The Voluntary Butler Scheme Interview

This man is Pure Genius. These songs will become the soundtrack to the life you wish you lived and have you combust into dance. I cannot praise it enough. Just bloody listen to him, ok?

Rob now plays as a one-man band, looping and multi-tracking all his instruments and vocals. And I’m so glad he made that change. Now, I know there’s a fair few people coming up and doing this, but having seen a wide range of what’s out there…Rob is the best. The Best. Timing. Lyrics. Poignancy. Fun. Riff. Charm. Truth. Beats. Rhymes. When I first heard him play, I felt like an empty void in my life had been filled beautifully. I hope you get that as well.

For this interview, I gathered an assortment of food and drink for Rob to match each part of his one-man-band self to.

Yep. Match each band member to what piece of food you think it would be, then eat them in order of preference.
So like, what the drummer in me would most like to eat?
What best represents them.
(Rob laughs. On reflection, I see this may have been confusing.)
Some of them are quite easy, like these pencil sweets. And lips and teeth…and lances.
Ah ha, so there’s a real answer?
No, it’s not a test. Just some of them could be obvious choices…like lips and teeth for voice. But you don’t have to pick that.
Well the pencils would be the drummer. I think they’d make good drumsticks.
(umms and ah’s, rummages through the pile. Rob chances upon the strawberry lances.)
For when you’re feeling Knightly.
Wow this is tough. Are those apricots?
Yep. And plums, satsumas, cherries, and a Danish pastry. And gin and tonics, premixed. In cans.
Ahhh. So I’ve got the drumsticks for the drums. How many band members do I have?
I dunno, that’s why I got a lot. You seem to play a lot of different instruments.
Well, I think these should be the ukulele player. (Picks up the cherries). Because they’re kind of Ukulele sized.
I suppose you could split it off- you’ve got a deep voice, a high voice….
I think these would be the front man.
The gin and tonics?
Yeah, because I think I need to loosen up a little bit. It’s quite rock and roll isn’t it. Err…this is tough isn’t it.
Sorry, it’s a little bit obscure. But I thought it would be quite fun.
I think these should be the guitarist, Hendrix style, you know (Teeth and Lips sweets), teeth on the guitar. Quite showbiz.
Oooo, I see what you’re aiming for here…loosening up, rock and roll antics…
Yeah, I’m not what I want to be at all. (chortle) Oh, these can be the piano player, like strings in the piano. (Strawberry lances) Can the fruit be as a whole?
Depends how many things you’ve got left I guess.
What have we done…lead singer, ukulele, piano
Drums, guitar…
Ah. I think the frog should be the deep singer. I can quite see a frog as a deep backing singer. (Freddo chocolate bar) It would be nice to have a backing singer actually. (looks quizzically at the Danish pastry.)
That could be the crash symbol.
Or the bass player. Druggy base player. So we’ve got a bass player now, that’s good. Who else do you have in a band? I haven’t been in a band for so long…(laughs)
Well this is your personal one man band.
Oh yeah. So I need a keyboard player.
Well what does front man count as? Because you might still have voice types…you’ve done deep voice, but you’ve got high voice left.
Lady singer. These are quite ladylike?
Plums?
Are they? Are plums a derogatory term for breasts? They’re not are they.
I think it’s any fruit really. Peaches.
Ok. Well the plums can be the lady singer. Oh wait!
(Now follows a rummage in his bag, and then Rob produces some shakers shaped like strawberries and grapes)
Oh wow, those are brilliant!
I bought them yesterday. They’re great aren’t they.
I’ve got some of them but made from seed pods.
Oh really?
Those are better though.
So um…
Apricots. Apricots are a bit unpopular I think.
They’re just yoghurt aren’t they.
Just little specks of fruit.
So what instrument’s got yoghurt?
You haven’t done your kazoo yet…or harmonica.
What could I do for the kazoo?
It’s quite niche. Bit quirky, not everyone likes it.
That’s true. Like an apricot. Not everyone likes apricot yoghurt. So that can be the kazoo. Poor kazoo.
And this can be…
Satsumas. You’ve got the harmonica left. Everyone likes to try it, but not everyone’s good at it. But satsumas are quite a widely eaten fruit.
True, yeah yeah.
They’d match the guitar more.
It’s kind of like peeling them though isn’t it. Not everybody’s got the nails for it.
Like not everybody having the harmonica skills. Sorted.
Now you have to, in order of preference of all the things they represent, consume them.
Oh no. Hah. Can I do this after I’ve played?
Yeah. It’s not a vital part of the interview, it was just an excuse for you to eat them really. Do you not like eating before you play?
Not really. I don’t like being bloated. Do you want me to orderise them though?
You can do. You don’t have to eat them though.
I think I’d probably go for the swirl first. Tesco bakery.
I wanted to ask, right after you sing we listen to –something, I can’t make out what it is- on your mp3 player…
Oh, La Bamba?
Yeah, I could never make out what you were saying.
La la la la la la bamba, do doo do do. Yeah, it’s a good song.
Hahah. But in the next bit, ‘and I’ll tell you all I know, about stacking shelf upon shelf upon shelf upon shelf’, is that from your supermarket days?
Ah, no. I’ve never thought about that actually, that’s quite good. I was thinking about you know when you put things on the shelf, put it on hold, give it time…
That’s probably a bit more meaningful. Did you work in Tescos, is that why you like the bakery goods?
No, Sainsbury’s. If you go on my myspace page, in the top friends there’s a free E.P. that I made, The Voluvant E.P and there’s a song on there that talks about an aroman metro.
An aroman metro?
Yeah, it’s a car.
Oh, I’m not great on car types. Well, good.
(Rob does croaky laugh)
Do you like volauvants?
No, not really.
They remind me of my childhood. The ones with mushroom in them…the idea of it was really appealing like ‘mmmm mushroom’ then you’d taste it and the pastry was all like defrosted and then cooked…horrible and tasteless. They weren’t good times.
So what would come next after the pastry?
Oh, umm..probably the pencils.
So is this what you prefer to eat, or what you prefer playing?
Oh. Well I better rethink this. Probably my least favourite thing in public is being a singer. (laughs) I really like singing, but I’m pretty new to being a singer.
But you’ve got a really good voice?
But it’s kind of more like being a vocalist isn’t it.
You’re putting yourself out there a lot more.
Yeah, exactly. I used to play drums in a band and so I’d be at the back. But I’d never get nervous before playing a gig. It’s quite nice to get nervous now. Like, ‘ahh, what’s going to happen’. So yeah, I think my least favourite thing would be singing, and my favourite thing is the guitar. No wait, drums first.
The pencils. They’re the best sweet too. And the blue ones.
Yeah exactly. So bass above singing. No, bass is probably last.
What about if it’s funky bass….
Yeah funky bass, that’s true.
Bass players nationwide get angry.
What were these again? (picks up the cherries)
Ukulele.
Oh yeah, I quite like that. That’s after drums. Harmonica’s fun. What were these?
Kazoo.
You’ve got a good memory going on there.
It feels like a game.
These were…
Lady voice.
Oh yeah (laughs). I like deep voice, although it’s hard to do. So deep voice next. Then lady voice. Oh piano, I really like playing the piano. So piano just below the drums. Let’s go drums, piano, ukulele, guitar, deep voice, lady voice, harmonica, bass, then singing at the bottom.
You’ve missed out the kazoo, shit.
Oh. I’ll put it in at about number four.
Have you ever heard of the Spinto Band?
Spinto Band? Yeah!
They do kazoos.
Do they have kazoos?
Yeh, they have a whole song with them.
Really?
I haven’t heard anything about them in ages actually. I saw them in Norwich…maybe supporting the Mystery Jets?
I think they probably did, yeah.
That was like two years ago… I don’t remember the details much. But they were on Jools Holland the night before the gig.
That’s the thing about support bands, you often don’t pay much attention at the time but afterwards you’re like, ‘oh, it was THAT band’.
That was the thing about Tuesday (Joe Lean gig) you and Beggars were both so so good, I couldn’t forget it.
Did you get the Beggars vinyl?
Yeah, but the stick thing on my vinyl player has broken so it skips.
The drummer’s wicked. I’ve made really good friends with him.
Yeah they were lovely. I mean, opening with a cover of Leonard Cohen, and releasing it as a single, is no mean feat. I thought they did it really well. Right. I’ve got some questions as well now if that’s ok. They’re a bit all over the place, because I did them on limited information.
Ok.
If you were volunteering to be a butler for anyone, who would it be?
Luis Prima. He sings the ‘I’m the king of the swingers…’ (jungle book)
Oh yeah!
His records are really really good. There’s loads of songs on there, like ‘please don’t squeeze a banana’. Me and my mate love it ‘I won’t squeeze on a grape’ (sings in contralto).
Like when people are buying fruit and are testing it for ripeness.
It doesn’t make much sense. It might make sense to him…
Well sometimes when you’re singing a song you can just get carried away and sing anything.
Yeah, I like gibberish. I’ve got loads of gibberish in my songs. (sings)Doomba doomba doomba day…(chuckle)
I love your lyrics. I was going to bring you a broccoli with a face drawn onto it. Hahah.
They seem to come out as warped love songs.
Have you ever unravelled a jumper for someone?
No (laughs)
You should do. I like that. What is your favourite jumper?
I got it in San Francisco actually. It’s yellow black and grey.
Stripy?
Yeah, really really stripy. I didn’t bring it on tour actually, I should have done. It’s really colourful, it’s got black, yellow, red…I don’t know how to describe it, it’s sort of woven.
Wool?
Yeah, it’s wool. That lyric came from this time with my old band when we were playing in Leeds, and afterwards we slept on this girl’s floor, and I was sleeping in this jumper because…
You wanted to?
Yeah, because I wanted to, and I was on the floor. And my mate was closer to this bottle of water than I was and he was like ‘can you pass me that bottle of water’ and I was like ‘Oh yeah, just wait while I unravel my jumper and lasso it.’ And then the next day I was trying to remember the line in my head.
So have you been writing these songs for a long time, or just storing the ideas?
I don’t know, I never really spend long doing it- they’re all sort of half an hour songs. I write things down in my little book, and then when I’ve got a tune I’ll just look in the book and try and find the words that fit.
That’s a good way to do it.
I only stopped playing in other bands in February, and then doing this I only played my first gig in October, and I only had about twelve songs and they were all really rubbish (laughs). So all of a sudden my aim was to write some really good songs…so I ended up with about thirty.
I don’t know if this is a good thing to do or not, but I think it was Bob Dylan who said if you’re writing songs you should aim to write ten a day, one of which you keep. But I like keeping everything…hahaha. And I wouldn’t be able to write that much anyway.
Do you play music then?
Yeah I do. I’ve been thinking actually, since listening to your music, that you are living the dream. I’d love to learn how to multi track, I play pretty much the same instruments as you except the guitar, and add saxophone and clarinet. But I’m always thinking of ideas that need multi tasking to the extreme. So yep, you’re living the dream.
It’s really quite simple! But you know, every time I play a gig with a band there’s always one band member who wants to be playing more than they are.
Well most people are multi-instrumentalists. You know, if you’re interested in music you will probably have tried out lots of different things.
I often feel pressurised to do things with other people but I’m trying to stick to my guns.
Yeah, like with that song you were playing earlier (Split) I was thinking how good it would sound with a girls voice in certain places, but then I thought how stupid it would be because it would take away the whole essence of what you do.
A girl’s voice on the loop part, or simultaneously or what?
I don’t know, it just sounded like with the deep voice and guitar at the start, quite traditional… um…
Like 50s doo-wop sort of thing?
Yeah, and you could imagine a sort of girl-boy swap over. But you could do that with your own voice, or different pitched instruments or whatever. But I was like poising my mind to expect to hear a girl’s voice come in…but then you finished. Haha.
Yeah yeah, I was just testing a few different bars at a time. I can never be bothered to play songs all the way through on sound check. You don’t really need to when you’re on your own; you just need to check that everything works.
The sound people would probably get pissed off as well.
Yeah. Some bands do go through the whole set…but it kind of takes the fun out of it. If you’re doing it on your own, once you’ve done it once that day…
Exactly. And there’s not really an atmosphere to be playing to. Just a dark room.
I feel at more and more gigs that I just want to piss around instead of playing the songs.
Well that’s just what you’re going to have to do.
Yep.
I looked up where you lived…it’s an exciting place. And I don’t actually mean that sarcastically. I live in the middle of nowhere. But, I thought that Stourbridge seemed to epitomise the archaic stereotypes of childhood dreams.
(Laughs) That’s not how I’d picture it...
But you’ve got Railway trains…that’s it really….(chortle).
The railway’s miles away though.
Really? I suppose I didn’t actually look at the map…I’m not really a big map reader. I was wondering if growing up there had any effect on you, because I kind of thought that the thoughts you seem to have are kind of childlike in the way that they are like how a child’s mind would work or look at things, that imagination, but for adult experiences, like love, because you’re an adult.
It is really nice. You know what, I do hope to leave there, but I still haven’t got in a position where I could leave there and err...
Survive?
Yeah, I suppose survive is a good word for it. (chortle) There’s like a really small part of it that’s really nice, I’d like to live there.
Could you not move there?
Not really. There’s a couple of little centre points, like there’s a really nice gig called Patti Piestellos which I love to play, the people down there are really cool. But apart from that it’s sort of small town, white shirts Saturday night….But anywhere you are you have to look for the good bits.
Well kind of related to that, seeing as there’s so much to do there…if you had to spend a day there, what would you do? I’ve got some options for you that you can choose from. You can…Go check out the steam trains, have a ride.
Yeah! (Sounds enthused)
Or go to the non-stop sponsored Bible reading that’s happening next month…
That sounds great, wow.
Ballroom dancing classes? The international festival of glass. Or counselling.
I think I’m good for counselling. Glass…I forgot about that actually. My friend’s a glass blower. People move down from Australia just to do the glass blowing. I’ve never been there, so why not? Then maybe we should ignore Stourbridge. Forget it exists.
I don’t know, there’s a lot going on. Talking of embracing society, if you could then make your own activities club, what would it be? And you can’t say butler training.
I think I’d put together an army to knit some jumpers.
I’m knitting a scarf at the moment. It’s red, green and brown.
I used to love brown. I’ve gone off brown in recent times (sounds perplexed).
I can imagine it suiting your colourings. I do prefer brighter colours though. That’s my dream, to knit a big scarf of ALL the colours. Hahaha, ‘my dream’. I had to stop knitting this one because I realised I was concentrating on the scarf, not my work, and this scarf was going to emerge that would be representative of my failure in life. So you’ve got one member of your army down.
It’s going to be like a sweat shop.
Not leisurely?
No, no, leisurely. Just like ‘come in here for twenty minutes’.

