Interview with Is Tropical

PHOTOS BY SAKURA: http://www.rockphotographer.net

It’s 7.30 on a Friday night, and Liverpool’s Korova club is bustling the exact way you’d expect it to be following the end of the mainstream horror that is the nine to five working week.

Those familiar with Korova will understand that the thought of trying to find a band amongst a club this notorious as being a must-drink spot for band types, encourages paranoid suggestions that the next half hour could well be spent glaring incessantly at well dressed, cool looking people in the hope that they’re the band I’m here to interview.

But then, amongst a table littered with vanquished noodle boxes and busy laptops, sit Is Tropical. It’s fair to say that they stand out. Not that they’re dressed in an attention seeking ensemble that screams, ‘we’re in a band, yah’ - although they are wearing some beautiful looking leather jackets which we covet from the offset - it’s more their presence and demeanor. They have the sort of intriguing and attractive personalties that you notice from far across the room - warm and inviting, you can’t help but just want to high five them instantly.

Is Tropical - a name which bassist / vocalist Dominic suggests originates from a scouse friend of theirs who constantly used the phrase ‘is right’ - are a delectable onslaught of catchy, spontaneous, synth pulsating slacker pop. Their songs are pep-laden dreams bound for Summer time status as the tunes to blast at sunshine piss ups in the park.

They’re currently at the beginning of a grilling tour schedule - tonight they’re playing one of their final shows as part of a tour supporting New Young Pony Club, but from here they’ve also got non-stop dates booked supporting Good Shoes, followed by a further tour with The Big Pink.

Shit guys.

“Yeah...” groans synth maestro Simon, grinning ear to ear “it didn’t really plan out did it?”

“I’m sure we’ll get to the end of next month and just be like ‘Aah shit’”, adds Dominic, laughing.

Oh, piss flaps. But at least you fellas have a strategy of tour-time survival, right?

“Well, I think we’re learning that you can’t get absolutely wasted every night, otherwise illness comes on” quips Simon, sensibly. All eyes dart immediately on their poorly looking drummer Gary, who sounds close to coughing up an entire lung any time soon and punctuates the entire interview with exhausting sounding chest rattlers. Poor little lamb.

Simon continues, “We’re trying to plan it so we can stay with people that we know, and it kind of works a little bit. It’s always good to tweet. Tweet - and look out for lonely people. I think because there’s so many of us (on this tour) we can be a bit imposing to just stay in someones house. Half stay in the van one night and the rest stay in a house. It can actually be pretty good fun to stay in the van, it can be a bit uncomfortable but at least you can have a bit of a party. They’re usually the best nights - they’re the ones you remember.”

Onstage, Is Tropical have a visually captivating stage presence courtesy of some gnarly looking Bandit scarves tied around the lower halves of their face. I admit to being fiercely disappointed that they didn’t wear the scarves for the interview - bandit fetishism has officially found it’s peculiar, vulgar place in the heart of this lady, right here. So what’s happening with the bandit masks?

Dominic: We wear them just for the stage really - they help to separate us from the audience. We’re not like Daft Punk or whatever and just wear em all the time.

Simon : It’s weird because when you’re playing an in-store gig, like when we go back to London, it’ll go from us being in the store and drinking to suddenly having to put the masks on and then go onstage. I guess it’d work better if we got to play bigger places and then we could just appear and play a gig and then disappear.

Like a Stars In Your Eyes style smoke screened transformation?

They laugh, and nod in united agreement - “Yeah, just like that!”

Simon: I still think it works, I mean it was never done to just hide ourselves from any audience or to try and be horrendously mysterious, it was just something to make us look more interesting during the performance. It also means that you don’t wind up doing the sort of awful pouting band photos that a lot of bands do.

Gary: Plus it hides you dribbling on stage.

You like to dribble on stage?!

Gary: Yes. Yes I do. Every now and then.

Fair play.

Simon: First we made masks for the eyes - like bird masks and that, but just found them to be too impractical.

Gary: Yeah, they ruin your depth perception.

Simon: Yeah, you can’t see your guitar or your synth properly with a mask like that, but I think it’s important to have something which sets you aside visually from everyone else. It’s like when you see a band in a magazine and they resemble characters - it makes you wanna delve in a little bit more and find out more about them.

Dominic: It’s not even wanting to find out more about them - it’s recognizing that there’s a difference between the performer and the actual person.

Simon: True - it’s just interesting to, not put on a persona as such, but to create a different atmosphere. There’s also a lot of people who don’t do it visually but characteristically who when you meet them aren’t boisterous and are quite quiet but then when they get on stage they just change. They don’t need a mask or anything like that they just do it with their personalities and start going nuts and it really works.

Is Tropical began band life in the less than tropical and now notorious London squatter party scene, becoming renowned for putting on their own gigs - specifically in the now defunct Toilet Factory.

D.I.Y gigs are currently very hot shit indeed, with most major cities’ (Hello Leeds! Hello Bristol! Hello fair Liverpool!) turning their backs on the overpriced, poor sound quality of their local club based gig nights in favour of the cheapo, BYOB gig within a house party.

Simon: We wanted to create our own scene and not latch onto anyone else’s. When you’re wanting to play it’s just easier to put on your own gigs, especially when you get thrown on at half 7 in a shitty pub with a promoter who doesn’t do his job, you may as well just put your own on.

Any advice you care to impart with people considering throwing a gig in their house?

Simon: Make sure anything that can catch fire is wet.

Dominic: In a very sad way, thats probably one of the most vital ones.

