Garden gnomes rejoice as Marion return crack free

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The Stool Pigeon December 2006
Garden gnomes rejoice as
Marion return crack free
I
Words MARK FERNYHOUGH
Picture HEIKE SCHNEIDER-MATZIGKEIT
N the nineties, Jaime Harding’s
reputation for attracting trouble was well
known: the skinny Marion vocalist’s
kidnapping and ransoming of garden
gnomes for crack is an often recounted
smug industry anecdote. Today, as the
second blacked out car in less than three
minutes pulls up menacingly alongside us,
one wonders whether much has changed.
“Jaime, I thought the Russian mafia had
finished with you,” whispers guitarist Phil
Cunningham, eyebrow aloft.
Wandering down the street with Belle
and Sebastian is never this perilous.
Fortunately for our interview, there will be
no impromptu beheadings. Instead, a chap
of considerable girth climbs out of the
shadowy hearse to enquire if we’re famous.
Through Primrose Hill’s residential
landscape, it’s not the ghosts of the
wilderness years that stalk Marion, but
stocky paparazzi vultures. I point towards
a translucent Jaime and confirm that his
song was once employed as a soundtrack to
a Citroen ad starring Bobby Brown. This is
BLOOD RED SHOES Mean it when they say, “NO!”
pretty much represent
everything I hate about
“PANIC
AT
THE
DISCO
music,” spits Blood Red Shoes’ drummer Steven Ansell of the
band that personally requested the Brighton duo for their opening
act at Brixton’s cavernous Carling Academy. “They’re like a
corporate, packaged-up, stylised, poster boy product to sell to
people who buy into it. I don’t find any human
connection; they’re big business, and from what I can tell
that’s all they are. It’s really sad that they’re represented in a way
where people think it’s this really meaningful thing, when it seems
to me that it’s quite the opposite.”
“We’re gonna play it,” guitarist and co-vocalist Laura-Mary
Carter adds, a few days before the gig happened. “But we won’t
sell our t-shirts really expensive, like them.”
“I like the idea that we can be in that world a bit,” Steven nods,
“and people’ll come over and see us and be like, hey, they sell their tshirts at nine pounds. How come Panic at the Disco... Hey, why?
Maybe a few people’ll ask a few questions because of that. That’d be
pretty cool.”
“Also... Brixton Academy!!!” Laura laughs.
Blood Red Shoes are two sussed punk kids who make a lean,
urgent noise you can dance to. They hooked up when Steven’s old
band, Cat On Form, split two years ago, and were offered a gig
after their first jam session, which is why they never had time to
add a bassist or a sousaphone player to their line-up. A 100-ODD
SHOWS AND THREE LIMITED EDITION 7”s LATER
and they suddenly find themselves feted by the mainstream music
industry they always seemed determined to operate outside of.
“But we’re just doing exactly the same thing,” Laura says. “It’s
just play anywhere, like always, except NOW WE’RE
HOMELESS because of it.”
BRS: doing that sole music
EAGERLY AWAITED
EXTRA!!
THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE STORY ---- “Y’know, I grew up in Horsham,
where my only access to music was reading the NME or Kerrang! and going to Our Price,” Steven says. “So all
the bands I liked were mainstream, obvious, radio bands, and I got into the music that I now like through those
bands. I heard The Smashing Pumpkins, and then I heard Nirvana, and then I heard Sonic Youth, and then I
heard Blonde Redhead, and then you start getting into a lot more interesting, underground stuff. But I got in there
through being into MASSIVE, million-selling mainstream bands - buying their records from a chain shop
and reading about it in the Rupert Murdoch-owned press. I’m never ever gonna forget that, ’cos otherwise you
get into that sort of WEIRD REVERSE SNOBBERY where you’re like, we’re so punk, we won’t be part of that
world. It means a tonne of people can’t access your music, and that’s a fucking shame.
“We’re in a world where most bands we know that get on big labels get pushed around, get told what to wear
and whether they should sing or SCREAM MORE, and we’re not doing that. WE’RE PRETTY GOOD
AT SAYING NO. I think we’re the kind of people that enjoy getting to say no as well, which is funny; it’s almost
like a reverse psychology thing. If we’d decided to be like this as a little CAREER PLAN, we probably
would be patting ourselves on the back going, ‘It’s worked quite well to say no, it makes people want you more.’”
Steven smiles: “But we actually just did it ’cos we actually mean no.”
Ones & Twos
Words. B. GRAHAM
Issue Nine. 2006
more than enough celebrity kudos for our
assailant and, within seconds, Jaime’s soul
has been stolen five times over via a
ludicrously cumbersome telescopic lens.
The rest of us trudge off into the distance,
laughing heartily like they do at the end of
an episode of Thundercats.