Interview & Words- Ali Hewson

Noah and the Whale Interview

Do you think the name Noah and the Whale reflects life- in a very strange parallel to the biblical stories…I thought, there is Noah and the Ark, and I don’t know whether you intended it to mean this, but he was leading people on to a better life...rejuvenation, cleansing...blah blah blah…and then Jonah and the Whale, who is stuck in a whale. So do you think the band name is a kind of very strange parallel to the fact that you’re leading people on through your music yet we’re all stuck in the big whale of the world, society and mortality?
Charlie: Well it wasn’t the initial reason behind the name...but it’s much better (chortle chortle)
Urby: We might nick that for other interviews!
Charlie: I think the beautiful thing about words is that no matter what you mean to say, you’re always going to link to something. So if that’s what it means to you, then that’s what it means. Do you know what I mean?
Do you think it’s a concept that applies to life as well?
Charlie: Do I think that concept is true? What’s the main jist? That we are leading people…
To better things, new directions. But at the same time, inevitably we are all just stuck.
C: that’s interesting
Urby: It’s quite a big thing to put on our shoulders.
Well maybe not just musicians…everyone in life
C: well part of what I try to say I guess is to look beyond the ‘whale’ in an unconventional way. For example, a lot of stuff that comes up is about death. So essentially we are trying to escape from this whale…I don’t know, I’ve always been terrified of death- I’m not a religious person but I’ve heard a song that talks about the physical continuation of your body, in its most base as fertiliser or whatever to this.
U: but I don’t think we’re stuck, time is just continuous.
Well kind of what I meant by asking was do you think there is a whale or do you think we’re not stuck at all?
C: umm, I just don’t care, to be honest. I think it’s interesting, but it’s just so abstract… I don’t know. If we’re talking about OUR music, then it’s probably more humane than that.
Fiddle: We wouldn’t want to lead anyone in any direction…
I didn’t mean it like you personally are leading them, but the concept of the arts as something to guide.
C: the light in the whale’s dark stomach.
F: Well music and art are the only sort of abstract things we have, that can sort of guide you in your journey of life.
U: are you asking us about the meaning of life basically? Because we don’t know! (Chortle)
Well I needed to start with that abstract one, as I’m now going to use that idea through the rest of my questions. Sorry, I didn’t mean it to be so demanding!
U: don’t worry, it’s probably the best interview we’ve had so far.
Well ok. If you had your own ark, what would you be sailing towards?
C: hmmm, I think I’d just sail. An ark’s a pretty amazing thing. It would be pretty self-sufficient. If you got hungry you could just eat some giraffe…
As long as they’d already bred…hahahaa.
U: I would be great to do a tour on an ark. Because we’ve got this tour bus now that’s a bit like an ark on wheels. It’s very self sufficient. It’s got beds…TVs…
C: hahaaa is that what you call self-sufficient, beds and TVs?
U: it’s got a toilet…and all your friends there. Tour by ark would be cool.
Ahh well that kind of leads onto my next questions. I’ve got lots of ark questions. In fact, they are all ark questions.
If you had a destination, would it matter if you ever reached it, or would it just be nice to kind of roll along.
C: I think once you’ve reached one destination you’re going to want to find another destination anyway.
U: you never get there and keep trying, or you get there and look for a new destination.
F: it’s always ongoing; you’ll never actually reach your destination.
C: it would be pretty good to be sailing anyway...so…
Would you have every animal on board, as is the tradition of arks?
U: I don’t think we’d discriminate.
C: we could get logical here…I mean there are a lot of tiny crabs that live in caves in Thailand…when are we going to go pick them up?
Well I am imagining it to be like the Men in Black locker, you’d just have one on board full of an animal world.
C: Oh ok, yeah. (Looks of relief all round)
U: Donkeys would be a lot harder to get onboard, because of their stubbornness.
F: what’s a mule?
U: a donkey and a horse
F: well you wouldn’t need a mule then, just a donkey and a horse.
U: but then you’re damaging the chance of procreation…
Is that a good attitude to have in life though- because they might be stubborn and difficult to manoeuvre, you won’t have them on the ark?
U: but you’re asking us to collect a whole world full of species, I’d rather save some than none.
Well it’s not really saving them as it isn’t in the context of a flood. You’ve just got a massive ark of some kind- that being a very ambiguous term for…something.
U: well I’d like to look after things if we were going to take them onboard.
C: would you save any of the damned humans? Like say you’ve got your pool-buddy
U: pool-buddy?!
C: I don’t know, whatever…But god’s like, you’ve got this ark, you can take your family and a bunch of animals, but Steve can’t come. What would you do? Would you try and stash Steve away somewhere?
You could put Steve inside a whale?
U: I’d do what Odysseus did; he escaped the Cyclops’ cave by clinging underneath a massive ram.
F: did they escape?
U: yeah, all of them did. Other than the ones that got eaten. So yeah, I’d probably try and smuggle Steve in like that.
Well that was one of my questions actually…
C: about Steve? How do you know Steve?
U: are you pool-buddies as well?!
Hahaha
He’s been lying to you. We play snooker together.
U: surely not!
He doesn’t really like pool…the whole concept of it disgusts him. Sorry. But yes, if you could each bring one person with you, who would it be? Would you in fact bring anyone at all?
F: are us three going to be there?
Yes.
F: so the whole of Noah and the Whale is there, all five of us.
And all the animals in the world…
F: all the animals in the world, and we can bring one other person...
C: for me it’s good, because my brothers in the band- so I’ll bring mum and he can bring dad. Whereas you guys are going to have to decide which parent.
F: ooooo.
C: or brother or sister?
Well it’s not really saving them though…the ark is whatever you want it to be. Everyone else in the world isn’t going to die.
C: so this isn’t the biblical story, we’re not actually Noah and family. So what’s the ark doing?
That’s for you to decide…
C: Ah well then I wouldn’t want to bring my mum and dad.
U: I’d bring a musician. Someone respected.
C: They might not want to come!
You can make the rules…
C: Maybe someone like Ray Mears, if you didn’t know where you were going to go. I’m not a very hands-on person.
C: Have you seen Into the Wild, the film?
(Silence)
F: I’d probably bring a zoo keeper.
U: a zoo keeper?!
C: That’s true actually. Someone to look after all the animals.
U: someone to shovel all the manure.
But would you pay them?
F: they get room and board.
U: do we get to keep one animal at the end of the tour? Like our favourite one? It’s a tough one. I’d probably take a really good chef. Jamie Oliver.
Erghh!
C: but he’s so annoying! You need someone who’s good at cooking loads of different foods.
Surely you should take a woman chef.
U: Why a woman chef?
Because then you can breed onboard.
U: well when you put it like that…I’ll go with you. You probably cook much better than I do.
C: you should bring Nigella Lawson
F: I’d bring Scarlett Johansson. That’s just top preference.
C: she wouldn’t want to come! She’s busy.
But this is a crazy magical ark that could be taking you up into the skies…or underwater…anywhere you want to go!
C: But would she be into that?
She might be?
C: I think she’d be a drag. She’d just be doing her makeup and whinging.
Couldn’t you lie? Bribe her in, like in King Kong. ‘It’s for a film…yeahhh errr…’ And then just take her on some crazy trek.
(Small dispute over the colour of daffodils. Apparently they would look good in ‘yeti blue’. Mmhmmmm….)
What music would you play to the animals on the ark, to nurture them, help them grow up strong…?
C: I’d play something soothing. If you played prodigy or something they’d get really…
Angsty?
C: exactly.
F: I’d probably play something classical, just to get them calm.
C: or that animal collective EP that they recorded in the forest, it’s called cabride? Songs. They recorded it in the woods so there’s loads of background noise on it.
So it would be quite homely for them. But you’ve got quite a lot of animals there…if you played rainforest noises, polar bears wouldn’t really…
C: they’d be freaking out. They’d be like, ‘what the hell is that’.
What would the ark be? Would it be a boat? A magical ship-plane…
F: A surfboard. It would be a surfboard.
C: would it be a surfboard with a…what do you call those things for holidays when it’s on top of your car…
U: I’d like a Swiss chalet.
Flying?
U: no no no, on water. (As if this was the obvious norm?) A massive crimson Swiss chalet with lots of wood and open fires, open plan…
F: you could water-ski out the back.
I had a vision like that, strangely. When I was about ten we went on holiday to Italy and I spent the whole two weeks drawing pictures and pictures of this big house thing that flew, and the stockrooms and all the things on it… Very fun indeed for a ten year old.
C: exciting
I could have been immersing myself in the culture…
C: maybe it’s more like a giant peach
I’m actually fulfilling my life dream in this interview. (chortle) Ahh…yep. So, a massive surfboard storage thing, crossed with a chalet…
C: with some peach as well
Made out of peach?
U: You’ve got to really use your mind…but when you get there it’s great.
C: Maybe a giant orange, because the surface would keep fresh for longer than a peach.
U: it would be cool to have some extra fruit trees on board as well. And a cabbage patch.
C: if this is complete fantasy, why not just have a proper garden? Just a big house and acres of garden
U: an orchard.
F: so it’s basically an island.
C: yeah, a floating island. There was that TV programme with that island you could steer and a polar bear?
Ahh yeah, that used to really freak me out. The animals were all quite creepy. On that note, we’ve got a bit of an environmental theme that sometimes comes out…So in terms of what you would eat- would it be self sustainable, and do you think that’s a good thing?
U: a very interesting question.
C: I want to bring a McDonald’s on. (hah)
U: I always prefer eating healthier foods. I feel better after doing it…and they taste better.
C: we all agreed the other day that our favourite food type was Italian food
You could have your own wheat field and make your own pasta?
U: and bring an Italian chef?
F: cheese, you’d need cheese though.
You could have cows and goats?
F: but what are they going to eat?
C: Italian food? Pasta? Seeds?
And it would have to be vegan Bolognese and stuff; otherwise it would defeat the point of saving the animals.
C: unless there was one particularly bad cow.
You’ve been really naughty! Munch munch…
U: or if it told really bad jokes.
When you’re on the ark, what would you be doing to pass your time?
U: well Charlie would be playing with stuff that I wouldn’t be happy about.
C: just to clear that up, that’s playing play station games.
I think if we’d got a garden I’d probably walk about, write some songs, make pasta, and pick fruit…
You probably wouldn’t have that much spare time actually, what with looking after all the animals.
C: we’d be very busy.