Simon: Also, there’s like 40ft drops that we’d make sure to put mattresses at the bottom of - that’s an important one. And be prepared to find some weird stuff - like at one of our parties there was this turd in the very corner of the room. It was boxed off, and at no moment during that party could anyone have been left alone to have done it. There was always about a hundred people in that area.

What about when things get predictably way out of control?

Simon: Police have come into our parties before and just gone ‘alright, can you just try and keep it down?’ We’ll show them round to prove that nothing bad’s going on, and that it’s all above board, even though it’s probably not. So long as you’re not selling alcohol or anything like that -

Dominic : - Yeah, so long as you’re not making money it’s fine. It’s quite horrible sometimes, it can get to about half ten and there’s already hundreds of people there. We’d need to get our czech / polish housemates to sort out the riff-raff and then the police would turn up...

Simon: One time some big drug dealers turned up and wouldn’t leave, so one of our crazy housemates just started stripping off all his clothes and started to do a wank in front of them. They just ran out the building, they we’re like ‘this is just too fucking weird!’ and got out as fast as they could.

So you’re recommending that Purple Revolvers’ readership wank at party undesirables?

They laugh, shaking their heads apologetically, each mumbling their own version of ‘Yeah...suppose so’.

Oh Christ. We can already imagine a lot of ill-equipped, light weight indie boys turning up to A&E at 3.30 on a Sunday morning with the genital equivalent of a knee-capping following the publishing of this advice.

And with that frankly disturbing mental image stained boldly into our poor, long suffering brains, we give them a quick smooch and a hug goodbye and scamper impudently away wishing they’d become Bleached Hem's new BFF’s.

Sigh.

Listen to Is Tropical, look at some pretty pictures, buy merch and check out their full tour schedule on their Myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/istropical

Evol Presents: New Young Pony Club @ Korova *w/ Is Tropical and Teeth.

PHOTOS BY SAKURA: http://www.rockphotographer.net

Let’s set the scene a little. It’s approximately 28 hours until the clocks go forward to officially fly the fine beginnings of British Summer Time - whatever that entails, probably one day of absolute sun, followed by dozens of desperate attempts to spark a BBQ under a succession of light showers - and the past ten day forecast has been grey skies on grey bloody skies.

Yuck.

There’s ways to replicate the hot, delicious atmospherics of the Summer though, amongst all the remanding coat-still-on gloom. If you like the idea of waking up with skin more orange and leathery than a St Johns market knock-off handbag, you can always wile your hours away on the sunbeds. Alternatively, a bass heavy, electro pop, thunder raucous of a band night can also do the trick. Sweat drenched, dance related humidity and all.

Luckily the couple of hundred of finely dressed, radiant young men and women cramped into Liverpool’s Korova have opted for the latter tonight. And they’re in for an absolute, ridiculously high-charged treat that half makes you wish you’d worn some kind of beach wear instead of the usual Korova uniformed cardigan and / or leather.

Second support act Teeth - with apologies to first support act, the amazing Hallo...I Love You! who Purple Revolver sadly, sadly missed to grab some rat-nasty dinner - help to kick things off with amazing fucking aplomb. Front woman Veronica, a hoody-caped storm of she-howling irrepressible energy, conducts the set with a Bikini Kill style gusto of charisma, snarls and at times sweetly near-monotonous vocals. Drum skins get pounded to oblivion and a laptop bearing third member bobs around beside her, arse shimmying, grinning deliriously and button pushing rhythmic, pulsating electro melodies at the audience.

Veronica even bravely attempts a circle pit in the middle of the set but only manages to peruade the members of third support act Is Tropical, stood at the side of the stage, to bravely step in and run wildly about with her. The song ends and a terrified looking audience stare jaws agape at this bombastic youth who surveys the edge of the crowd, ‘Remember dong Geometry in school?’ she laughs, ‘this is just like - look!’ - she drags her hand around the edge of the semi-circular gaping void she’s just created - ‘a perfect fucking circle!’

Circle pit fear-defiers Is Tropical take to the stage next. Managing to accomplish some outstanding on stage visuals thanks to some very dark mood lighting, back projection of tropical scenes and faces hidden by fantastic looking bandit scarfs, their set is a pep dominant, synth-infested, lyrical slacker-pop fest.

Particular set highlights Seasick Mutiny and When O’ When are prime examples of the smile inducing casanova indie charms Is Tropical have to offer. Seasick Mutiny - a synth-convulsed, cheerful swagger of a tune belts on menacing and bass-jovially divine, whereas When O’ When provides mind defacing catchy hooks, and doss Parisian waltzing which bursts into a fervent, hustling pulsation of anthemic addictiveness.

It’s no surprise that following a rare succession of such awesome support acts as this, that the audience are riled up and crowd crushingly anticipative for New Young Pony Club.

Christ alive, they’ve barely played even half a song and the audience are bustling wildly amongst each other, it’s packed so deep and so eager for the trip in here that you literally can’t move without grinding up against some absolute total stranger.

Front woman Tabitha is dominant, stunning, raw - a one woman chemistry set of fiery, snaking movements, intent on making sultry, humble eye contact with every appreciative person in the audience.

Their set tonight is perfect. Songs off Fantastic Playroom sound re-worked and fresh - their sound at times even resembles the bass bleating, more tropical sounding of Bow Wow Wow’s back catalogue (not least of all because of Tabitha’s new hair stylings closely resembling that of Bow Wow Wow’s front woman Annabella Lwin). This is most evident on Hiding On The Staircase, in which the more exotic elements of the songs original structure are drawn out and exaggerated into a dance-o-matic, bass heavy dream. The chorus and hooks are given a bigger role and embellished into infectious, repetitious statements.

