Men At Work

The Rubberbandits used to be just another foul-mouthed, plastic bag-wearing, greyhound-loving comedy rap duo, but 20 million YouTube views, 260,000 Facebook likes, 32,000 Twitter followers, one killer double album entitled Serious About Men and several bags of glue later, they’re so adored that we have to sneak them into a pub, the newly renovated Kennedy’s of Tara St., before opening hours to conduct this interview.

What follows is a very, very, very heavily abridged version of my conversation with Mr. Chrome and Blindboy Boat Club, otherwise known as the two funniest men ever to wear polyethylene.
So, tell me about the new music video for ‘I Like To Shift Girls’.
BBC: It’s going to be loads of women and they have to shift us. That’s the video.
MC: The thing about that though, like, it sounds like it’s good craic but you don’t know where her mouth has been that day. Like, if it’s one woman, you’re willing to take the risk that her mouth hasn’t been around an exhaust pipe or in a couple of bins, but if you’ve got 30 women, the odds are that at least one of them was sucking a toe bar earlier that day. Or eating a snail.
Ludacris has been doing those kinds of videos for years, and he seems fine.
MC: But what Ludacris does is he puts a condom on his hands and a condom over his head and and then they remove it afterwords with special effects. I’m gonna hafta paint my mouth with latex. Or we could write a song about going to the zoo instead of a song about shifting girls.
BBC: Better write a song about riding an alligator, riding through Garryowen on an alligator with a cowboy hat on. (The barman brings the boys a pot of tea and a bag of Cadbury’s Buttons each).
BBC: Awwwwwh, yes!
MC: But-tons! But-tons! Will you have some?
No, thanks, they’re all for you. What’s been the best reaction to Serious About Men?
MC: Marty Whelan said that it was, quote, “the gassest fucking craic I’ve had in a long time.”
BBC: Yeh. Alec Baldwin likes it. He gave it to his children. Tweeted about it. Boy George liked it. The celebrities tweet us but I prefer tweeting girls. We got tweeted last week by an XXX model with tits the size of a fireplace.
MC: Really?
BBC: Did you not see her?
MC: Naw. What did she say? (adopts sultry tone) ‘Ooh, boys. Oh, look at this, man’?
BBC: Something along the lines of that. Supermodel lingo.
And what about the hundred-odd famous men whose names appear on the cover?
BBC: Jamie Heaslip is happy with it. I didn’t know who he was, but someone told me to put his name there.
MC: We had the notion of sending it to everyone, but I don’t know the Pink Panther’s address.
BBC: But the thing is, like, those men that we’re serious about, some of them we’re serious about in a negative fashion. That’s why Hitler and Gary Glitter are on it.
MC: We’re serious about not liking them boys.
BBC: And in the instance of Jamie Heaslip, we’re very serious about not knowing who he is.
Some of the tracks on the album reflect genuine problems in Irish society, like ‘Buddies In Boston’...
MC: You get one or two ones that have a serious message. Like ‘Bags Of Glue’, that’s serious. I mean, how else are you going to ride a fat bird? If people don’t know that there’s glue out there, you’re gonna have a load of lonely fat birds. And then ‘Double Dropping Yokes With Eamon DeValera’ is just a laugh. The new song we’re writing, ‘Library Fun Time’, that’s about the importance of reading books, because children aren’t reading enough books.
BBC: I mean, go into a shop or a Library and get a book about a snake!
MC: Here, are we supposed to be plugging that fucking gig?
BBC: Yah. That’s in the Academy on the first of March. It’s our new show and it’s the Serious About Men album tour.
MC: And it’s going to be fucking class.
(Finglas rapper) Lethal Dialect has joined the line-up for that show. Do you feel it’s important to support other Irish hip hop artists?
BBC: Oh, yeah. Support the boys. It’s not that Irish rap is shit, it just needs a voice. Lethal Dialect? I’d listen to him. Lecs Luther, I’d listen to him. I’d happily listen to them, djaknoaaawImean?
MC: I think they need a few more songs about dragons, though.
Really? Lethal’s Dialect’s songs usually reflect real-life experiences.
MC: Yah. It’s about smokin’ hash and about real life out in Finglas. However, you need one or two songs about dragons or space aliens or flying saucer men from Mars. He needs to write a song called, ‘Silly Man The Martian Comes To Finglas’. Actually, let’s write that ourselves.
BBC: And give it to him? And he has to do it! And it’ll be spaceships… and Finglas...
MC: And we’ll use terms like, ‘It was totally orbital.’ (singing) ‘I wanna see the rings of Saturn around your house… in Finglas’ We’ll work on it, like. That’s just the first thing that came into our heads, but it was good.
And it’ll totally fit in with the rest of his material.
BBC: Exactly. Gritty life in Finglas.
How would you feel about performing your songs with a full band?
BBC: Oh, yeah, we’d love that, if we could. The problem with that is that we’d need mega dollars. Rap music with a decent band is phenomenal but it’s a bit down the road. We care about the music and getting the right sound, so to do that would be unreal.
So, I know you’re serious about men, hip hop (Irish or otherwise), alligators, supermodels and Martians. What else?
MC: We’re serious about meetin’ Brendan Glesson. Very serious about that. Serious about buildin’ a raft and goin’ up and down the Liffey.
BBC: …and reading about alchemy.
The nightclub?
BBC: No, no, alchemy. The practice that led to modern chemistry. Big with the Normans.
MC: (nodding) Mmm. Are you sure you won’t have a But-ton?

The Rubberbandits appear at the Music Show in the RDS on Saturday, February 25, and play headline shows in the Roisin Dubh Galway (29), the Academy, Dublin (March 1) and The White Lady, Kinsale (3). Serious About Men is out now on Lovely Men Music.