Pay peanuts; get monkeys – an interview with Simian Mobile Disco

Simian Mobile Disco are two English lads well aware that its not their look people are after when they buy a SMD record. We met in their hotel as they were touring Temporary Pleasure. The two of them had no problem chatting but were dreading the time the photographer would come knocking at the door. Here’s the gist of it.  This is one of the press photos circulating at the moment, and having met the two of them, I can say with a fair degree of confidence, that they enjoyed this shoot about as much as water torture.

Warning: If you meet Simian Mobile Disco at a festival, a party or in a late night diner and you fall into candid conversation with them about music, recording and your untapped vocal ability, and then, buoyed on by a hitherto alien confidence, you offer to sing on their next record, and they smile encouragingly and say ‘Get us up on the MySpace mate’, you have about as much a chance of singing for them as you do of finding a bikini in Tehran.

“Now, that just makes us sound like we’re cruel,” says Jason. True, it kind of does.

Jason and Jas have a new album out in August called Temporary Pleasure. It’s heavy on collaborations. Gruff Rhys, Beth Ditto and Jamie Liddell have all contributed vocals. The Gruff Rhys track is called Cream Dream. “He came in the studio,” Jas explains, “And said, ‘I called it Cream Dream because,’ – long, dramatic, slightly awkward pause –  ‘You know, it rhymes’.” The amount of vocal tracks for consideration they got sent to them was immense but their wish list was also quite long. Nick Cave and Andre 3000 didn’t pick up the phone – maybe they should have tried their MySpace?

When you were stuck for inspiration during recording who’d you turn to?

Jas: When we reached a section of a track that we weren’t sure what to do with it, we’d ask ourselves, ‘What would Todd Rungren do?’

Is it scary sending a record into a market where everyone’s skint?

Jason: For us we’re quite lucky with our label in that they let us do what we want and don’t put that much pressure on us to make a certain album. But working with other bands I’ve definitely noticed the pressure they’re under in the last 12 months.

Jas: They’re shitting it.

In light of that pressure does your label ever tell you not to cut your hair or dress like Empire of the Sun?

Jason: No, they know that would never work. We’re not really stars like that.

Jas: We were definitely not told to wear these clothes.

LCD Soundsystem got 45 minutes for their Run record; you guys got half an hour. Are Nike trying to say that English people are lazier than the Yanks?

Jas: It actually came it at even less than thirty minutes and had to ask us to lengthen it. I suppose, it’s just that we’re not very good at running.

This issue takes the theme of performance. How choreographed is your stage act?

Jason: Were not ever going to be flamboyant performers so we wanted to make something that was real and tied to a time. With an electronic music show that’s sometimes really difficult. We didn’t want it to be based around a computer and playback, so the live show based itself around those rules as we wanted it be real and organic. Because we use lots of old keyboards and equipment it can be very predictable. It’s quite a challenge just to keep it running and that kind of is the performance.

Jas: We’re trying to make a spectacle. The worst thing of an electronic show is not knowing what they’re doing, like they could be checking their emails.

Or not checking their myspace in your case?

Jason: We should never have said that. We’ll just have to use a Facebook excuse from now on.

Where do you find the best looking crowds in Europe?

Jason:  The Exit Festival is pretty incredible.

And the most hardcore?

Jason: Whenever we play anywhere on the west coast of Ireland it’s always fucking mental.

And if they weren’t being beautiful in Serbia or strung-out in Ireland, where would you like people to listen to Temporary Pleasure.

Jason: Maybe floating in that blue lagoon in Iceland.

Jas: With the music pumped in underwater.

And finally, how demanding are Simian Mobile Disco?

Jason: Because of our show we have to travel with a round table. Venues tell us, ‘sure no problem we can just put two square tables together,’ but we always need to stipulate it’s a round table… otherwise we’d catch our testicles on the corners.

At home with HR Giger

In summer I had the pleasure of driving from Berlin to Zurich, kipping one night in a tent, only to have Giger cut an interview after only 25 minutes. Mad frustrating. It was supposed to be a VBS documentary but in the end all we got out of it was a print piece. He drank half a bottle of Jameson during the 25 minutes.

HR Giger, regardless of how many museum or galleries he fills with volumes of his other work, will almost certainly go down in history as that strange Swiss guy behind the Alien movie. During the 70s Giger produced a book called Necronomicon, which established him as the foremost fantastical artist at the time. Salvador Dali was so impressed by his work that he invited him over to Spain for a visit and stole Giger’s girlfriend in the process.

In the 80s Giger got involved in the movies and got an Oscar for his work on Alien, but after a couple of awful cinematic collaborations in the 90s he pretty much disappeared to everyone except the goths and metalheads raiding his back catalogue for tattoos.

He’s 69 now. Loathed by feminists and obscenity sticklers, Giger, the one-time king of darkness and the person Ridley Scott confessed to being petrified of meeting, is now no more scary than a grumpy old neighbor. He wears Crocs. He potters around the garden, mumbles to the cat, drops himself in front of the tube for the afternoon, and cracks open a bottle whenever he feels like it. His wife Carmen lives next door. Giger punched a hole through the wall to join the buildings. Giger’s side is painted black from floor to ceiling; Carmen’s, one assumes, ain’t so bad.

He divides his time between a castle in the Alps and his house in Zurich where he has a little train track running round the garden and right through the kitchen. When he sketches, he still likes to draw strange alien figures with hefty packages pinning fragile looking ladies to the floor, but his days of nightmarish visions and brutal hallucinations are over. He goes to bed at 5 AM and wakes at noon. The night before the interview, Giger had overdone it at the dinner table.

How was your fondue last night?
Heavy. Oh so heavy. After I always say, “Oh my God, why have I done that?” But it’s so good.

