5. Morris Minor And The MajorsStutter Rap (No Sleep Til Bedtime)
Your next choice is the speech impediment-mocking Beastie Boys parody ‘Stutter Rap’.
I wasn’t aware that it was mocking it. I thought it was laughing with, rather than against. And obviously I wasn’t really familiar with the Beastie Boys when I was 12 or whatever I was. Maybe it was earlier than that. I can’t remember.
When I was at school I was an obese midget so I took ‘Stutter Rap’ into PE because I probably wanted someone to stop hitting me and someone accidentally sat on it and broke the 7" single and I was devastated. So that incident taught me never to take 7" singles into PE. It’s a very important lesson.
What were you hoping to achieve by taking it into PE? Presumably you didn’t have a turntable wired up in the corner next to the vaulting horse.
That’s the thing, it was a futile gesture or attempt at popularity in some way. "Look what I’ve got. Stop hitting me. Look what I’ve got. Stop hitting me." I was all right at PE because, despite the fact that I had the turning radius of the average-sized Boeing jet, I’ve always had pretty decent hand-eye coordination so I could pretty much kick or catch a ball whenever it was put in my general direction.
Your songs contain humour. Do you have to rein yourself in when a song is getting too funny and veering into comedy or Beastie Boys parody territory?
Absolutely. Tastes being what they are, occasionally for people on an individual basis that’s going to happen. I’m entirely comfortable with that because there’s nothing worse than comedy music. "Comedy music! Wahey!" It’s not for me. But similarly, on the other side of the coin, so much music out there doesn’t take account of a sense of humour at all and certainly in terms of our band, and particularly me because I write the lyrics, it’s a part of the personalities. A lot of bands seem to filter it out and write in a strictly rock & roll idiom so it’s either about someone who died or love or something about SO-CI-ETY and how it’s keeping you oppressed. And you know what? Yeah, it is. But you can probably, using your brain, find a slightly more dignified way to go about it.