New single Chaos, too, is another prime example of NYPC prowess for performance. Loud and powerful - melody and chorus sound brighter and bigger, and with an intimate pronouncement of personality blasting proudly and uncontrollably through.

The crowd is a sweaty, make up smeared mass dance off by this point. Tabitha pauses breathlessly between songs to thank the audience again and again, and to taunt them into a further fevered excitable glory.

‘I just want to say how amazing it is that so many girls have come to the gig tonight...’ she says at one point, looking genuinely delighted by the fact - and rightfully so, it’s still incredibly rare to attend a gig in which more than half the audience are bloody female.

A cover of PJ Harvey’s deconstructive gender role classic Dress is a nice addition to the set, and non-surprisingly one which the audience laps up. Impassioned and with NYPC’s style still imprinted all over it - the songs delivery is forceful and defiant, but never loses touch with the bands five man mission of dance induing excellence.

The set finishes in a pit of sweaty, over-exerted exhaustion. The crowd are red faced and wilting and Tabitha is panting away on the floor of the stage with a towel over her face. Heres hoping that this Summer is even half as hot or as spring-heeled as tonights unintentional replication of it has been. We might have to all quit our day jobs and resign ourselves to sun soaked, dance ridden leisure for a couple of months if it is. Perfect.

New Young Pony Club official: http://newyoungponyclub.com/

Download NYPC's new album The Optimist here: http://bit.ly/crA70B

Teeth Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/teethdance

Is Tropical Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/istropical

Evol on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8926329069&ref=ts

Important Life Lessons (from 90's music videos) - Part 3

You’ve Got It (The Right Stuff) is really quite the sweet ‘bros before hoes’ morality tale on the surface. But if you’re willing to really dig deeper, and Gods knows Bleached Hem has gotten good at digging holes for itself lately (Re: Cycle Sluts From Hell), then you’ll realise a far darker ill-morality tale with many a murky, unwanted lesson to be gained from it.

Let’s begin with the whole bros before hoes issue. I mean, it’s that age old shitter of meeting the pal of your dreams, sharing a few scandalously magical months joined at the hip and playing old Mega Drive games round at theirs 5 nights a week, and then BAM! Motherfucker meets a new ‘special friend’ and before you know it you’re relegated to the once a month meet up slot once reserved for their poor, suffering mother.

See, that’s the great thing about New Kids. Here they are, singing this song about things going pretty damn smooth with their new respective lady friends, but - hold up son - they’re still finding the sweet time to rock it with their boy chums.

Look at them - goofing off, joyriding in supposedly stolen cars and spending the rest of their free time co-ordinating heavily choreographed in sync dance routines with each other. Damn. That’s what bromance is all about - being totally in sync with each other. To hell with that totally rad young lady. They’ll call her back when they’re done singing at each other, Godammit. Bitch can wait.

But then, look a bit closer and the whole thing starts resembling a pop video rendition of Larry Clarks epic aids ridden, teenage sex-terror film Kids (http://tinyurl.com/cwx7dk). Especially when they start pursuing that poor outnumbered trio of local underage girls and chase them into a bloody cemetery. I mean, come on New Kids - we know we’ve probably got bras older and with more sexual experience than you guys but still - that isn’t how you win a girls heart or even legally get into her knickers. In fact you’ve taken the whole bros before hoes principle to a totally dangerous new level.

The lessons we can take from this are so incredibly important that we’re gonna have to break it on down for y’all - New Kids style. Uh-oh-oh-woah-OH-OH!

One: Gentlemen. Bros before hoes = yes. Just don’t let the friendship enter Chasing Amy ‘I think we all need to sleep together’ territory. Especially in cemeteries. And especially with underage girls. And super especially if they look terrified out of their poor naive wits. Poor lambs. Get a grip fellas. You can take one night off a week from the lads to woo, romance and tap that ‘right stuff’ without turning it into an ill-fated group hang. We all know how they end, and so do the Police.

Two: Ladies. If your beau isn’t answering the phone and is turning up to your dates with his whole baby faced posse of jive limbed loser friends - get some self respect and ditch the chump. If you continue to see him, it’ll only end with you becoming a beer caddy during Friday night X-Box live playoffs, and you getting drunk and copping off with that freaky looking one in the hat in lieu of actual affection from your genuine boyfriend. And that is science fact. NASA did research.

Three: Stay outta the cemeteries, for Chrissakes.

Four: Shredded jeans and Bauhaus t-shirts make you look totally badass. Irrespective of age, badass achievements, and the fact that you’ve blatantly got no fucking clue who Bauhaus are, you ignorant pissing poser.
This, again, was also researched by NASA.

Five: We totally thought New Kids On The Block were dreamboats when we were five. But then, that’s exactly the kind of shit which boys like New Kids want you to think. In retrospect, they’re horrific, disturbing, sinister and haven’t got half a brain cell or even a quarter of good intentions between them. So err....what am I saying again? Oh yeah. Don’t have crushes on anyone. Ever. They only let you down. Yeah. Something like that.

Don't Mess With Cycle Sluts...

Fuck. I always have to go and punch above my weight.

CUE WONDER YEARS STYLE VOICE OVER: Having posted the vital life lessons to be favourably learnt from the amazing Cycle Sluts From Hell up on Purple Revolver, I've discovered some of my own vital life lessons from having been a grammatically incorrect smart-arse with awful taste in men.

1. Don't mess with bikers.

2. America HATES me.

3. Even bands with one hit to their name from the 90's still google their old band daily for news, so don't fucking start mouthing off. They will kill you.

4. Gotta hand it to them, they make some good points. Good game Cycle Sluts. Well played. And for the record, most the time I wish I were a beer too.