What are you doing with yourself these days?
You know I haven’t painted since the 90s? I’m quiet now. I like watching television. I like the Wire, and the Sopranos is so good.

Yesterday we met your good friend Walter Wegmüller, who helped Timothy Leary when he was on the run. He spoke about the “freaky times” back in Switzerland in the 70s. What were they like?
Ah, the freaky times. When Timothy Leary was in Switzerland, he was hoping to get asylum so he could stay here and not go back to prison in America. I was collecting signatures for him. My father was a pharmacist, you know? “What are you doing with this guy?” he asked me. It was funny. Timothy Leary was a very nice man. I didn’t meet him back then in Switzerland, but I met him later in Los Angeles when he wrote two articles for my books. They were very good and he was a very fine person.

Did you exchange ideas?
Oh not much. What could I say? He was a very intelligent man with a lot of knowledge and I’m, well, I’m just an artist.

Did you ever take LSD with him?
Ah, you know you can’t talk about that on record. LSD is still forbidden, so it’s not good to talk about those things.

You’ve said before that much of the inspiration for your art comes from dreams, and more specifically nightmares?
Everyone always wants to know about my dreams. The inspiration is mostly from literature actually. I have read so many things that have inspired me. Beckett was very much an inspiration for me. His theatre especially. I made paintings as a homage to Samuel Beckett [Homage to S. Beckett I,II,III]. They were some of the very few colored paintings I’ve done.

What other writers were an inspiration for you?
Crime writers especially. I started with Edgar Wallace and then all sorts of Western writers.

Your work comes from a much darker place than Beckett or Wallace?
Darker, yes. It came partly from Chur where I grew up; partly from the war. I was born in 1940 so I could feel the atmosphere when my parents were afraid. The lamps were always a bluish dark, so the planes would not bomb us. Switzerland and Germany are close. The targets weren’t always very well marked. I felt the fear of that very much.

Later on at a certain time I saw a lot of witchcraft books and stuff like that. H.P. Lovecraft and these kind of people. I’d say my inspiration comes from books mostly, but dreams also.

Is there any way that you can control the dreams and manipulate your surroundings from within the dream?
Yeah sometimes it happens and I can remember when I’m in a dream. Or I get the feeling like I’m out of my body. A long time ago, about 10 or even 20 years ago, I had that. But it didn’t happen to me often. Probably four or five times but yeah, that was strong.

Was it frightening?
No. It wasn’t frightening. It was just, well, I was so surprised. A dream where I can’t get enough air, that’s frightening. Or the kind of dream where I was stuck in a grave or something like that, that was frightening. But later I developed these passages paintings [Passage I-XXX] and they were very good for that. I got some sort of relief. I got no more bad dreams when I painted these passages. It was helpful.

Does that happen often?
No, not often, but I did the right thing because at the time these passage dreams were ruining my work. It was the right thing to make me feel better.

Can you tell me about the dream behind Necronomicon your book that Ridley Scott used as the template for Alien?
These things come from H.P. Lovecraft. In the 70s I was very familiar with Lovecraft.

And the Alien figure itself?
Well it all comes from the same place. I had already done Necronom IV and V, these monsters with the long heads. That’s what Ridley Scott saw. I showed them in a gallery in Paris. Jodoworsky visited the gallery and so did Ridley Scott and later on I got an invitation to do some work for movies. First it was Jodoworsky for Dune then later on it was Ridley Scott for Alien.

What ever happened with Dune?
Dune never happened with me. I was asked to do it two times. Once with Jodorowsky and then another time with Ridley Scott, but the daughter of Dino de Laurentis had the rights for Dune and she gave them to David Lynch. And David Lynch was not very happy with me.

Why’s that?
He said that I had stolen his ideas, that I’d stolen his baby. I said I liked his baby from Eraserhead. I always said very nice things about him but he was a little strange. And he was jealous because I exhibited in a New York gallery and he couldn’t. He was sour. But I like him.

Do you have a favorite Lynch movie?
Yes, I mean all of Twin Peaks. That was really fabulous. And of course it all started with Eraserhead. All the films he did were wonderful.

How much control were you given during the production of Alien?
Well Ridley Scott directed it and I hadn’t much to say. Ridley Scott knew exactly what he wanted. I was happy that he accepted my book and he showed it to all the crew like it was the bible. He said, you have to do it exactly this way, and I was happy with that. I like him very much. He’s a great guy.

Giger’s preliminary sketches for the Batmobile.

Certain other projects you did after Alien, like Poltergeist II and Killer Condom weren’t as well received, why did you choose to work on them?
After Alien things didn’t turn out so well in the movies because I didn’t get involved enough. I didn’t want to stay in another country. I had spent several months in Shepperton Studios working on Alien and wanted to be home. Later on when it came to doing these other projects I spent only a few days in the country for each one. When the movies eventually came out I thought, “Oh shit.” But I couldn’t change it. There was no more time. So I thought that’s the wrong way to work. If you work on a film you have to be there all the time and be always looking at what they’re doing otherwise they’ll do what they want. In film, everybody wants to bring his own ideas in and make his own style, so it’s terrible. I was very depressed when I saw that.

Which film made you the most depressed?
All of them. I was only pleased with Alien and with the other things I was not very happy with.

After all your involvement in Hollywood, are you filthy rich?
Ah no. I’m actually poor. I had to sell several paintings to pay for the castle. That was shit. I had to sell some very nice, very important paintings.

When did you get the castle?
I did a show in Gruyeres in 1990 and fell in love with the town. I heard that they wanted to sell the castle, so I got it at auction. It was very difficult as I’m really not rich, you know? I got the money from many different places. I was always looking for something, a place for my paintings and sculptures, and I think a castle is the right place for me, no?

