- Music
- 16 Apr 01
Stuart Clark, whose middle name is “Intrepid”, recently spent 48 hours on tour with PET LAMB, grindpopcore merchants extraordinaire. His liver and tympanic membranes survived intact, and after a mere six weeks recuperation, he filed this report.
IT MIGHTN’T have quite the same amphetamine-fuelled ring as Motorhead’s ‘No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith’ but as epitaphs go, ‘Minimal Personal Hygiene ‘Til Merseyside’ is pungently perfect for Pet Lamb’s maiden voyage round the pubs, clubs, halls and toilets which make up the British gig circuit.
No matter that the Dublin grindpopcore merchants signed last year to Roadrunner and have just released a debut album which has everyone from Dave Fanning to John Peel uttering the words ‘next’, ‘big’ and ‘thing’ in close proximity. Money’s tighter than the proverbial duck’s derrière and if a few shekels can be saved sleeping on a store-room floor with no running water, bugger all heating and a toilet that looks suspiciously like next door’s front patio, then that’s where the collective hat will be laid.
Which, at the end of the day, is an extremely long and convoluted way of saying, “what the fuck am I doing freezing my nadgers off on a mouldy carpet in Wales with four smelly musicians, an equally ripe roadie and a manager who doesn’t so much snore as do industrial Hoover impressions?”
“It’s a bit like being in the boy scouts, isn’t it?,” proffers guitarist and lead-throat Dylan the next morning, as we inspect the ground-frost on the shagpile. “We made the decision before the tour started that if it meant saving a couple of quid, we were prepared to rough it. When you sign to a record company – and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Geffen or some back-bedroom operation – there’s only a certain amount of money that they’re going to spend on you and you’ve got to work out how that’s best invested. If we’d slept in a B&B last night, we’d have to have paid £15 or £20 a head. Multiply that by six and you’ve got an extra day in the recording studio.
“Yeah, it’d be nice to stay somewhere decent but you can’t hear clean sheets on a CD and the audience are far away enough at gigs to not mind if you’ve got rancid armpits.”
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It all sounded rather romantic when Pet Lamb manager and Blunt overlord Dan Oggly suggested that I jump in the van – rented, fact fans, from Steve Mack – and monitor first-hand the band’s attempts to capture the heads, hearts and pocket money of the UK’s alarmingly youthful indie masses. 12 hours after arriving in Newport – a sort of Limerick with Max Boyce accents – and I’m beginning to realise that not every tour reads like a chapter from Led Zep’s Hammer Of The Gods.
“It’s not so bad if you’ve got a double-decker bus with beds, showers, TVs and a Sega Megadrive like those bastards Therapy?”, laughs Dylan, “but when you’re doing it on zero budget, it’s bloody hard work. Not that we didn’t know precisely what we were getting ourselves into before we gave up the day jobs. At this level, being in a band’s about the most precarious profession you can think of but it sure as hell beats sitting around on your arse all day in Dublin. That’s not meant as a slag – it’s just that once you reach a certain level, you have to get out of Ireland or otherwise you’ll stagnate playing to the same people in the same venues week after week.”
“A perfect example of that,” joins in drummer James, “is the Golden Horde. At one time they had a huge following but then every indie disco, Rag Ball or christening you went to, there they were doing their Ramones thing and it got boring. It’s also very dangerous when you know you can go on stage and the crowd are automatically going to be with you from the first note. That’s why last night was such a buzz – nobody knew who the fuck we were, so we had to win them over. There were only 70 or 80 people in the place but by the end most of them were jumping around and when that happens, you’ve got yourselves a result.”
The good burghers of Newport might be regarded as sheepshaggers by their not always friendly neighbours in Cardiff and Swansea but at least they’ve the satisfaction of knowing that they’ve got all the decent bands. The Manic Street Preachers – “lovely, quiet lads” apparently – come from up the road, 60ft Dolls have just signed a deal with Rough Trade that’s even bigger than The Smiths’ and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci are as rifftastically awesome as their moniker is unpronounceable.
“It’s a no bullshit sort of town,” Simon, the exiled Englishman who runs the gigs at TJ’s tells me afterwards. “You can force-feed hype to audiences in London but here the bottom line’s music.
“That’s why bands with genuine integrity like Girls Against Boys and Jesus Lizard tend to go down better than the S*M*A*S*Hs of this world, who are all attitude and no songs.”
Pet Lamb were paid £50, a slab of questionable Spanish beer and a job lot of Spaghetti Bolognese for last night’s co-headliner with The Flying Medallions, an indie-rap crew so bereft of conventional talent that world domination seems assured.
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“They were complete fucking lunatics,” enthuses Kevin, he of the permanent smile and Jimi Hendrix shape-throwing. “The lead singer, who’s apparently a supermarket manager by day, was bombed out of his head on painkillers he’d been prescribed for his sinuses and I’m not sure the rest of them knew what country they were in, let alone town.”
