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IT'S THE NED OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT... AND THEY FEEL FINE

• They may be the zit on the hirsute posterior of pop music, but NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN'S Black Country boil has eaten the world; a runaway hairy tale success story of colourful T-shirts, partisan fans, Top 20 hits and entry into the Supertax Indie Premier League (Unfashionable Division). ANDREW COLLINS asks 'Why aren't they Simply Ned?' and tries to probe how they sexually excite 470,000 people. Mad shatters: KEVIN CUMMINS

Welcome to Central TV's Subterranian Homeownership Blues, a lunchtime magazine show in which members of Ned's Atomic Dustbin - or 'The Neds' - give helpful DIY advice and home hints. This week, Mat and Jonn are in Alex's cellar.
"You can't damp-proof a cellar," states Mat, authoritatively.
"Oh, you'll need some kind of sealant," proffers Jonn, rubbing his not insubstantial chin.
"What do you reckon it'll cost me? A couple of grand?" asks Alex, keen to convert the space beneath his house into a recreation room.
And you thought life with 'The Neds' was going to be all Holden's Original Black Country Bitter, a swift roll-up in the afternoon, going down the Army & Navy and lighting your own farts in hotel lobbies. And it is all that, of course. But it's much more besides.
"You won't be able to smoke draw in here, though - no ventilation..." warns Mat.

WHY ARE Ned's Atomic Dustbin? It's a pertinent question for our age, and will probably end up an option on some GCSE Philosophy And Big Shorts paper by 1994. Why oh why oh why oh why? They're fast, they're feisty, they're fun, they're five and - whoops! - they're famous.
Arriving on the coat-tails of The Wonder Stuff, Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself - spiritual forebears and tour piggybackers all - at the turn of the decade, the band with the looks (lived-in) and the locks (lived-in-by-little-creatures), if not the lifestyle, were destined to succeed. Unforgettable name. Jolly logo. Technicolor T-shirts. Celebrity mates.
By their second single,'Kill Your Television', in July 1990, The Neds had nestled in the Top 53. In 1991, they were on Top Of The Pops with 'Happy', and, quite honestly, it all looked a bit easy. Maybe that was the point. "If we are a zit on the backside of music, it's not doing anything to hinder us," Jonn told Simon Williams at the time. Their debut album 'God Fodder' went on to sell half a million copies. The zit that ate the world. A hairytale success. There isn't a jury in the land that could find it in their hearts to knock The Neds'. Unless, of course, they were music lovers.
I'm sorry. Hate to, like, bring the whole thing down and everything, but 'God Fodder' was a terrible, half-baked, all-crust-no-topping, soggy pizza of a record. A second listen was not a luxury this album could afford. Apart from the genuinely magical 'Happy', it stank. Except I'm wrong - half a million people told me so.
Aside from the bonanza two-bass-guitars configuration (a total accident in the band's planning stage, this). The Neds had nothing to offer the world of music, but this did not stop them cleaning up, attaching their spongy logo to the bosom of every outdoor festival-goer under 18 who left the house between Reading '91 and Glastonbury '92, and entering their badly-spelled names into The Church Of Pop's hallowed roster for all of time.
"THE NEDS WOZ'ERE. F_ING F—."
Clever wording, we know. Cheers.

"I never said I'm the be-all and end-all."
'Spring'

"It's all we have/It's all we've got/It's enough."
'You Don't Want To Do That'

