Shaz, where does you nickname come from?

Shaz: My name Shaz? When I was little I used to live in Essex and I used to go to clubs in Essex. There used to be girls called Sharon and their nickname was Shaz cause they’d go to the clubs in their high heels when they were like sixteen –
Chris – They were easy.
Shaz – Quite easy. They were called Sharons and their nicknames or short for that was Shaz.
Chris – You should see him in high heels. It’s a very Indian name as well.
Shaz – Is it?
Chris – Shabba.

On your website you mention a Jekyl & Hyde quality to your music.

Chris – I think it’s to be exploited more really. It’s something to do with our personalities of the group. There’s a definite split in the personalities – not one person – us all being similar in the ways we can all be extreme characters. The music has to follow suit with that. But really it’s in the same way that, not in the most gloriously same way, the Smiths would play around with happy tunes with melancholic vocals . . . there’s nothing wrong with dynamics changing within a song . . . the name really follows.

How did you find Fierce Panda?

Shaz -We stalked them for a little while.

Chris - We’ve always loved them and sort of dreamt of being with them- we were really lucky because it was, I think it was our second ever gig, it was a night called –

Shaz – Club Fandango –

Chris – Which is a night that Fierce Panda put on in London with a few bands that they are liking at the time and just as our second ever gig we got off at that– we played it and they liked it and we decided to work together.

Shaz- We did one release with them.

Chris- That was actually Suzie, which is out at the moment in England. The single - which we’ve re-recorded and re-released which goes with the album - at the time it was the first song that we got out there so it was a quite exciting time it went straight to radio. We owe a lot to Simon and the family at Fierce Panda. He’s a bit of a maverick, Simon Williams, he has a fuck the law kind of attitude, which is very unusual. It was nice to start off our journey with some one who cares about music.

Your cd has a wonderful balance of instruments’ sound.

Chris – the keys and the guitars fight a lot with each other, totally. When it comes to recording we’ve got a really set idea of the way we’d like it to sound. It’s quite difficult to actually do that. We’ve done it on this record. When we’ve done it on demos and things like that before it’s quite easy to get it wrong because it’s all on the same frequency – you’re bashing the ride cymbal and you get a guitar and keyboards in there and they’re all sort of similar frequencies but you can give it enough space for everything to jump out. . . . that’s down to John (Cornfield) our producer. He’s well into making bands getting their balls out and making it sound like it does live. He’s just great at capturing the acoustic sounds. We wanted it to sound like it was the next step but at the same time trying to be careful not to overproduce it. I think it’s quite easy to slap a whole lot of shit on top of it and ruin it.

Your music is kind of an edgy pop.

Chris - Eggy pop. Kind of stinky. Eggy, whiffy pop.

Is it a bad word? Do you embrace it?

We give it a nice big cuddle, like a hug for about an hour and then stick a knife in the back of it and then chuck it away and then give it another cuddle and apologize and try to heal it up again. We’re not afraid of being pop at all because pop means people dig it on a general level – not to say that we haven’t had years and years of making music that was a bit more – let’s put it this way, we just finished listening to music of bands that we were in when we were about fifteen, cause me and Pete and Shaz we’ve known each other for a long time at school and we’ve been in bands together before, and saying what the fuck were we thinking? When we made this band we said we were going to open the floodgates and concentrate more on the songwriting side of it.

Shaz – I think a lot people would just call pop anything with a hint of a melody. We’re not scared of melodies. They’re great. If that’s what constitutes pop then that’s what we’re doing.

You list Prince as a hero.

Chris – I’m obsessed. I always have been.

What in particular about him?

Chris – Oh my god, how long should we spend sharing our love for Prince music? I think for me, as a kid it was about buying an album that can tell a story. It was about the variety and the total, fucking looseness of his ideas and at the same time how he could capture it and snap it all together in the same family. It was amazing. I think it’s sexy and it’s filthy and dirty at the same time. I think the music itself is really intelligent but I think the fact that he was a total weirdo got me intrigued when I was a little kid. It was the first concert I ever went to – a Prince concert when I was ten and that just totally and utterly fucked me up for the rest of my life basically, because otherwise I could have been a successful businessman. I can’t now, because he’s fucked it all.