“One of them was telling me that their record company’s booked them into the studio this week to record an EP and they haven’t written the songs yet,” adds Pet Lamb's second guitarist Brian with obvious admiration.
“They ought to do the one that goes, ‘You’re a slag, you’re a slag, you’re a dirty old slag’,” suggests Dylan. “I’d love to see the sort of debate that’d spark off on the Melody Maker letters page!”
So, it’s with aching backs, frostbitten feet and swollen bladders that we clamber back on to the bus for the short hop to the Cardiff Astoria and an early evening rendezvous with Messrs. Cairns, McKeegan and Ewing.
In between playing their own club gigs, Pet Lamb have landed the opening slot on the UK and German legs of Therapy?’s latest Euro jaunt. It’s not the first time they’ve been given a leg-up by Larne’s finest, something which has predictably lead to cynical sniping of the if-it-wasn’t-for-them-you-wouldn’t-have-got-signed variety.
“That,” responds Kevin sweetly, “is complete and utter bollocks. We’ve never hidden the fact that we’re friendly with Therapy? but neither have we made a big deal about it because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t have any bearing on our music. Most people in Dublin accept that but there are a few gobshites who feel that because Andy Cairns is involved in Blunt and helped finance our first two EPs, we in some way avoided paying our dues. What they conveniently forget is the two years of non-stop gigging and rehearsing that persuaded Blunt to give us that break.”
“I know as a music fan myself,” resumes James, “that if someone I’m into says, ‘so and so are brilliant’, I’ll try and check ‘em out but I’m not going to spend £12 or whatever on a CD unless I think it’s worth it. And that’s why we had absolutely no qualms about accepting this tour – if people see us doing our 20 minutes and decide on the strength of that to buy Sweaty Handshake, it’s obviously because they like us and not because we’re mates with Therapy?”
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“There was no way we were going to pass up on the opportunity of going to Germany and playing in front of 2000 or 3000 people every night just to keep a handful of begrudgers in Dublin happy,” Dylan concludes. “Andy’s done us an awful lot of favours – for instance, I don’t think MTV would have come across and filmed us at the Rock Garden unless he’d agreed to take part in the interview afterwards – but last time I checked he wasn’t the A&R man at Roadrunner.”
Hopefully that’s the subject closed, sealed in lead and buried in reinforced concrete for the next three thousand years. Arriving at the Astoria, we’re immediately struck by bus envy which is kinda like the phallic variety, only not quite so distressing because there’s always a chance of one day getting a bigger bus. As Kieran the roadie delicately puts it, the Starcaster that for the next month is Therapy?’s home isn’t so much a means of transport as a “motherfucking statement with wheels”.
Inside the 1800-capacity venue, Andy Cairns’ guitar techni-cian is undertaking the precision task of setting-up the two astro-turf Subbuteo pitches which are always the first flight-cases off the Artic. The band’s contract stipulates that the promoter has to provide a miniaturised version of the local team and, sure enough, the Bluebirds are waiting in the dressing-room to take on Cairns’ beloved Chelsea, who are tonight forced to don their away strip. Andy’s also been onto the Welsh Subbuteo Association and arranged for Carl Young, the former world number three, to come down and give us a demonstration of ‘table football’ at its finest. Chatting to him later over a pint or three of the local brew, Brains Bitter, it transpires that the game can get every bit as violent as its big brother. Young was nearly blinded four years ago when the father of a young opponent tried to gouge his eyes out and has the scars to prove it.
As keen as I am to perfect my kick-in technique, now seems an appropriate moment to engage Pet Lamb in a formal interview which is much the same as an informal interview except that alcohol and Class ‘A’ drugs aren’t quite such an integral part of the proceedings. Please note that we’re mainly talking about the journalist here, not the band.
Right, eyes down, your starter for ten. How comes they signed to Roadrunner, a label best known for its patronage of dodgy Belgian heavy metallers with moustaches, rather than a major or a recognised hardcore imprint like Domino or Wiiija?
“To be honest,” admits James, “Roadrunner’s was the first solid offer we got but that’s not why we took it. Sure, up till now they’ve specialised in metal but they’re also the biggest independent label in the world with distribution just about everywhere you can buy records. I mean, they took Sepultura, a death metal band from Brazil, and sold two million copies of their last album.”
“It’s not an eight-figure deal which will have us in debt for the rest of our lives,” stresses Dylan, “but there’s enough money to cover the important stuff like recording and touring and we’ve also got the added benefit of being able to walk into the office any time we want and shout at our A&R man, Miles. Roadrunner’s big but not so big that they can afford to forget who you are.”
