The big cheese

Something tells me that Clint Velour, Camembert Quartet’s super snarky frontman, won’t take kindly to a Hot Press issue dedicated to singer-songwriters.

Needless to say, my suspicions are quickly confirmed.
“The whole second Camembert album takes the piss out of singer-songwriters and the students who buy their work,” he explains. Oh crikey.
Tubridy Tonight viewers will know the Camembert Quartet as the show’s in-house band. On top of that, Clint Velour also produces the songs that bookend Joe Duffy’s ‘Funny Fridays’ on Liveline. He’s also a major contributor to Leviathan, the “political cabaret” that takes place in CrawDaddy, Dublin on the first Thursday of every month.
Still, taking the piss out of singer-songwriters is arguably what Velure does best. “I do James Blunt’s ‘You're Beautiful’, except I call it ‘You’re Ineffectual’,” he informs me. Why ‘ineffectual’ exactly? “Because he sees this bird on a train, does nothing about it but walks home and has a wank. It would be far cooler to actually do something about it. But all he does is stare at her on the train like a weird German.”
‘Boybands Are Runts’ – which was originally called something far less savory – deals in classic boy band-type harmonies and whiny lyrics. But if boybands really are runts, what does that make singer-songwriters?
“They’re even smaller, singer-songwriters are hobbits. I do Paddy Casey as a hobbit in our show,” he says. “But I’m not going to slag him too much because... you know... our fate is in his hands. He will find the ring and save Middle Earth. He has a lot of pressure to deal with and I don’t want to add to that.”
All joking aside, Clint has his reasons for having a go at today’s singer-songwriters, and even just plain songwriters for that matter, and it’s this old nugget:
“I just think that the stuff these days is an insult to the really good songwriters of the ‘60s and ‘70s and ‘80s,” he begins. “I don’t want to be one of those guys that just says ‘Oh – music was better back then,’ but sorry, it was.”
What Clint means when he refers to “back then” is a time when the likes of Elton John, David Bowie (“look how many extraordinary things he did, and he ditched the acoustic guitar pretty quickly after Ziggie Stardust”), Stevie Wonder and Prince had control over the charts.
“Think of the crop of songwriters we have now and compare them to Prince, the amount of talent that they have would barely fit his little toe. And he’s not a tall person so that’s a very tiny toe.”
Many would agree that this was a happier time but, more importantly Clint says, it was also a time when musicians had balls.
“The stuff they’re coming out with today is so apathetic, and so politically apathetic too. I love ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Revolution’ – call to arms songs – and the biggest song of last year was Snow Patrol’s ‘If I Just Lay Here And Do Nothing’ or whatever it’s called.
“There is a singer-songwriter way of doing things that’s passive, non-urgent, monosyllabic and sexually bereft. For instance, consider Status Quo’s ‘Rockin’ All Over The World’ and then put it against Coldplay’s version that they did at Live 8 – the way Chris Martin sang it was like he was about to nod off and go to sleep.”
And apparently we should be very wary of singer-songwriters' tendency to take things lying down: “I’m suspicious of men in their 20s who don’t want to rock out, or to mix it up a bit. There has to be a time when you turn the guitars up to 11.
“I just hate to think that some people don’t know enough about music and so they think that the thing to aspire to be is the next James Morrison.”
At this stage I feel like I need to stick up for the genre. If Clint’s main argument is that they don’t “mix it up” – that they don’t bother to incorporate a band or even a piano (“No one plays the piano any more except for Chris Martin and he plays it really annoyingly”), but merely strum their guitars to a rhythm that would embarrass a comatose snail, I ask what he thinks of Mika – the all singing, all dancing, all colourful reincarnation of Freddie Mercury (if you believe everything you read).
“They say he sounds like Freddie Mercury but he actually sounds like a remake of Justin Hawkins of The Darkness. Mika is replacing The Darkness. This is how bad things have got – that someone felt the need to replace The Darkness.”
Nope, it looks like nothing is going to shift this man’s opinions; in Clint’s eyes, singer-songwriters will forever be depressing, boring and – this just in – lazy.
“Bowie and Stevie Wonder released two albums a year, these four-year gestation periods between albums is just ridiculous. It’s got to the point where people bring their first album out when kids finish their Leaving Cert and their second album comes out when they’ve left college.”
How long between the two Camembert albums again?
“Three years.”
Interesting.
The Camembert Quartet will be playing Easter Sunday at the Samhlaíocht Easter Arts Festival in Tralee. Music Is War and Sell Out are available on www.thecamembertquartet.com.