[ (Now moves to drawing talk. See www.myspace.com/cbmagazine )
U: I’m covering happiness and my aspirations too.
C: if you wanted, you could add this to the kid’s category, as I’m drawing like a ten year old. This is why I started playing guitar instead.
That’s why modern art is invented. ]



Interview & Words- Ali Hewson

Duke Spirit Interview

A: What do you think of 2000 trees so far?
I’ve got to say, as we drove up I presumed it would be a lot smaller, and I thought it might be a bit of a shit show joke, but I was willing to do it anyway because it’s Cheltenham, and I grew up here, went to school here, and family live here, so I was like, I’m not really going to say no. But actually, when I drove up, and was ushered in by some fine stewardesses (chortles all round)
P: Oh yeah.
Some lions and lionesses…and it made me think that it was actually quite substantial. So yeah, I mean the weather’s obviously made it a bit fucking hard core, but then I do think that brings out the best in people. People willing to go bare footed, like yourself. And I saw one guy, and the lighting…and his own ability to enjoy sensations…he was just like, fuck it.
A: The crisps?
No, no. The feeling? (appears confused).
(Phoebe laughs.)
He just fucking looked at a big puddle, and took his clothes off and jumped right in.
(Phoebe groans.)
A: Happy! (sung).
He might have been, yeah. But there’s a cynical part of me, the cynical urban dweller, that goes “Oh you cunt.” Just going to a festival just for one random one off weekend of acting really silly. How inane. Then I suddenly thought no, don’t think that. Look! He’s totally fucking loving rolling around like a pig in shit.
Ph: Crazzzzyy.
But that is the taste of festivals, because we don’t live in a tribal, or…we don’t live in the way that our ancestors did, but I’m sure there is still some impulse inside us wanting to live really really close to the grass, really close to the trees, and like, just not be enveloped with tons and tons of material objects. And there’s something about festivals that brings us closer to something that runs in our blood, you know, pissing in your own trousers and rolling around in mud…Maybe some people would say we’ve evolved past that but a little part of me…there’s some ancestor tugging at me going ‘go on, roll around in mud.’.
A: Well it’s quite fitting that you’ve got a feather in your hair.
And up there…there was a peacock, and a cockerel, and all kinds of stuff going on up there in the park which I love…
A: I had this crazy…spaced out…after I spoke to you, I went to the toilet in the farmhouse…completely wankered…and there were these peacocks everywhere, and then went to this warehouse filled with beer and chocolate…
Wow, that’s all that was in it? Beer and chocolate? That’s unbelievable. Do you need any more chocolate, because I’ve got some?
A: I’ve got two bars…(an educated guess would say I brandished boost bars at this point)
Do you need any of this? It’s got expresso in it… (another educated guess would presume that at this point, we were offered choclit.)
A: You probably need that to keep your energy up.
I think I’ll have it on the way home.
A: I’ve got two boost bars, and I’ve had one, so you know…
P: Got your messengers out.
PH: I hate you!
(Screeching is coming from 80s B line matchbox disaster)
I tell you what, you should watch these guys. I’ve seen them play on and off for years and they are really intense. I don’t know if you know bands like The Cramps? From years ago, fucking brilliant. Its’ like ‘ahh, stepping back in time’. But they’re also really hard.
A: Just quickly then, so we can go watch them. The festival’s got a really green thing going on. In the first issue of the magazine we had sort of a green footprint running through…does the band do anything for that, or do you personally…what do you think about it?
When we’re travelling on a bus we’re always quite conscious of recycling our plastic bottles, separate our rubbish, I must have that. There are days where our standards slip, because you’re really hung over or having a bit of a dark day and it just gets thrown out. I don’t actually eat meat, and the rest of the guys kind of do but they’re all kind of conscious and we travel a lot, especially in America and they’re all really good at going, ‘ah, do you know what, I’m not going to eat shit battery farmed meat’ and we tend to just take pride in the fact that you can be a fucking rock and roll band and still go ‘you know what, I’m not going to eat that and that. I’m going to wait until we get to a nice restaurant and find out if it’s organic and stuff. So as ridiculously thoughtful as that sounds, those sort of discussions do go ahead. There’s not a huge amount we can actually do about travelling at the moment, but there are actually some friends in Portland, Oregon, who have developed a tour bus that runs on vegetable oil. You should look them up, they’re called Grease not Gas.com. And we made friends with them on our tour.
P: Are they not a band?
Well, they’re band’s friends. Someone we know does actually occasionally go on the road with them. But unfortunately, the one thing they developed is actually too small to hold us and our gear. But we stay in contact with them a lot, and everytime we’re in Portland we go see them. They’re actually developing their ideas properly, with some proper sponsorships and big kind of…So yeah, just look them up.
A: But the thing is, using vegetable oil rises crop prices, which is raising the price of animal feed, which is raising meat prices.
I understand that argument but I still beg to differ…
A: I don’t think it’s a bad thing…I think we can probably find an alternative to the animal feed.
I was listening to a radio programme about how in fact there’s always a surplus of ethanol from corn, and there’s a surplus of all these food stuffs, they’re just not distributed in the right way. So if globally…we’ve got the fucking internet, you can GPS yourself out of a fucking hole. If you can do that then we should be able to go ‘where should we make fuel from the surplus? Ok, let’s distribute that out and sell it’. But unfortunately each country is gripping on to their own export control, so it will never happen. But globally, there’s stuff that’s getting left over that could become fuel and thereby not affect fuel prices, or crop prices. But no one has the heart, no one who has the power has the heart. But honestly if we could harness bio-diesel we would, but currently we can’t, and you feel shit about it. But to be honest, I don’t drive into work five days a week, and drive home five days a week. I go on a tour a few times a year.
A: I think it’s different as a musician because it’s kind of for the greater good.
Exactly.
A: There’s people who drive their kids into school every day…
I’ll tell you what I always do…well half the band have just moved out of flats at the moment, we all live in London, and we’re going to be on tour so much at the end of the year that they just moved out of their flats and put their stuff in storage, so they’re not using electricity at home. But I’ve got into this habit now that if I don’t do it I feel really bad…I defrost my fridge and turn it off before I go on tour. So when I get home I’ve never got anything to eat, but it’s like ‘why am I going to leave a fridge on for four weeks?!’ so when I leave home it goes on total shut down. So there’s a little bit of thought, I wish I could do more, and I will try to.
A: That’s great.
P: I was just wondering. You know Heart is a Lonely Hunter, your song?
Oh yeah.
P: Did you get that from Carson McCullers?
No, that was actually a song by our friends The Archie Bronson Outfit, that they didn’t finish writing. So we said, we really love that song, can we finish it and write a chorus. And then by the time they’d put their album out they’d kind of done it again.
P: Because I was listening to the album loads, and I was also reading that book, and just thinking…Is there a connection…
Well he might have had one…because the verse lyrics are my friend Mark’s, from the Archie Bronson Outfit.
P: And do you use any William Blake?
I do know some William Blake but no, I don’t think I’ve used his words in lyrics.
P: A song name of yours is a line in one of his poems.
Well yeah, that makes me wonder, I mean, I’ve got books of poetry.
P: It might have been small in the back of your mind.
It might have been in my subconscious, yeah. It was more me thinking about how I felt about someone, that I couldn’t possibly put into it. Maybe it’s just one of those things.

