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A BAND YOU CAN'T REFUSE
Ned's Atomic Dustbin might be one of the year's unlikeliest phenomena but, to their fanatical female followers, their appeal is obvious. Andy Ross meets the logical heirs to the Stourbridge throne, Ian T Tilton gets the Ned's on the run
PART ONE:
THE BROS Rape Squad goes a long way towards explaining the impending
success of Ned's Atomic Dustbin.
Their popularity has pretty much caught the music press unawares. The
Neds have comprehensively failed their entrance exams to critical acceptance:
they have a silly name; they are not long out of adolescence; they use
their older brothers' hand-me-down crimping tongs; there's no girl in
the band; they don't come from Canada. And, horror upon horrors, they
come from Stourbridge!
Ah, but then there's always the Bros Rape Squad. The Squad may be comprised
entirely of Elaine and Carla, but the two girls are randomly representative
of the fanatical following that is the Ned's phenomenon.
To all outward appearances these are two sane, intelligent, gainfully
employed young women but, as we all know, appearances are almost invariably
deceptive.
Like dozens — and for all I know, hundreds - of apparently normal
individuals, they choose to spend every free moment God sends hitching
the length of the country purely to watch Ned's Atomic Dustbin perform.
Watching the Ned's in action is a fairly bewildering and exceedingly
sweaty experience; watching the 'followers' in action is to experience
human behaviour so bizarre it's only a matter of time before Desmond
Morris writes the definitive anthropological study of it.
Easily identifiable by their faithful friend, the army kitbag, the followers
regard soundchecks as social events in their own right, and keep count
of the number of dates they've made on a tour.
Elaine and Carla missed three of the 15 dates on the last tour, and
their attendance at tonight's Liverpool gig compensates a little for
their comparatively poor attendance record during the current batch.
Like many of their colleagues, they stumbled on to the Ned's while following
the Stuffies (and/or the Poppies), and their on-the-road routine is
part social club, part travelling circus, and a severely large part
Outward Bound course. It's rumoured Prince Charles is also a fan.
Wherever they lay their kitbags, that's their home. In the case of the
Squad, it's car parks, a toilet for the disabled in Nottingham ("That
was good," notes Elaine — watch out for the Egon
Ronay Good Toilets Guide), any place with a roof.
Last time around, Liverpool provided welcome refuge via the doorway
of MacDonald's, a food chain which has the great accolade of being the
Bros Rape Squad's preferred provider of washroom facilities (ie the
women's loo).
With sleeping bags and woollies in every follower's bag, they don't
freeze, and Thatcher would doubtless be overjoyed to discover that some
people with perfectly good homes to go to actually sleep rough, if not
for pleasure, then with willing complicity.
And thus it is that the under-gigging Wonder Stuff have effectively
handed over a ready-made omnipresent audience to the Ned's, a hearteningly
hygienic nucleus of fans to which new converts can adhere. And adhere
they do.
PART TWO:
THE LOGICAL heirs to the Stourbridge throne have all the credentials
for the job - these basically being all the reasons I forwarded earlier
for their general unpopularity with the papers.
Their new (and only their second) record, 'Kill Your Television', is
a representative introduction to the Ned's sound.
This is Stuffies' poppiness (or is that Poppies' stuffiness?) set to
frantic battery by Dan Dan The Drummer Man, all of which shows clear
iines of descent from The Beat That Refused To Die, namely the dreaded
Grebo.
And as bands go, they're far more at one with their audience than most.
Singer John, at 21 the OAP of the group, expresses his respect for the
fans.
"We don't just like them, we admire them. I
don't think I could do what they do. We might be able to spend every
night on the road (they always find local fans more than willing to
offer up some carpet space after a gig), and sit in a van all day -
but hitching from one end of the country to the other. . .it's just
incredible. They're mad, completely mad!"
How many faces do you recognise?
"Tonight I'd say nigh on 50 - but half of them have had to miss
gigs recently because of their 'A' levels."
This is a quandary well appreciated by the Ned's, as three of the five
were studying for their own 'A's a year ago. Matt, one of the ex-college
kids and one of the two bassists, is equally appreciative of the Neddites.
"They're always there. If I go to a gig and I want to dance, but
no one else is dancing, I won't dance. But they'll dance anyway and
everyone else joins in, so it's great to have them on your side."
Agents provocateurs? "Yeah, in a nutshell."
ONE DEFINITE contributory factor to their fans' strength of allegiance
is that the average age of the group is that of their followers. With
a few exceptions, the happening bands of the last two years are significantly
older.
When I ask the other bassist, Alex, what he considers to constitute
"old", he replies "25, i suppose". The sincerity
of his answer makes it all the more depressing for those of us old enough
to remember punk. I'm putting in my order for a walking frame.
The rapport between those onstage and those on the dance floor is obvious,
and the warmth generated is as much that of affection as body heat —
all of which makes the events of the previous night seem totally incongruous.
The Neds were booked to play at a "Bug Jam", a convention
of VW Beetle owners at Santa Pod drag track. 10,000 people turned up,
with a fair percentage of beered-up interlopers looking for trouble.
