THE BINMEN COMETH
Carlos Fandango Radiates on
NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN,
Jayne Houghton's camera glows.
"We were getting quite attached to our first van. It was called Tom, like
the Van-Tom Of The Opera. That's our funniest joke to date. It was mildly
amusing when standing on Saddleworth Moors in the pissing rain while the
van squirted it's hot liquid everywhere…"
Ned's Atomic Dustbin have arrived. Not in the real world, you understand,
but they've finally turned up at Brixton Academy on the ninth leg of The
Wonder Stuff tour. And safely ensconced in their dressing room with a
rider of baby-sized beers and ant-proportioned sandwiches, they're pouring
forth remarkable tales about transportational traumas, claiming to have
used a 'plethora' of hire vans to get around the country. Namely, a different
vehicle for each gig, so unreliable have been the various engines and
components. Then again, the way this tour has been flying it might not
be that long before Ned's Atomic Dustbin do actually arrive in the real
world.
(Yet) another bunch of would-be cults from the Black Country, their name
is filched from 'The Goon Show' and their second birthday was on November
8th. They consist of: Jonn (fringe and vocals); Brass* (blonde fringe
and guitar); Mat (hat and bass); Alex (outrageous fringe and another bass);
and Dan (mildly impressive fringe and drums). Oh, and not forgetting,
for fear of homicidal retribution, band manager Tank, a charmingly murderous
sort, who assaults first and asks for reviews later. Perhaps.
Collectively, they are referred to in sussed bars as The Ned's, although
a more suitable tag would be the Neddies, the Binnies, or my personal,
rather abstract fave, the Tommies. And before you say anything, The Ned's,
like many hopeful acts before them, used devious buy-on tactics to get
on this tour. It is rumoured that £10, 000 was offered to secure John
Moore And The Expressway the support slot at PIL's Hammersmith Odeon gig
(an offer rejected by PIL, by the way). The Ned's were equally cunning,
but infinitely
more successful with the Stuffies.
"I paid us on with £4.12, all in coppers," beams Tank proudly. "But they
charged us VAT as well - there was no mention of that in the initial contract,
so they're fucking rip-off merchants!"
"The VAT was twelve grand," mutters Alex.
"Make sure you use that headline: 'The Wonder Stuff are money-grabbing
sons of bitches!!'."
But by gum it was money well spent, as far as £4.12 goes. Which isn't
very far at all if you sit down and think about it. Particularly if you're
drinking and chain-smoking while you're contemplating the matter in hand.
As a measure of their success in the past week and a half, The Ned's would
like it to be known that they've shifted a copious quantity of t-shirts.
And they weren't New Order t-shirts, either.
"We had 140 and to our utter surprise we flogged them all! Apparently
our t-shirts outsold Iron Maiden's support band's t-shirts after two nights
in Glasgow… Some girl bought out t-shirt the other night and she didn't
even know what we were called. She'd just seen us, and that was all that
mattered."
In fact, they haven't got any left to sell tonight, a fashion tragedy
with over 4000 loaded bastard Southern punters waving wallets around aimlessly.
But t-shirts aren't the only expendable commodities on a Ned's tour: "We've
sacked our sound engineer. We'd done six gigs and we're getting better,
really tight, yet the sound was gradually getting worse. We ended up not
trusting him, so we got rid of him."
Any other problems?
"We've been sleeping on people's kitchen floors, stinking of cat's piss,"
shudders Alex.
"Bradford was the worst night of my life," moans Mat. "It was worse than
sleeping in my brother's room… He's a mental out-patient."
"We stayed above a butcher's shop in Sunderland," erupt their fellow fringes,
"where five year-olds were chucking stones at us and shouting, 'Ya fookin'
long-'aired geey bastards!' We wouldn't have minded but there was ten
of us and four of them and they scared the shit out of us! They'd already
dismantled the telephone booth and they'd started on the kerbside! It
was quite an experience, to be honest."
"We've been having terrible days and brilliant gigs, like," expounds Alex,
cutting through his fellow Ned's urgent babble like Luke Skywalker's long
fluorescent dildo slicing through Darth Vader's wrist. Bazzaamm! Scream!!