SUNDAYS ARE set apart for "dinner at me mum's", a pint of stout, five-a-side football, and napping in front of Highway for Ned's Atomic Dustbin. You find us in the heart of Lye, a polite red-brick NB on the map that side of Stourbridge that rarely troubles the horizon for more than two storeys and has too many streets called Lane. The Neds are supping ale in a cosy downhome hostelry that's been their haunt since student pub The Swan filled up with young ravers they didn't recognise. "You can walk to any of our houses in five minutes from here," smiles Alex. Nice to know.
Nobody bothers The Neds in Stourbridge. Hell, Robert Plant can drink round here without anyone interrupting him. "He was in The Swan a couple of months ago," Alex boasts, "and one of my girlfriend's friends, who's a big Zeppelin fan, was going 'Don't be silly, that's not Robert Plant, it's someone who likes him'!"
I first met The Neds at London's Hit Factory studios two months ago - at least, I think it was them, it could've just been five people who like them. They treated me with all the suspicion any first-time journalist would merit. I heard most of their second album 'Are You Normal?' through the suite's eat-shit speakers and treated it with equal suspicion. I'd like to think neither party was justified in all this defence-mechanism hostility. The tracks surprised me with their newly-acquired production highs and traceable tunes, and I wasn't a bastard.
Their expressions that day read "You hate us, don't you?" and mine read "No." I hate famine, disease, homelessness, Nazis, falling in love with someone who can't reciprocate, shaving, pit closures, Prince and death. I don't hate Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Ned's Atomic Dustbin are five lads from the Black Country aged between 20 and 25 who have made it in a world of shite and danger; three longhairs and two, lapsed who pronounce "going? as "gooing" and are therefore as close to my heart as cholesterol.
They walked out of school into Aston Villa Leisure Centre without picking up a mop, they've been in Rolling Stone in their own clothes, they are Mark Goodier/Megahits/Indie/The Early 90's/Generic Overlay/Quality Merchandising/Apolitical-jump-up-and-down-Family-Notown INCARNATE. A ray of hope, a careers master's break-out, a good message in a bad universe. Sadly, that message is 'THE NEDS WOZ'ERE. F—ING F—'.
Nobody bothers The Neds in Stourbridge, but if they go into Brum of a night it's different. "I had a couple of schoolgirls come up to me, and I could just feel my face going red, I just wanted to get away," grins The Neds' own trashcan Sinatra, Jonn.
"I was harassed while I was trying to buy one red lace at the Army & Navy store," recounts Mat ("Bass# 1"), "these two geezers were standing outside, watching me, I said 'I'm only buying a f—ing lace, mate!'"
"I was in a small village in Cornwall, in the supermarket, fondling this particularly mouldy-looking baked potato, and this geezer came up from the meat counter, going 'OH MY GOD! IT'S NOT! IT'S NOT!'" blushes Alex ("Bass# 2"), "and I was just standing there with this potato going, 'What? What?', he said 'I can't believe you're in Cornwall!' I put the potato down and tried to look like a rock'n'roll icon."