Is the castle a work in progress or is it finished?
More or less I’m finished, but it’s not done so well. I mean it was done on a really small budget. I can always make it better, but what I’m doing now is putting on shows in different countries to get publicity for the castle. And to find out where my paintings are.

What happened to your paintings?
Some of them were sold and I don’t know to where, and some of them got stolen. It’s horrible.

Were they stolen from your house?
Some, yes. And during the transport to shows. That’s shit. The two paintings for Emerson Lake and Palmer, for their Brain Salad Surgery album, were stolen.

What can you do in that situation?
Nothing. I tried. I said I’ll pay 10,000 francs if someone knows anything about them. I don’t know where they are. It upsets me so much. I like those things and I did them in 1973 and Emerson Lake and Palmer even came to Switzerland to see them.

If you were rich, what would you like to do with the castle?
I’d like to buy back some paintings. There was an idea for a train set running through the castle, but it’s too crazy. It’s fantastical. It costs too much to make such a train and you could never pay if off. It would be very funny to have, but I still have to pay for the castle. I have two million I have to pay back to the bank for the castle, and that’s heavy.

The castle gets a lot of visits from young rockers and goths. They seem to look on it as a bit of temple of darkness. Do you get any bizarre requests from them?
Oh yes. I get a lot of strange people who come to see my work in Gruyeres. It’s very nice. You know people from the village they know my fans when they see them. They’re all in black. They want to marry there, do photo shoots, all kinds of stuff.

Do you think they ever have sex in the castle?
Ha, it’s possible. I don’t know. We don’t have everything so tightly controlled.

Apart from art, is there anything else you collect?
I have weapons. I never want to be without weapons. As protection. I like weapons. From a child I always had weapons.

What’s your favourite weapon?
I have a small 5mm, 22 calibre, it’s a small revolver. That was what Li (Giger’s first wife) shot herself with. It’s very small. I have three revolvers with gunpowder in the barrel. You can fill them up. That’s fun.

Would you recommend the film industry to a fine artist?
Oh no, not at all. It’s very hard to work for film and you never have time to finish things in a really good way. Films make you crazy. You know once I wanted to work in Switzerland for the film industry. That was for the movie Species. Oh that was wrong.

Why was it so bad?
These guys I was working with, they didn’t want to work on Saturday and Sunday. It was terrible. They blamed me because I wanted them to work late. Film is great. I mean, I see what they do today and it’s wonderful. They know how to do it, they have all kinds of things but it really makes you crazy.

Advertising Heroin

This was an interview I did with Johnny Cooper Clarke. First off I tried to get him after a show but it was impossible to get through all the fans giving him smokes and buying him beers. Eventually I got him on the phone, at his house, in the English countryside. He was an absolute gent and I felt like a bit of a cunt for running the piece with that headline, but you got to get them in the door somehow, right?

In school, in Ireland, we get Austin Clarke on our poetry syllabus moaning about heifers and blackbirds in the faraway Irish mists – snooze. In England they get John Cooper Clarke: “The fucking cops are fucking keen to fucking keep it fucking clean. The fucking chief’s a fucking swine who fucking draws a fucking line.” – fucking sweet. He’s experiencing a bit of an upturn in popularity in recent years thanks to endorsements by the Artic Monkeys, so not wanting to miss the ship after it’s left the shore, we figured we’d get ours in too.

What makes for a really good poem?
I don’t spend much time reading poetry I must say, but I like all sorts of stuff so it’s a tough one to pin down

Is there a point when you’re writing a poem where you think, that’s it I’ve nailed it?
Nah, I don’t really ever feel that. I tweak them all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever walked away going that’s it. I don’t work that way I suppose. Also with the show it’s not 100% poetry. It’s just sort of talking with the audience, getting a few gags in

Would you prefer it if your shows had less laughs and the poetry was taken more seriously?
No, I like that. I like it like that.

Do you put much time into your look?
No, not really I’ve been wearing the same kind of thing for years, which is a bit of a tall order these days as people are much bigger now. Buying a jacket off the rail is near impossible if you’re a bit on the slender side

You’re the skinniest man I’ve ever seen on a stage, do you eat much?
Loads. Go figure. I eat a lot.

Where did you first develop an interest in poetry?
At school. Where we all start

Was it not about strange for you to embark on such a fanciful career?
It is kind of fanciful but I’ve got a feeling that everybody in the world has written a poem. It’s the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Have you had many jobs to support your poetry?
How long have you got?

What was the worst one?
The worst one? A building site. Digging foundations for garages. Blimey that was heavy work. I lasted a fortnight. I didn’t really have many muscles but I was able to count each one as they hurt so bad.

How did the Ou Est la Maison De Fromage? collaboration come about with Alan Williams
That was a criminal act. It was a bootleg. I feel terrible about it and wish it didn’t exist. It was a bootleg. I made no money off it and I wish it never existed.

And has he got in touch with you?
No.

It must be nice to have kids a good forty years younger than you turning up at your shows?
Well the Artic Monkeys are always dropping my name, and Kate Nash too. It’s nice when these glamorous artists talk about you. And I did get put on the GCSE syllabus which introduced younger people to me.

How did the Sugar Puffs advert come about?
They left a telegram – I think that’s what we used in those days – saying get in touch. And I thought that sounds lucrative. They were great. They were a lot of fun to make.

You were using a lot of heroin back in those days weren’t you?
Yeah, but I kept it pretty quiet.

Did it not seem strange to be doing a kid’s ad considering?
A little bit, but the subject just doesn’t come up. Everybody’s got to eat.

Was it the hardest thing you’ve ever done, kicking heroin?
It was pretty tough yeah. It were hard.

