Talking Turkey

It may be all gloom, doom and despondency in the real world, but on Planet Rock it’s, “Goodbye recession, hello Christmas and, sure, I’ll have another double Jack and Coke if Hot Press are buying!”

Yes, it’s time to wave a defiant two fingers at the credit crunch and ponder the burning musical issues of the year. Gathered in The Central Hotel for the fifth annual HP-7 Summit – just like the G-7 only with fake reindeer antlers and a bigger bar tab – are:

MICHELLE DOHERTY: The former model and air hostess who’s currently juggling Channel 6 VJ duties with a daily Phantom 105.2 show that’s essential listening.
ROCKY O’REILLY: One half of Belfast electropoppers Oppenheimer who are glued to the computer waiting to see their recent turn on ultra-hip WB.com teen drama series, Rockville, CA.
NIALL BRESLIN: Singer, guitarist and complete ride (or so the majority of HP’s female staff reckon) with The Blizzards whose Oxegen stormer was a mere curtain-raiser for their platinum-selling Domino Effect album.
MARK GREANEY: The former JJ72 mainman who’s proving that lightning can strike in the same place twice with his Billy Corgan-endorsed new combo Concerto For Constantine.
NIAMH FARRELL: The Ham Sandwich lead singer whose twin ’08 highlights have been picking up a Meteor Best New Act Award, and welcoming baby rock ‘n’ roller Oscar into the world when she hadn’t realised she was pregnant.
MESSIAH J: The rapid fire Dublin rapper who, assisted by The Expert (not his real name either), redefined what Irish hip hop’s all about with October’s From The Word Go.
DANNY O’DONOGHUE: Singer, songwriter and keyboard-player with The Script who came out of nowhere this year to join that elite band of artists who’ve simultaneously topped the Irish and UK album charts. Next stop: America.
Making sure there’s no biting, gouging or hair pulling is Hot Press’ Stuart Clark whose broken man demeanour could have something to do with Everton being turned over the previous night by Wigan Athletic.

STUART: Okay team, an easy one to get you limbered up. Albums of the year?
NIAMH: Vampire Weekend did it for me… in every way! They’re the first New York guitar band in ages that don’t sound identical to The Strokes or Interpol.
NIALL: Duke Special’s I Never Thought This Day Would Come. I’m not the jealous type but when I heard some of the songs on it I thought, “You bastard!”
MESSIAH J: The Last Shadow Puppets, Portishead Third or Jape Ritual. I have to declare an interest in that he’s a mate of mine, but Richie Egan’s a genius. He totally rocked the Electric Picnic in August, and hopefully next year he’ll get the recognition he deserves outside of Ireland as well.
ROCKY: The Bronx’s third album, which like the first two is self-titled and therefore highly confusing, Fight Like Apes… And The Mystery Of The Golden Medallion and the Mates Of State record, Re-Arrange Us. They’re a duo from Kansas who write these really upbeat pop tunes.
MICHELLE: Midnight Boom by The Kills. Alison Mosshart is the coolest bitch ever! I want to be her when I grow up.
NIALL: I want to be Jamie Hince so I can cop off with Kate Moss!
DANNY: I’ve had Elbow’s Seldom Seen Kid on virtual repeat since it came out. I was actually introduced to them four or five years ago by Tony from Aslan who gave me a CD of theirs he’d burned off the internet – legally of course! Guy Garvey’s got such a unique voice.
MARK: Die! Die! Die!’s self-titled album, which I bought after seeing them play to about ten people downstairs in Thomas Read’s.
STUART: Was anyone camped outside HMV waiting for them to open so that they could get the new Guns N’ Roses album?
EVERYONE: No!
MESSIAH J: Is it as good as The Spaghetti Incident? What is?
NIALL: The sad thing is that even Axl Rose has resorted to that horrible robotic voice, which Rihanna, Britney Spears and every single emo band in the world uses. Guns N’ Roses were always about songs, and there aren’t any on Chinese Democracy that are up to Appetite For Destruction standard. Never mind nuclear bombs, there should be a worldwide ban on vocoders!
ROCKY: If you’re using the vocoder as an instrument, like we do quite a bit, it’s fine. What I don’t as a producer myself agree with is sticking every single vocal through an autotune so that it’s perfectly in pitch. There are definitely bands that do a couple of takes and then spend the rest of the day in the swimming pool while the engineers correct their bad singing and playing.
MARK: Often it’s the imperfections that make an artist special. One of the greatest singers ever, Maria Callas, was always slightly flat or slightly sharp, but that’s what gave her voice its unique character.
