I
once told The Starries that they reminded me of a cross between the Minutemen
and The Soft Machine - they'd never heard of either band! So what's behind east
Birmingham's finest, what drives their sonic terrorism? I met with the band
at the Flapper and Firkin and persuaded them to bear their souls over a couple
of beers and the pubs fine potato wedges (with barbecue sauce). So let me introduce
you to Richard, Paul and Steve:
Richard - The band formed in the summer of 97. We decided that
as three close friends that it would be a good idea to get
together.
Paul - We first had a jam in February 97 at Richard's house. It
gelled.
Steve - I just had my bongos round there at the time but it was great.
R - We'd known each other for years and had more than our share
of disagreements, bouts of bullying and the like!
P - Richard and I used to hate each other's guts!
S- I've known Richard since I was five and Paul since I was
eleven.
R - when we were sixteen and at college Steve and I were in a
band called The Women, which is a damn fine name for a band.
We've each had our musical pasts before The Starries.
P - I had a guitar when I was seven
R - I had a guitar when I was eleven but I was told that my hands
were to small to play so I gave it up for a few years.
S - I had two wooden blocks and a cushion I remember playing
along to Paradise City on the Freddie Mercury tribute.
Mum and dad got pissed off with this and bought me a drum kit
S
- The first rehearsal we had together was pretty dreary.
P - We tried to get a light feel to it but ended up sounding like Symposium,
it was so heavy.
R - Paul had never been in a band before and I'd never played guitar or sung.
S - The rehearsal room was like a gig venue though we were still crushed up
in one corner. The sound was just washing around the place.
P - Richard had a few songs and we just jammed away, it sounded awful and it
just didn't work. We built our hopes up about it and thought that what we were
going to do was going to sound really good. We just expected it to gel straight
away, so we were a bit upset about that.
R - That's what being young and naive is all about though!
P -When we were thinking of a name we thought of Soviet at
first, or The Inflatable Play People.
R - We did not want to come across as communists though!
P- ....and The Inflatable Play People just sounded comical!
R - Most band names are pretty awful and you just go with the one
that is the least awful!
S - You just have to decide and then forget about it. You can
argue about it forever.
R- It's a very memorable name, easily mispronounced as "The
Stare-ies" or "The Stories". I had a birthday
party recently and my friend's mum put star eyes on the icing
guitar!
R
- I think metal and grunge are our original influences.
S - We've always listened to heavy stuff. We used to go to Edward's (much frequented
club in Birmingham) and head-bang. We've always had that heavy element but then
we calmed down. Richard was never into hard metal though.
R - I like Metallica, I like pop metal!
P - I liked Slayer and Morbid Angel.
S - We went to Edward's and wrecked our necks. Then we got leather smoking jackets,
grew our hair and that was grunge.
R - Nirvana happened and made our lives what they are today!
S - Richard likes quite a lot of folk stuff as well.
R - A wide smorgasbord of taste, everything and anything as long as it's not
crap. I don't think we plough any particular furrough as far as influences are
concerned, especially in the early days - we didn't even listen to each other!
P -We've had comparisons to Captain Beefheart before.
S - Perhaps that was more with the instrumental stuff. A lot of
people say it's like dark jazz, whatever that is.
P - There's a reason for that instrumental period. We moved
studios around April and didn't have a PA. We'd heard Mogwai and
thought that might be a direction to go in.
R - We did an entirely instrumental gig and cleared the whole
room.
S - The main band spent the night trying to get everyone back in;
they didn't like us for that.
S
- There's several bands that we're really interested in, like Jameson. I spoke
to Stuart from the band when we first saw them and we just kept in touch. Calvados
Beam Trio are another good band, San Lorenzo as well. It's good working with
Jackie and Rob because they let us play with whom we want to, they know that
we pull a decent crowd.
P -There's no scene as such in Birmingham. I've never really been
into Pram and Plone, personally speaking.
R - I'd rather we didn't just fit in with that crowd; we are
almost a different generation. We're more energetic.
S - We did see the Pram video on MTV last week, it was absolutely
brilliant, and I really like that song Sleepy Sweet.
It's good to see a Birmingham band get somewhere like that.
R - Playing with Idlewild was great. It all started last
January when we came to see them bottom of the bill at the
Flapper and Firkin supporting Midget and Glitterbox.
S - We'd read about them and had the Chandelier 7"
single. I phoned up the venue to ask what time the bands were on
and Colin, the Idlewild drummer, answered the phone! We came down
and introduced ourselves to them and gave them some tapes the
next time we saw them play. They found them quite funny and said
maybe we should have stuck to 'krautrock', but they offered us a
gig at the Flapper and Firkin with them and then ULU in London
after that. That was probably the best gig we've ever done. We
had a rider as well; we'd never had one before. We had trouble
getting paid though.
R - We were drunk, naive and over trusting. Basically it was our
holiday for the year and when you are on holiday you don't want
to worry about those sorts of things.
S -They'd like us to do some more dates with them at some stage,
bigger capacity venues, about 2000.
P - We could have had an Arab Strap connection but when we gave
them a tape and they thought it sounded terrible.
R - They liked the drums, but the strange vocals and awful bass
playing.
P - It was recorded on a little ghetto blaster. As we did not
have a PA Richard had to scream down the little built in
microphone!
R
- We don't really think about getting signed at the moment and I don't think
that's likely given the current climate in the music industry. The whole of
the country in a musical depression, Brit-pop is dead and the press over hypes
everything that comes out. It will be another six months at least until things
start picking up and the optimism returns.
S - Birmingham's good though. It's not getting much attention but if you are
in London you have to go down a line of conformity, you've got to get in with
the scene. Here you can do your own thing.
R - It's like in Coventry fifteen years ago with ska - Coventry of all places!
If it could happen there it could happen anywhere!!
The conversation then degenerates into what did happen "After the (Arab) strap" gig, well as much as they can remember anyway!
This interview first appeared in Bearos Records Newsletter 3 (February 1999)