Getting Fixed Up

Considering they chose to name themselves after the prostitutes who worked in a famous Dublin brothel and haven t been in any way reluctant to dabble in dark and often sleazy subject matter, it shouldn t come as any surprise that Fixed Stars have found occasionally found themselves in situations unlikely to provide Westlife with lyrical material.
Singer and chief songwriter Mark Cullen is a firm believer in the philosophy of write about what you know , but this admirable ethos seemed to go pear-shaped earlier this year with the photo session for a Melody Maker feature which took place in an upmarket bordello and quite frankly left him looking like something you d find on Gary Glitter s hard drive.
"We went along with the basic idea," he explains, "what with the origins of the band s name and all that. But we d had a bit too much to drink and I went a bit mad with the make-up box. I actually hadn t seen the piece until I came back from London, went to my local in Finglas for a pint and was greeted with wolf whistles by my mates . . . some of whom swore they d ride me if I looked like that all the time! Ah well, what s the point of being in a band if you can t act the bollox!"
Not that glamming up like Filipino rent boys is all there is to Fixed Stars. Since changing their name from Bawl four years ago they ve toughened up their music while actually making it sound more commercial in the process. Bawl s Year Zero, while an indisputably fine album containing some sharp tunes and witheringly precise lyrics (no less a writer than Grant McLennan is a confirmed fan), still had the feel of a work-in-progress. Since the inception of Fixed Stars, though, a definite Roxy/Glam influence has been incorporated into proceedings while Cullen s lyrics have largely shifted away from the personal and into the observational.
"Most of the songs on Year Zero were written around the break-up with a long-term girlfriend. If you re a songwriter and your childhood sweetheart dumps you then it s a fair bet that you might feel compelled to share this experience with the world!" laughs Mark. "But for Illegitimate Targets I wanted to look outwards a bit more. I felt that there were loads of things going on in people s everyday lives which weren t being touched by lyricists and I just wanted to get some grit and dirt back into things. Y know, joyriding, wife beating, paedophilia, drugs and despair . . . all the Poppy themes!"
This intoxicating blend of harsh reality, hedonism and heady melodies sounds utterly irresistible to my ears and their three singles to date Blueprints , Here Comes The Music and Every Night have all been corkers. But it s perhaps understandable that their UK record company Mercury have been, shall we say, a tad confused about how to pitch Fixed Stars in the contemporary marketplace, that confusion being most evident when they sent this bunch of self-confessed scumbags out on a Radio 1 roadshow.
"Now that was weird, " he recalls. "We were on a bill with all these boy and girl groups who d arrive with their personal fuckin trainers and all that shite, whereas we d still be hungover from the night before and have to have a few shots of whiskey before we went out to face these screaming kids at ten o clock in the morning. The other people on the bill were absolutely horrified! It was bizarre standing there in front of all
these kids, miming to Sunny Suburban Nights , which includes the line "Among the semen/There between the battered wives" . . . but we re better men for the experience."
Another experience which has placed an extra arrow or two in Mark Cullen s quiver came last year when he was requested by Ian Broudie to contribute lyrics to a handful of songs on the last Lightning Seeds album, one of which Sweet Soul Sensation boasts the curious credit Broudie/Cullen/Green, the latter gentleman being none other than the Reverend Al himself.
"Our publishers sent a demo to Ian Broudie with the idea of him producing us and he apparently hated it. Then a while later he got a second one, loved it and we had a meeting at which I was, well, hostile is probably the best way of putting it.
Funnily enough, he seemed to like us more after that and after we d done some songs for Illegitimate Targets he asked me if I d fancy collaborating on a few Lightning Seeds songs. I said Yeah immediately, even though I couldn t have remembered one of their songs to save my life.
The Al Green thing was strange alright, " he continues. "We d sampled a vocal line for Sweet Soul Sensation and sent it off for clearance, but then some hotshot lawyer got on our case and started demanding credits and mad percentages. We settled on a three-way credit so there I am, a bloke from Finglas who s co-written a song with Al Green . . . Jayzes, what a world!"
Fixed Stars Here Comes The Music will be re-released next month and Illegitimate Targets should be with us before the end of the year.