Interview taken from HermAphrodite #9.

Becca ( to Chris ) - “I want to know about after Kelli left, how did you come to the decision of it being you that would be the singer ? You obviously must have gone through such a change - I met you a few of years ago, and you wouldn’t have been able...”

Chris - “I wasn’t together...”

Becca - “...to be a front-person. So you’ve gone through a journey from that, to being onstage wiggling your bits. And you were wiggling.”

Giggles.

Becca - “You were wiggling, and you were gyrating.”

Sniggers.

Dave - “What have you got to say for yourself ? Shocking behaviour...”

Chris - “I couldn’t help it, I was so excited.”

Bless.

me - “Bless.”

Chris - “But yes, it has been a massive change. I have gone though a massive change. But it was the most natural thing to do. Originally when we recorded the first album I sang ion the demos, that was how we planned it. But for the time, culturally, the music we were doing wasn’t that important, Kelli was more important. And I didn’t have the balls. But I do now.”

me - “I had heard that Betty Boo was going to be joining you...”

Chris starts laughing...

me - “...But Noel [ Fielding ] was able to quosh that rumour...”

Becca - “I’d heard Gail Porter.”

Yikes.

me - “Now Betty Boo would have been fanTAStic.”

Dave - “Betty Boo would have been good... to meet.”

Oooh.

Becca - “But did somebody in a high position in the record company say ‘you need a pretty female vocalist’ ? Did you look for one ?”

Chris - “We didn’t... ( grins ) Did you ever meet Kelli ?”

Ouch.

Anyway. No, they didn’t go out looking for a foxy young laydee...

Dave - “It was quite deliberate that we didn’t choose someone too pretty.”

me - “But then you’ve got this [ gesture to Chris ] cheekboned young elf.”

Dave ( grins ) - “Yeah, but we can’t help that, he writes the songs.”

Elfin, elvish and talented. Bummer, eh ?

Dave - “Now we’ve just got the guy who sings the songs to sing them. And people think we’re being strange, or making some kind of weird statement. Chris sang all of the ‘Becoming X’ songs - we’ve still got them, they were great - but it was 1994...”

Chris - “The Year of the Ram...”

Dave - “And it was the Year of The Ram. Portishead had just come out, that was the atmosphere of the time, and the whole thing of having a female vocal over beats kind of worked. But it wouldn’t have worked with a male vocal.”

The trends of the time are very important to them. As they want to be successful, as well as heard.

Dave - “We always want to make sure that it’s a fashionable thing that we do. We’ll never sacrifice any kind of fashionable-ness by being too honest.”

But they are not just in it for the money.

Dave - “If we had played the game we could have just gone really fuckin’ enormous in America, but the price of doing that... We would have had to make a record we didn’t really want to make. And we’re all a bit too selfish to do that.”

So instead they have a new album they’re very proud of. And the same moniker to travel under...

me - “Did you think about changing your name ?”

Chris - “Yes.”

me - “Then why didn’t you ?”

Chris - “Because we ARE The Sneaker Pimps. We always were. I think it would be stupid of us to not use what fanbase we have.”

Dave - “And if we changed the name it would imply that if Kelli wasn’t there then it wasn’t The Sneaker Pimps.”

But it still is. There’s still a definite imprint of style on their new material. Which can be found on their fantastic spangly new album...

me - “Right. New album called ‘Splinter’. Is that because you’re a thorn that gets stuck under people’s skin or is that because you’re an offshoot of something or because you really really like The Turtles ?”

Chris - “Um... A little bit of all of that I think.”

me - “So as well as being trip-hop leaders you want to be a hairy dojo to a group of radioactive turtles you’ve found in a sewer...?”

Chris - “Yeah, why not ?”

Chris - “I think the under-the-skin thing is the probably the most apt way of describing the album. And also yes we are an offshoot.”

Dave - “We’re not an offshoot, we’re the original shoot...”

Chris - “Oh, alright.”