DANNY: Another perfect example is Bright Eyes – I think he sings more out of tune than he does in tune, but that doesn’t stop the emotion from coming across. We need a new sticker, which says, “No autotune was used in the recording of this album.” It’s taking the artistry out of singing, and producing a generation of robots with that horrible nasally twang. There are kids nowadays whose natural voice sounds like autotune because they’re mimicking what they hear in the charts. On the subject of Guns N’ Roses, their manager had this great line when he was asked why the album took so long, which was, “They didn’t rush the Sistine Chapel!” That’s so wonderfully arrogant.
MESSIAH J: You can either have Michael Bolton who can hit 32 notes perfectly or someone with charm like Bob Dylan. Can you imagine what ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ or ‘Lay Lady Lay’ would sound like autotuned? I got Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak the other day, which is a pretty decent record but what worries me is that every hip hop album next year is going to be smothered in vocoders.
NIALL: You’ve guys coming out of college who can use Pro Tools, but don’t know how to mike up a drum-kit. Combine that with record labels wanting albums to be made as quickly as possible so they can save on studio time, and production as we know it, seems to be a dying art.
MICHELLE: It’s not just production that’s same-y. I was listening to ’59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem, and there’s not a note or a vocal inflection that hasn’t already been on a Killers or Bruce Springsteen record.
MARK: If 99.9% of the bands out there sound similar, it’s because they chose to go down that path for commercial expediency. It’s the .1% who’ve the balls to do their own thing who are making interesting music. Everyone’s yapping on about how the power’s with the artist again – well, prove it!
STUART: Fleetwood Man infamously spent seven months once getting a snare sound. What are the most indulgent things you’ve done in a studio?
NIALL: We wasted ten days on Domino Effect tuning a bass guitar, which resulted in me telling three guitar techs that they were shit at their job, and squaring up to our producer, Michael Beinhorn. If our manager, who’s eight stone, hadn’t stood between us I’d probably be in Portlaoise jail now.
MARK: Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being eight stone!
NIALL: We eventually discovered that the monster P.A. we’d brought in to get a live sound was picking up a harmonic that threw everything else out.
NIAMH: Our problem is getting distracted really easily. We recorded our album with Karl Odlum, who’s one of the funniest men you’ve ever met, and put as much energy into playing practical jokes on each other as we did recording. There was one time when we were in a cottage down the country when the lads hung a pair of overalls from an outhouse doorframe, and stuck a light behind it so it looked like a real person dangling there. You should have heard the scream when I saw it!
MARK: When we were making the second JJs album with Flood, I spent a week messing around with this keyboard he’d brought in for no other reason than it was the one Depeche Mode had used on ‘Enjoy The Silence’. He was just as bad spending hours telling us about all the bands he’d worked with like them, Nine Inch Nails and the Pumpkins.
STUART: Who Concerto For Constantine got to support during the summer in Dublin and Belfast. That had to be a real “pinch me am I dreaming?” moment.
MARK: It was great in theory, but not so much in practice. Our dressing-room was right beside the stage in the RDS, so when they started playing ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ in soundcheck myself and Gavin (Fox, Concerto bassist), not unreasonably I thought, went into the empty hall to have a look. The second we did two massive American dudes pounced on us and said, “You’ve got to get out of here right now, this is a private area.” All of which I’d have forgiven if that night and in Belfast they hadn’t been so underwhelming. I’d met Billy Corgan before when he came down to some JJs gigs in Chicago and he was much nicer then.
NIAMH: I actually left the Pumpkins gig in the RDS early because it was so self-indulgent.
STUART: Anybody else have an unfortunate superstar encounter?
MESSIAH J: Jeru The Damaja, who’s a rapper from New York, was the most abusive, obnoxious person ever. He had a massive chip on his shoulder, and was very disrespectful and leery on stage. He’s got a paranoia thing going on with racism, and just wasn’t very nice. We met Wyclef Jean as well who was a bit mad. Otherwise we’ve been fairly lucky with the people we’ve supported. Chuck D from Public Enemy and Jurassic 5 have both consistently been lovely, and Mike Skinner of The Streets gave me relationship advice and then wanted to know which Italian football strip I preferred – the home or the away.
NIAMH: Not since my David Coverdale experience a couple of years ago! We knew the organiser of Whitesnake’s Irish dates through a My Morning Jacket tour we’d done and when their support, The Quireboys, pulled at the last minute he gave us a call going, “Do you want the gig?” We were like, “Are you taking the piss? They’re a heavy metal band!” Anyway, he talked us in to it and we got to meet Marco Mendoza and Tommy Aldridge who watched our set both nights and were lovely. David Coverdale, on the other hand, had very precise rules about when you could and couldn’t be in the backstage area and had a woman whose job seemed to be arranging pink cushions in his dressing-room. He also said to me, “Ham Sandwich? I’d have you between two slices of bread every day”, which was a bit disturbing coming from a man who’s well into his sixties!