Interview- Ali Hewson, Polly O'shea, Phoebe Halstead; Words- Ali Hewson

Mystery Jets Interview

The Mystery Jets are a very exciting band indeed. They used to live on an island inside an island. They like glitter. They are lovely. Although they did blow all of their advance on jetpacks and all of the rainbows in the UK, in a similar way to how the Queen owns all of the swans. This incredible future was written in William's salad leaves. He still doesn't believe it.


If you could choose anybody, alive or dead, to be your pen-pal, who would you pick?
I think I’d pick you actually.
Me? Ok.
Yeah I think you’d be a really good pen-pal partner. You and maybe Ray Davies from the Kinks. So I could have two different ones.
I saw him at Isle of White Festival
Did he have a big band with him?
Nope. But it was really good. About two or three years ago.
I just love his songs.

I just read something about how you all used to write to each other as pen pals?
Yeah me and Blaine did- when he moved to France and I was at boarding school when we were about 7 or 8 and we used to write letters and draw pictures of what our band was going to be like when we grew up and were in a band, silly things like that.
You’re lucky…your childhood dream actually came true.
Yeah I suppose it is lucky. I don’t really think about that. I think it’s so easy to take a lot of things for granted. But yeah I guess it was lucky, so that’s good.
I suppose if you’re in the wrong family or something you don’t think about it.
Yeah, it’s so silly to compare circumstances with people. You can only really compare things with yourself. Did you have any childhood dreams? Probably hundreds.
I don’t know…I know I wanted to be a journalist, but that was from when I was about 10. Our nanny was from Australia, and we met her friend Arran in London, and he’d just got back from the set of Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, and was about to go to the Caribbean…and he was a freelance journalist. I wanted to travel! I wanted to be an archaeologist too at one point.
An archaeologist? Well I guess journalism’s quite like archaeology…
What, digging around? Haha. Ahh no, I hate the kind of journalism where people get their facts wrong or say things and it causes loads of offence and hurt…
When people get misquoted…
Yeah exactly. I don’t like doing that.
I think a lot of journalists like to get the wrong end of the stick in a way. I think part of the job of people in films or bands or whatever is that they are supposed to live other people’s dreams for them. So they’re meant to do things like drive their Rolls Royce’s. And I think that’s what a lot of journalists latch on to. Because really life is pretty normal for everyone.
Pretty mundane.
It can be, yeah.
Not in a pessimistic way, because life’s brilliant, but a lot of life is just filling time.
So much time is spent just wasting it.
It works out that I spend something ridiculous like 4 weeks of my life on the bus to and from college.
You spend like two thirds of your life asleep.
And on tour, you must spend so much time on the coach.
It’s terrible, it really frustrates me, but there’s not much you can do about it.
As long as you can find things to do, read lots of books.
I keep a diary.
(The pasta salad is good.
William: There are some great cheeses in there. Will this sober you up?
Me: I’m sober. But it is indeed good. As is the pizza here. I bet you’re glad you didn’t just get a salad now…
William: I am indeed.
Advert for Expresso finished. I said I’d write it in, but the general café noise is overwhelming on record, as is the accumulation of several months of life on my memory. Bah, I’m a half assed journalist.*)

So would you ever leave Norwich? Would you ever want to live anywhere else?

*I have a full ass really. It’s on YouTube, in gold. Har, har.