To recap, during a brief period in the
mid-nineties Macclesfield’s Marion were
poised to become kohl-smudged stadium
giants. Striking an icy shadow over a lager,
lager, lager-obsessed climate, their top 10
debut album, This World and Body, boasted
dark amphetamine-fuelled tunes by the
bucket load, all of which were sung by
Jaime in a yearning sci-fi croon that
encompassed more drama than a week’s
worth of Eastenders. With that, plus a
bearded guitarist named Beard, how could
they fail? In short, Morrissey handpicked
them to precede him on stage. Lesser
groups would have been destroyed, sent to
madness, pecked to death by locusts
following one of Mozza’s ill-fated
‘blessings’ - music’s answer to an Egyptian
curse. Marion just heroically giged
themselves to death. It gets worse: “Ian
McCulloch used to come into our dressing
room and steal all our cheap drugs,”
complains Jaime.
“We toured and toured our first album
for years,” winces Phil. “Then as soon as
we stopped, our record label gave us one
week to write and record the follow up.”
This is not the only example of Marion
being hampered by record company
ineptness. “Our b-sides were always the
best songs because we were left alone to
write them,” Jaime explains. “We did a
track for our first album called ‘Wait’ and a
record exec wanted us to add an ‘Every
Breath You Take’-esque Sting bass line to it.
That won’t be happening this time around.”
A facial hair-free line-up of Marion
have returned in 2006, upping their game
by borrowing Haven’s sticksman, Jack
Mitchell, although one assumes his father
band haven’t traded him in for some of
Jaime’s half-inched garden ornaments.
They’ve returned to a host of sold out gigs
and upbeat reviews, making you wonder
where Marion’s followers were back in ’98
when their Johnny Marr-produced second
LP, The Program, bombed so horrifically.
“A bigger question is where the hell
were we?” ponders Phil, who now splits his
time between being guitarist in Marion
and another obscure Manc group entitled
New Order.
Jaime is more specific about his band’s
downfall. “Drugs,” he sighs softly.
“For years me and Jaime lost contact,”
says Phil, regretfully. “So it’s great that
we’re working together again.”
“I bought an acoustic guitar in
Prague, and stopped off in Hungary and
Budapest - the best city in the world,”
explains Jaime.
In the more familiar setting of a swanky
London hotel bar, Jaime has no qualms
with disrobing into some more photogenic
trousers. An 83-year-old female hotel
resident seated nearby is clearly roused
from her tea-time slumber by this graphic
exhibition. It’s understandable that
Marion’s fanbase have reached a new level
of maturity, but this verges on the
ridiculous. At least, and despite a decade of
excess, Jaime Harding is not yet receding.
“It’s not something that bothers me,” he
says, not altogether convincingly. “Look at
Nick Cave - he’s well bald now.
Although... it is nice to have hair.”
“ More like
ad-lib than
best bib and
Tucker ”
DAVID HOPKINS
fter a lengthy get-to-know-you discussion
A on the merits of various metal bands, I
ask the master of the ‘drone tone’,
Alexander Tucker, to respond to the folk
label that his hypnotic, layered guitar and
vocal music has been tagged with. While
he acknowledges that he went through a
major “John Fay phase”, he suggests that
his use of technology, especially loop
pedals, goes against the roots of traditional
folk. He considers his work to be a rather
loose, modern interpretation based on “not
having any proficiency” and “coming from
a place that uses feedback, noise and sound
to create your own world”. He adds, after
joking about a totally unfulfilling three
weeks of classical guitar lessons at school
that, “If you give me a guitar with normal
tuning I don’t know what to do with it.”
hat may be the case, but with a downtuned guitar or electric mandolin in his
hands and effects pedals at his feet, you
could argue that he has too many ideas
floating around in that centre-parted head
of his. And that’s part of the joy of his latest
effort Furrowed Brow - it’s a far more direct
and cohesive album than its largely
improvised, rambling predecessor, Old Fog.
Alexander agrees, explaining that it was
simply a case of being “able to just sit down
and focus on the music” in a studio, rather
than recording at home with “cardboard
all around me, domestic stuff and traffic”.
alking me through the intricacies of the
methodical way he recorded it - the
laying down of numerous guitar tracks in
real time to give a “sense of locomotion” two things become clear: first, that I don’t
really have a clue what the hell he’s talking
about when he uses words like ‘membrane’
and ‘technicolour’ in reference to his
music; and, second, that Tucker is like
some sort of weed smoking, metalobsessed, home counties incarnation of
Leonardo Da Vinci.
prolific artisan to say the least, when he
mentions that, “It’s still a surprise
recording and playing - I feel like I’m
having to catch up with ideas a lot of the
time,” I can well believe him. Along with
his constant painting, illustration, and
part-time gilding of sculptures in order to
pay his rent, he’s already started work on
the next record. “The work I was doing
last week is for the fourth album, I
suppose,” he says. “It’s definitely going to
be much more massively layered - very
warm, big and bright. One of the new
songs is quite poppy in a way.”
long with that revelation, he mentions
that a new track is to feature drums,
which he gleefully describes as being
“quite Boredoms-esque”. Then he delves
back into bewildering technical talk about
phrasing that makes my face hurt.
ith a string of solo dates, a tour supporting
Bardo Pond and an appearance at
December’s ATP festival scheduled, Mr
Complex Music Terminology is going to
be busy these next few weeks. No doubt
he’ll still manage to craft a few more
songs, get round to doing a Godflesh
covers band with Tim from Part Chimp
that they’ve been talking about, and maybe
even gild the odd Buddha’s head.
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