Rubber Up

Waiting for someone to answer the telephone is nerve-wracking at the best of times. It’s an even odder sensation when you know the person on the other end of the line has made a career out of prank phone calls.

Shannonside rap comedy duo Rubberbandits first captured the hearts of the nation when they posted their improvised exploits on YouTube, where they’ve now racked up half a million views. They’ve since turned their offbeat humour to the dynamic world of gangsta’ rap, producing electro hip hop tunes like ‘Too Many Gee’, ‘Up The Ra’ and, of course, the divine ‘Bags Of Glue’.
In a live setting, they perform only in masks made from plastic carrier bags and their beats are provided by a third masked cohort named Willie O’DJ. If you haven’t already guessed, these are not your average satirists.
I hold my breath for an obnoxious Limerick accent on the other end of the line, and my patience is rewarded.
“Hellawh?”
“Er… hello. Can I speak to em… a Rubberbandit, please?”
As a member of the press, I am not permitted to know their real names, especially now that they’ve been drafted in by RTÉ for a special project, which they’re also keeping schtum about.
The man on the phone introduces himself as Blind Boy Boat Club. He is the one with the tracksuit, he assures me. Mr. Chrome is the one without the tracksuit.
This Bandit tells me he’s just been outside, shooting a wheelbarrow with a pellet gun, because “there’s nothing else to be doing in a recession, like.” He’s currently unemployed but he wouldn’t mind a job, he adds, so long as it has something to do with philosophy or the arts (unfortunately “there’s not much of that inside in FÁS, like.”) He’s got an MA in Philosophy and is only too happy to give me an example of the wisdom he’s picked up along the way; “Philosophy is thinking about thinking,” he muses, “but being able to wank about wanking…”
“Ah, it’s poetic, like,” he says, when I compliment him on his fine inner-city drawl. “There’s poetry in the Limerick accent djaknoaaawImean? It’s not like the Cork accent where they sound like they’re singing all the time…
‘Hip hop is about being real,” he spouts, “all I can write about is greyhounds, like. What else am I supposed to write about, djaknoaaawImean? Like, if I was rich and I had a big huge pair of plastic tits on me or something, I’d probably rap about that. But all I can rap about is greyhounds, horses, smoking fags, rollerblading, philosophy… I mean what else, like?”
With that in mind, what does he figure is Rubberbandits’ target audience?
“The internet I suppose…”
And, does the er… internet respond well?
“Sometimes like, djaknoaaawImean? Like, I fingered the internet last year there and I got away with it. I might have broken its heart for a while, but it’s talking to me again now.”
Ah, but the internet is an unforgiving mistress, Blind Boy Boat Club, you can never tell what it’s really thinking.
“You can’t,” he agrees, “that’s the thing as well, it’s got that whole machine thing going on with it. You can’t read its emotions, it’s pure binary. I just want some emotion off it, like, and it won’t give it to me.”
But I wouldn’t feel too bad for Blind Boy. These days, Rubberbandits sell out venues like Dublin’s Academy and Galway’s Roisin Dubh in a heartbeat – LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy even turned up at their Electric Picnic show this year. Speaking of the festival, how’d he enjoy EP?
“It was grand, like,” he shrugs, “but we spent half the time on the run from Marty Whelan ‘cause he wanted to box the head off us, djaknoaaawImean? Marty’s a snake, I’d better not say anymore bad shit about him though, ‘cause number one; we owe him money; and number two; we told everyone that he was in the ‘RA.”
Enraged TV presenters aside, Rubberbandits’ EP slot was arguably their most bizarre performance to date. Joined by viral sensation Crystal Swing, the family trio was bottled off the stage after one song.
“We had pre-recorded a video that was gonna play on a very large screen behind them,” he recalls, “basically myself and Mr.Chrome re-enacting the lyrics to ‘He Drinks Tequila’. It ended in simulated gay sex between the two of us, but the fucking projector broke on the night. I think the audience was expecting more than just Crystal Swing and when they didn’t get it they started firing bottles at yer wan’s head, which was out of line, like. I met them back stage, though, and they’re souuuuuuund. I’d give the Ma one, I’d tell you that.”
Whoah. How are they gonna top that at the Galway Comedy Festival this month?
“We’ve been trying for ages to get a live swan on stage. I won’t tell anyone what we plan on doing, but there’ll be a live swan and a little go-cart and a little swan-sized helmet. It’ll be grand, like, I mean what could go wrong?”
In possibly the oddest twist in the Rubberbandits’ tale, they were invited to appear in front of the Trinity College Philosophical Society as guest speakers just last week;
“It was unreal,” Blind Boy remembers, “afterwards they come up to me with this book from 1670, right, pure old – in this book was the signatures of Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, all these heavyweights, and I got to draw Bob Marley, a tri-colour, hash leaves, Tupac... Five or six years ago in school I was nearly kicked out for drawing that shit on desks and now the Trinity College Philosophical Society are inviting me to do it. I enjoy that irony. That gets me out of bed in the morning.”
Hmm… If hip hop is about being real, I think this is about as hip hop as Blind Boy Boat Club gets…
“My uncle Niall, right, he fell off the roof of his house and broke his leg – however, he happened to be doing it while trying to adjust his satellite aerial looking for free porn. That’s hilarious. DjaknoaaawImean?”

Rubberbandits perform at the Radisson Hotel, Galway on October 23 as part of the Galway Comedy Festival.