I doubt these comments are the end of it. If you happen to notice a leather bound bunch of dames wearing a pair of tits for ear muffs around NYC any time soon, you'll know what became of me.

Important Life Lessons (from 90's music videos) - Part 2

PART 2:

CYCLE SLUTS FROM HELL

I wish You Were A Beer

Fuck, we’ve all been there. The precious shrapnel the dole considerately threw on the floor for you just 2 days ago has already perished mysteriously from your wallet, you’re stuck in some hipster club at 3am and there aint nothing left for another goddamn bevvie.

And then what’s this?! That fucking tattooed, plaid on plaid, latfh.com reject you’ve been giving the glad eye to all night in the hope of obtaining one last charity ale, has decided to fucking bolt it? Now!?

Hey, fuggedaboudit!

What Cycle Sluts From Hell fail to realise is that they’re not really doin themselves many favours in the ‘hey, buy me a drink, lover’ department. Sure, leather crotch-hoisting catsuits might go rad with that badass, chain gang look you’re going for, but at the end of the day most of the poser boys you’re singing to are big time adorable sissies at heart and TERRIFIED of sexually aggressive madams such as yourselves.

Also, it might help if you weren’t stood directly in front of the bloody dance floor smoke machine all night. You may as well rub vaseline on a camera lens, take a self-portrait and upload it onto a dating profile on Hipsters-need-loving-too.com. No-ones gonna want to approach such a visually ambiguous so-and-so at that time in the morning, lest they wake up next to Kerry Katona on a comedown.

Plus, you know what ladies, there’s nothing wrong with being nice. The whole passive-aggressive foreplay thing died out sometime swiftly after Fatal Attraction happened. It’s okay to be attracted to posers - for the most part they can be pretty fucking hot. You know, if ironic mustache’s and boys in bands are your bag, like, so jog on from your aggression and stop telling the poor bastard to shut up - I doubt the poor bloke’s even had a chance to get a word in yet, the way you’ve all been goin on.

But we totally get it. There’s been many an arduous, embittered gathering of early morning ill-advised flirtations when we’ve mistakenly locked lips with a bloke in a Folk Implosion t-shirt and an upturned ‘Suicidal’ trucker cap when really all we need is one more bloody beer, and we’ve just not paid enough attention to our actual bloody needs. You know, like those times when you gorge on 3 bars worth of Dairy Milk when what you actually need is a large glass of water. Or is that just us? Anyway, the point is, we’ve been there sisters, we’ve been had, we’ve been done, we’ve been used and abandoned in our hours of need too! But you don’t bloody well see us going round in a leather studded bathing suit and head banging our mullet perms about the place in protest.

So what can we learn from Cycle Sluts From Hell? If you aint got even a half decent face, no-one’s gonna bloody well waste time trying to look at it - in fact video directors will probably persuade you that dark lighting and heavily shadowed visages are what all the bands are doing these days, posers have feelings too and Christ alive, don’t overdo it on the make-up. We can’t tell if you’re a Cycle Slut or that evil red-hooded gnome from Don’t Look Now. Sinister. Even Marilyn Manson has his boundaries, and they stop well before yours. And you know it’s a dark Cycle Slut day in Hell when you’re taking lessons off Marilyn soft-lad Manson.

Fuggedaboudit.

Bleached Hem does a Voodou

Bleached Hem decided to get some totally out of character beauty therapy done by those rad visual makeover genius' at Liverpools' Voodou salon on Bold Street. With shocking and frankly disturbingly self revealing results....

This is way out - way, way, way, WAY out - of my comfort zone.

For starters, I’m probably hairier than some of the men in this place. I like to use feminist credentials to back this up, but really it’s because I’m a lazy little rat and at the moment am trying my damnedest to repulse and repel people.

Have you ever had your nails done before? The nice lady prepping the extensive nail buffing, shaving, clipping, shining, and plastic apparel asks.

No, I reply, trying my best to think up an adequate reasoning as to why a woman of 24 has never gotten round to fixing up her paws. But I’ve got nothing but the poverty card - Too skint, I say, smiling half-heartedly.

And what about a facial? She continues, whilst buffing the shine off my natural, flava-less claws.

I stare at a patch of fag-stain yellow on my index finger. I am vile. Please - buff it off. NOW.

No, never had a facial either. To be honest I’ve never even been a hairdressers before.

She pauses with incredulity, as anyone should do - it’s a fucking achievement to have survived this long in life without paying someone to sort your mane out.

Me mums a hairdresser - I just always got her to do it.

She nods with a slight look of the impressed on her face. But it could just be gas.

I mumble something extra about how there’s no money in writing and how hard it is to survive on nada, but trail off when I realise that I sound like a grade-A prick.

So, we’ve got you signed up for a Brazilian wax for today too. I’m guessing it’s your first time for that as well is it?

Yessum, I gulp.

I’ve avoided this procedure for years. Kind of because I never wanted to wind up in a situation when I was sleeping with a man who actually preferred me resembling a pre-pubescent in my downstairs smut factory, but also because I never wanted to seem like I was trying too hard.

Being a little natural in that area bears the same kind of casual nonchalance that turning up on a date in a dirty auld t-shirt dress and some torn tights does. Couldn’t give a shit, lad. Take it or leave it.

So do you know what a Brazilian involves then? she asks, raising her eyebrows in delight.

Err...not really.

Well, it basically means you have absolutely no hair on your labia or the surrounding area - we leave a small strip, but that’s it.

The labia! Christ! It’s only 11 in the morning and already I’ve wound up in a situation when the grooming of my sodding labia comes into the conversation.

