SCRATCH THAT HITCH

Unless you come from Sheffield, have a lead singer by the name of Jarvis and are known to the world as Pulp, it is generally accepted on Planet Indie that you should split up immediately if your first decade of existence has been distinguished by a conspicuous lack of success.
However, somebody forgot to tell this to The Hitchers, Limerick s wide-eyed purveyors of spikesome punk-pop, who have been toiling boyishly at the cruel coalface of the music industry since 1988.
Finally, however, they have completed that difficult first album: the joyously-titled It s All Fun And Games Til Someone Loses An Eye will be released on the independent Murgatroid label this month. The first single from the album, Killed It With My Bare Hands , is already available and is one of the more precious pop gems to have emerged from the nation in recent times.
As singer, songwriter and drummer Niall Quinn prepares for the ritual humiliation that is otherwise known as a Hot Press grilling, he is a little distracted by rumours on the footie grapevine that a prominent member of his beloved Leeds United squad is about to be prosecuted for aggravated sexual assault.
That s all we fucking need, he mutters morosely, before settling down to the matter at hand.
So what s the reaction been like to the single?
Well, the big thing for us was the fact that John Peel rang up our manager as soon as he heard it and expressed an interest in us recording a session. That s a serious landmark for me, practically a rite of passage. Apparently, bands usually deal with his minions, so for John Peel to phone up personally was extremely flattering.
The band have also been featured on MTV Europe and have garnered much critical acclaim in the indie press. Niall isn t altogether surprised: he considers the bulk of contemporary pop to be dross of an extremely low order.
I actually thought that things were looking up back around 94 when the likes of Green Day were emerging but it seems to have gone pear-shaped again. All this retro-rock rubbish we ve been inundated with from people like Kula Shaker and Placebo is just depressing. What s going through their little minds!? What do they think they re achieving? I d love to have been a fly on the wall at that critical moment in pop history when Ocean Colour Scene discovered that they were, in actual fact, Traffic . . .
appalling attitude
Complaints about Dadcore () Hot Press 97) aside, Niall is greatly perturbed by the lack of ideas in Irish pop circles.
When U2 s Discothhque is thought to be innovative, you re in trouble. It sounds like the sort of thing INXS were knocking out back in the mid- 80s!
The cash-happy Dublin foursome, he believes, have a lot to answer for . . .
I think the great tragedy for so many Irish bands right now is that they spent the entire 1980s listening to just two groups: U2 and The Cure. It shows. I feel I was far better off listening to The Housemartins and The Smiths!
Not altogether surprisingly, The Hitchers express no great interest in cracking the Dublin scene .
To be perfectly honest, we re most than happy to just ignore Dublin. Anytime we ve tried to do anything in the place, we ve come across this appalling attitude. We rang up one venue to ask about a gig and they informed us that we d have to pay #70 for the privilege of playing there! And they told us we d have to run buses up from Limerick so that they could take drinking money off our friends. We just told them to fuck off.
Niall writes the bulk of The Hitchers material but bassist Hoss Carnage (!) has lately been lending a hand, while twin guitarists Andy Gallagher and Eric Fitzgerald are also threatening to put pen to paper.
This is good and bad, laughs Niall. It s good because there s a lot more material seeping through but it s bad cause we can never fucking agree on anything in the studio!
The band are reasonably confident that they ll do OK across the water.
We ve got a distribution deal with Vital in the UK and as they look after the likes of Creation, it gives us some credence. We ll see how it goes.
The singing drummer ( There isn t that many of us left. After meself and Phil Collins, the list starts looking pretty thin. ) (What about Don Henley? Ed.) is under no illusion that The Hitchers have just completed recording a masterpiece.
If the album doesn t sell, I don t really care. I m fully aware that it s not perfect. But all I ever wanted to do was make an album and we ve done it; it s a genuine document of what we ve been up to and where we ve been. The Hitchers isn t going to last forever but as long as it does, we ll have fun. n