Do you think you got anything out of that period?
No I think it’s all negative. I can’t think of anything to recommend that road.

So you wouldn’t recommend drugs to aspiring artists?
Whatever makes people good it ain’t drugs. Drugs will never furnish you with any particular talent.

you should check out john’s site and read his poems

Jello Biafra

This is an interview I did with Jello Biafra – ex Dead Kennedy’s frontman – for the German magazine Style and the Family Tunes. Jello makes you call him at 3am his time, then wait on the phone through a three-minute answer machine message about the evils of Bill Clinton. Interviewing him, everytime you make an interjection, Jello jumps back with a “Don’t interrupt me”.  Quiet right. If he runs for office again, I’d throw him an old vote or two.

Jello Biafra does not have a Facebook profile, neither does he have a computer in his house. If he had, he jokes, he’d probably go straight for the porn. But Jello doesn’t come across as much of a comic, although appearing as the voice of Osama Bin Laden for an audiobook and calling his latest collaborative work, Sieg Howdy, is as amusing as obese people in a microcar. In interview, Jello is a straight-talking, hard-focused, “Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking,” activist. If you call him he treats you to a three and a half minute minute recorded message on the evils of John McCain, Bill Clinton and Sara Palin. He didn’t vote for Barack Obama – Jello is a Ralph Nader supporter and Obama is a Patriot Act supporter, and that’s ample reason for not doing so – but he does want him to succeed. In order to do this Jello’s going to be like a dog barking at his heels. He’s even written a letter to Obama outlining his list of demands. Jello’s new album is out in Autumn and depending on how the forty-fourth president does in the next months might well be released with the blunt title, Audacity of Hype.

This issue we’re covering punk activism yet this publication is far from a punk magazine. Should punk be fashionable?
Activism tends to get a lot more done when it’s fashionable. If it weren’t for protesting being trendy, we never would have stopped the Vietnam War.

You ran for president. Did you seriously think you had a chance?
I’d be a much better president than some of the ones we’ve had recently, but then again so would a cockroach. I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on running the last time but I got nominated and thought people who don’t know anything about Ralph Nader or the Green Party might get off their asses and show up. It brought a punk spirit into the Green Party which wasn’t there before.

So if the old punks are running for office today, who are the new punks?
Oh that’s for you to say. Punk was never a movement. It was a sound at one stage, maybe even a fashion and definitely a punk spirit but that in itself is not a movement. For me a movement is political, has a mission, there’s an eye on the prize. Punk is culture, and culture itself can be part of a movement but it’s not the movement.

And that culture is now responsible for a lot of bad music and, more unfortunately, the title of Ashton Kutcher’s MTV adventure. Was mainstream success a very bad thing for punk?
My attitude when Green Day and Offspring and Rancid got famous was, okay this is going to screw up the underground in someway but we had been ready for this for the last fifteen years. The music was cool and we always knew that if it got on mainstream radio other people would like it because it brought back the spirit of rock and roll. I told people if you’re upset about Green Day or Good Charlotte or any of the crap that came later, don’t listen to it. Just support the music you like, don’t worry about the shit that you hate. That’s why I never run out of interesting bands to go and see.
I’m into seeing bands doing something new, something shocking?

But what’s left to do on a punk stage?
Well you’re obviously not going to the right shows anymore. You’re having to share the same country with U2 and that’s making you discouraged.

Your spoken word shows are the most popular thing you do now. How did that come about?
It took off more than I thought it would, but part of the reason for that was because the LAPD decided to make me the big example of why musicians should be censored and put in jail when they dragged me into court over the Frankenchrist album. After that I got all these requests from universities asking me to lecture on censorship, and I brought the spoken word on tour. If you find you have another gift to the one you already know sometimes you have an obligation to use it.

Do you think there’s a limit to punk music that you could surpass through the medium of spoken word?
I don’t know whether it surpasses any limits. It’s not superior or inferior. It does mean I can go into more detail and infect people’s brains with a positive disease at a deeper level. I can give them more germs without the noise drowning them out. I like causing trouble and this is a great way to do it.

It’s hard to not feel that the majority of what we listen to now is insipid and dumb compared to the counter position music took in the eighties.
Commercial pop music has always been insipid, as I put it, to sedate people and convince them that the main pleasure they can get out of life is to shut up and shop. But that doesn’t make all music insipid all of the time. Again, people say the eighties were so great and the music was so good, but there were only certain elements of the underground scene that made the eighties bearable because the rest was so awful. Otherwise Reagan was president, Thatcher was prime minister. Every last gain of human consciousness [from the seventies] was being ripped down and destroyed.

What’s your take on artists throwing their weight behind causes?
I get much more angry at the artist who doesn’t use his position to advance something good. And it isn’t just the artist, compare what Mohammed Ali did as a famous sports figure with what Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or David Beckham have done. I’m much more on the John Lennon than the Paul McCartney side of the fence. In some ways Paul McCartney has thrown away his worth as an artist.

So, if for example, an artist whose music you liked was an ardent Republican, would you still listen to their music?
It wouldn’t help but I’m not sure it would turn me off completely. I’ve had to argue this point with radical hardcore punks before that if you listen to nothing but radical hardcore punk then your music and art will suffer. I try to bring the spirit of Jerry Lee Lewis into my work and my spoken word but I couldn’t imagine a conversation about politics with Jerry Lee would go very well.

If you could go back and do it all again tomorrow, would you do it the same way?
I can’t think of another way. Granted the other former members of Dead Kennedys have turned out to be some of the greediest most dishonest people I’ve ever known in my life but that doesn’t take away from the music and I see no point in having any huge regret over anything I did or didn’t do. I was just another nineteen-year-old who moved half way across the country to make some noise in California… and I was young enough to not know any better.

www.alternativetentacles.com
Jello Biafra has a new album out in Autumn, which may or may not be called the Audacity of Hype.