It’s all good though. Some 45 minutes worth of having someone preen and buff all the crap off your nails and replace then with synthetic loveliness is more therapeutic than I’d at first have envisioned. In fact, I’m pretty fucking zen right about now.

And then I’ve got talons. This is how Catwoman must feel! I think, victoriously undermining the glamour aspect of the moment with a momentary blurb of geek-culture that my mouth thankfully refuses to say out loud.

I feel pretty fucking ghetto, actually, with talons. Part of me wants to ask her to get some press on crystals out and spell out ‘THUG 4 LIFE’ above the cuticles. Or get some leopard print stickers over the top. But I successfully curb the idea. It starts with ‘THUG 4 LIFE’ - it ends with getting your weave torn out at a freestyle hip hop night for calling someone a ‘sistaa’, and failing to reference a Lil’Kim lyric in retaliation.

We then move on to the facial. For some reason this means me having to take my top off, which sounds like the kind of cheap rouse boys use to see yer tits - ‘come round and hang out if you want - but you’ll have to take your top off if you do. The central heatings gone haywire again’...err, sure. But it’s actually all part of a supremo rad plan to make me feel FUCKING BOSS.

It’s less a facial and more an elaborate attack on every yucky, ugly detriment life has decided to shit on you over the past few weeks. Shoulder, neck, chin, cheeks, nose, forehead, ears - all massaged. Goodbye mean bitch at the dole! Farewell bank charge for spending over my overdraft! See yer later guilt, loathing, envy and failure! Good riddance rubbish boys! Adios feel-better drink binges! It’s so unbelievably good, I almost ask her to marry me.

She gives me a skincare check-up - turns out living on a diet of extreme-caffeine dependence, carefree alcoholism, coco pops and Drum Gold rollies does diabolical things to the skin. Congestion. Extreme Dehydration. Breakouts. It is a litany of the fact that I am probably going to age haggard and sallow. Like that dude from Motley Crue with that spinal disease and bloated liver who pretty much has to play guitar out of a wheelchair these days, with a face like Grandpa from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fuck.

She lights some incense and candles and turns out the light. This is more romance than I’m certainly ever used to. Perhaps it’s all a clever plan to help me take my knickers off for the Brazilian later.

And then I’m left for a sweet, solitary 20 minutes with some kind of heavy, delicious face mask on. I can hear the Voodou Spotify playlist upstairs banging out some high-five worthy contemporary pop classics, and begin to wonder what would happen if that creature from Cloverfield suddenly attacked Liverpool.

Holy fucking crap.

And I’d be down here with a towel covering my tits and lord knows what on my face. What if I had to run?! What if those beastly little creatures who make people explode in that movie like the taste of face masks?! What then? What THEN??!

What the Christ? Where does this crap from? Relax. You. Freak.

And then I nearly doze off, awakened only by the light being switched on and the mask being scrubbed off my face.

I don’t want to be waxed now. The idea of flashing my wanny at someone whilst they strip hot wax covered hair off sensitive areas is the last thing my newly discovered sense of enlightenment needs. I’m zen, man! Don’t ruin my buzz!

But it happens. I walk into a different room and am left to de-robe my bottom half and replace my underwear with a rather fetching disposable thong type thing and lie down on the bench.

There’s a lot more teamwork involved than I’d initially thought (teamwork is dreamwork, guys!), mostly involving pulling my skin tight to avoid ‘bruising’ (don’t bruise my labia, for Chrissake!) whilst the beauty therapist administers the wax and yanks, pulls, and tears hair from my poor little body. I feel like I’ve betrayed the poor thing! I begin to worry that it might go on an orgasm strike in revenge. Please. God. No.

It’s not too painful actually. I can think of a lot worse. That doesn’t mean to say that there aren’t noises erupting from my mouth which I hope to happy fuck I never hear again. The most vile thing about said noise is it’s ashamedly twee quality - lots of ‘Oooh!’s and ‘Yeeesh’s, at one point I’m sure I even scream ‘Blimey!’, which is a word I wasn’t even aware was in my vocabulary.

If it get’s too painful at any point love, or you just want to take a breather, then just let me know. Oh, and feel free to scream and swear to your hearts content - they can’t hear you upstairs.

In Voodou no-one can hear you scream.

Usually such a statement would mean an embraced free reign of noise. Every filthy word I could think of parading out of my mouth thick and fast and at decibels requiring health warnings. But I barely even muster a ‘MOTHERFUCKAAAAA!!!’ - instead it comes out all shocked and whimpered, like ‘mumfugger’. I’m polite. POLITE.

There is much laughter, obviously. I probably cussed more during the massage than I am now. I am an epic failure of bad-ass proportions. Whatever you do Ms. Voodou - just don’t tell the kids - it’d break their hearts to think their hero wasn’t the potty mouthed, discordant nightmare she makes out to be.

And then it’s over. Relieved, and frankly embarrassed, I start to sit up.

Oh no - not yet. If you just turn over, I’ll do your bottom.

EXCUSE ME?? You’ll do my WHAT?!!

There’s bits of hair that we couldn’t reach from the front, She smiles, It won’t take long and it wont hurt.

A wave of shame passes over me. I can’t even discuss this part of the day - I made a mental note the second there was arse to hand contact to erase it from my mind forever.

And that’s that. Harmless, really. Well, I mean - I feel a little violated. But in a good way. And what’s more I do feel like a million, trillion, dirty bucks. My face looks pure - PURE! I look the most sober and healthy that I probably ever have after the age of 14.

And also - the pussy-do looks good, man. Not nearly as sleazy or low-rent pornographic as the radical feminists had me believing. In fact, I dare say it's tasteful.