STOP THE tape. Right there. The Neds are a true fan's band; their fan-base is large and reliable, ensuring 'Not Sleeping Around'- their latest and worst single ever - a Top 20 placing in Week One. For many thousands, The Neds are My Favourite Band - quite an achievement considering they rode in on equally partisan-friendly outfits like the Stuffies and the Poppies. The Beatles were a fans band. The Bay City Rollers were a fans band. So were The Smiths, so are The Cure, so are the Manic Street Preachers. So what's the problem? Simple - The Neds look like the fans, and not vice versa.
Doh! We got it wrong again! Mat, Alex, Rat, Dan and Jonn are just tall Neds fans. With houses.
"Why don't you like that?" cries Alex.
You look like normal people! You are normal!
"Yeah, and the journalists that don't like us, don't like us for that reason. Because of that they won't listen very hard to the music.
Jonn, ever reasonable: "I can see why people don't like it, because it looks really right on, doesn't it? The thing with Morrissey, for instance, that always makes you sick is the way he poses as The People's Poet, Friend Of The People, which he clearly isn't. That is sick, real hypocrisy. So I can see your point."
Alex: "We can understand why people don't like us, which is a good start I think - but we can't change. We don't want to."
I don't think you should change. It's obviously working. Your next tour takes in leisure centres, civic halls and academies, your last album sold 470,000 copies, your last single went Top 20 - if you changed now, you'd need your Neds testing. You've crossed the thin red line whereby you could now release 'Silent Night' and chart. K'CHiNG!
About this, Mat is acrimonious. "People actually don't listen to music anymore. This is the newest thing, it was released at four o'clock, you heard it at one minute past four, you bought it at two minutes past four and yes, I'm ahead of the crowd. Everything's so immediate..."
"If you're gonna be hyper-cynical about it..." interjects Jonn, in wise, off-ticking mode. "Never mind what you think of 'Not Sleeping Around' as a song - we made sure it was a really interesting record. A string version of an old song, a dance remix, another song we hadn't released before, done with a different producer so it's more noisy - we tried to make sure we were giving people a lot of stuff."
"It turned out to be a good record as opposed to a good single," Alex concludes. "We've never written a B-side in our lives."
"Anyway, there are games you have to play," confesses Mat, easily the most agitated of my three Neds. He's apologising for the fact that 'Not Sleeping Around' is, in his opinion "in the bottom three" tracks on the album (he's not alone in this), but their Epic radio plugger advised them to run with it because - unusually for The Neds - it actually contains the song title in the chorus. Ah yes, I can see clearly now! Been away for a year. Build-up campaign is crucial. Prioritise radio play. Maximum passive recognition-and-purchase potential. Neds Atomic Dustbin have saved their best single for later in the name of sales strategy! It is called 'Intact', you will find it at the very end of 'Are You Normal?' when you buy it at two minutes past four tomorrow and if you think I'm being hyper-cynical, you're wrong. The New Supertax Indie Premier League - Carter, Senseless Things, Kingmaker, Megas, Thousand Yard Stare - have relieved themselves of the horse-fixing hippy-ocrisy brown-paper-baggage that once dogged their trade - thinking small, being distributed independently, those sorts of things.
"It all boils down to the reasons that you do it, and the reasons that you continue to do it," Mat states, calmly. Rat ("expletives and guitars") has just arrived, an hour late, and looking like some of Stourbridge slept on him last night. We send him back to bed. "Most people do it because they want attention, they want to be famous, and they want to take coke and have their dick sucked. I would not come away from an experience like that feeling any better at all. Like, the Manic Street Preachers aren't in this to make music..."
Which is a very muso thing to say.
"... And Hendrix was never in it to make money!"
Can't imagine Jimi and Mitch Mitchell ever talking sealant either.
Jonn: "One of the problems is, once you've had a certain amount of success - and we're paying for our houses with money from the band — then you're in it to the point of not knowing anything else. We've never worked in any other way, we've had a particularly easy time of it, I suppose, and now we're in it, WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ELSE! People could say we're only in it for the money now, but how else are we gonna earn any? Even if you're totally uninspired and the ideas you're coming up with are shit you'd better do it, 'cos how else are you gonna pay for your house?"
Mat "What am I gonna do at 21 with two piss-poor A-levels? I can't do anything else. If you work in Superdrug, no-one is pressuring you to feel guilty about it."
Jonn: "Picture the scene: we split up. What would Dan do? I worry about Dan a lot. How old is he? 20? He was 14 when he joined!"
Alex: "It wouldn't be half as bad if the Poppies split up because they're about 30. We've missed out on real life and real jobs - y'know, straight out of school into this."
Mat: "I've been offered crack on 42nd Street and I've never filled out a National Insurance form."
BINGO! There you have it! Rock'n'roll. The stark and insane reality of Being In A Band. The Unforgiving. The hopeless glory. Ned's Atomic Dustbin.
"We'd never want to be at the top of our profession," confesses Alex, in a rare moment of frightened honesty, "like, Carter are at the top of our supposed scene, Guns N' Roses are the biggest band in the world, and how shit must it be to be Michael Jackson? - meanwhile, we always want to be bubbling under. The person on top gets all the great reviews and all the stick - we haven't got that pressure and yet almost as many people like us as like Carter!"
Jonn: "There was a point last year, when we played Reading - we were main support first night, Carter were main support the next - and it was the first time I'd ever really considered us and Carter as this competition, like, 'Who's the top indie band in the country? Is it Carter? Is it us?' And when I realised I was thinking that way I thought 'Shit! I don't want this at all, this rubbish. No thank you!'
"When you think of the amount of coverage we've had - and yet there there isn't that much to report! And this is what the papers find out, I think. It's interesting up to a point."

"WHY DON'T cows turn me on sexually? asks Mat, entirely rhetorically. He is making a point, and the point is: why ask questions? I'll tell you why...
Mat doesn't get turned on by cows because - and I'm guessing here - the quality of a cow's skin doesn't appeal to him, the very size of a cow is very off-putting, not an easy beast to mount, quite powerful and likely to make a man feel pretty inadequate. There's bound to be flies, too. Want any more details?
"I suppose I'd be intimidated by the fact that their eyes are on the side of their heads and they can see backards," Mat whimpers. I know, I haven't exactly scored a Nobel-prize-winning intellectual victory here by proving that there is a reason behind even the most offhand and rather grubby statement, but I am, nonetheless, tempted to cry "Touche!" Why ARE Ned's Atomic Dustbin? Why aren't they Simply Ned? Why aren't they The Nedding Present? Why aren't they Ned Zeppelin? Right Said Ned? The Ned Kennedys? And why do they turn 470,000 people on sexually? Is that ALL they want of pop music?
Beats me.
To be, I guess, continued...