Shaz – Now I just want to be a weirdo.

Chris – Yeah, I just want to be a weirdo. The most recent stuff I’m not too hip to. Prince to me sums up the pop star icon in the sense that to me, a true, amazing pop star should be someone you think is from some kind of other world, Michael Jackson included. His music seemed to be coming from some sort of bizarre land that we weren’t allowed to go near. And he’d do an album every year it was just amazing every time. I could go on and on.

What is that sound in one of the songs? A xylaphone (I am told it’s Shoot me Down).

It’s from a melotron, which is a thing the Beatles used a lot in the 60s. You can have the strings melotron and the vibraphone melotron and lots of different trumpet melatron . The melotron is a type of keyboard. We used two or three sounds off this melotron.

Any activities in Seattle?

Chris - We just had a Chinese that was very special, met Tim Burgess outside. He’s very friendly.

Shaz – We met a guy with a really good mustache.

Chris – He said he’s currently growing a mullet. We met a girl who tried to make me like I was chatting her up even though I was only asking if she worked in the cigarette shop and she said her boyfriend was coming back at any minute.

Shaz- The old classic.

Chris – I just said I’m only here to get a packet of cigarettes and that I wasn’t trying to chat her up and she said you’d better go now and be safe, be careful, these streets are dangerous. And as I left there and went next door to the venue I felt very safe. We haven’t really had a chance cause we’ve been stuck in this weird vessel.

Shaz – We’ve just come off a tour where when after playing a gig you kind of have to leave.

What was Top of the pops like?

Chris – It’s something that we always wanted to do. It’s quite a milestone. If people want to take the piss out of the fact that you’ve spent the last five years not working and just trying to be in a band then they always ask so when are you going to be on the Totp then? We were really quite excited about doing, but then when we actually got to do it was just like doing a tv show.

Shaz – That’s what it was.


Chris - It’s a lot more exciting doing gigs. We did love it though. We loved it because – who was playing on the other side of the ring to us who had all those fit backup singers who were winking and sort of fluttering their eyelids ?

Shaz – Atomic Kitten.

Chris – Fucking Stevie Wonder was in there wasn’t he? Kanye West.

Shaz - Yeah. We wandered around the corridors.

Chris – They stuff lots of makeup on you though, man. I saw that and I looked like an old birthday cake, without the candles. My face looked like I was just one big piece of old icing, which upset me. Other than that . . . I’m not letting them get anywhere near my face again, Shaz.

Shaz – I was quite happy with my eyelids.

Chris - You don’t get as many close ups though. My Grandma was happy I was on it though. You’re on totp and she realizes it’s not a total waste of time. Your records out there and people are buying it.

It’s validation for you.

Chris – yeah.

Shaz – In other people’s eyes.

Are you all from London?

Chris – Essex, which is the country.

Shaz – Just outside London.

Chris – You get on a train and you’re in central London in twenty minutes, but then you can hear cows. England’s like that, it’s all squashed together. Here everything’s so fucking massive. In London you can be standing in a cow field. Basically Essex has got a bit of a bad name for the slag factor in England. Essex has a bad name for being easy, like people from Essex are easy, boys and girls give out. The reputation around the country, people are like . . . I don’t know why that is. Why is that?

Shaz- Cause it’s true.

Chris – Is it? How do you know? You’ve never lived anywhere else.

Shaz – That’s true.

Chris – We live in East London now and that’s not so easy, is it?

Shaz – No.

Chris – We live right around the corner to each other so it’s kind of handy, like for practice. We can all play knock down ginger on each other every now and then.

What?

Chris – Maybe it has a different name in America. It’s a game in England where you run up and tap on someone’s door and then run away. Then you find out it’s your best mate, around the corner, laughing. Do you do that thing when you put poo in a paper bag and light it and leave it at the door and they have the flaming poo.

I make jokes about that. Sometimes I think about doing that.

