ON THE LEVEL

WHAT WOULD a festival be without mud, botulism and portaloos which smell worse than Liam Fay's socks and boast an even more exotic range of wildlife. Er, very pleasant actually.
"We've just got back from Roskilde in Sweden," enthuses Levellers drummer Charlie, "and it was absolutely brilliant. Forget the hotel, you could have slept in the toilets and it's the first time I've been to one of those events and been able to eat the food. Basically, it's everything Glastonbury aspires to but hasn't quite got its act together to be."
If you accept the 'stadium crustie' tag that's been bestowed on them by those fine men and women of the press corp, The Levellers ought to be in their element stuck in an oversize cow field with 40,000 adoring fans. This isn't always the case, though.
"They vary a lot," continues Charlie who, in keeping with the rest of the band, appears to have abandoned his surname. "If they're well organised they're a bit like a working holiday but some are your worst nightmares come to life. We did one last summer which ended up in a big barney over the billing.
We were supposed to go on before Lou Reed, who was headlining, but The Fall insisted that they should have the slot because they've been round longer than us, blah blah blah. The organiser was freaking and saying, 'They're going to pull out if they don't get their own way', to which we replied, 'Great, tell 'em to fuck off!'. To be honest, we didn't care when we played, as long as it wasn't 5 o'clock in the morning, but that attitude annoyed us. Bands ought to learn how to control their egos."
Charlie seems impressed when I tell him all was sweetness and light in Thurles last year, save for one of the star turns commandeering the communal backstage water fountain for their own dressing-room and Carter USM muttering darkly about how it might be retrieved. The Levellers' Saturday night appearance at Feile is their first here since a fairly extensive Irish tour last autumn and compensates for the eleventh hour cancellation of the Belfast 'Peace Together' benefit which they'd agreed to participate in.
"It was a shame that fell apart," he says with enough sincerity to suggest that he wasn't delighted to have a day off for a change. "Ali and Robert approached us last December and as English people who've been to Northern Ireland and seen what's going on there, we were delighted to accept. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong - perhaps they didn't define their aims precisely enough - but at least they're giving it a go and hopefully that determination will pay off.
"Part the problem, I reckon, is that everyone's suffering from 'charity fatigue.' 'Band Aid' was a good cause but it was also a novelty. Nowadays, there are so many fundraising concerts and records that your response to another is, 'Oh no, here we go again!'. Simon, our guitarist, did the 'Putting Our House In Order' single which was pretty decent but I'm not sure if it even went Top 30. What we do is put on three or four gigs a year, as The Levellers, and split the proceeds between different organisations that we support. That way you raise money without getting involved in the political side of things."
You'd imagine that a mega-group like Guns N' Roses or INXS would have been the UK's biggest live draw in 1992 but, nope, that accolade belongs to The Levellers whose perverse infatuation with Ford Transits and motorway service stations meant that they put more Doc Martens on community centre floors than any other hot to trot rock 'n' roll combo.
"You'll have to check the exact number with our manager," resumes Charlie, "but we must have played over 100 shows last year and that's why I reckon we're doing so well at the moment. You can push and hype a band to your heart's content but there's no substitute for a good sweaty gig and, even though I do say so myself, The Levellers are shit hot live."
THE MOSHPIT
Having braved the moshpit at one of their Limerick hoe-downs and lived - albeit in a neck brace - to tell the tale, I'm pleased to confirm that The Levellers are, indeed, pretty nifty on stage. This also seems to be the verdict in the States where their last tour went down better than a chillidog with garlic mayo.
"I tell you something," the drummer adds earnestly, "it's a fucking huge country. You could spend half your life gigging there and not play the same town twice which, on one hand, is great but on the other means that you've got to work your balls off to get anywhere. The reaction was mixed. Down south, in places like Texas, they didn't particularly connect with what we're doing but in Chicago, and other industrialised areas, they were really responsive. Most of them are into hardcore and rap, so when we came along it was a case of, 'fuck, what is this?'."
Yes, it has to be said that the didgeridoo's place in American musical folklore isn't overly prominent.
Although there have been few blank pages in The Levellers' Filofax of late, they've somehow put aside enough time to record their third as-yet-untitled album which is due out in September. More commercial maybe than A Weapon Called The World or Levelling The Land, the LP still quivers with righteous indignation and suggests that the art of marrying pop and politics is alive and well in Brighton, England.
"We wanted an up-and-coming producer for the record and chose Marcus Flaws, a German guy who's done stuff in the past with Brian Eno, but the company weren't so sure and asked whether they could have an 'executive producer' who turned out to be Steve Lilleywhite. It was stupid because you had two people fighting over the way it should sound and when Steve did a mix, which frankly we weren't impressed with, we persuaded them to let Marcus finish it off on his own."
Led Zep obsessives should note that 'This Garden' marks the vinyl debut of John-Paul Jones' daughter, Cindy, on backing vocals while of interest to lawyers is the legal wrangle surrounding the sample on 'Warning'.
"There's a bit on it," explains Charlie, "which we got clearance from one company to use only to find out that there are two more claiming copyright. There's no way we can release the LP until it's sorted, so hopefully everyone will get their act together."
You may have noticed that this sparkling piece of prose is totally devoid of smart-arse references to dogs-on-string, cider parties and dubious hairstyles. This has nothing to do with your's truly becoming a mature adult but the fact that The Levellers have been known to dispatch gift-wrapped boxes of excrement to hacks that take potshots at them in print.
"Yeah," laughs Charlie, "you'd better watch what you write or there might be a surprise for you in the post!"