Oh yeah.
Is it like quite a small place?
Yes. In such a small place you can either feel really detached or really involved in what’s going on. But I’m glad it’s my hometown, my family will probably always be here.
Do you have brothers and sisters and stuff?
Yeah I have a brother and a sister.
Older or younger?
Little ones.
Oh little, really.
Well not that little. My sister’s fifteen and my brother’s twelve. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Yeah I’ve got an older sister. She’s got her own family, in Bristol.
That’s good.
Yeah, it is really good.
Does she have babies? Kids.
Mmm. She’s got three boys. One’s eight, and the twins are like four or five.
Three boys…
Yeah, it’s a real handful I think. I didn’t really know her for a long time. She left home when she was sixteen, and I was only seven.
That’s just the time when you start to get to know each other.
Yeah, when you start to become mates. She buggered off for like seven years and then appeared out of the blue, with kids. We’re good mates now.
That’s good. I think it’s difficult with brothers and sisters. You’re either going to really get on with them, at some point, whether it’s at some point later…or you’re just never going to click.
Well, what’s quite nice about me and her is that we get on in a way that’s quite exclusive to us. We get on in a way that doesn’t involve our mum and dad. Like a little scene away from them, it’s quite cool.
I always think it’s odd how siblings can be like ready-made best friends that don’t have to be your family but will always be there in blood.
It runs deep I guess.
You’re lucky. I had a really good holiday to Egypt with my mum and brother and sister. We went diving. You should go if you ever get the chance.
Well my Dad was born in Alexandria, so I’d like to go there.
You should go to Dahab.
Is that near Cairo?
Not really, you have to get a plane. It’s a really great place though, although it’s getting quite developed it’s got a one storey rule and loads of the land is still owned by the Bedouins.
Have you read Hideous Kinky?
I’ve not read it, just seen the film.
I think that’s in Morocco. But the same sort of vibe.
I didn’t realise that was a book as well. We got it free in the newspaper.
A couple of years ago? Yeah, I got that too.
It’s such a hard choice… Would you take your kids if you went travelling. If the only thing that was going to make you happy was going to live somewhere else but your kids didn’t want to. What would you do?
I suppose you’d have to wait till they were adults. I don’t really want kids to be honest.
Really? I do like this freedom.
No. It’s really enjoyable, not being responsible. Well, only being responsible for yourself.
It’s just such a big thing, as soon as you have a kid that’s the rest of your life attached to someone else, or a family. What if you hated your child?
That would be awful. But I think there’s probably a part of all parents that hates their children.
Most likely. On a slightly different tact, if you had a zoo, which animals would you keep in it?
I’d have animals that were extinct in it. So it was exclusively an extinct zoo.
And then breed and rehabilitate them?
Yeah, to put them back. Dodos, Woolly Mammoths, Sabre Tooth Tigers…Umm, what else would I have? I don’t really know a lot about extinct animals, there’s only about three that I’ve ever heard of.
Probably some sort of eagle?
Yeah, some kind of rare eagle.
Dinosaurs? You’d have to make sure you had a couple as well, in case something went wrong, or one died…
They’d have to reproduce.
Imagine if you were that animal, and you were put with the other animal, and you were the only two of that animal in the world, and you didn’t fancy her… I’m sure instinct would take over.
Yeah, I think animals probably don’t have the same level of like, “oo, I like her” sort of thing.
Maybe. There was this really interesting article in the National Geographic about animals showing intelligence. And there was this really sad story about a parrot. A woman taught a parrot to speak, not just in repetition, but actually knowing what the words meant. So it could do things like if you held up something it could say it’s name and what colour it was and things like that.
That’s a parrot?
Yeah.
Wow.
But one of the things it said which was just so horrible, was just “tree”. And when it said “tree” it meant it wanted to be carried out to the corridor in the lab so it could look out of the window at an elm tree, because it wanted to be free. It’s just like, you teach an animal how to communicate for the first time, the only speaking animal, and it just tells you it wants freedom.
Yeah yeah yeah, that’s bizarre. Humans are horrible.
Yeah. So a zoo for extinct animals would be really good for helping them out.
And you’re offering something that no one else is offering.
Exactly. God I hate that parrot story.
It’s quite sad isn’t it.
They didn’t even linger on it. There was a dog as well, when you showed it a photo of a toy it could go into the next room and pick out the real toy. And about how only a few animals could see in the mirror.
Really? And recognise their own reflection.
Yeah. We have a chaffinch at our house, and my dad’s kitchen windows are mirrored. And everyday it comes and sits at the window and pecks at the glass, because it thinks it’s found a mate. But it’s just its reflection. It’s so sad. And it’s not going to find another mate, because it’s fallen in love with its own self.
It’s just going to suffer.
Yep, a long lonely summer of being heartbroken…
By himself. That would make a great story.
Yeah, I wrote a poem about it.
Really? That’s quite bizarre, constantly breaking your own heart.
Monkeys can see their own reflection though. In the same article, they were saying how they put spots of red paint on the monkey’s head, and they wouldn’t try to take it off the monkey in the mirror, they’d took it off their own head. So they realised that they could recognise their own reflection. Quite clever…I wouldn’t have though of that myself…Yep. Poor parrot.
Yeah that’s tragic. And the chaffinch. Pathetic really.
It’s horrible. I tried to make my Dad un-mirror the windows but we don’t know how.
You could just smash them.
(Nice expresso man brings brownie.)
Ok, if you ran away from home, -the boy who ran away- where would you go?
Um, running away from home. I’d go to Brazil I think. I love Brazil. I recon that would be really exciting. It’s a big mixture of Japanese people, and Germans, and obviously Portuguese. So they’re all mixed together and they end up looking quite weird. People that you can’t quite place. I find that really interesting. It seems really lively and dangerous as well. I think in poorer places, and South America, people treat life differently, they value it in a different way.
I’d definitely like to live in Brazil. The whole atmosphere would be different.
I think if I did that I wouldn’t ever be able to come back. England is so kind of like…
Would you need to come back though?
Well maybe not.
I think life’s too short to call one place your home.
Mmm, I agree.
Well that’s kind of the point of running away.
Why come back.
Depends what your reasons were for leaving I guess.
I mean, I’ve got nothing to run away from really. Apart from sometimes you need to run away from yourself, when you’re really not happy. I dunno.
I heard that the name Mystery Jets came from a toy plane that flew into Henry’s room and it had a little note in it.
Yeah it had a scroll in it.
He never told you what the note said- what would you like to think was written on it?
I don’t know; I’d like to think that it said some bizarre riddle, which he’s still trying to work out to this day.
What would the answer hold?
I don’t think the answer is really what you need; it’s more the act of doing it.
Of solving the riddle.
Yeah.
Maybe, in effect, the riddle was the fact that you had to make the band. And you’re solving it everyday by writing songs.
Yeah, and kind of getting closer to the answer. It’s got to be something unobtainable, because you don’t really want the journey to end. I don’t think anyone’s just going to wake up one day and think ‘I’ve found the answer to life’. The riddle is just like progression really. Going onwards and just not stopping. Which I suppose is kind of obvious and boring.
No not really.
I think in that attitude lots of things get thrown to a place where they move by themselves.
Trying to solve things?
Yeah, just moving. If you move quickly, you’re going to hit things faster, and with much more of an explosion that you would if you sort of stroll. And because you move quicker, things happen quicker. Like if you ride around London on a bicycle, the streets actually look like things you’ve never seen before. Well, they did for me anyway. I was riding around Pimlico and Victoria, and just because I was that little bit higher up, and I was going quicker, I saw things that I’d never seen before. You notice things quicker, and you forget things quicker.
That reminds me a little bit of that scene from Amelie, where she takes the blind man by the arm and walks him down the street, describing everything she can see and smell, really really really quick. Literally just down the street and across the road, and then she just leaves him.
And he’s just had his mind blown.
Yeah. So. If you had to send your own message, in a plane or a bottle or whatever…what would it be?
If I was to send a message?
Yeah. If you’d been the person sending the plane. ‘Hi Henry!’
‘How are you doing?’. Hah. No. I might put something really meaningful, like ‘Stop Now’. I don’t know, I don’t think that whatever I put would have any effect.
It may do…
It may do…but you have to consider the consequences of what you write. I think I might just put something really mundane…or something Biblical like ‘thou shalt forgive’. I dunno.
That’s not really that mundane.
No, it’s not is it. (chortle)
Do you want some biscuit?
For inspiration?
Yes.
Eat more wafer biscuits. Maybe I could put that.
I’d say that’s pretty good.
It’s pretty incredible. That’s as good as it gets really.
Onto some more vaguely related questions…What do you think was the best invention of all time?
Human life, really.
Was that an invention?
It depends what an invention is. I mean, it’s something that was created- whether that was by a bunch of apes, or through evolution, or some sort of weird rock minerals in the ocean…I dunno, what’s an invention? Something happens, somewhere. The good thing about human life is that it’s the core to every other invention.
Yeah, that’s true.
I don’t know. I mean, the bicycle is pretty good as well. It’s a great experience to nip around town on one.
Which bicycle though? Penny farthing…
Yeah, I think the penny farthing. Or the Harley Davidson.
That’s not so much for nipping around town on though…
More for showing off, check me out, on my bike. But yeah, one of the two- human life or bicycles.
That’s variety. What do you think, or hope, will be the best invention of all time?
An instant songwriter. So basically you can have an idea, like, I want to write a tragic lovesong about blah blah blah, and you just put it into the instant song writing machine, plug it in for a minute, if you want like a three minute song, or a minute and a half if you want more of the resolute, ten minute, tribal stuff, and then ‘ding ding!’ it comes out on a CD. You learn it, and there’s chord progressions transcribed on manuscript paper, and then you’ve got your song. And there’s a hit button, and you’re only allowed to push it one or two times a year, and that’s when it gives you a pop gem. I recon that would be quite cool.
Does that not take out all the beauty of the creation of art?
Absolutely.
Who would make the machine?
That’s a point…it would have to be some mega-genius. Get Ray Davies to do it.
But then you’d have no variety.
That’s true. It would all come out sounding like Waterloo Sunset.
You could say that essentially, that machine is a symbol for all other life and music that’s already happened. Because if you have an idea of what you want to write a song about, you look subconsciously, or consciously, for inspiration from all around you anyway, so it’s not all coming from yourself in the first place. So essentially, everything around you is the machine already.
Yeah. I think the machine is kind of a full stop on everything as well. It’s the end of progression. It takes everything and can absorb everything up to that point, but it can’t go any further, it’s only us that can do that. That’s kind of a bad answer.
No, not really. Because you do then have to take the song that it gives you and make it your own. Because anyone could take that song and do something different with it, and it could be awful or it could be brilliant.
The machine is just basically our brain, really. Like our brains are just a store of everything you’ve ever seen or thought was beautiful. It just offers you an answer, a solution. It’s your subconscious. A feeling that kind of gets stuck in your head for a long time. I think it’s a good feeling. It attracts other things. So by the time a few weeks have past, it’s bigger than it was…it grows.
Or you share it with other people and they help you out.
I don’t like doing that, I think it’s too personal. It’s almost like the other things that come around it are armour, so when it does come out it’s got skin, it’s protected.
What, the other musical elements?