And like a wise old drunk used to always say to me, right before she got dementia - Sweetheart, how can they pick you flowers, if you don't trim the lawn? She was so right, that one. SO right. This one's for you, Ethel.

So yeah. big time high fives to you, Voodou. I’m frankly shocked that my face, nails and fanny didn’t destroy the equipment you used on it...but Christ, it survived and so did I. Let’s be pals, shall we? Yeah? Rad. See you next time buddykins. xoxo

Music Video Reviewwww: Lady Gaga: Telephone feat. Beyonce

Following some less than complementary statements made against Lady Gaga during our interview with Siobhan Fahey, mostly concerning the grave, awful possible truth that Gaga is essentially a fantastically presented version of a terrifically turgid song, it seems apt that Telephone (Feat. Beyonce) could well be an immense example of this fact.

But don’t believe the hip anti-hype.

I mean, Paparazzi was pretty awesome (mostly because we like all the support we can get, musical or otherwise, for stalking the objects of our affections) and Lovegame too was a filthy little treat (anything you can crotch-grab along to is A-Okay in our books)...oh, who are we kidding, maybe she is bloody awful but this is true love. Unconditional. Gaga could cover a turd in shoulder pads, mickey mouse sunglasses and record it passing through a sewer for 4 minutes, and we’d still find a guilty pleasured way to dance to the end mix.

Telephone, in that respect, is quite the deliciously polished turd. In fact, it’s such a deliciously polished turd that it’s practically gourmet. They’d probably sell it in Harrods with a price tag only Mohamed Al Fayed himself could afford.

The song is essentially an elongated drunken text message set to one helluva conflated post-mix of fabulous aural tack. It’s also totally irrelevant. The song could be preaching the genocide of kittens, and we still would have attentively watched the video 5 times in a row.

Christ - the cigarette wrap around shades? Diet-coke can curlers? Police tape lingerie? I mean, it’s a cartoonish exaggeration of a Sunday morning down at Liverpool 1, sure, but I sure as fuck don’t look forward to wearing any normal clothes ever again after seeing that fine array of beautiful absurdity.

Richard Branson too must be bloody glad-happy that his mobile phones are allowed to be smuggled imperviously into prisons these days, eh? I mean once inmates the Western hemisphere over check out the kip of that LG being practically stink-fingered out of Gagas crotch, they’ll all bloody want one! Nice work Branson. I can see why you’re so rich.

But have you even listened to the song, Dickie? Bitch can’t get no signal! Doesn’t sound like your phones are providing the service they should be. But even if she could get above a one bar, she certainly wouldn’t fucking answer you - you lout - she’s too busaay cabbage-patching to Xanadu or Loose Joints or Christ knows what else by now. Unlucky.

In short: Pussy Wagon - we love you. Tarantino pastiche - we love you. Psycho jittering editing - you’re unecessary, but we love you. Gaga vagina shot - we applaud you. Death by honey? Sandwich making?! Tank Girl style cartoonery!!? Meer cat dance routines?!! The costumes! The dialogue! The make-up! Oh my!

Perhaps the prison guards sum it up best when, having copped a flash of Gaga’s Vay-gaga, they say:

“See, I told you she didn’t have a dick...”

“Too bad...”

Too bad indeed. We’d be all over that shit if she did.

Gaga. Beyonce. We salute you.

Important Life Lessons (from 90's music videos) - Part 1

DJ JAZZY JEFF AND THE FRESH PRINCE -

GIRLS AINT NOTHIN BUT TROUBLE

Not to get the spanners out and re-open an old and under-utilized rumour mill, but well, anyone else remember those Will Smith gay rumours? Scientology...sham marriage...Hollywood rent boys...all that onscreen Fresh Prince Of Bel Air chemistry with Carleton?! Boy oh boy.

Girls Aint Nothin But Trouble, in retrospect, provides a whole lotta bubble to that squeak.

I mean, for starters, Fresh - you always were close with yo’homeboy Jazz, aint nothing wrong with that, but when you release a song publicly attempting to start a heterosexual coup against the female race through rhymes with said homeboy, you gotta start to worry.

For starters, this ‘Exotic Elaine’ you speak of - any broad with an alliterative double barrel name featuring a precursor adjective of a slightly saucy nature, is not one to be trusted. Particularly when homegirl looks of the same genetic ilk as RuPaul, dresses like a streetwalker and wears a weave that Marie Antoinette would have deemed overkill.

And Fresh, everyone knows, if you’re paying a ho to hang out with you she’s basically into casual prostitution, and if you’re flashing the dollar about then it’s within a mutual consensus that you want some smart price loving, and she wants to buy a tuna steak for her dinner tomorrow night. So whats all this about you freaking out when bitch finally starts getting aptly ‘fresh’ with you?

“She started grabbin all over me, kissin’ and huggin’ - So I shoved her away, I said, ‘You better stop buggin’”

Wait - what? Seriously - FRESH - let’s get real here. This is your argument as to why straight men everywhere should ‘remember (your) rhyme and get the hell away’ from girls? Christ. If you don’t want a slot machine to pay out, then don’t ply it with your pennies - IDIOT. And as for her/he screaming ‘rape’ on you at the end of the whole thing, well, that kind of a story might hold up in the patriarchal fun house of the law courts, but it sure don’t fly within the rhymes of a pop video. No. Sir.

Another lesson we can learn from Girls Aint Nothin But Trouble, is that one should never trust a broad who interrupts a crucial Mike (who??) Tyson fight / casual tequila binge to drag you back to her demonic, satin sheeted, Backdraft homage of a bedroom for no good dirty deeds (girl, you cookin a BBQ in the bathroom, or what? Crack open a window fo’Chrissake).