Dee-tachable penis

Sexual conservatism takes one in the jaw

Baby Dee, god bless her harangued soul, may never grant an interview that does not include a line of questions about her gender transformation. And maybe her music will always play first wife to her long hair, lipstick, big hands and tits. That’s a shame. Because, in spite of everything we’ve achieved as an evolved homogenised society; and contrary to the advances of women, the potential emergence of Hilldawg as the most powerful leader of the world; the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Ladyfests and all that hooey, we’re still just a bunch of school-yard kids getting cheap thrills debating the absence or presence of willies.

“I’d rather not get into that,” says Baby Dee. The sex-op that is, but a biography can make a musician and Baby Dee, aka Pinky Pinky Pinky, ex-tree surgeon, ex-organist, ex lap-dancer and ex-man has a story big enough for her own scene.

“I was kind of a bum, musically, and decided to become musically literate. So I took a class and I don’t know why but I became fascinated by Gregorian Chants. I became really obsessed with that type of music, and that’s what got me sort of singing. But I’d never really thought of myself as a singer.”

It’s Baby Dee’s voice that’ll either suck you in or spit you out. Hard to describe but here goes anyway: think of Fagan from Oliver Twist, Tom Waits, Joanna Newsom, the boys who were thrown out of choir for taking the piss, the low end notes on a tumble dryer, the sound of this symbol: Ω and that other ambiguous New York character, Antony.

“I never really got too far beyond Bach,” she says talking about those classes. And eventually graduated as an organist taking a job in a church in the South Bronx. Then Baby Dee had her Paul on the road to Damascus moment and realised that her vocation lay in being a woman rather than a man. “When I realised I was a tranny I had to do something about it and that was the end of my career in the church.”

‘Jesus got a plan for you. He’s gonna fry your fat ass in hell,’ is the line in Baby Dee’s The Song of God’s Great Plan.
‘What does a hooker know about loving?’ is another line from another song. “I turned a few tricks,” she says, “I had my time, not particularly successful at it. Lucky for me because if I’d been better looking I probably would have gone down the tubes.”

For someone so candid lyrically, Baby Dee is quite shy in real life, and on stage comes across like your nine-year-old niece who’s been rehearsing her party piece in her bedroom for six months but never imagined she’d be called upon to perform. It’s endearing. Crowds love her, as she ambles across small stages in odd, torn socks, from her harp to her keyboard, and then back to her harp again. I guess it’s because she’s gracious. She didn’t get her first band until she was in her fifties, and would probably have never been doing this interview if it hadn’t been for a certain Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy coming along to one of her shows and convincing her to make a record. For someone who previously had only been accepted in the entertainment world in freak shows, riding tricycles and going under the description of a ‘Bilateral Hermaphrodite’, to be treated like an artist must be a whole lot of vindication, and none too soon either. If music has the power to transport then most of what we hear today gets you about as far as an elephant on rusty rollerblades; Baby Dee shoots you out of a cannon into a completely different world.

She’s now 53. She drinks Scotch on the rocks, smokes Old Holburn tobacco that she rolls too loose to stay lit and wears a combination of Dalmatian and leopard print, fleece and hiking boots, with her dyed red hair pulled back tight inside a hood. Her only makeup is a thin line of red lipstick. She’s tall. A good three inches over six foot, with shoulders that look like they could carry grown men out of burning buildings. Baby Dee can handle herself, which is good because she stands out. On the day we meet, in a beer garden of a hotel, packed with tracksuits on £1Ryanair flights from some god-awful place like Hull or Wolverhampton, every head turns and it’s a bit hairy. Baby Dee doesn’t seem to notice and when asked about her role as a famous transsexual replies, “I’m not the spokesperson type,” she says. “I just do my part.”

About A Boy

Christmas drinks with Europe’s most notorious child lovers.

Finding the ideal flatmate is as tough as finding the perfect partner. Some people are born messy, others can’t help but be loud and then, there are those, who in spite of their inherently sweet nature and amiability still wreck your head for no good reason. Ricardo and Martin are perfect flatmates. They live together in a small terraced house in Leiden in the Netherlands. They like Walt Disney, Star Wars and Macauley Culkin movies circa 1989. You see, Martin Uttenbogaard (36) and Ricardo Hunefeld (22) are paedophiles. Ricardo outed himself on YouTube, and Martin ran for government on a reduce the age of consent campaign which bombed like a hot snot, consequently they’re about as recognisable, and as welcome, in mainland Europe as Josef Fritzl. They invited me around for tea and biscuits just before Christmas.

So, it’s Christmas next week, the time of year that kids from all over the world look forward to. What’ll you guys be doing?
M: We want to invent, no invite some people over here and have dinner.

Those other people will be paedophiles?
M: Yes.

Do you mostly hang out with other paedophiles?
M:  Sometimes we go to a movie together. It’s nice to be friends but you can’t be friends with all of them
R: It’s hard because we’re too famous.
M: I used to go to the swimming pool with other paedophiles but they don’t want me to come anymore in case I’m recognised. There’s also a meeting of paedophiles called Internantional Boy Love Day. It’s twice a year when the moon or the sun is in a certain place but we are not allowed to go there because people are afraid that we’ll get recognised.

Will you spend time with your own families over the holiday?
M: I have only contact with my two brothers my sister and my parents.

And what about their kids?
M: I don’t have contact with other parts of the family. If they have a family celebration I’m not invited.
R My family don’t have any contact with me. But that’s okay.

