scans.
BETTER NED THAN DEAD?
NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN.
You love them, they love you, they hate us and CAITLIN MORAN thinks
they're sorta okay. Sometimes. If only they didn't open their mouths.
A load of old rubbish: PAT POPE
SHE LOVES THEM
HONESTLY, I CAME HERE with the express intention of NOT being in any
way nasty or horrid about Ned's Atomic Dustbin, mainly for two reasons:
(i) they are from the Midlands, and so, in all probability, related
to me; and (ii) they once wrote a song which I rather liked.
It was despairing and pained and reaching for something just outside
its grasp - which is what music should almost always be like. Not that
I can remember what it was called. It definitely wasn't "Kill Your
Television", however, cos that's a stupid thing for a pop band
to want to do. How would we know what was happening on "Brookside"
then?
But I digress. Having spent the best part of a day in a horrible dusty
warehouse in King's Cross with the Neds, a place that eschews carpets
or any kind of drinking facilities in favour of endless miles of pigeon
shit and the odd saucerful of rat-poison, in order to watch them shoot
their new video, I have come to a couple of conclusions.
(i) Neds aren't a band who are particularly sensitive or intelligent.
They're Jonn and four other ugly whining c***s who wouldn't know a razor,
hairbrush or cohesive argument, even if it was wrapped up with string
and shoved up their arses.
(ii) There is no washing powder in the world that shifts pigeon shit.
(iii) Every single band in the world simultaneously over and underrates
the music press. Utterly. They do not understand it at all.
So let's leap into the interview, and see what's swimming around the
goldfish-bowl minds of the Nedlingtons.
WE LOVE THEM NOT
"WE were deserted," Jonn says, baldly.
He seems to be terribly hurt and confused.
Deserted? Who by?
"The music press. You. Two years ago, we were the greatest thing
around, you wrote about us all the time. And now... in last week's Maker
you had a huge article about Nirvana playing the Roseland in America.
We sold that out in January, but there wasn't one word printed about
it. I know I'm talking in cliches already, but you really did build
us up and then knock us down. And I just want to know why. Did you get
bored of us?"
Oh no. It's too early in the morning for this one. Look, it's like this
- when a band is first discovered, the journalists who love them will
fight to write about them. They want to pour glittery words over them,
and, maybe, be the band's mates, go drinking with them, have sex with
them, etc.
After a couple of months, we run out of journalists who like the band
- and the ones who weren't so keen get to have a go. If the band hack
it, there will be no backlash. If they can't, there will. It's as simple
as that.
"But I still don't understand," Ratt says. Ratt is the Ned
with the huge amount of matted dreadlocks, and a face like a mattress
doubled-over on itself. Halfway through the interview, we have a very
frustrating semi-argument, during which his babbling leads me to believe
that English isn't his first language.
Quite possibly it is his third.
"For instance," Ratt continues, "in our interviews, journalists
keep going on about how we haven't got anything to say, now we're miserable,
how we're boring. Well, that's not our fault. Quite frankly, I think
it's up to the journalist to make us sound interesting, to find angles
that keep people reading."
Alright, dearie. Would you like us to teach you how to play guitar,
as well? Or can you manage that particular troublesome chore on your
own?
THEY HATE US
APPARENTLY they can, because the Neds are currently hunched over guitars,
"in search of inspiration". Yes, the Neds are writing their
third album, which apparently will "be really different,"
and "really great".
So why where the last two so shit?
"We're still proud of those, it's just we've changed so much since
then. We were 18, 19, and those are the kind of songs 18 and 19-year-olds
would write," Jonn says.
So how is the new stuff going to be different?
"We'll be bringing in new instruments, slowing down a lot more
on what we do. In the early days, we'd rush to write a song and record
it, we tried to do it as quickly as possible. But now, I want to give
the songs time to grow, time to breathe before we slap them onto vinyl,"
Jonn explains.
It occurs to me at this point that Jonn - a man whose surname I've forgotten
and who wrote that really brilliant song that I can't remember the title
of - should leave the Neds and form a band of hopeless melancholic,
folky singer-songwriters.
This thought is compounded when I ask him later if he likes himself,
and he twists his face up into a moue of disgust before spitting out,
"No, not really, no."
BUT YOU LOVE THEM
AND the final proof comes when I ask Ratt why he thinks The Kids love(d)
Neds.
"It's because we're fun, we're really stupid on stage, we jump
around and we're just normal, everyday people having a good time,"
Ratt explains.
When, some time later, I ask Jonn the same question, he puts his head
in his hands for a while.
Then he looks up.
"Some of the songs I've written," he says, slowly, "summed
up what I felt, and hundreds of other people feel every day, but don't
know quite how to say. One of the songs I like best is about that feeling
when you're in a huge black depression, feeling all alone, and you suddenly
think of all the other people who've felt that way - who are feeling
that way now.
"I've never wanted to be normal, or second best," he spits.
"I wanted to be the best."
Ned's Atomic Dustbin play Reading on Friday