STUART: Michelle, going full-time with Phantom meant giving up your Aer Lingus job, which you’d previously combined with your Channel 6 work. How on earth did you manage to juggle the two?
MICHELLE: It’s a technique I’ve developed called not sleeping! I can’t sit still and love being under pressure, although when it came to doing my first live Phantom show it was, “You’ve gone too far this time, girl!” I was so nervous, but now it seems the most natural thing in the world to be doing.
STUART: Did anyone do a double take when they saw you demonstrating how to put on your oxygen mask?
MICHELLE: I was asked by a guy getting off the plane one evening, “Do you have a sister?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve two sisters” to which he replied, “Does either of them work on the telly?” They recognised you, but didn’t think there was any way you could be the same person they’d seen that morning introducing a Kings Of Leon video! I was able to work the hostessing around my Channel 6 pre-records, but not live radio so I gave it up four months ago.
STUART: Rocky, most of Oppenheimer’s year was spent touring in the States, but you managed to find a spare day to propose to your girlfriend. Did she say “yes”?
ROCKY: Amazingly she did, and we’re getting married on December 29, which is a pretty good Christmas present.
EVERYONE: Congratulations!
ROCKY: Thanks, we completed the marriage course on Saturday, which was okay until the priest started singing songs about God to the tune of The Flintstones, and made us watch Toy Story. He did explain the relevance of this, but I’d stopped listening at that point. It’s been an incredible year for us – we actually split up for three days not so long ago because of the pressures.
MARK: You and the girlfriend or the band?
ROCKY: The band – the girlfriend’s working out fine! Shaun is also getting married at the start of next year and moving to New York, so we’ve both had to question whether what we’re doing professionally is working. I’ve got to be honest and say that finance-wise it’s been difficult for Oppenheimer. You’ve just spent £30,000 on one three-month tour, only to find that there’s another, which needs financing. What’s kept us afloat is our music being used on commercials and American TV shows like Ugly Betty and Gossip Girl, which works out at roughly $25,000 a pop. If you’ve publishing, record and management deals in place, you’ll probably see about 40% of that fee 18 months later… if you’re lucky. For us this year, it was about fighting to get that money before it was too late, which got the better of us for a while. We’ve since found a really good manager, who’s fighting our corner, and signed a new publishing deal, so we’re feeling a lot more positive now.
STUART: I hear you’ve gone from being mere soundtrackers to key cast members.
ROCKY: Yeah, we’ve just appeared on a new show called Rockville, CA which is us and a bunch of real bands playing in a club where all the teen drama unfolds. We had to be at this place in Los Angles called the Echoplex for seven o’clock in the morning and perform in front of 100 hip looking extras who made us feel very fat and ugly. They do the three takes and that’s you done.
STUART: Danny, last Christmas no one knew who the fuck The Script were and now you’re cosying up to Beyoncé at the World Music Awards.
DANNY: From a shitty little shed in James’ Street where we produced this record to the WMAs in Monaco in less than six months – fuck me, that is surreal! We got to hang out with Mariah Carey, Nick Cannon, Jesse Metcalf who had one too many Arthur Scargills and ended up breaking his leg in two places, and Akon who wants to do some kind of collaboration with us in the New Year. It’s good to try something new – both as a band and as producers, which all of us are as well.
STUART: How crazy are things for you at the moment?
DANNY: Very! We’ve got a promo tour coming up that’s nine countries in nine days, and the first two months of the New Year are going to be spent working solid in the States where ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ is being used to promote a show called Ghost Whisperer starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. It’s like what they did with Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars’ on Grey’s Anatomy.
STUART: When it comes to changed lifestyles, I don’t think anyone in Ireland can beat Niamh who went to the doctor’s with a tummy ache and came out an expectant mum.
NIAMH: I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was imagining all sorts because the pain was like nothing I’d felt before, but not that I was pregnant.
STUART: How did you break the news to the father?
NIAMH: I didn’t have to because Derek was stood outside and overheard the nurse talking to me. The first thing he said was, “What are we going to call it? I’ve always liked the name Oscar if it’s a boy.” Then they gave me gas, and that was me gone – “Phone my Dad, phone my Mam, phone everybody!” I was completely out of it.
STUART: It was a brilliant excuse for you not to attend pre-natal classes.