Dave - “And she was the splinter.”

me - “So it’s a bitter Geri Halliwell name ?”

Chris ( hurriedly ) - “We’re not bitter. We’re just...”

me - “Bored of talking about it ?”

Chris - “Yeah. It’s not that important to us.”

Dave - “We’ve lived with the idea for a good year or so year now - a year and a half actually - and it is the first time we’ve had to talk about it.”

So we leave the subject. And move off and on to the next question in my book of biro’d delights...

me - “Are you tight with your flows ?”

Blank faces. Sniggers.

me - “In a Mel-G style-ee...”

Chris - “I don’t understand that.”

me - “it’s just something from that Missy Elliot duet she did. Your flows can be your poetry. As opposed to your waters breaking.”

Dave - “Oooh, tight with your FLOWS.”

me - “What did you think I said ?”

Dave - “Well, that but...”

me - “You thought I meant ‘Are you tight with your Floella Benjamins ? Do you not give her her taxi-fare home ?’”

Dave - “I was thinking floes with an e. And was thinking ‘what the hell is that ?’”

Well, no, that would be a ridiculous question. Akin to ‘are you a canal gate ?’

Thankfully, ponderances of this nature are swiftly left behind now. As Dave looks out of the bus windows...

Dave - “I can see you over there.”

Chris - “What ?”

Dave - “You’re on the back of that electricity box.”

Chris - “Oh, is that my chin again ?”

me - “Your chin ?”

Adorning a record poster. Several posters in fact.

I mention that every recent review seems to make something of Chris’ elf-like appearance / nature. They’ve noticed it too.

me - “Did you want to be a pixie when you grew up ?”

Dave seems to find this very funny.

Chris - “Did I ? Not at all.”

me - “I did. My ears were nearly pointy enough... I wanted to be Peter Pan when I got big.”

Chris - “Aaah. I suppose Peter Pan was pretty cool.”

Becca - “He could fly.”

And he hung out with Tinkerbell. And mermaids.

Chris - “Yeah, he was pretty cool.”

me - “So you never had a Peter Pan phase ?”

Chris - “I can’t remember. But thinking about it now, I probably did.”

Becca - “You still can.”

Chris - “I’ll do it now shall I ?”

me - “Yeah. Right now.”

Chris - “Okay. This is my Peter Pan phase.”

Dave - “I would shy away from Peter Pan because Michael Jackson’s OBSESSED with him...”

me - “Just because he’s named his ranch after him...”

Dave - “Well yeah, tiny things like that.”

me - “Michael Jackson does not fight pirates, he doesn’t have dibs on the whole Peter Pan thing...”

Chris - “Yeah, but he does hang around with Lost Boys, doesn’t he...?”

Choppy waters swiftly left, that, I do believe. Let’s talk about the band’s visuals...

me - “Your video had fantastic martial-arty-wotsits, are you going to be going for a different sports motif throughout ? Because I really want to see welly-wanging in there. You don’t get enough of that in pop videos.”

Becca - “Or rolling cheese.”

Chris - “What is cheese rolling ?”

me - “Well you take a biiiig circular cheese...”

Chris - “And you make a sport out of it ?”

Oh yes.

me - “And people get so badly injured...”

Becca - “They had to ban it last year...”

me - “...Because the St. John’s Ambulance refused to turn up, because people get crushed by the cheese.”

There are giggles at this. It is a sport taken very seriously in some parts of the country however.

me - “You roll a cheese down a hill, and then people chase the cheese. And then they get hurt rolling down the hill - or they get rolled over by the cheese.”

Dave - “Is this true ?”

Becca - “Honest to God.”

Chris - “Wow. I’ve missed out.”

me - “And there’s an alternative sport where you bowl them down city streets. There’s ‘cheese with a hill’ and ‘cheese with a street’. That could be a new direction for you...”

Dave - “That as a video idea is what we’re looking for...”

Marvellous.

Something to look to the future with, at least.

As is the band’s new club night...

me - “I want to enquire about your Home Taping club night. And why Tony Blair ?”