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The company’s commitment towards all things loud and left-field appears to be genuine. Since signing Pet Lamb, Roadrunner have also snared their comrades-in-distorted-guitars Wormhole and after a spot of aural tweaking, will be giving their Chicks Dig Scars album a full international release in the Spring.
“It’s great that bands like Wormhole, Mexican Pets and Female Hercules are starting to get recognition outside of Ireland,” reflects Kevin, “because with a few minor exceptions, they’ve been ignored by the media at home. I’m not going to jump on the ‘let’s slag off Hot Press' bandwagon because you’ve given us a fair bit of coverage but when you think of The Sultans, The Frank And Walters, My Bloody Valentine, Therapy? – they all got their first front covers from British magazines.”
“The main problem,” asserts Dylan, “is that the people who run the Irish music industry – the promoters, the record company bosses – are too old and set in their ways. They know how to deal with mainstream groups like U2 and Hothouse Flowers because that’s what they’ve grown up with but try and get ‘em to come to a hardcore gig and they’ll mumble their apologies and say they’ve got to stay at home and listen to their Rory Gallagher records.
“The positive side of your MCDs and Solids ignoring what’s been going on is that the people who are genuinely commited to the music have been forced to build up their own alternative support network. They’re still quite small but you’ve got Dead Elvis and Blunt releasing records, various fanzines dotted round the country who are prepared to write about them and videomakers such as Eamon Crudden and Michelle Spillane, who’s done stuff for us, who are able to produce really imaginative promos for virtually no money.”
“It’s funny,” picks up Kevin again, “there isn’t so much a Dublin ‘scene’ as a loose alliance of groups that don’t want to be The Stunning. The showband mentality didn’t die out in the ‘60s, it just got itself slightly trendier clothes and we’re trying to get as far away from that as possible.”
A quick listen to Sweaty Handshake suggests they’ve succeeded, the full metal racket of ‘The Bastard’ and ‘Asshole Agony Aunt’ combining with the poppier likes of ‘Black Mask’ and forthcoming single ‘Where Did Your Plans Go’ to produce an album that’s equal parts Motorhead, Jesus Lizard and – whisper it quietly – Therapy? It’s the way in which Pet Lamb mix’n’match those influences, though, that gives the record its cutting edge and ensures that it’s more than the sum of its illustrious parts.
Just as the band are preparing to launch into an explanation of their 10-point plan for the eradication of third world debt, along comes a tour-manageress-who-must-be-obeyed to inform them that an entire stage crew are awaiting the pleasure of their company downstairs for a soundcheck. The guy at the desk has obviously modified his knobs so that they go up to ‘11’, the decibel level causing one of the venue’s more elderly cleaners to run off to the Ladies howling that her eardrums have been perforated.
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The average age of the crowd when the doors open at 8 o’clock appears to be somewhere in the region of 13 but let’s not be churlish here, who would you rather your kid brother or sister was listening to – Therapy? or Boyzone? There’s pretty much a full house by the time Pet Lamb amble on and within seconds the front half-dozen rows are in slam-dive heaven. The rest gradually follow and by the end of the set you’d be forgiven for wondering who the headliners are.
Ballerinas and opera singers tend to get given bouquets of flowers and baskets of fruit as tokens of esteem – fortunately for Pet Lamb and their loyal journalistic colleague, it’s a virginal bottle of Vladivar that awaits them in the dressing-room accompanied by a touching little note that reads, ‘Love from Therapy? XXX’. A familiar goateed face sticks itself round the door, says ‘fucking brilliant, lads!’ and then inquires if anyone fancies taking on Chelsea. Dan Oggly, a Forest man through and through, reckons it’s time that Big Stan gave Glenn Hoddle’s boys a whumping and leaves us to indulge in our vodka-quaffing session without him.
“Man, I can’t understand this soccer vibe,” drawls Brett, the stand-in guitarist with Pet Lamb’s fellow support band Dig who’s been rechristened ‘Iggy’ on account of him being the spit of a certain James Osterberg. Little do we realise that in 15 minutes time his lead singer mate Scott will provide us with the first genuine Spinal Tap moment of the tour – the Californian doing what a man is supposed to do in the toilet oblivious to the fact that BBC Radio One’s Steve Lamacq has just announced, ‘Cardiff, please put your hands together and welcome Dig’, and his colleagues are on stage waiting for him.
“Hey guys, stop trying to wind me up,” is the muffled response as we try and alert him to his predicament. Then the penny – in more ways than one – drops and we’re treated to the sight of a visibly distressed grunge-slacker hurtling down two flights of stairs with his trousers at half-mast.
“What I love about touring and being in a band,” confides Dylan later, “is that it negates any responsibility on your part to behave like an adult. And that’s what it’s all about really, isn’t it?
“Making music, getting pissed and having a laugh with your mates.”