Yeah, the arrangements, how the drum beat could be…but the main thing is the melody.
And the idea, and the message.
What you want to say, yeah. Well it’s not necessarily true, it’s true to me. Everyone’s got their own way. Some people can just cast things off, really carelessly, it’s amazing. Just naturally.
Do you know the song, ‘Love is just a Four Lettered Word’, Joan Baez sings it but Bob Dylan originally wrote it…and he was just kind of messing around on the piano or the guitar or something with Joan Baez, he just wrote it whilst they were hanging out…and then she covered it, and he heard it on the radio and rang her up and was like ‘wow that’s a great song, congratulations!’ and she was like, ‘it’s your song, you wrote it’. And he didn’t remember.
He forgot.
He is just such a genius that he can spew out songs like that. Or just really forgetful.
Or both. I don’t know.
I’d like to be able to do that.
To be able to do that?
Yeah. It happened sometimes, like not with songs, but you write a poem or something, or do a piece of art, and forget that you’ve done it, and when you look back on it you don’t recognise it as your own. And that’s the best times, because you can look at it completely objectively.
That’s really nice. I guess it’s hard to do with songs, because you put so much into making them, that when it’s over you want to get as far away as possible.
Yeah, with a song it can’t really be like a piece or writing or a drawing or something, you can’t do it wherever you are…
Well you can,
If you have long enough. A few more mundane questions. What’s your favourite breakfast cereal?
I used to be a massive cereal fan. When I was younger it was kind of all I ever ate…like five or six bowls a day. Lucky charms were like my…I used to love lucky charms.
Oh yeah, they were quite chewy.
Yeah, they had those marshmallow bits and then bits that were more kind of like…
Cereal?
Like wheetos…
Cheerios?
Yeah, like cheerios. That’s the one. I used to love the leprechaun on the cover of the cereal box, the lucky charm guy. He was quite inspiring.
I don’t remember the cover so much as the sweetness of the cereal.
I just think it’s a really great idea….’Lucky Charms’ (said in Irish accent) this kind of Irish cereal…and you felt really lucky, with all this magic stuff. And grown-ups hated it, because it was too sweet and sugary. And it’s not healthy in the least.
What do you think needs to be done in the world to make it a happier place?
I think people need to start thinking more about what they do. I don’t know, just making sacrifices, and realising that what they want isn’t always best for the situation. I don’t know. I think some people are really stupid…to me; it just looks like that’s the only possible reason why certain things happen. And if someone’s stupid, then maybe there’s something you can do, maybe there’s not. And if people make mistakes by their own set of judgements or values…it’s like what I said earlier, it’s silly to compare people, which I’m sure most people know, but if someone goes out and does things the way they see is right, but the more you can try and jump out of your own box and into someone else’s shoes, the better really.
I had a life changing moment the other day…well, it’s not that significant. But do you like Regina Spektor?
Yeah
Have you heard her song the ghost of corporate future?
No
It’s all about this business man, and he goes out and starts jumping in all the puddles with his shoes off, and it’s because he’s had a visit from the ghost of corporate future, who told him ‘people are just people, they shouldn’t make you nervous’. And it’s so simple, but for some reason I’ve actually mentally changed since listening to it. You have to listen to the whole thing really…hah.
I’ll have to listen to it, yeah.
Well I’ve been trying to spread the word, and it actually has been having an effect on people. The magazine’s non-profit, and when I’m out I sell them to people…and people are like…I love the world a lot of the time, but sometimes people are just so dismissive. You must get it a lot with your music- before people even know what something is they’re ready to dismiss it. But recently when anyone has been like that, I’ve told them to listen to the song, and given them a magazine, and I’ve got emails back saying how it’s changed their perspective on things. Which is really good. So you should listen to it.
I will, I will. You should play it to me.
I will, I will.
(chortle)Like one guy who didn’t like Wolfmother…he then went and listened to them.
I’m not too keen on Wolfmother. Do you like them?
Yeah I do. But then again, I like everything. Hah.
I just find them too macho.
Andrew Stockdale was really nice. And, he has an amazing voice and stage presence.
I think that they’re good. I just don’t believe in it.
You don’t believe in it?
No. When I look at them…It just doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just such a parody.
I suppose with a lot of heavier rock and roll, the lyrics can’t ever…well, they can mean something, but they’re not going to be as personal because they’ve got to fit the genre.
So many of the songs are just about sex. They’re basically just doing what Led Zeppelin did, but without the art of the skill. And even Led Zeppelin weren’t particularly masochistic.
They were extremely cultured.
Yeah, they had songs that were extremely sexy, but a lot of their stuff was based on J.R. Tolkien, and Lord of the Rings, fantastical stuff. And Robert Plant is as much of a woman as a man, you know…just the way he moves. There’s a lot of it in Australia, like The Datsuns or whatever, Jet.
Oh dear, The Datsuns were in issue one. Hahaha.
I just don’t like it. Cowboy boots and jeans so tight you can see their fucking bollocks coming out. I just find it so typical, like Man…Woman. You know. Is it really that simple? No, it’s not that simple. There’s a whole fucking spectrum in between that which is far more interesting.
Sometimes it is.
Yeah, sometimes it is, when you’ve had a few drinks or whatever.
You should read that. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense…
I’m just being assumptive about a band I know nothing about.
No, no. During the interview we were talking about how people compare them to the old rock greats, and kind of saying why not do it, if you can. But at the same time I agree with what you’re saying. It’s such a cliché.
You’ve got a platform.
The good thing about it is that it means that you can hear the music live, because those bands are doing it, and you don’t just have to get your Led Zep CDs out.
It’s definitely powerful, I mean, they’re popular, they sell records. It’s obviously got something. But I think if people are going to listen to you, then you should say something worth saying.
What else have we got…do you like the Black Keys?
I don’t’ know anything about them. I like The Mules. I know Ed, the drummer. He’s nice.
He’s playing at Reepham Festival. Would you like to play? Haha.
When is that?
26th July.
I’d love to.
(Sorry, small plug for Reepham Fest. Followed by much Travel travel talkyspeak. )
Do you know the WOOFF organic farms? You subscribe to the organisation and they give you the contact details for these farms all over the world, you go work on them for board and lodge.
I think my sister did something like that. It sounds good.
Well I think that’s kind of how we want to run our farm in New Zealand (life plan).
It’s a good idea.
I’m looking forward to it. (hah) Would you ever do that?
No. I don’t ever want to settle anywhere. I mean, the thought of it actually really makes me feel pretty sad.
What about less settling, more setting up a community base somewhere. I wouldn’t ever let something hold me back from moving on. I think until you’ve travelled and seen a lot of places you can’t ever decide where you want to be.
Yeah, that’s true. I quite like being alone. You get a lot done. I just think…I like company, but having that responsibility for other people.
I’m just so looking forward to travelling and having time for yourself. You don’t get it in everyday life. You probably don’t get it at all?
What, time on my own?
Yeah.
Sometimes. I went to Istanbul on my own, a couple of years ago. It was good.
What did you do?
I did a lot of drawing, a lot of writing, and just walked around and got a suntan…met some nice people. I ended up getting a bus through the night to a little town on the Dead Sea called Mazarin. I met some people and we stayed together, then I got the bus back, left, and that was it. It was good. But you can do that.
YOU can do that!
I suppose. But I’m responsible for the people in our band and our manager, who I really like.
It doesn’t have to be forever though.
No, I don’t think it will be.
(I meant the travel)
I’d like it to be. But not in the conventional touring, album, touring, album, kind of sense.
Once you have a bond like that with people it wont ever go.
Well things will come and go, and different points in our lives will require us to be different things, I don’t really know. Anything could happen at any point.
Maybe things would be a lot better if you got some time alone. It sounds so cliché, finding yourself…but when you come back together it would be stronger I think. Have you heard, in Bhutan, they don’t measure Gross National Produce, they measure Gross National Happiness.
Where’s Bhutan?
No idea. (chuckle)
In Indonesia or something? How do you measure someone’s happiness?
Well, I thought it was a lovely idea until I read how they do it. They just send out a questionnaire asking, ’How happy are you?’. On a scale of 1 -100 I think. And then they ask how happy you think your friends are, and your family. But what if you’ve just had a good or bad day?
Or it was your birthday.
It’s a flaw in the plan.
It’s a sweet idea isn’t it.
It’s the kind of thing you’d do if you were in a fantasy of if you had your own country… with a zoo full of extinct people…ah bugger…people. I mean animals.
I think people would have been better actually.
It would be huge.
That’s sort of what a prison is, isn’t it. Extinct people.
Yeah. That’s deep. How are they extinct though- are they dead to themselves?
Well probably most of them are. Well I mean, they’re not dead to the outside world, but…
They’re trying to make them extinct.
A place we just brush all the bad things away too.
Maybe that’s our new kind of evolution. Like people with a disability…I guess they would have died out, but now we put them in a mental asylum or whatever…trying to make a ‘purer’ society.
I think it’s just the way humans are. Like, you find someone who you think is incredibly beautiful, you fall in love with them, you have children. That’s making a purer society. You learn from the mistakes of your parents. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing actually. Well, it obviously depends on how you go about it, like Hitler…was wrong.
I watched this really interesting documentary once about how he sent teams of people out to Africa to take measurements of the local people, because he thought they were the origins of the Arian race. Even though they were dark skinned and dark haired. And he got them all measured up and tested, looking for some god like ancient roots…I can’t really remember the details. And did you know as well, it was said he was the greatest actor in all of Germany.
Actor?
Yes. His photographer, Leni Reisenthal said it. She did that legendary Olympics film in the 60s.
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.
And she did all of the Nazi propaganda. And basically, every bit of Hitler that anyone ever saw was him acting, and her directing. And he admitted it, he knew he was doing it. I found it bizarre. He could consciously act as a great speaker and dictator…but in real life…I watched this documentary on it and they showed the bits she cut out of the films, and he’s just crazy. That might have been the documentary trying to sway it, I don’t know.
What was he doing?
Just generally freaking out at people, acting really schizophrenically. Just generally acting like a mad dictator crazy….how you expect that he should have been acting, instead of the very controlled exterior that we are presented with, that he was acting.
That’s a bit bizarre.
Oh bollocks. We’ve only got three minutes left. What’s your most treasured childhood memory?
Um…building a tree house in…no, I never built a tree house. I always wanted to build a tree house. My most treasured childhood memory…I don’t know, there’s too many and not enough. I can’t really say. I’ve got the images but they’re not….Oh I know. I was in our living room, I was like seven years old, and there was like this bit of cardboard leaning up against the radiator, and I used to piss on this bit of cardboard, just because I could. And it would go down into the carpet and dry off or whatever.(I laugh here, a lot.) And I’d done it about ten times and then one day I was like dancing around in the living room and I went over to piss on the bit of cardboard and I didn’t see my dad at the other end of the living room, reading, and he looked down over his newspaper and was like ‘What are you doing!’ and spanked me over his knee. And that’s probably my favourite memory. I mean, it was really scary at the time. I mean, I’ve got sweeter memories, obviously, that’s just one I can never forget. Like there’s one of my parents room was kind of blue, like being on the water in a swimming pool. I don’t know, there are loads. But that’s one I can’t forget.

