Interview taken ( & edited ) from HermAphrodite #8.

So are visuals of that kind important to them? Do they give a lot of thought to live TV performaces?

Me – “Would you want choreographed dance routines and so on for your Top Of The Pops debut?”

Steve – “Only if cows do it.”

Me – “Ooh. Anchor.”

Steve – “ Or if Steps could be the backing dancers.”

Andy – “Ooh, God, no way.”

I’m with him on this one. When faced with Steps I usually say ‘YIKES!’

Steve – “I think people expect too much from Steps. I think they expect them to be genuine musicians, but what they do is plastic pop music. If you look too deeply you’ll be disappointed, but if you expect rubbish and that’s what you want, then you’ll get it. Steps take it to a level, and they do it SO WELL, that I like them a lot.”

Me – “But we’ve already had Abba though, we don’t need another one.”

Andy – “And Abba were talented.”

Steve – “Naah, Steps are so bad they’re good, I like them.”

He has other similar foibles. Like B*witched. For example.

Steve – “They don’t look like they should be pop-starrs, they can’t dance, it’s just like – WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY DOING THERE?”

But the ‘so bad they’re good’ judgement method doesn’t work on everyone.

Steve – “I suppose you could say the same about 911, but they’re so bad they’re just bad.”

We then move on to bemoaning the state of the current pop market.

Steve – “But if people are actually buying it, you can’t blame the industry for capitalising in on it. If the kids are buying it then it’s their fault.”

Me – “But they’ve got no basis of comparison.”

Andy – “Kids buy whatever gets pushed at them by the magazines – I think somebody at some level in the industry should honestly start screening out rubbish. It’s a shame they don’t.”

Yes. But that’s not the way it works. Ah well…

…And then, as they used to live near me ( before they upped for Liverpool ), and because I’m sure they can rise to the challenge, I ask for Ooberman’s Top Three Things To Do In Bradford.

Andy – “There’s that amazing Film & Photography Museum.”

Me – “They haven’t changed the exhibits there since I was eight!”

Steve – “It’s atrocious, that is the most over-rated museum in the country.”

But then, I did see ‘Star Wars’ on The Imax screen in there.

Andy – “The second best thing to do in Bradford is…”

Steve – “Support Bradford Football Club, because they’re in the Premiership now.”

Andy – “And the third one – go visit Judy Woods. Which is this lovely woods near where me and Danny used to live – in a place called Woodside, not surprisingly. And it’s where ‘Tears From A Willow’ was inspired, this lovely open woodland with loads of little secret dingly-dells, and stuff like that. You can have a really nice day out there.”

Steve – “After caning it on some substance or other we found this bit of ground with a big waterfall going down it, and we sat on the edge going, ‘Bloody Hell man, it’s a dingly-dell!’ We just made the name up. And then we got back to the flat we had at the time, and on the back of a ten pound note there’s a Dingly Dell Cricket Club!”

Andy – “And on that ‘substance’ that seemed incredibly profound.”

Steve – “Yeah. ‘Surely we can now fly!’”

And so on the subject of that ‘Tears From A Willow’ song… They’ve described it as being the ‘Most Ooberman-like record’ that they’ve made. Why?

Andy – “That was actually the demo that got us signed –it’s got a lot of different ‘sonic textures’ if you will. It’s not just a straightforward pop song, there’s a lot of different territories in there. There’s a poignancy under the surface. It’s heart-felt and wacky in a way I don’t think ‘Blossoms Falling’ or ‘Million Suns really were. It’s all about dealing with breaking up with a long-term girlfriend, but having your mates to pull you through because mates will always last forever whereas relationships won’t necessarily. And it’s also got a reference to that acid trip we had with ‘going down to talk to the cows’. So there’s a surface level of almost throwaway-stupidity, which we always like to have. And then if you scratch the surface you’ll see this deeper level of poignancy, which is actually great if you get into it. Some reviewers missed that completely, and just said it was all a joke, but they don’t realise… Because they’re fools. With weak minds. ( pause ) That and ‘Shorley Wall’, that’s the definition of an Ooberman song.”

Steve – “Initially with ‘The Shorley Wall EP’ we were going to stick sea-shells on the front, and make it 3-D. Danny went to Blackpool, and got a sample of one of them – this perfect symmetrical white shell, about an inch big. So Danny went ahead and ordered a big massive bag of them. And they all came back mis-shapen, they weren’t symmetrical at all.”

Which left them with a 2,500 un-used shells.

Andy – “I think we used them all.”

Me – “How???”

Andy – “The ‘Shorley Wall’ launch party! When the EP came out, we got loads of industrial sand, and we filled the alcoves in this pub with sand – we asked them first. And we just laid all the shells out, and had a party on the beach. In a pub. It was the best party I’ve been to.”

They’d recommend that kind of behaviour. Particularly if everyone at that kind of party is forced to dress with a nautical theme in mind. Actually, they’d just recommend that kind of thinking. You don’t have to follow the same route as everyone else in order to get where you want to go. Ooberman are proof. They didn’t do the normal ‘pub-circuit before being snatched up by eager scouts’ route to fame and indy-label glory. They weren’t snaffled by an A&R man. They just got their first single out because they sent a copy to some management companies, Blur got hold of it, and it wound up being released on Graham Coxon’s Transcopic label. They would recommend this way of working.

Steve – “Don’t send tapes out to loads of labels.”

Better to generate a bit of mystery than over-saturate. Oh, and also.

Steve – “Get good at song-writing first, then get good at recording.”

Then get yourself adopted by a pop-starr with a label, and release a couple of ltd. edition singles. Give yourself an ‘authentic pop-history’ ( as Steve would have you believe ).

Me – “So did you have a ten-point plan ? Did you start off with a big list of everything you wanted ?”

Steve – “Yeah ! We’re neurotic planners. Danny especially – he’s kind of like the brains behind the whole thing. He spent a lot of time planning ways to infiltrate the music industry and then infiltrate the media and then gradually hopefully the minds and hearts of the public. So yeah. A lot of neurotic planning. Planning is everything.”

Andy – “When we first started Ooberman, two years ago when all five of us came together finally, I think Danny did actually have a ten-point plan. From his vision of the actual music industry and the way it worked he would have a point where he expected things to happen, and another four months down the line ‘this’ to happen. About a year ago, we went back to it and looked at it and it was uncannily accurate; Get a Small Record Deal. Get a Ltd Edition Record Out, Build Up A Fanbase In Liverpool...”

Steve – “And uncannily, we have to respect him for that.”

Andy – “Yeah, well done Danny.”

You worrying creative psychic you.

Andy – “It’s on his wall actually in his bedroom.”

Steve – “It’s one big plan. With a load of sub-plans inside it.”

Why do I keep meeting wildly creative despots in the last few weeks? And why are they always so nice?

Me – “Is it good that he has the band as an outlet, or is he trying to take over the world with it ?”

Steve – “Oh, he IS trying to take over the world by planning.”

Andy – “This [ band malarkey ] is merely a means to an end.”

But if it means that the entire world ends up listening to their glorious sunny nougat music, maybe a meticulous global domination is not such a bad idea…

Last revised: 26/07/01