their first single. The Manics use one of their songs as onstage-intro music. Welcome to the world of Ooberman, where keyboards are blue & furry and bees are worthy of a punk hymn. I think Ooberman make records that sound like Cadbury’s Caramel. The band themselves would rather be thought of as a very expensive Belgian chocolate. And, perhaps more importantly, they’re the only band I know who has their own cartoon mascot, who pops up, Where’s Wally Style, on all of their sleeve-art. He’s called The Ooberman. Naturally. So then. Does he have any special powers?

Sophia – “I didn’t make him up, but I’d say no. He’d probably like to have, but I’d say he hasn’t.”

Steve – “He’s got the amazing power to repel girls.”

That’ll be the Pants On Outside Your Tights Power then.

Steve – “He’s got the power to make a fool of himself.”

Mmm-hmm.

Steve – “The Ooberman’s character is one of hidden greatness, hidden potential, that no-one actually sees on the surface until you get to see the real character beneath his sad little geeky exterior. Which is uncannily like our band.”

Andy – “We went to a party, at Steve’s house, a couple of years ago, before the band had actually properly got together. And we were looking for a band name. And at that time me and Danny were giggling stupidly about writing a radio sitcom called ‘Stoned Kitchen’. Which would have all sorts of crazy characters. All in a stoned kitchen. And one of the characters was a guy called The Ooberman. Who was this little skinny guy who was trying to make himself a bit cooler and more funky than he really was by adopting the name The Ooberman. So that’s how that came about. The reason why he’s wearing his ridiculous get-up with the bucket on the head is that he had this crazy idea of going out and impressing women. By dressing up as this outlandish character. In the misguided belief that women went for men like that.”

Ah.

Danny – “I did have a bit of a bit of a wild scheme at one point that he was on the verge of discovering a mechanism for opening up gateways in time to other dimensions, by mixing together Pro-Plus and vodka.”

Sophia – “That’s a special power if I ever heard one...”

Danny – “That is a special power. And he’s using his power to try and stalk the ‘Shorley Wall’ mermaids. On the back cover of the last single there’s a picture of him appearing in a golden cloud and watching the mermaids sitting down in a little pool. And on the front cover of the album as well he’s spying on the mermaids.”

So if Danny’s drawing the Ooberman, how much of him is there in the small caped creature. Would HE want to stalk mermaids ?

Danny – “Uuuur, no. I think I’d just go over and introduce myself, have a swim. I don’t think I’d perve on them.”

And the mermaid fetish isn’t born from Peter Pan. Danny never had urges that way...

Danny – “Though I wouldn’t mind flying like a superman.”

Sophia – “I wanted to be Wendy. Desperately. I saw the Disney version of ‘Peter Pan’ when I was little, and the bit where they land on ‘Big Ben’ and then take off again, I though that was beautiful and peaceful. I though ‘that looks great that, I’d love to do that’.”

She probably still does, if she could muster the energy. When I spoke to the band, they were just tidying up the last few dates of a a really rather extensive tour. So. Are they knackered yet?

Sophia – “I’m knackered. But I’ve got a notoriously low resistance to being tired.”

Andy – “I think it gets to her a bit, simply not having female company to talk to.”

Steve – “It gets to me as well.”

Danny – “I miss female company as well. ( he turns to Sophia ) Apart from you. Obviously.”

Talking to fans and service-station staff isn’t quite the same. Apparently.

So. Beyond being tired and a little lonely, how do they feel to be here? Metaphorically, at least…

Steve – “It’s great getting the album out at last.”

Andy – “It’s been ten years in the making.”

Steve – “Kind of. A culmination of a ten year plan dreaming and scheming to get here.”

Andy – “Doing your GCSE’s at school, saying ‘It’d be great to be in a band, sod this, let’s be in a band’.”

Steve – “And now it’s actually out ! You can stand in newsagents and read magazines and go ‘We’re getting reviewed in here !’. It’s unreal. It’s an exciting time.”

Sophia – “I felt like that when ‘Shorley Wall’ came out, the first EP. I felt like that then, really excited seeing it on the shelves. But there’s been a few singles out since then – I think you just get accustomed to that as it goes along. It’s nice to have the album in the shops, and we’re proud of it, but it’s not exhilarating or shocking any more.”

They don’t feel like proper pop-starrs. And as yet, they haven’t taken to standing in HMV pointing out their own record.

Andy – “No-one recognises us so we have to do that at the moment.”

Steve – “Yeah, do our own promotion.”

Me – “But you haven’t had the songs written for ten years ?”

Steve – “No. The oldest song on the album is probably ‘Sur La Plage’ and that’s about two years old.”

Andy – “That’s the first song we actually started doing together as a band.”

Steve – “The ten year thing was more like; ten years of gradually getting into recording, getting enough equipment together to get up to a level of song-writing that you felt was good enough to release on the unsuspecting world. So there’s ten years of rubbish behind us, and I’m sure there’s ten years of rubbish in front of us, but for the moment we’re quite happy where we are.”

As it should be, one supposes.

And then Danny & Sophia are stolen for another interview. And I take the opportunity to ascertain whether the remaining band members remember where they were when they first heard themselves on the radio..?

Steve – “I was actually in my front-room, in my dressing-gown, having a very lazy morning, when Jo Whiley played us for the first time. At twenty-five past one. Which is funny, because she played it at that time every time she played it.”

Andy also clearly recalls his whereabouts.

Andy – “Me and Danny were in the rehearsal room. And we got a phone call from our manager at about twelve o’clock saying ‘Jo Whiley’s going to play it !’ So we spent about an hour scrabbling around trying to hook up some radio system – we were in some ridiculous damp warehouse trying to get this wire to stretch across to get a signal. We finally got it, and we came on, we just started dancing around like goons.”

Steve – “It was amazing. Just a very dizzying experience. We used to be – well, we still are – just listeners to the radio. And suddenly we’re coming out with it, we’re providers. ‘Oh hang on, this is me coming out of the speakers.’”

So have they ever channel-hopped ( on TV ) onto their own faces ?

Andy – “Yes. On MTV. But we always know when it’s going to be on. So we sit there waiting for it for hours.”

Steve – “A couple of mates have said that they were watching some obscure Sky cable bollocks at half one in the morning, and then we came on. He said he nearly dropped his Indian all over the floor.”

And that wasn’t just for the shock of seeing dancing cows in a video.

Oh, and before we leave the subject, yes Ooberman have noticed the literal slant of their videos. Ooberman would like to write a song about being James Bond in the Bahamas. Or going down to talk to the koalas...

Andy – “That video for ‘A Million Suns’ where we’re all wearing space-suits... That kind of fit the lolloping groove of the song – that’s where the idea of space came into it – and also it was the 25^th anniversary of the Lunar Landings. We had to be suspended on wires - it was so painful, it really was. Sophia came out with a classic quote about where the, uh, harness was chafing her, which I can’t repeat. But after that we decided to write a song called ‘Taking It Easy In The Bahamas’.”

Niiice.

>>> Part 2

Last revised: 26/07/01