Interview & Words- Ali Hewson

Josh Ritter Interview

This man is fabulous. A Canadian song machine he is a real life Mister Singer. One Who Knows.

On a yellow day Luis and I brought some gifts along for Josh in a bid to encourage him to expose his cogs of songwriting genius. With the help of Kathleen the strawberry plant and some lovely Norfolk cider, we managed to discover what makes him tick.

(NB. Josh is now very happily married to Dawn Landes...a super bird for his nest.Yipee)

A: If you were a bird, which one would you be?
I would be… a bird of paradise.
A: Mmmmm, good choice. With your wings, where would you travel to?
I would stick pretty close to home. But I would, um that’s a good question, where would I go? I’ve been everywhere, so I don’t know. I would probably go and spend a little time in Spain, I’d probably go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks (chortles)
A: Well I suppose if you were a bird of paradise you’d be born out somewhere nice wouldn’t you.
Yeah I’d probably go somewhere snowy for vacation. Be a snowbird.
A: You might freeze though and all your feathers would drop out. It would be difficult.
It would be hard. The life of a bird of paradise isn’t as easy as they make it sound.
L: And you’d have to try not to get poached.
A: Or stuffed. What would you most like to experience in your life as a bird?
I’d probably like to raise a family. I’d have a nest and a nice mother bird there. A chick (hahahaa)
A: Where would you base your nest?
In a cave.
A: A dark cave, or a beautiful cave in the mountains?
Probably a crystal cave of some kind.
A: Oh that would be good! Kind of along the lines of your lady bird friend- which historical heroin would you go and sing for to pass your days?
Oh wow. As a bird, or just me?
A: Both?
I’m a big fan of Joan of Arc. She’s the one. She’s the one for me. Someday we’ll meet.
A: Whilst she’s burning away you could sing songs of woe to her.
Yeah, yeah. And before that we’d sing love songs together. It would be great. (Looks highly impressed at self). I like the hard to get historical heroines.
A: I bet she was a lesbian.
You think so?
A:I dunno. I was just saying it to disappoint you really. (hah) If you were a bird, you could only sing, so would you still express yourself through songs if you couldn’t have words?
Yeah, I think that’s right. If you couldn’t fall in love why would you have any music, what would you need it for? I mean love or dying, those are the things you need music for the most.
A:What about everyday living, or would you say that’s aspiring to love?
I think music is like a pill, like a medicine. You need it at certain times and other times you don’t. And when you need it, you really need it. That’s why a song is so great because it’s like a little pill that you can take for a time when you really need it. I always listen to a Leonard Cohen song called The Future whenever I drive into New York, I always need that right then- it’s the perfect song for that moment.
A:Are you going to go see him on his tour?
I would love to.
A:I’m seeing him twice
Are you really! Is he playing here?
A:At the o2 Arena. But he’s also playing at the Big Chill festival.
Oh my god.
A:You should try and go along.
I think he’s probably playing a lot in Canada. I would love to see him. That’s awesome. What’s your favourite song by Leonard Cohen? You’ll love him when you see him, he’s amazing.
A: In so many ways I love his older, gentler songs. But when he hits it with albums like I’m Your Man it’s just fantastic. I couldn’t choose a favourite.
L: If you did go to a festival, do you recon you’d be recognised?
Oh yeah, definitely. I’ve been to festivals where that’s happened but it might just be the big hair…
L: Because you’ve performed at Oxygen haven’t you?
Yeah, yeah
L: That’s a major Irish festival. I’ve read that you see Dublin as a second home? Because you have quite a huge fan base there.
Yeah, the Irish thing is kind of where I started you know, I started with the Frames, Damien Rice and those guys, and kind of got my introduction through them. So yeah, it’s definitely a second home. I’ve got lots of great friends there- really cool, happy people. Do you guys go there ever?
A: I went there once, two years ago. We had booked a hostel but we ended up only staying there a few nights, all the others we stayed with new friends. It’s quite expensive…but brilliant. I’d love to go back.
Kind of back on track to Leonard Cohen…say on your flights as a bird you found the bone of song, which songs do you think would be on it for you personally?
I think that all songs ever written would be on it. It’s kind of like religion or anything else; there was an original thing and then it kind of grew up and grew out. All songs are connected to each other.
A: It’s the same with stories
Yeah, just different combinations. It’s like the Rosetta Stone, there’s a key to unlocking all the language in the world, right there. And you can go from that to anything. It’s the same with song. Leonard Cohen said if he’d lived three hundred years ago he’d be the same person, just singing in a different language. You’d sing about love, god and war. What else is there, really. All the songs in the world have that.I think it’s odd that a lot of the pop songs now are just about love, and it’s love without any God and without any war…it’s empty in the middle. Not that it’s bad, it’s just that there’s a lot of stuff that you could sing about in pop songs, a lot of things that don’t get sung about.
A: Kind of relating to stories…if you could be any character out of any book, who would you be?
I’d be Huck Fin out of Huckleberry Fin.
A: Any particular reason for that?
I just really like him; I think he’s the quintessential American character. He wants to do good- sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. He tries hard. And he knows that there’s no answer to any problem, or any ethical problem, or anything that doesn’t come out of from what you tell yourself you believe in. He doesn’t look to God, or any figures in authority, he just kind of looks inside himself and sees what he believes. And he’s also really funny. I really love Huck Finn.
L: Do you think he reflects yourself at all?
I’d hope so. Most of the times I’ve gone to religion or authority figures for answers, I haven’t gotten the ones I thought were right, you know.
A: That might be if you haven’t thought it through as well. Often if you just go over something again and again you find the answers anyway. Especially if you are writing music…the answers will just come out.
Yeah, when someone gives you a definite answer it’s like somebody’s offering you a shortcut to something. And it’s like, you could take the shortcut and it would be really easy, but it doesn’t necessarily take you to the place you want to go. Though a lot of people are like that.
A: I suppose that’s how society has to work. People have to have easy answers and easy ways to do things and then they just live and then they die, then it all goes round in a cycle again.
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that that’s true for, definitely.
A: Well, it’s great if you’re happy to do that.
Huckleberry Fin, he braced the law over and over again, it’s a story of a guy helping a slave to escape. If you listen to what people had told him he wouldn’t have helped the guy escape.
A: Sometimes things have to be broken. Well, a lot of the time actually.
L: I was listening to your album, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter today. In ‘wait for love’, is it about a person who is kind of with somebody as a quick replacement for someone else they’re too impatient to wait for? What’s it about?
Well I was thinking about when you’re in love with somebody, and the things you do can be very similar to each other, just like the way you kiss, or the way you hold each other. But it’s not about that, it’s about being generous. It’s about someone being generous and not trying to make you into someone that you’re not and withholding their love from you. I wanted to pick out how sometimes you just have to wait for the right person, and that’s the hardest part. It’s easy to find somebody who’ll just hold it, but to hold it right is the hard part.
A: It’s like the answers to the questions, you’ve just got to wait for it to work out and fall into place.
Yeah, definitely, yeah.
L: Does that come from your own experience?
Definitely.(chortles) My on-going experience. Definitely for sure.
L: In ‘The Temptation of Adam’, two people are in a missile solo. I like the line about the oak tree…
Oh yeah, thanks! I was proud of that.
L: If you were in a missile silo, who would you most want to be in there with?
I think with that song, I dunno, there’s that moment of being in love where everything is perfect, and it’s not about real life or anything, it’s just about total stars in your eyes, and that can only exist for one, tiny little stretch of time.
L: Is that what you meant by saying it wouldn’t work out?
Yeah. It’s like the Garden of Eden or something. You could take all the religion out of the Garden of Eden story and say this is like two people who are falling in love, and for just a little stretch of time, it’s perfect. And then they start to discover things about each other, and things can never be the same. Being in the Garden of Eden is like being in a missile silo, where everything is in a climate controlled, sealed paradise. A little concrete cylinder way underneath the ground, and for a little while it’s perfect, but you know that it couldn’t last up above where there’s other forms of boredom- standing in line to get a ticket, or paying your bills, waiting to connect to the internet…
L: Everyday stuff just gets in the way. The stuff that makes up everyday life.
It is, yeah. When you think about some of these people that manage to do these amazing, huge things in their lives, and you ask them if you watch TV. They don’t have time. Its’ kind of amazing.
A: There are some good things on TV though.
Oh yeah, for sure.
L: I like documentaries.
I grew up without TV so I watch it when it’s around…
L: It’s kind of the same with me, I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch something, unless it was really really good. Was the idea of being underground in a bunker inspired by any fears of nuclear war, or anything like that…is that why you put those people in that situation?
Yeah, I was just loving this writer called Meryll Spark, she writes these great books where there’s a very definite ‘something is coming’; there’s a timeline, there’s a mountain that’s about to explode, you know someone’s going to die. She tells you at the beginning of the book that this guy’s going to die but you don’t know how or when, and that’s cool, because it gives you a certain space of time where something could happen. And you know when something happens that the story’s going to be over, but I really like that kind of feeling- just end it with a bang you know. But I mean, I’ve never been that worried about it, but where I grew up there’s definitely some spots where you don’t know what’s buried under the ground.
L: Does the earth upset you at all, what’s around you…how do you feel about the way human’s are?
I don’t think that humans are any different now to what they will ever be. I’m no socialist, I just think that people are people, you know. You can’t look at a grizzly bear eating a deer and not think that we are pretty much the same. People do what’s most convenient to them, and then they repent. In the words of somebody better than me. You’re going to do what you’re going to do. We’re in a very lucky place here in the first world to be able to make all sorts of moral pronouncements, but when you’ve got nothing to eat or nowhere to go, decisions are based on that, not anything else. That’s how I feel and I think things could go bad, or they could stay the same. But I don’t believe in a ‘golden age’, I don’t believe in people having an enlightening period or anything.
L: It’s a constant struggle for everyone really, all the time. Nature.
A: We’re always going to be looking for the same things. Looking to survive. Experiencing love and death. Bringing love and death back into it, ha.ha.
Yeah, somebody who has everything could have just as many existential dilemmas as somebody who has nothing. But that doesn’t mean they have to be running away.
A: Sort of along those lines, I’ve kind of noticed a recurring theme in your songs about modes of transport coming in and ruining something for the protagonist of the song
Yeah, yeah yeah.
A: Obviously, industrialisation changed the landscape of the world; do you think it would be possible, well I think it would be possible eventually, but do you think we’ll ever come round to living back like…
Agrarian…
A: Yep, do you think humans would submit to that?
I don’t think it’s a matter of submit. I think there’s a time when the world will obviously be limited. I don’t believe that we’re going to change our ways with fossil fuels until we run out of them. Then I think we’ll change. That’s the way I think it’s going to happen, as a cynic or…I’m not a naturally cynical person, I just think that’s how it’s going to be, because that’s how things seem to be riding. But I do think that the great thing is that things happen, we’re adaptable. We’re not necessarily adaptable from moment to moment, willingly, but we do learn to adapt, in the same way that a coyote would. We’ll figure it out as time goes on, and you know, maybe not all of us will, but…
A: You started your degree in Scotland, in folk and old roots music; do you think with the way the music trends are going that it’s circling back to music like that? Obviously there’s always going to be an undercurrent, but I’ve certainly noticed that in more popular music that people are exposed to, do you think it’s circling back to people finding those older roots?
I think that there’s so much music that’s just available now at the click of a button, that those people who are interested and are so inclined to find it in their own room without even going to a record store. It still passes on by word of mouth, I mean I don’t think it circles back, I think it’s always evolving in a direction. There’s no core to return to.
A: What about the use of it, as inspiration?
Perhaps, that’s true. I think every ten years or so that happens and there’s a revival. I don’t think it ever goes there to return and stay, it kind of circles.
A: Always evolving, like humans.
It’s not getting better, or worse, it’s just kind of returning over and over again, which is cool. It’s good for careers too, because if you have a long career of like forty years, you can come back every ten years or so (laughy laugh)
A: Do you think that’s what will happen to you in ten years?
I hope so! I think that’s the key. George Washington said that the secret to success is survival. And that’s getting harder and harder these days because of bands that come up and go. You even see it on myspace. They play some shows to like 20,000 people, then they’re gone, they just disappear. And if you can survive, if you don’t have to play to large groups of people, you can just play…
A: Just keep consistent.
Yeah, I hope.
A: This is a bit unrelated, but if you ran your own radio show, who would you have as your weekly slot to play?
Oh, I would have Tom Waits. (with much resolution.) I’d bring him in every week. I would love to be cohorts with him. I would say something, and then he would say something really funny. I’d be the normal guy, he’d be the crazy one. Because you always have one crazy guy.
A: Have you ever thought of doing a radio show?
No, I never have.
L:You obviously are a big fan of radio though.
I love doing notes from the road, I love writing stuff about everything. But I’d never thought about radio though.
A: You should do a show from the road.
It would be cool
L: A rodeo.
A: It would save you writing it…more environmental…no paper?
That’s great!
L: Do you do anything environmental, to change your impact?
Yeah, actually, I’ve just started this thing called 1% to the planet with some folks I know. Basically every year my company, which is a touring company, we give 1% of everything we make to this thing called 1% to the planet. They basically help me research environmental charities that I then give money to. 1% doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is. Especially with the organisation we have, a lot of money goes in, and a lot goes out, and there’s a little bit of money on the top that you can live on, but we give it everything we make. And that’s good. I love it. It’s the beginning for me.
A: We often ask bands about whether you can really do anything touring, like Radiohead who stopped effectively stopped touring to save emissions, but I think really that it’s for the greater good if you’re touring around and playing music…
It’s interesting, there are ways you can do it- but someone like me, I can’t afford to not tour. I have to tour to feed myself, you know, records don’t sell, nobody buys records. So you’ve got to go tour, and if you don’t tour, then you can’t support a band.
A: Have you thought of doing an un-venued tour? Nina Violet played at my house this year as part of a house party tour, and Willy Mason has done a house party tour too…
I started doing that, but I like to play in a venue when I know what the sound’s going to be like, and more than a few people can come. Willy’s a cool guy, and I think that might work better for him. And especially like… If I was playing at your house, that would be great, but there’s some people where it’s a different story…(chortle)

Interview- Ali Hewson & Luis Forte; Words- Ali Hewson

Yeti Interview

I realise that I look like a Beatles fanatic in this.