How did you two chaps meet?
R: Through the Internet, via a forum. There are paedophile forums and we recognise each other from the nicknames.

How open are you about being paedophiles?
R: There are no boundaries to us being open.

Okay but Martin is a vegetarian and can tell the world he doesn’t eat meat without fear of retribution. Is it the same with you being a paedophile?
R: It’s the same.

Is it not dangerous for you as well-known paedophile?
M: People from the extreme right put flyers all over the neighbourhood. I got bricks through my windows and very angry people at the door. They were scary times. It felt like I was trapped in my house. People shouted they were going to kill me. You’d call the police but they always came after fifteen minutes.

What about the police, are they on your side?
M: Most of them are okay. But the real problem is that it always takes a long time for them to come and the police station isn’t very far. I have a camera and I film what is happening so I can tell the police what the people who throw rocks look like.

Have any of them actually got through the door?
M: There is a boy who’s 16 who still comes and kicks at the door; kids when they see me run away or shout names but it’s nearly a year since my windows were last smashed. People shout at me from car windows or sometimes in the supermarket but it’s not as bad as it was when I was in the middle of the election campaign.

What do you do for a living, Ricardo?
R: I was a Streetmaker.

Sweetmaker? Like sweets?
R: No streets. Bricks. I made streets and then I was fired for being a paedophile.

So your boss found out you were a paedophile, was this after you made the YouTube flick?
R: My boss knew it half a year before I lost my job and it was no problem. But with his girlfriend it was a problem. She found out when I went on YouTube. I went to court and the judge said that I was illegally fired so technically I’m still working for my boss but he doesn’t pay me. And I couldn’t get welfare either because they said I was still employed. Once I get money I can go look for other work.

Do you really think you’ll get another job?
No.

Why on earth did you make the video?
I wanted to be honest. I don’t like secrets.

What was the reaction on YouTube, did you get any support from other paedos?
From some, but it was more hate mail.

Were you scared shitless?
Yeah, very.

When did you realise you were paedophiles?
R: When I was 13.
M: When I was 12. I realised I was interested in younger boys but also older men, but I didn’t find older men attractive. I liked to be found attractive by older men and fantasised about that.
R: When I was 13 I always fantasised about boys who were 5 years younger than me.

So if neither of you were attracted to older men as kids, don’t you think paedophilia is a bit one-sided?
R: No, it’s both sided.
M: A lot of boys and girls learn that it’s not good to have a relationship with older people and that affects it. People in the eighties had those relationships more than now, and boys liked it, just kept it secret.

Boys and girls learn it’s dangerous to have sex with older people because they’re too young to make a judgement on the situation and physically they’re too young for sex.
M: I don’t think you can do be too young. Everything you like, no matter what age you are, you don’t stop liking as you get older. It’s only indoctrination that makes people not like things or feel embarrassed by them. Like if a very young child is masturbated by a granddad, people only have problems with that when they are older because it’s taboo. You never have people complaining because they were on their grandfather’s lap or he hugged me. It’s only when people make it a taboo.

Being hugged by your granddad and being wanked by your granddad are very different things?
R: It’s only a taboo when you make it a taboo. And then people have mental problems, even though they liked it a lot when it was happening. They grow up and have mental problems because they think it was wrong.

Okay, for the sake of continuity lets assume you’re right and it is all just taboo, how do you know when a child is ready for sex?
R: It’s just like a healthy sexual relationship. You have to talk about it.
In my opinion the way society treats sexuality is the problem because children know what they like and dislike. They have their own opinion when they go to supermarkets, so why not with sexuality. If that’s the case you’d have far less rape. Parents suppress children and control them when I believe most people are horny about their own children.
M: But we weren’t talking about incest.
R: So? That’s what I think… But friendship must come in the first place, then sex can come after that.

But you can get kids to do anything, they’d run to the shops in exchange for a piece of fluff. You can manipulate them because they look up to adults and they’re stupid. How can you really know that having anal sex with a kid is what they want?
R: If he says I’m ready then okay.
M: When you know a child and a child knows you, and you both know that you want that then you can start experimenting. It’s no good when you hurt the child of course, but if you don’t that’s okay.

On your website it says you want to reduce the age of consent to twelve. Why stop there, why not eight or six or four years of age?
M: In the end we want to abolish the age of consent totally but that’s only when sexual taboos have been abolished. At six years of age you think it’s nice to be touched on the genitals but when you are older you think it’s a bad thing and you feel it was wrong. Society has to change first.

Do you think it will change?
R: I don’t think so.

So your situation is pretty much hopeless?
M: I have a different opinion. He is very sceptical, but I think it will change when people think about child sexuality as a positive thing. Right now they see it as a bad thing. When they see it as not damaging their life, then it will be possible.

What benefits do you think a child can get from a sexual relationship with an adult?
M: I think there are a lot. They learn not to be afraid of strangers. Most strangers aren’t bad guys. The traffic is much more dangerous than the chance people will do something to you. People are now afraid to hug children, especially men. People only know their parents or children, not adults who are on an emotional level with them. They say that all paedophiles rape children but that’s not the case.

But having sex with a kid makes you a rapist.
R:I don’t agree
M:I think sexuality is a positive thing, but there are a lot of problems with people who think we spend all day standing by football fields staring at children playing.

Do you ever do that?
R: No.

On your website there’s a lot of paedophile short stories that revolve around precocious kids tricking adults into sex. Are seductive kids the cause of paedophilia?
R: It is very common.
M: When you meet a boy it’s very common that he tries something once they realise you are open to it, even if they are straight it’s very common that they want to experiment. Then you have to turn them down. It happened to me with a 12-year-old and I had to turn him down and the sad thing is that as he gets older he could think that he did something wrong.