Dave ( grin ) - “We’re not getting Tony Blair. That was a stupid misquote.”

Chris - “We MIGHT be getting Tony Blair.”

To make a tape of his favourite music to play at their new club night.

Dave - “We were talking to someone from the press about it, and said ‘someone like Tony Blair’, mentioned loads of names as we were brainstorming. But now we’re thinking it might be quite an interesting thing to ask Tony Blair.”

They want Ready Steady Cook’s Fern Britten as well.

me - “Why ?”

Dave - “Because these people all occupy some kind of celebrity status.”

And their motives are more curiosity-based than satirical exposition.

Dave - “We don’t really want to take the piss out of them... But we got a SHOCKING tape from...”

Chris - “Gary Barlow!”

Dave - “SHOCKING!”

Chris - “It’s going to be a monthly thing, occurring in the ICA [ London, obviously ]. We’re going to play eight tapes, from celebrities and non-celebrities.”

Dave - “Normally in a club you’d have a DJ, with a bit of an ego, controlling the crowd, as Mr Vibe-ster. Shiite. So we just thought we’d get loads of different people, play their tapes, just like when you’ve got someone at home. It could be someone who’s walking down the street, or it could be the Prime Minister of Great Britain.”

me - “But we won’t get Judy Finnegan on the decks ?”

Dave - “There’s no decks.”

me - “We won’t get Judy Finnegan pressing play ?”

Sadly, no. Although...

Dave - “We want Judy Finnegan. And Richard Madely. We’ve got Roy Hattersley, Adam & Joe, Louis Theroux, ( pause ) Jennifer Anniston...”

me - “How ?”

Becca - “How the hell ? Was there a lot of shampoo involved ?”

Dave - “It was us just sitting there thinking ‘if we managed to get there number we could just call them’.”

me - “What does she like ?”

Dave - “We don’t know yet.”

Chris - “It hasn’t come through yet.”

Becca - “It’ll be interesting though.”

And then we’re interrupted by the arrival of Liam’s pathologist brother. And then I ask another band-biog question prompted by my WWWeb-trawlings.

me - “This fantastic piece of Internet print-out credits you with the start of trip-hop.”

They make disparaging giggle noises.

Dave - “No.”

Chris - “Uh, no.”

me - “Whitney Houston thinks Bobby Brown started it, so, that’s who you’re up against.”

Dave - We’re not going to fight about it...”

Damn.

Chris - “We didn’t start trip-hop.”

Dave - “Though we were kind of around at the start of it.”

Chris - “A lot of people started it.”

Dave - “We were kind of in the first flurry of trip-hop people who made it into the charts.”

Chris - “We invented speed-garage though.”

Dave - “At home in the kitchen.”

me - “With an egg-whisk and an oven-timer ?”

Sadly not.

Chris - “It was Van Helden’s mix of ‘Spin Spin Sugar’...”

Dave - “...That was the first tune hailed as speed-garage.”

And look where it’s brought them... New record, new singles, new singer, new outlook... It hasn’t all been rosy but hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. For the most part...

Chris - “People have walked out of gigs...”

Dave - “When they see that Kelli isn’t there.”

Becca - “And about this you feel...?”

Chris - “Fine. The gigs have been so good so far that it hasn’t affected us.”

Dave - “And - as you’ve said in that write-up - it is a lot to expect for people to just listen to new material and a totally different singer. It is a bit of a chore - I don’t know how long I’d stay...”

But at Glastonbury people did.

me - “There was no mass exodus, it was really sweet.”

Becca - “And you were wigglin’.”

Chris - “And I was wigglin’.”

Becca - “And I was wigglin’.”

Chris - “There were a lot of people wigglin’ at the end definitely.”

Dave - “I think I managed half a wiggle. From the back.”

Becca - “And I’ll wiggle this evening.”

Chris - “Yeah ! Come wiggle !”

Come one, come all...

Last revised: 26/07/01