Song writing is obviously important to you as a band, is it an aspect that you all participate in, or on different songs, or what?

I guess it depends on the song; it depends on who started it.
Whoever sings lead on the song. Usually they write it. Our writing processes are pretty similar.
It’s just like the Beatles.

I have to say, I did turn to my friend during the gig and say that it was just like if the Beatles were together again. Almost.

Well…

In parts.

We would have twelve albums out by now.
And been a bit better rehearsed, tighter.

And you’re not eating cheese sandwiches on stage.

That’s because they haven’t given us any cheese sandwiches!
(John enters)
Apparently Ali thought that we were like the Beatles, in the way that we sound.
Really?

Well I know that everyone says it, but it’s true. You can just hear it in certain moments.

Maybe in a couple of songs, especially “Say it like you mean it”. We just ripped off the Beatles.
It’s not ripped off, it just sounds like them…

In the first magazine I put you on the Jukebox with ‘Catch 22’, “so damn malodorous of The Beatles.”

So do you like The Beatles?

Who doesn’t, really? Apart from the people who say they don’t just for effect.
(General murmurs of assent.)

I don’t believe it.

The Beatles were all very well, but they were just the seed of the great back that would become Boybands really.

I don’t get the whole Stones vs The Beatles thing. I like them both. Why do you have to love or hate something?

Well…the Stones were rock, The Beatles were pop.

The Beatles were very Rocknroll.

One’s Northern, one’s not. Same as Oasis and Blur.

I dunno, I think most music of that time just stands in a league of it’s own. You can’t compare the different bands.

So who do you prefer- Oasis or Blur?

I’m not a big fan of either.

What if you were pushed to answer, which one then?

I quite like that big piece of art that Blur had, it was in the portrait gallery.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So that would probably swing it for me.

Are you an artist?

Yep.

Oooo.

I had a life drawing class today actually. It’s really good.

Do you have a model posing?

Yeh, a man and a beanbag.

Was he naked?

Yeah, it’s life drawing.

What? But it doesn’t have to be naked?

I think it generally is. Naked people drawing. Drawing naked people, even.

No, that’s pornography. Prawn porn.

Or bath time.

So you’re a pornographer?

No. (chuckle) Might be in the future. (if only we knew then what we know now- Ed.)

[Jumble of words, something about plumbing.]

This guy was nice to draw. He had a slightly rounded belly and good lines. And really good legs like a greek statue.

Nice as in attractive, or nice as in nice to draw?

Just good to draw. We were doing white chalk drawings on brown paper, in blocks of light. If he’d had been really skinny it wouldn’t really have worked.

I’ve done a bit of drawing in my day.

Actually, drawing is going to come into one of the questions, so I might as well do it now.

I think that I should answer this actually, because I’m pretty skilled.

Skilled?

Yeah, because your fucking pictures in the studio are terrible.

They’re better than your pictures.

Actually Mark, you’re pretty good. Didn’t you do painting and drawing and stuff?

I was twelve.

You were twelve when you were at art school?

I was a man of mystery. I quit when I was fifteen. I decided I wanted to play football. (hoarse laughter follows)

What a career change.

Guitar’s third choice. Guitar’s third choice. You’re just unravelling the pages of mystery here.

You should write a song about it.

Would that not be a bit self-indulgent, to write about my pop career when I was twelve.

Not if one of the others wrote it.

(Someone begins to sing something that sounds like “my dream, what should I do with my brain”. I’m sure that wasn’t the words but hey, it’s lost in the digital vaults of time.)

That’s what the third album is going to be called…and each of us is going to write a song about our teenage rejections.

What kind of football was it that you played?

It was soccer.

What happened, did you injure yourself?

(Something about a joke.
Greg always makes jokes, really bad jokes.
That had actually never been said before)

Norwich Arts Centre didn’t give us any orange juice. Just soya milk. And no cheese with the watery warm meal either.

That wasn’t too hot, the quorn concarne.
Corn?
Quorn.
I had some in Sheppard’s pie, it wasn’t too bad.
(Man comes in, talks about tshirts.
Do you want to draw us naked?
The room we are in tonight is a DORM. As in we are all in the same room.
You’re shitting me.
So I hope you like it.
We’re paying £120 for that?
Is it like a big brother room?
There’s only four beds (ha ha ha)
He’s only on this tour to lure us in.
Yep, just for some kind of homosexual fun.)

Some kind? Is he leaving it up to you to choose? (Project ‘At Your Happiest’ talk talk tak tak tak- see website.)

Is that a spaceship?

It’s me, running.

With a football?

It’s actually a giant orange. I’m definitely the fastest.

Are you the fittest?

Sure for hell.

It looks almost like Chinese calligraphy.

Or Norman lettering.

You know in the Chinese ink paintings of trees and reeds and stuff

I’ve done that

Me too. And each branch is a character- like, a word. So the whole painting tells a story.

Have you been told your Chinese name, so you know what it means?

I was at one point. I think it was something strange like Soup Girl.

Soup Girl? All the Chinese names are meant to be about something that’s aesthetically pleasing.

So for example, my name has ‘light’ and it has a bridge in it, so it’s like ‘the bridge of light’.

My exchange partner Zhu, her first name was sunrise, because that’s what her mum saw when she was born, but her surname meant Pig. Sunrise Pig.

Really? Well the thing is when you have something like Pig, it can mean all kinds of different things. The word for pig can also mean pearl. So they’re quite different, because one is very aesthetically pleasing, and the other one oinks.

I wish English names were like that.

Well English names are different, because they’ve got more history. Chinese names aren’t really to do with history. It’s more of a puzzle. They’re a lot more aesthetic, and to do with how it sounds.

(Other drawings offered forward. ‘Is that blood or a ponytail?’)

On a lighter note,

What could possibly be lighter than the death of David Tenant?

What’s your favourite insect to eat?

What kind of a question is that? Who eats insects?

It’s in your fucking song! Insect eating man.

Apart from flies by accident, the only insect I’ve ever eaten is shot-put ants. Have you ever tried them?

I think they used to serve them in a pub I used to work in.

How much were they? And how many did you get?

They came with pudding. Chocolate covered ants.

Pudding?

Custard? Chocolate ants?

You like custard don’t you andy.
It’s my favourite dessert.
I bet we wont get any in our swanky hotel. We’re paying £120 per person, and sleeping in a dorm.

Per person?! You’ve been ripped off.

Yeah of course we have.
No way, we paid £220 for eight people. It’s still a rip off…but Travelodge.

You know Travelodge has got offers on at the moment for £19 a room?

But that’s the thing with Travelodge you get that sofa thing which isn’t a bed.
It isn’t so bad. You get good free stuff.
No, I like Travelodge. But certain members of the band stole stuff from Travelodge and were caught on camera. So we’re in their black books now.

Do you ever watch Flight of the Concords?

It’s rubbish. It is rubbish. Do you like it?

Yeah it’s funny. Have you listened to their songs properly?

Yeah, they’re crap.
Who?
Flight of the Concords.
It’s two kiwi dudes on BBC3 comedy. Set in New York isn’t it? And they’re kind of a band.

(Looks as though there isn’t any possible way this blurb can be elaborated)
Have you watched the actual songs, not in the series? It’s a bit less deadpan.

No.

You should.

Ok I will.

They’re really witty, and have brilliant timing.

Not like us.
No, we keep great time.
Like The Beatles in fact.
(John has finished his picture).
Is that a rosary?
It’s beads. Chanting beads. I decided to become a Buddhist.

How long ago was that?

Seven years.

What made you decide to do that?

I just felt there was something missing in my life.

Has it helped?

Yeah, absolutely.

Is it Buddhists who believe that desire leads to pain?

Yeah, that’s sort of old Hinayanda Buddhism, where you try and cut off all your desires. But the Buddhism that I practise,Mahaygana, sort of takes into account that you can’t…because that’s desire in itself, to cut out desire. But you can actually use the desires…

Why would you want to cut out desires? All types of desires?

Not all types.

Everyone has desires.

You’d probably die if you didn’t follow your desires.

Really?

What about when you’re hungry?

You’d die an inner death.
We never follow our desires. Like instead of doing something else tonight, we played the first show of this tour.

Did you enjoy it?

I did, yeah. I was saying, you said it was rubbish but I thought it was really good.

I didn’t think it was really good.
I thought Say it like you Mean It went alright.
It makes a change from playing everything the same every night.
As long as Ali thought it was alright.

I did, I assure you.

At the end of it, I realised that I wasn’t actually giving 100%, so in the last one minute I did.

The last one minute? (enthusiastically shouts BYE! THANKYOU!! Big smiley faces all round.)

I was giving it like 99%...
99%? More like 64%.
Bollocks.
60%.
You were all bopping around, I was bopping around more than anyone… I felt I was putting it on, the bopping up and down.
Booiing.

Does it ever come naturally? The Bobbing up and down?

Yeah it does. Just tonight it felt a bit contrived. Like I was doing it to enthuse myself slightly.
It depends on two important factors: How bouncy the stage is- some stages actually bounce and some don’t-

Your shoes?

Yeah, you can wear bouncy shoes too. And also if the music’s really loud and you’re getting into it. Then also the crowd. If they’re going up and down, then you just follow that I guess.
I bounce when I’m happy.
There were a lot of drunkards dancing tonight.
They were drunk?
Yes.
They’d jump to anything then wouldn’t they.
Probably…
(Graham finishes his ‘at your happiest’ picture)

What are you drawing graham?

That’s at his most happiest…(laughy)
It’s a kind of religion too. Called Pub.
It’s a pretty good self portrait actually.
So what have we got. We’ve got John chanting yay, Graham in the pub drinking, Mark killing David Tenant, and we’ve got Andrew…

With a giant orange.

With a giant orange…(chuckles)
What is he doing?
I’m chasing A Dream. A tangerine dream.
(chortles)
It’s obvious. I could have drawn a robot but that would have been cheating. So I drew a dream instead.

They look like they’ve all been drawn by five year olds.




Interview & Words- Ali Hewson