You’re both into boys, what do the gay community think of you?
M: There used to be a brotherhood. But every time the gays got more rights the paedophiles got less. The gay community is afraid of the link between the two communities. A lot of older gay people aren’t against us as they were oppressed like us but the young gay people hate paedophiles. They forget they were suppressed before as a group.

Do you think they’re hypocrites?
M: They say paedophilia is so bad but if they see a 15-year-old boy walking by and he looks good they all want to have a sexual relationship with him.

You probably can’t say this to me while I’m recording but are you either of you in a relationship with a kid at the moment?
M: We are not active. I think nowadays when you have a sex with a young child you can bring the child a lot of problems. The child isn’t allowed to talk about it and if they do you can go to prison. They indoctrinate the child and the police ask them what happens and that’s all damaging to the child.
R: I have contact with a little boy but there’s no sex. It’s only playing football.

How old is this little boy?
R: He’s thirteen.

Will it become more?
R: No I don’t want more.

What do you talk about when you’re playing football?
R: Everything. He knows everything about me.

Is he gay?
R: No. He’s pure hetero.

And do his parents know?
R: A little.

So, a lot of the attraction of being a paedophile is in having friendships with kids, not just sex?
R: Sexuality is less, friendship is important.

Really?
M: Well even with heteros, you have people who only want to fuck and then people who want relationships. I want a relationship. And if sex were allowed I’d only want it if the child was interested. We’re not just interested in fucking children.

Okay, I’m looking around your room here and I see lots of children’s DVDs, toys, stuffed animals and a Millennium Falcon. Are you guys just big kids yourselves?
R: Paedophiles are on the same level as children. That’s why they are more capable of knowing what’s going on with children.
M: I believe that grown-up people act like grown-ups because they have to. But that’s changing because there are more and more grown-up people who are interested in comics and toys. There are a lot of grown-up people who are into Smurfs and dinky cars.

Sure, but they don’t eat them or get them stuck up their noses, do they?
R: Maybe secretly they’re playing.
M: I collected lots of Star Wars as a kid. When I was older I still collected them but don’t play with them.

But it’s like your development has stopped if you still play with toys at a certain age.
M: Yeah a lot of people say there was something wrong with our youth and that’s why we stopped at that level emotionally, but we both had perfectly normal childhoods.
R: I like Walt Disney movies but that doesn’t make me a child.

Me too, but unlike kids, you don’t believe in mermaids or singing teacups, do you?
M: It’s not so black and white. A lot of adults have an inner child.
R: Adults think children are 100% childish and you can’t have serious conversation with them but that’s too much.
M: I believe every adult has gay feelings and paedophile feelings. It’s different from person to person and it can also change during a lifetime a bit. In Greek society it was very common to have sex with children and have a wife.

In Greece it was illegal to have sex with children under twelve unless they were a slave. You can say all you want about the golden age of paedophilia in Greece, but they were still rapists according to the Greek senate.

M: Yes but the point I want to make is all those grown up men, it was very common.

But it was rape. Just because a crime was prevalent in the past is no vindication for it in the present.
M: But that’s not the point. A lot of people had both orientations. There are societies where paedophile relationships are common. Like in Africa.

Cholera is common in Africa. Anyway, what do you think of celebrity paedophiles like Michael Jackson and Gary Glitter?
M: The problem with Michael Jackson is that he doesn’t say he’s a peado. So he isn’t doing anything good for paedophiles. Gary Glitter’s the same. He says he’s not a paedophile. And he’s advertising going to Vietnam to have sex with children. So even if he is a paedo, then he’s not a good example.

Is there a type of paedophile gaydar?
R: No.
M: It’s not possible.
R: Especially not in this time because people are so scared.
M: Paedophiles aren’t interested in sex with each other so they don’t look at each other. Gay people have their way. They talk differently or dress differently. Paedophiles try and look normal. I don’t think there are any clues.

Have you seen the Southpark episode about paedophilia?
M: Yes, I don’t remember it so well.

Well Cartman’s pissed off that all his buddies are immature, so he decides to go online and find some adult friends. He meets a bunch of guys from NAMBLA and long story short, they befriend Cartman and the rest of the Southpark kids, and then try and fuck them.
M: I’ve heard something about it but I believe it wasn’t allowed in the Netherlands. I saw it but it’s not my kind of humour. They make it laughable and that’s better than being hysterical but they also make it a bad thing. And they say you want to fuck children over and over.

Do you have a type that you go for?
R: Blonde.
M: Not too fat, not too skinny. Heteros have females who are very popular and paedos have the same. We have forums with boys in swimsuits and most paedos have the same tastes.

Are there any celebrity kids that you fancy?
R: Macauley Culkin, but he’s now older.

He’s older than you now.
M: I like the boy from Who’s The Boss, the youngest boy. He’s older than me perhaps. I liked him when he was a boy.

What do you say to people who think the pair of you are monsters?
M: Well that means we’re not human beings. It means you’re a good guy and we’re totally bad and that’s not true. It’s better to call some acts monstrous but not the person.