Rose Of Avalanche lasted 15 minutes before the bombardment of cans hastened
their exit. Next up, the Ned's managed to get two-thirds of the way
through their set, while the beer boys in the crowd thumped themselves
into the definition of a riot.
A security guard wielding a hammer in a less-than-friendly manner then
approached John and suggested it would be in the band's interests to
vacate the stage. They obliged. Mega City Four didn't even get to play,
but they did have their hire van smashed up as compensation.
So life on the road for the Ned's hasn't exactly been plain sailing.
This is the unfashionable process of paying your dues — but it's
working. The fans respond directly, and affectionately.
"In London they started throwing marshmallows at us," reveals
Rat, band guitarist. "Because it was so hot, the marshmallows hit
the stage and melted everywhere. The stage manager went absolutely barmy.
You know if you get your wellies and walk around in mud and shit, it's
just like that - you get a second shoe, covered in melted marshmallows."
"You can't lift your feet up without strings of pink shit sticking
to the floor," notes John, in a matter-of-fact tone which implies
that marshmallow feet is a perfectly normal hazard of stage craft.
Matt: "We got frozen peas at Dudley JB's. And again at Birmingham.
They just threw them one at a time."
The Ned's heads-down act seems to encourage audience participation.
. .
John: "We don't discourage it, but we've never
done anything to get them to do it."
Rat: "The one thing we don't like is, when we play London, there's
all these chaps who stand at the front and yell, Geezer! all night.
It seems to mean something to them."
John: "I think it means you're a nice chap. When we played Subterania,
just before we came on there was chorus of Geezer! all night, but then
you had all these girls at the back shouting, Wanker! and that was louder
than the Geezer!" - It makes you wonder what they'd shout if they
didn't like the band.
IT'S ARGUABLE that the Ned's good-natured levity, coupled with the daft
name, has led to the press not taking the band seriously. Rat: "Why
can't people take you seriously if you're having fun? That's just bullshit.
People take you seriously for having a long face and talking about the
coffee shortage in Bolivia(?). That's not serious.
"You should be able to take the band seriously for enjoying themselves,
and the people who come to see us for enjoying themselves as well. People
wouldn't go to work and earn money if they couldn't enjoy themselves,
you know what I mean?"
Fair point. But the band also has something of a beer boy reputation.
"It's the connotations of where we come from," adds Alex.
"The press think. Oh, they're good time boys, they like to go out,
get drunk and snog loads of girls. It's early in our career, and so
people don't really know what we're about, they try to put over their
own opinions."
John: "I don't want to talk about Pop Will Eat Itself specifically,
but.. .they haven't made any real effort not to come across like that."
Alex: "It's not entirely their fault, though, it's because they
didn't nip it in the bud early on. We're not trying to be laddish, even
though we might be from time to time."
If the Ned's do come across as lads, it's because of their genuine enthusiasm
for being in a band. They seem totally without affectation, fans in
their own right.
Formed at college a couple of years ago, they quite happily concede
that they might still be naive.
John: "Everything that happens to us, every new development, we
love it. We're pathetic! We phone each other up when we make a record
or get in the papers and say, Ooh, f**king hell! Ooh, ace! We love it,
we really do!"
Alex: "We're stupid. We're ill in the brain sometimes! With 'Kill
Your Television', we've never been so proud of anything we've ever done
before."
Coming from many bands, such a claim would sound thoroughly unconvincing.
This lot mean it.
Rat: "I'm playing this new 12-inch at home, and listening to it,
and I'm thinking, F**k me, have I really done this? I'm not being egotistical,
but I listen to all the tracks and think it's come out really, really
well."
Well enough, in fact, to raise a possibility which only six months ago
would have seemed ludicrously unlikely - Top Of The Pops!
Rat: "If you don't go on, then you don't show people that there's
a choice out there."
Rat (in fan mode): "You sit down, look at the paper, see who's
on Top Of The Pops, and you've got all the usual
boring things on, but then you see someone's on it like The Wonder Stuff,
or Pop Will Eat Itself, or Jesus Jones, or The Mission, and you think,
Ace!, and you stay in and watch it just for that. There'll be loads
of kids watching who have never seen those bands before, and they'll
go, That song's brilliant, and they'll go out on the Saturday and buy
it."
Alex: "You might get a certain amount of press attention for snubbing
Top Of The Pops, but I think it's far better if people
see you and ask themselves. What are these long-haired idiots doing
on TV? It's an achievement to play on Top
Of The Pops."
Yep, they're fans alright - diamond, er, geezers.
Five very personable chaps who wouldn't harm a fly, say boo to a goose
or be vaguely unpleasant to man or beast. They are so pleasant, in fact,
that they'll probably have to start beating up old ladies in order to
gain the merest hint of a rock and roll reputation.
The Tops might not invite the Ned's down to Broadcasting
House this time around, but the precedents set by local heroes PWEI
and The Wonder Stuff have beaten a broad path to the doors of Studio
B. Those lovable long-haired idiots will be coming to your screen soon.
. .