In the very unlikely scenario that a fine honey hunts you down at one of your more pitiful, lonely, drunken moments and offers you no-strings sex on tap, it’s probably only because she’s got her no-good hulk of a beau due home at any second, and she’s lookin for either A) a lameo, dreadful threeway B) an extra hand to get E4 to work on freeview or C) to get grave biblical vengeance on said beau for that RuPaul looking weave she found in the backseat of her Toyota last night.

Either way, you don’t want in. Just look at the Fresh Prince! Look at him! Outside in the snow in his goddamn knickers.

Should you find yourself in a similar situation, we highly recommend taking the cowards way out a la Fresh Prince. No-body likes a hero. Just look at R-Kelly - hiding in a closet with a baretta hoping to either shoot, stealthily hide or opera your way out of a scenario does nothing but escalate the situation.

Although, admittedly, hiding in a closet does work wonders for some situations huh Fresh?

Whatever, anyway - the main lessons to be learnt from Girl’s Aint Nothin’ But Trouble? Wearing La Cox Sportif for a date will encourage your girl to hide inside her house for three hours till you go-the-fuck-away (and don’t stand on the step and wait for her - even TV licensing officers have more self-respect than that).

Do decorate your bedroom walls with crudely painted pictures of Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, and the lyrics to your latest rhyme. It’s totally rad and will NEVER look dated.

And finally, don’t over-compensate for a hidden homosexual agenda. The fine honeys hate it.

Interview with Siobhan Fahey

Most of you will remember, fondly and with a skipped heartbeat of adoration, Siobhan Fahey as the incredible glam-goth figure from Shakespear’s Sister’s video for their big hitter of a single ‘Stay’.

Visually arresting with a vaudevillian array of dark make-up paired with a sparkling dominatrix catsuit, crown of glittering thorns and facial expressions spanning the sinister and the seductive, Fahey was a subversive breath of fresh hair in a stale industry of uninspired pop music. The song too was pretty fucking amazing. We played it till the vinyl was practically transparent.

Calling from Los Angeles over a particularly sketchy Skype-line, we’re discussing the transition Fahey made between the mainstream, bubblegum pop stardom of Bananarama to the slightly subversive pop artist she became with Shakespear’s Sister. Does she think mainstream pop is starting to finally experiment again with previously underground genres and darker themes?

“I do think there’s signs of that again” she begins, her tone thoughtful and her voice beautifully sultry, “I mean, God - pop music’s become a dirty word because of Pop Idol and manufactured pop taking over the chart and the radio in the past ten years. It’s been quite horrific really, so it’s refreshing to see people come along who look more interesting and sound more authentic, writing their own stuff.”

“Whenever the World gets too marketed, and too money obsessed and too status obsessed, then you get a reaction to that, I think. People are sick of manufactured rubbish now - the recession’s a great leveler. Art always gets more interesting in a recession”.

Anyone in particular that she thinks is pushing those boundaries?

“There’s no-one really that I find particularly amazing, to be honest with you. The closest thing I’ve come to being intrigued is La Roux.” She pauses, “And obviously Lady Gaga looks amazing, but her music’s appalling. It sounds like Hazell Dean! WAKE UP WORLD!” she declares emphatically, sniggering, “It’s style over content, she’s got an amazing voice but so do a lot of people down the pub, you know?”

Yowza. For some reason we imagined Fahey as intrigued as the rest of us by Gaga’s sexually aggressive stage performances and unrelenting visual style. But now our eyes are open - maybe Gaga really does just sound like ‘Eurotrash from the late 80’s’, as Fahey gigglingly puts it. Maybe we have been suckered in by style - again. Bollocks.

Fahey herself is an incredibly stylish lady. You can always count on those with punk rock ethics to spearhead an incredible sense of individuality with artful, expressive fashion choices, and to hell with what everyone else is wearing.

“Being an old punk, I believe in your right to look like an individual and express yourself in the way you look. I don’t spend a fortune on clothes - I’m not into the whole idea of wearing labels...” she pauses before laughing warmly at herself, “Although I do make the exception for Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen! Right now I’ve got this really fantastic McQueen suit with amazing space-age shoulder pads on a very narrow cut, like early Roxy Music, jacket with drainpipe pants”.

Colour. Us. Jealous. Understatement? Completely. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven that 1 in 3 people with immaculate taste turn to total dreamy jelly whenever they hear the words ‘McQueen’, ‘Space-age’, ‘Shoulder pads’, ‘Roxy music’, and ‘drainpipe pants’ in the same sentence.

What is abundantly clear is that Fahey - who at 53 years old is at an age which our horrifically ageist society condemns as being too far past 30 to do, well, anything really, particularly if you’re a woman - is still undeniably punk rock. Any woman who can use a music festival as an excuse for a family vacation, deserves a belter of a high five as far as we’re concerned.

Her and her two sons (from her marriage to the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart) have been to the Coachella music festival in LA together for the past four years, in fact: “My highlight of last years festival, which was really an amazing life moment that I actually cherished, was that I saw Leonard Cohen”, she gasps with adulation, “Oh, it was incredible! It was like being in a church when he sang Hallelujah - the whole audience swayed, and held each other and cried - it was amazing. Probably one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen in my life actually”.

Not only that, but rumour has it Fahey has also done magic mushrooms with her sons (it’s okay, they’re 18 and 21 before you start dialing social services). True story?

She laughs, “It was their friends that gave it to me behind their back! And of course, double standards apply - I mean they were outraged that their mother had taken their friends magic mushrooms”.