The King has left the building

The Red Cow Roundabout was built by canny developers who wanted to make an impression on the two great opponents in Irish society. For Dubliners it means you are now leaving the city proper and can break speed limits and laugh at local radio presenters en route to whatever quaint village you’ve chosen to rape and pillage that weekend in Donegal, Mayo or Kerry. For country people it’s a last chance to brief your children on the dangers of heroin cigarettes and cocaine tabs and get yourself mentally prepared for the ‘lock-hards’, the joyriders and the junkies who make up the rest of the population of the city who aren’t originally from the country or Poland. But for one man called Moran it was a place of unison rather than division. He bought a small bar, then built a giant hotel and every year, during the Christmas holidays, his Red Cow complex hosts parties that bring country and city people together to the strains of music, laughter and tears. This is no Camp David and Bush, Blair and Clinton – the Mahatma Ghandis of our generation – haven’t even heard of the spot; this is the Red Cow Hotel and the man in charge of breaking down the barriers and bringing about sea-change is no politician – it’s Dickie ‘spit on me’ Rock.
Dickie Rock has been an entertainer for more than forty years. He made his name with the Miami Showband touring Ireland and England in the sixties and seventies. Dickie Rock is nearly seventy. He still gets nervous before a show. He still believes in giving the audience exactly what they want; he never leaves them waiting or wanting. Dickie Rock is the last great pro.
“I was a Dubliner, a skinny little fucker with attitude and I was told I was too slick for the country. I won them over by my performance and the choice of material.”
Tonight Dickie has a crowd of seven hundred nurses waiting for him. They’ve just had a sit down meal. The Duck a l’Orange was apparently too citric and the Beef and Mixed Veg was a bit dry but the Cherry Trifle and the Lemon Meringues rescued everything. Success. The crowd are happy. They’re from Our Lady’s Hospital. Men and Women. All ages. Sil Fox the comedian is warming them up while Dickie does his exercises in suite 206. No one knows quite what his exercises are. Long-serving manager Jackie Johnson can’t even hazard a guess: “Best to leave him be before he goes on. His routine is his routine.” Mystic indeed but my guess is it’s yoga. Dickie’s dropping from the sun salute into the scorpion and finishing off with the one-legged king pigeon replete with a couple of leg lunges and air-punches.
Sil Fox goes into his last number. It’s something about Budweiser and having sex in a canoe. “They’re both fucking close to water” is the punch line. The crowd give him a great send off but not too many of them go rushing to the foyer to buy his CDs. Either they’ve been too generous with the Lemon Meringue or they’re locked in anticipation of the crooner about to leap on stage. A lot of them, including pretty much everyone in the place under the age of forty-five, are sceptical. In fifteen minutes Dickie will have them on their feet, arms linked, swinging from side to side and when that’s not enough they’ll rush the stage for kisses. Don’t forget now, Dickie Rock is close to seventy – that’s Albert Reynolds and ‘Parky’ country, and they’re ain’t too many young ‘uns travelling there.
Both Kevin Myers and Bob Geldof have come out in criticism of Dickie Rock. Now while Bob Geldof has been dining out on one song for the last thirty years and Kevin Myers has been getting by on a faux-Irish Richard Littlejohn impression for the last couple of decades their criticisms still carry water. In a one and a half hour set Dickie does cover after cover, from Delilah to My Way to Spanish Eyes. He’s no songwriter. In fact Dickie Rock has never written anything more than his biography. He calls himself an entertainer, that’s all. But without him, chances are we’d still be having sex with the lights off in Ireland and the big ‘O’ would still be a reference to Offaly.
You see while the Brits had the Beatles and the Yanks had Elvis to shift them into a sexual revolution, we Irish were still going out to dances where resident bands made up of greasy musicians plonked on chairs supping warm porter was as good as it got. “They were like bricklayers; it was a trade,” says Dickie. When Dickie and the other showbands came along, they danced on stage, they mimicked Elvis and they contributed to the sexualisation of modern Ireland. In doing so of course, they provoked the ire of the moral minority, the original Taliban: The Irish Catholic Church.
“Archbishop John McQuaid was always against the showbands,” says Dickie. “He said it was a sin to dance during Lent and closed the ballrooms for seven weeks, putting a lot of men with families out of work.”
It was probably jealousy. Back then they had every Taoiseach in their pocket – Christ they even managed to get Call of the Wild, a book about a simple pack hound who got the horn for some wolfy chick, banned – so seeing virtuous Mna na hEireann losing their shit over these geeky teen singers was a threat. But in spite of their best efforts they couldn’t stop it.
The mania that followed Dickie was inexplicable.
“The first time it happened I was sixteen and had joined my first band. We were in the Finglas Hall and all the young ones were screaming. I had a voice I could sing a bit, but I wasn’t tall, I was no looker and I couldn’t work out why they were screaming,” he says, “It was great.”
Dickie doesn’t think much of the contemporaries. In his opinion they don’t sing like men, “Shane Ward? A man? Twenty-seven/twenty-eight? The best of luck to him but he sings like a little girl.”
Dickie in contrast lets it rip. He juggles the mic, machine guns the crowd with his fists and conducts the spotlight through an unselfish choreography that allows him to pick out ladies to the back and sides and serenade them.
A small group of women have gathered in the wing. Natasha is forty-five and has seen Dickie four times this year. “If he was ninety I’d still do him,” she says. Huh? I asked if she thought he was a good singer. Her colleague is nineteen, Jasmine. “He’s all right like,” she says, “for an auld fella an all.”
Non-committal in front of the notebook, Jasmine is still pouting and craning her neck when Dickie bends down to plant one on her cheek.
When the show ends Dickie disappears. “It’s the only way to avoid getting into trouble,” he says, “and you have to maintain an aura.”
In a pink sports jacket, blue shirt, tight trousers and ankle-length winklepickers, Dickie Rock packs up his bag and escapes out to his car. He’s living in an apartment at the moment. He likes to change his Dublin addresses every few years but spends most of the time with his wife in Spain. People offer him drinks, women offer him phone numbers but Dickie is not in it for the quick favours, he’s in it for the audience and nothing will compromise that.
“They’re the boss. They pay the tune,” he says.
Dickie Rock, what can I tell ye? Slightly deaf, skin like mahogany and old enough to say he was once your age, twice, yet still the last great pro in Ireland.