NIAMH: The amount of people who’ve said, “You were so lucky to escape the nine months of bullshit that everybody tells you!” Even when you’ve had the kid, you still have to live by the rule of “Don’t listen to anybody.” People, even complete strangers, will give you advice ‘til it’s falling out of your ears. At the end of the day you just have to go with what you feel is right.
STUART: How are the grandparents?
NIAMH: Still in shock but doting! Like I say, Derek was the one who told them…
NIALL: …and got the broken nose!
NIAMH: No, they’re delighted. My Mam lives in Scotland, so it’s hard for her not being able to see Oscar all the time, but they love him to bits and it’s all working out really well.
STUART: The various members of ABBA had to literally book their babies two years in advance, so that the happy event didn’t interfere with them selling another zillion records. Does this now make 30-date toilet tours of the UK impossible or are there contingency plans?
NIAMH: It depends on how supportive your other half is. Derek, being a musician himself, understands that I’m going to be away more than the average mum.
STUART: Bresy, if you told the lads, “Great news, I’m going to be a dad!” would they be delighted or worried that it’s going to hold the band back?
NIALL: Doran, our bass player dropped that bombshell on us shortly after he’d broken up with his girlfriend. If you’re gigging round Ireland it’s not a problem but, yeah, it is going to complicate things if we get offered three months of shows in America. You can’t expect five members of a band to live like hermits though – there are going to be births, deaths and marriages that you deal with as they come along.
STUART: Snow Patrol’s A Hundred Million Suns has been critically savaged by the same people who loved them eight years ago when they were selling fuck all records. Does Ireland have a serious indie schmindie begrudgery thing going on?
NIALL: The show’s about 50 times bigger now, but otherwise they’re remarkably similar to the band I snuck into The Stables to see when I was 14. So, yeah, the criticism they’ve been getting is totally based on the fact that they’ve become successful. Someone said to Zach La Rocha on MTV2 in Germany, “You’re staying in The Four Seasons, isn’t that going against what you stand for?” and he said, “I’ve got a family. I need to make money, but that doesn’t mean everything I’ve done in the past is a lie.” You can’t expect people to stay the same their whole fucking lives. I certainly won’t be doing this in three or four years time if we haven’t broken out of Ireland. I want a house and a career. I’d love to go off and do something left of centre, but I can’t. We’re signed to a label that demands you sell records or they’ll drop you.
DANNY: Despite the success we’ve been fortunate enough to have, I’m still the same gurrier who got the 78A out to James’ Street every day to make a record that for all we knew was going to end up in the bargain bins. Hand on my heart, the other guys in the band haven’t changed a bit, they’re still the salt of the earth. Of course we sit down every once in a while and go, “Fuck me, man, look how mental this is after getting!” but you don’t automatically turn into a wanker when you get a gold disc. Or you shouldn’t do!
ROCKY: I don’t know if it’s the same in Dublin, but in Belfast you’ve got 25 people who instead of doing it themselves sit on the internet all day slagging everything off, and not having the balls to use their real name. Northern Ireland’s version of Thumped is a thing called Fastfude, which is fantastic for finding cheap synthesisers and selling shit ones, but there’s a core of miserable bastards who give off this image of the Belfast scene being negative whereas the reality is that most bands get on and help each other out.
NIALL: Forum fuckers!
MARK: It’s just the reality. If you put something out into the public sphere, you have to accept whatever’s thrown at you – besides stalkers trying to kill you that is! The more successful you are, the more these loolahs are going to hear and criticise you. I think the positives of blogs and forums far outweigh the negatives though.
STUART: Changing subject, were you guys as outraged by the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross affair as The Daily Mail were?
MICHELLE: I do think they stepped over the line. It was funny to a certain extent, but ringing a 78-year-old man four times was totally out of order. That said, I can’t wait for Friday Night With Jonathan Ross to come back!
NIAMH: What was ridiculous was Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, being all upset one day and in the papers half-naked the next. “It’s disgraceful – look at my breasts!” If she’d done one interview, fine, but she milked it for all it was worth.
NIALL: I personally think that Russell Brand did it because he wanted out of his contract, and said to Jonathan Ross, “I’ll resign while you have a nice little break in the run-up to Christmas. They’re not going to fire you mate, you’re brilliant!” I thought Andrew Sachs was extremely dignified about the whole thing whereas his granddaughter came across as a total hypocrite.
MARK: It was more a moral question of, “Should Jonathan Ross be getting this ridiculous, grotesque amount of licence-payers money to make prank calls to an old age pensioner?” There are people working their arses off sweeping the road to pay for this eejit to behave like a teenager.