TURN THE PAGE FOR THE STORY OF THE NEDS' PHOTO SESH-INFULL!

LEICA VIRGIN

• Just to prove that anyone can do it, NME invited prize-winning amateur photographer RUTH CHURCHMAN to point-and-shoot alongside our man in the Armani KEVIN CUMMINS at that all-important Neds shoot. DAVID QUANTICK drank the free beer

In our infinite desire to bring joy to the world, NME agreed to help Amateur Photographer magazine make one of their readers very happy by participating in a fab competition idea — namely, giving someone the chance not only to win a mega flash Minolta XR3i Turbo camera but also to work with top rock photographer and playboy Kevin Cummins on a real life job.
And so it comes to pass that Ruth Churchman from Brighton found herself in a cold and dark photographer's studio in London's sunny East End, lying on the floor and shouting at Ned's Atomic Dustbin. It's a funny old world, isn't it?
Come with me now to that same studio where we find Ruth standing behind a big cracked bit of glass as Kevin fusses with his cameras. Why the glass, Kev?
"Erm," says the man who, sadly enough, hasn't missed an episode of Coronation Street since 1960, "It's because there's a glass shop at the end of our road."
Ned's Atomic Dustbin arrive. They are all drunk and immediately order some quite disgusting pizzas. The Neds do not like being photographed. "It's embarrassing," says Jonn, beerily. "We've never been into posing. I don't want to look a dick, that's the extent of my vanity..." Jonn has some advice for would-be photographers. "The worst thing they can possibly say is 'throw some shapes', 'cos then you just basically want to stab them on the spot."
But the band step forward and are duly photographed individually by Kevin — "When you've got a band like Ned's Atomic Dustbin who want to act like laddoes on the tour bus all the time," says Man City's only fan, "It's good to do them one at a time, because then you can get them to act serious for a minute. When they're all together, they're clowning about."
This Ruth soon discovers, when it is her turn to take some shots.
Kevin had kindly allowed Ruth to do the black and white group shots. Immediately the Neds turn into laddoes on the tour bus. Jonn farts and declares that he has stuffed his socks down his trousers. Mat shouts "Talk to us! Chastise us!" Ruth will have none of their foolish banter. She ignores them, lies on the floor and blasts away.

ASKED TO describe her working methods, Ruth says "Oh, bloody hell...I didn't know 'til about half an hour ago that I was doing this. I'm working with the light, hey! I take pictures of bands on stage all the time, but I've never done a band standing about, trying to make them look interesting. Erm, I'm not saying they don't look interesting."
Mat comes out of the toilet, dressed for some reason as a woman. Naturally neither Kevin nor Ruth have any film left, so this moment goes unrecorded. Rat declares Ruth's session to be "all right. It didn't seem as stressfull as normal," and wanders off to eat more disgusting pizza.
The band leave and it is time to probe. Ruth is 27, got into photography through her Dad, went to art college and has done "factory jobs". This excites Kevin who thinks she means Factory Records jobs. Ruth has enjoyed her day. "The Neds were all right, they were a laugh. Knowing me, I probably won't believe it's happened," she sighs. "I was glad it was the Neds instead of Suede. I don't really like Suede."
Ruth, a Faith No More and Soundgarden fan, muses, "It was difficult but it was good to have a challenge. I'd do it again; I'm quite happy but it was so overwhelming you have to take it in your stride, or you'd be on the floor."
"You were on the floor," says Kevin, who was once Holiday Inn Guest Of The Day in Lucille Ball's home town. Ruth shrugs. "I don't mind making a prat of myself, "she says, showing that she has the Right Stuff. Kevin tries to examine Ruth's camera but he cannot get the lens cap off.
Eventually it is time to go home. We drink what is left of the lager supplied by Amateur Photographer (cheers) and prepare to go.
"Do you think that all this has demystified the process?" asks Kevin. "No," says Ruth and heads off happily into the night with a free Minolta and a memory of an afternoon with five tour bus laddoes that will last a lifetime. Probably.