Which brings us to talking about London in the 80’s. An overspill of excess from the 70’s punk scene combined with an overkill of grandeur from the decades optimism of ‘new money’ meant that drugs were rife, self-destruction was common, and there was plenty of opportunity to fuck up on hedonism.

“I kind of remember the late 70‘s, early 80’s much more strongly than I remember the mid or late 80’s because they were really quite pivotal times in the culture. I was very young and it was a magical time, but my memory of it - maybe I was hanging out with the right people, or maybe the wrong people - but we weren’t doing drugs. Or at least not the drugs that people later got addicted to, you know, cos they were too expensive!”

“I guess what happened was that in the mid 80’s, everyone that I knew in the early 80’s who had been really inspiring had fallen foul of heroin. I don’t know quite what happened there. I guess it started off with ecstasy...but yeah, I saw a lot of people nose dive. I don’t know why - didn’t they read the double page spreads in The News Of The World when they were growing up? I did! And it warned me off! When you’re 10 you salivate over seedy lifestyles.”

Does she pay much attention to the tabloids these days?

“Not any more. I totally cut the tabloids out of my life because it depresses the hell outta’ me that people are that unscrupulous.”

I tell her about the disturbing trend of tabloid journalisms’ morbid fascination with watching female artists and tabloid stars self destruct - almost putting a timer on the sensitive, over-worked and over-exposed minds and bodies of the successful, talented and the famous and waiting for the cynical, money grabbing, messy pay off.

“Well, I don’t buy the tabloids and I don’t read the tabloids, so it’s news to me that they like to watch female stars unravel. Obviously, Amy Winehouse and her drama was a kind of a national obsession for a few years, and I think that was probably because she’s so brilliant that it’s horrible to see such brilliance go to waste. It’s like McQueen dying - it’s a terrible loss to the culture - it’s our own personal loss, you know?”

Fahey could have wound up as another ‘troubled female star’ herself, especially if the culture would have been as fame-baiting and papp-aggresive as it is now. In 1993 she faced her own battle with a severe depression and admitted herself into a psychiatric unit.

“It was useful to me at that particular junction in my life,” she expounds, openly, “it’s just an opportunity to get off the merry go round and be able to take stock of things. There was a good friend of mine who followed me into the clinic two weeks after I got admitted so I spent the whole time nursing her!” she laughs.

“I’m not really somebody who thinks that therapy is necessarily the answer to your problems. I’m somebody who’s always been able to identify and talk about my problems to my friends and the people around me anyway. It’s probably much more useful to people who aren’t able to do that. I find salvation in taking a more spiritual overview to life and when you can do that, it totally alters your perspective”.

We decide to get away from such a heavy topic of conversation much to Fahey’s delight, “It’s only nine in the morning here!” she shrieks, amused, whilst we apologise and take ratio of the probably uneven and unfair caffeine keel between us, and move on to talking about her music.

Shakespear’s Sister’s most recent album Song’s From A Red Room (the red room in question being Fahey’s actual bedroom, a “fantasy bedroom, with red silk damask walls, like a womb or a sanctuary”), is a delightfully dark pop-synth hidden gem pitched somewhere between the sublimely sinister and the acutely seductive.

Bitter Pill from Song’s From A Red Room was partially covered by the Pussycat Dolls, who turned it into a bizarre amateur mash-up with Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff taking place of Fahey’s original chorus. How the Christ did that happen?

“In a totally fortuitous and random way,” she declares, the words audibly clambering fiendish out of the corners of her no doubt tickled grin, “a friend of mine manages the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, and I’d given him a couple of tracks of mine to listen to and he was going into Interscope to have a meeting about them.”

“Interscope we’re putting together the Pussycat Dolls project and they were looking for songs, he played them Bitter Pill and the A&R man loved it and they got in touch and asked if they could use it. So I sent them the files, and they replaced my vocals with theirs.”

“It’s a totally different track though. My chorus, which is ‘Bitter pill to swallow, can’t see tomorrow...drowning in sorrow’!” she laughs, “Oh! I think that’s a bit too dark for the Pussycat Dolls, so they didn’t use my chorus, they supplanted it with Donna Summer. So it’s kind of a travesty - a musical travesty - in my view. But hey, financially it paid for me to actually record Song’s From A Red Room”.

Shakespear’s sister are touring the country from April 15th, what can we look forward to from her live show?

“Well, I’m really, really happy to be playing live again with the band. The last time I did a Shakespear’s Sister gig was, I think 1997, although I was doing some little underground performances in electro clubs a few years ago, but it was really pared down, so it’s great to be playing with a full rock’n’roll band with four fantastic album worths of songs to draw from”.

As to what else to expect from the live show, Fahey’s keeping pretty schtum, except to mention that she’s going to look damned amazing:

“Well, I’ve got a pretty cool costume, that I designed myself. I’ve got a beautiful headdress which is VERY important, since I’m playing very small places and people can probably only see my face. So I’ve gotta have a good head”.

We seriously can’t wait.

Shakespear's Sister will be touring the UK at the following dates and venues:

Thu 15th April 2010: O2 Academy, Sheffield


Fri 16th April 2010: O2 Academy, Liverpool


Sat 17th April 2010: O2 ABC, Glasgow


Sun 18th April 2010: O2 Academy, Newcastle


Tue 20th April 2010: O2 Academy, Bristol


Wed 21st April 2010: O2 Academy, Birmingham


Thu 22nd April: London Bloomsbury Ballroom

You can buy tickets here: http://www.ticketline.co.uk/shakespears-sister-tickets or from the usual ticket peddlers.

Shakespear's Sister official: http://www.shakespearssister.co.uk/

Buy Song's From A Red Room here: http://tinyurl.com/yf4lxvl