Chris – Do it. Why don’t you do it this year?

They might get see me.

Chris – Wear a balaclava.

Shaz – And run fucking fast. Just get in the car and drive off. Chuck it out of the car. Don’t even get out of the car.

Chris – Get a kid to run out and do it for you. Pay him.

Shaz – Pay him a dollar.

Chris – Here’s a tip: light it after you let go of it. There’s an idea if you ever get bored.

On those late nights.

Chris – Are you a night owl?

I am.

Chris – Are you creative?

Yeah. Are you night owls?

Together – yeah.

Chris – Basically people who are creative are night owls, aren’t they? They get haunted.

Shaz – By themselves.

Chris – Do you go to bed with someone?

Often with my cat.

Chris – Your old hairy lover.

Shaz – What colour is your cat?

Actually I have two cats. One’s a cream tortoise/tabby and one’s a calico.

Chris – I like that, cozy colours. What about a siamese cat?

Siamese cats are crazy.

Chris – If you were a cat what would you be, Shaz?

Shaz – I don’t get on with cats. I would rather have a dog than a cat. I like big cats. I wouldn’t mind a little lion.

Chris – Take it on the bus.

What cat would you be?

Chris – I’d be one of those hairless ones. Really ugly, skinny, no friends.

Shaz – Eyes looking in different directions.

Chris – No tail cause it got cut off when I was little.

Shaz – You had some kid bullying you.

Chris - A tuft of hair sticking out of my left ear.

Those are cute cats though.

Chris – Scars all over my back from when I got abused before I was even born, before I even came out. That would be me. Suffered as a result of my siblings. But I made it cause I got out and I got strong. I used my ugliness to my advantage. I scared the other cats away so I could eat. I became fat. A big fat bald wrinkly scarred cat.

Those cats are very authentic – that’s what they really look like, under that fur.

Chris – It’s true, man. Just like if we were still cavemen we’d be big hairy motherfuckers. We probably would be motherfuckers because they were incestuous in those days. That word is too widely used nowadays. No one actually has sex with their mums anymore.

I think some people probably do.

Chris - Do you reckon? In certain parts of the world.

Shaz - Essex.

Chris – Remember your mates would say but what if your mom was like Claudia Schiffer, you would do, wouldn’t you? I never had a sister but I always wanted one. I mean not for that reason.

Forum – single?

Shaz – No.

Chris – Yes. I am single but Shaz is as well, in his heart.

Have you ever been on a tour bus?

I have.

Chris - Our busses in England don’t look like this. They look like travelling strip clubs. They’re all full of ultramodern neon lights and mirrors everywhere, like you would expect an 80s strip club to be. This is more sort of a 60s brothel.

Shaz - Our bus before this had pink leather seats.

Chris – Can you imagine that, first thing in the morning when you wake up?

Like pepto bismol?

Chris - Like that. It’s kind of like going camping, forever. We’re on the move always now. But I still get that little feeling when I get in my bunk, it’s a bit like cosying down in your tent, listen to every one humming away in their beds, a hubbub of boyish chat.

Shaz – You even get the rain on the roof as you do in a tent.

Chris – The only thing you don’t have is the sound of nature, the animals.

You could get a tape of those sounds.

Chris – Yeah, that would be nice, depending on what mood you’re in.
You could put on a fierce storm at sea or a dolphin pack.

Shaz – I was thinking of cows and sheep.

Chris – Like English sounds. It would be nice to have a stereo tape with a babbling brook and then on the other side wind blowing through a weeping willow tree and the sound of a little kid playing by himself, with a bald cat. Slapping its back.

Shaz – It’s such a great idea.

Chris – Boy Kill Boy sound tapes. Storytelling.

We actually had a bear come into the city.

Chris – Really?

Shaz – Fucking hell, what did you do?

They killed it. It was looking for food.

Shaz – Why did they do that?

Chris - Why didn’t they get a cowboy to lassoo it? It’s like the whale in the Thames. Aimals and the big city they don’t mix do they? It’s a grave shame.