Scrungel!! Barf!! Sorry Alex, you were saying? "Yeah, every day's been
a massive downer, a nightmare, and you have half an hour of ecstasy on
stage. The cheers at the end have been heart-warming."
Almost as heart-warming, nay, artery-glowing, if not bleedin' ventricle-inflaming
as the Ned's treatment at the hands of The Wonder Stuff and associate
road crew: "We're learning what it's like to be on tour. If they treated
us like shit
we'd probably stay like the band we were at the start of the tour. With
them treating us with respect it makes you wanna live up to their expectations,
they give us a chance."
Sound massive don't they, readers? Out on the wide open road, thrilling
the fans and revelling in a thrashy (but not thrash-paced) cacophony of
grilling guitar and drilling basslines, Ned's Atomic Dustbin appear to
be gargantuan. Except of course, they aren't. This is their second ever
interview. It's also their second appearance in London (their debut being
with Mega City 4 at the Fulham Greyhound). As I type, their music press
cuttings consist of one marvellously livid Sounds review and a minute
mention in the NME gossip column. They've made three demo tapes, none
of which they consider sufficiently listenable for me to experience. And
they haven't had a sniff of a record release, much to the disbelief of
eager new fans: "When we say we haven't put anything out they think we're
taking the piss out of them, but we're not, we're telling the truth!"
So, dear Ned's, what the fuck have you been doing for the past two whole
years? (He asked indignantly).
"Hang on, hang on!" They shouted defensively, "when Mat joined he hadn't
played a bass guitar in his life, he had to start from scratch. We didn't
do our first gig for months…We were rounding our sound, uh, finding our
niche, ermm, building up a local following. Besides which, we never had
any money to play anywhere else except home. We're really skint, we couldn't
afford to play other gigs."
With one pair of crimpers to go crimping around five fringes the Neds
aren't jesting. They were skint during their "Crap and Gothic" early days.
They were penniless when they got bored doing slow songs and decided to
play them faster. And they're currently as wealthy as a one-legged wombat
in spite of their rapidly spreading infamy, which is due in no small part
to the motormouths of their more illustrious chums Messrs Poppie and Stuffie.
Clint and Miles in particular have been breaking a leg to squeeze The
Neds into conversations: the former stumbled upon them gigging and giggling
in The Mitre back home; the latter has nudged his bosses awake, with the
result that Polydor look set to pay for The Ned's first "proper" demotape.
In quietly drunken moments, both singers might just confess to feeling
fear at the plausible thought of The Ned's overtaking both of their combos
on the Highway To Hades. Yet being part of such a publicity-friendly Stourbridge
scene has it's indigenous disadvantages.
"There's a lot of bitching between different bands back home. Someone
will come along and say, 'Oh, it's just another Stourbridge band'. We
were slagged off from the word go - as is everyone else - and it's not
enough just to be good, you've got to be arty-farty as well."
The Neds assure me they are not arty-farty. Although one suspects they
won't deny being farty.
"The Birmingham crowd is dead 'clicky' (sic)*. Some of them called us
a 'dogshit hyped band', and all we'd had was a little piece in the Bromsgrove
Gazette!"
The Neds convinced me they are not bulging with enthusiasm for Brum.
"We'd rather drive to Glasgow sitting in a van for nine hours, play a
good gig and drive all the way back than play in Birmingham, where you
go down like nothing if you're not part of the click (sic)*," they gush
profusely. "It's nice to think we've stepped out of that scene a bit,
even if we have to step back into it. But we're not the sons of the Poppies
or the Stuffies - this is totally different. Actually, we're gonna do
what The Stone Roses did… But we're gonna do it in Dudley, like!"
You know what? They probably will as well. Scallies beware - the binmen
cometh.
* I copied this as it was written, i've not a scoobie why Rat seems to
be called Brass.
I suspect the last two (sic)'s were down to the author not being aware
of the term "Clique". Although i can't back that up.
Big thanks to Steve Edwards for contributing this.