Cheesy listening

Frankly it doesn’t make a lot of sense. For a start, there are five of them. They also maintain that they’re a lounge/cabaret act from the late 1960s who’ve been catapulted into present day Ireland due to an unfortunate collision with a strange sci-fi type pothole that hid a flux in the space time continuum. Apparently. The music is a strange mating of punk, Sinatra, Techno, lounge and The Lyrics Board. They’ve made there home at The Sugar Club in recent months, occasionally venturing forth to supply musical delights for RTE radio’s Stand-Up Stories and The Irish Comedy Improv’s Saturday morning radio show. Their latest project is the Music Is War album on Cosmic Music, which offers a dozen tracks which vary from Prodigy medlies to the sure-to-be-chart-topper ‘Boybands Are C**ts’.

“Well, they are,” insists frontman Clint Velour, “in fact, everyone in music are cunts. Music has become so corporate that somebody like Led Zepplin would never be allowed to make an album today, just as Humphrey Bogart would be considered to ugly to be a film star. UK Garage heads, Radiohead, Ronan Keating, Nu-metal bands… It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. There’s no glamour, no style anymore. I think that’s what we’re mostly trying to do, bring back that glamour. And get girls. If you look at the greats, guys like Frankie and Dino and Sammy and Doonican and compare them to what we’ve got now it’s obvious we’re being taken for a ride. You can’t imagine a band like Coldplay patting a broad on the ass, can you? I wouldn’t imagine Toploader are funded by organised crime. Although…”

There are some contemporary musicians who escape the Quartet’s ire. The Sex Pistols, Led Zepplin, Van Halen, Phats ’n’ Small and Kylie Minogue are all featured in the band’s set, albeit in almost unrecognisable form. “It’s our interpretation of the music of these great artists,” insists Velour. “There’s so much blandness out there at the moment that we feel duty bound to deliver some quality product to the kids. We’d see ourselves coming from the same direction as The Strokes or The Hives, who ripped off our stage-suits idea by the way, except that we’re a covers band so we’re doing other peoples material. In a way that frees us up to concentrate on the interpretation and the playing. It’s unlikely that after thousands of years of music anyone’s going to write a song that’s better than any other song ever written so we’ve decided not to waste our fucking time trying. Having said that it’s rumoured that Chris de Burgh has sealed himself into a recording studio in an effort to write the ultimate song, and if anyone could do it… Well, actually no, it wouldn’t be Chris.”

The bands identification with their younger fans is most evident on the slackers anthem ‘Mom, Stay Out Of My Pit’ containing the immortal couplet “Why was I not born in the projects/Like society’s rejects/Why do you always give me money/Why did you call me Anthony?”

“It’s an expression of the youth of Ireland’s pain,” says Velour. “I mean, it’s no surprise that when kids hit puberty they have this desire to wear black oversized clothes and skateboard outside financial institutions. It’s a logical reaction to the years they’ve spent listening to the saccherine music of Westlife, Keating, Six et al. There’s a certain musical critical facility that kicks in as puberty approaches and kids suddenly realise that the music they’ve been listening to is total crap. So they overcompensate by painting their rooms black and listening to music that contains the word ‘motherfucker’ in every verse. It’s quite healthy actually. And there is a song called ‘Slow’ on the album that parodies those boy band type ballads, but we balance that up by including a shoegazing number called ‘Slit Your Wrists’. I don’t understand how bands who make so much money from singing about being miserable can continue to be miserable. But basically there’s something for everyone.”

The album also contains 15 comedy sketches from the various band members who rejoice in such exotic showbiz monikers as Vic Ferrari, Doctor Slease and Major James Wand. The spoken word elements are reminiscent of Monty Python, and indeed, plans are in motion to bring The Camembert Quartet’s adventures to the small screen.

“Yes, we plan a cartoon series based around the history of the band that’ll include cameos from some of rock music’s greats. We couldn’t do a live action movie since a lot of the people we’ve played with are no longer with us. And people like the Maharishi seemed strangely reluctant to appear. Which is odd if you consider how we’ve popularised his philosophy with so many people. And doing it in cartoon form means we can travel through time and visit places like Las Vegas. Cosmic Music, who are making the cartoon have been really good to us. They’re sort of a cross between Creation Records and Motown, which is very us. Though again, their MD, Paddy Cullivan is a cunt. But that’s the wonderful world of music for ya!”