DANNY: I love both of them, but on this occasion they made a real hames of it. Not working in the BBC I don’t know whether the people who lost their jobs deserved it or were scapegoats. Bottom line though it shouldn’t have happened. Do it with the lads at home if you have to, but don’t broadcast it on public radio.
MESSIAH J: I think they’d have had more support if it was actually funny. I’m all for pushing boundaries where comedy’s concerned, but it was just a lame joke at a nice old man’s expense.
STUART: Who stayed up all night to watch Barack Obama wipe that smug grin off McCain’s face?
NIALL: We’d just played the CMJ seminar in New York, and instead of going up to Canada with the rest of the lads I stayed so that I could be in Times Square when the results came through. ABC News had this camera, which kept sweeping the crowd, and you could see me on it surrounded by all these Chinese people who came up to my knees! When they announced on the big screens that he’d got the final electoral votes he needed, the place went berserk. Afterwards we went up to Harlem where there were all these jazz bands playing and taxi drivers crying with joy. I don’t say it lightly, but it was the most amazing night of my life.
MARK: If he closes down Guantanamo, which he’s pledged to do, that’ll be a huge statement. What puzzles me is Obama saying he wants to ‘flood’ Afghanistan with troops when the early part of the election campaign was all about young American lives being lost. He’s pulling soldiers from Iraq to put into Afghanistan because, what, one’s unjust and the other isn’t? There’s a huge moral dilemma there.
DANNY: His acceptance speech in Chicago was real hairs on the back of the neck stuff. I grew up with older people banging on about JFK – well, that was our generation’s JFK moment.
STUART: Did anyone here have a secret hankering for John McCain or Sarah Palin?
MARK: I’ve got a secret hankering for Sarah Palin, but it’s got nothing to do with politics! The second most powerful person on the planet, though? That’s scary.
NIALL: The first thing she’d have done with those guns of hers was shoot John McCain! “I'm President now!”
ROCKY: What you become aware of travelling round America is the completely different mindset that exists from state to state. Something that’s important in Missouri can mean fuck all in Utah. We met people living 2,000 miles away from water who’d never heard an Irish accent before, and were ushering their friends and family over to listen to us. It’s a completely different world to here.
STUART: We started on a musical note, so let’s end on one. Gigs of the year?
ROCKY: Headlights who played to 20 people last month in Auntie Annie’s and were absolutely brilliant – MySpace them! – and Flaming Lips who we supported during the summer in Custom House Square. There was so much confetti and these huge balloons, which were floating round Belfast for a week after. For two hours before they went on Wayne Coyne was at the back of the stage getting things ready. The rest of the band got pissed off with him afterwards ‘cause they had to get up at six, and he wouldn’t leave until he’d spoken to everyone in the crowd who’d managed to blag their way backstage. There was a guy trying to sell a movie concept to him who he listened to for forty-five minutes. It was incredible.
MESSIAH J: Terry Callier, who I didn’t know much about beforehand, blew me away at the Picnic. It was in one of the smaller tents on Friday evening, and there weren’t many people there, but he played it as if it was the most important gig of his life. Underworld were great at Stradbally too, and I really enjoyed Lykke Li the other night in The Button Factory.
DANNY: For us, it had to be the whole V Festival buzz. We got to play five times that weekend on different stages, and discovered on the Sunday that we were number one in Ireland and the UK. Punter-wise, I’d never seen Muse before and couldn’t believe how fucking big they sound. We’re going to have to nick their engineer!
STUART: Who happens to be Dublin’s very own Marc Carolan.
DANNY: Irish and a genius, what more can you ask for?
NIAMH: Elbow and Wilco were both awesome at the Electric Picnic.
MICHELLE: I’ll go with Elbow as well. They’re great interviewees – really smart and funny in a self-deprecating sort of way.
NIALL: For reasons of pure nostalgia, it has to be Rage Against The Machine at Oxegen. It was great being able to tell the My Chemical Romance fuckers, “This was my generation!” The sound was dodgy, but that didn’t matter in the moshpit.
STUART: Were you down there being a big bully and slamming into the little kids?
NIALL: I wasn’t at first but then some guy hit me on the side of the jaw and I thought, “That’s it!” and randomly started running at people.
MICHELLE: Shame on you!
NIALL: I was so bedraggled afterwards that they didn’t believe I was in a band, and tried to stop me getting on the bus taking artists back to the hotel. They thought I’d found my pass on the floor!
STUART: Ladies and gentleman, Happy Christmas!
EVERYONE: Happy Christmas!

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