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We caught up with
the very tasty Dish from Pretty Boy Floyd after their gig at Trillians
Rock Bar, Newcastle upon Tyne on 7th February 2002.
 Hi
Dish! How's it going?
Great. We didn't have as
much time to drink before we went on so I don't know how we sounded out
there but we certainly seemed to play better.
You sounded really good.
Really? The crowd was kinda stale.
No, it's just we're a bit shy that's all.
Yeh? A shy crowd? I know a lot of places when we've walked onstage the
people would go nuts. But tonight we walked on and about half of the
crowd went Woo! (laughs). I thought 'Oh Shit! this is a Faster crowd,
we're done for!'.
No. A lot of people here tonight said they were looking forward to
seeing your band play.
Oh that's cool. Don't get me wrong Faster's great, but sometimes it can
get real scary when you're all made up and you're in an angry country.
Sometimes I've noticed that people here are really angry. I've never
been in a place where I've had to be afraid of white people before.
I mean sure you go into a club or something in LA and the prejudice can
sometimes run a little thick, but you know you have to watch your ass.
Well over here you don't know when you've got to watch your ass or when
not to.
Well we're pretty harmless here in
Newcastle.
In Bradford we got into a fight. It was Tamie and Christian who got into
a fight. This guy was really, really, loaded and he was fighting over a
taxi with them. Which was pretty stupid you know. But I've been pushed
and in London I got kind of jacked for some money.
A couple of gypsies surrounded me and well, I was on my own and trying
to buy cigarettes, and they kinda jacked me for £20. But I was a little
bit afraid because I didn't know how to go about dealing with it so I
just said here's the £20, I'm leaving. I was just walking down the
street and they just kind of blocked me in and their eyes were wandering
like they were on drugs or something.
Oh that's terrible! You shouldn't have any hassle like that up here in
Newcastle.
Yeh. Actually I love the architecture here, it's just amazing. I walked
around this afternoon and I've never seen a city that's just so
beautiful. All the little tiny streets with all those castle looking
buildings. In America, well basically we're only 200 years old.
Everything's all Art Deco, it just looks shit.
But over here I went into a pub and it was like 700 years old! I
couldn't believe it. I asked … 700 years this pubs been here? I know a
bar that's been in my hometown that's been there for 12 years and I
thought that was a friggin' record.
How's the tour gone so far?
It's been amazing! It's been multiple times better than what we thought
it was going to be. The fan response has been just so amazing. We were a
little worried because it's been 14 years almost and we weren't sure if
people were going to remember us or not. But all the fans have been
showing up.
All the shows have been sold out, every single one. From what we hear
the next ones are sold out as well. So that means every single show on
this tour in the UK will have been totally sold out. That is with 2
bands from the eighties that really haven't done anything for about 8
years. So to sell out these venues is pretty cool.
I think this is the only band I've ever come to see that's ever sold out
a gig here.
Oh really? That's cool.
I think you have the management wondering what they are going to do
with all these people that are going to turn up here tonight. We all
think it's just so amazing that the band have chosen to come and play
here.
Well you know when we first walked into Trillians and looked about we
thought it looked kinda small, the capacity I guess is 400? All the
other places we've been playing have been 1,000 - 2,000 seat venues.
Apart from when we played The Underworld which is 800 but we played 2
nights in a row there. Both of those gigs sold out. Tomorrow night we're
playing 1,500 and that's all sold out. The next one is 2,000 after that
and that's sold out.
So when we walked in and we saw the size of the room we thought … Hey
they're only going to get maybe 250 in this place. It's looks very
small. But somehow they managed to squeeze them in. They just packed
them in there. But the difference between tonight's crowd was they were
a little bit more laid back. Which is actually kind of alright.
At the beginning we didn't really know if we wanted to go on, but it was
actually more of an LA style crowd we had in tonight. In the sense that
they were kind of … Well come on let's see what you got. Luckily we
didn't have too many fuck ups and things went well near the end. People
went Wow! So yeh so far the tours been great. It's a great package we've
been offered.
I think we go onto Italy and Sweden, and some other places, Spain. The
package seems to work so we're just gonna push it until it doesn't I
guess. Who knows we'll just keep touring. Just put me on a plane and
I'll play.
Are we going to see you back in the UK before too long?
There's actually already been talk of us coming back and doing some
shows in London. Maybe in 6 or 7 months. Unfortunately we can't come
back right away. But hey it took us 14 years to build it up for this
kind of following, so when we come back in a few months time you never
know.
We might be playing Joes bar & grill down with 15 seater and a local
PA and a jazz drum kit. But yeh sure we'll be back. As long as
everything goes well and after Pollstar see's the numbers on this tour
it will be easier. A lot of people were afraid to book us. They were
very afraid to book it. We started trying to book it and a lot of people
were afraid to pay the money up front. They didn't want to take the
chance. We're not asking for a pile of money but it is a risk, we do ask
for a decent amount to pay our bills.
We seem to have proven that the glam rock metal scene is still very much
alive, much more so than anywhere else I've been. In Japan it was great
but the UK has been amazing, much more fun to play. Although not as many
fights in Japan! We had security in Japan. Over here they are like …
Fuck off you blokes. They are not afraid to fight you just for fun. I
never realised that.
We're just a bit excitable.
Yeh! Which is good. But sometimes it can hurt. I was a little bit
freaked out the first 2 days but I'm alright now.
What about the new album? When are we going
to see a new album?
Well the live records out, it only just came out. It's live at the
Pretty Ugly Club, which is Tamie's night at the Dragonfly club. It just
so happens that our tour manager for this UK run owns the Dragonfly
where they have the Pretty Ugly Club. It's like one big family where we
played a few nights and then decided to record it. It turned out great.
I'm not going to say it's like the best live record ever, but it's solid
and there's a lot of songs that no-ones every heard yet on the record.
There's 7 minutes of 'Shock the World' and it's never ever been recorded
and released as a song. It was written years and years ago before I was
in the band that's why we brought it back on a limb on night and said
let's record these.
We did 2 new studio tracks as well. We did a Billy Joel cover …
'What's the matter of the clothes I'm wearing' … we did like a heavier
more punk rock version of it, which was cool.
We also did a Christmas song for some Warner Brothers eighties Christmas
thing, we actually wrote it ourselves. It's about a dysfunctional family
and their Christmas and I've yet to see it out. It's going to be one of
those TV advertised … bands like these do Christmas songs! But I think
the live record's solid, it's a solid record. It's very simple, there's
a good amount of sounds.
There are at least 5 songs that nobodies ever heard on there unless
they've come to LA and seen us play live. You really won't have heard
these songs. Of course we also do Leather Boys and Babylon, which are
like staples to the label. They insist you put them on and play them on
a record.
There's also an EP out that was done a couple of years back, we did Shut
up and Junkie Girl off that tonight. Then of course we have Porn Stars,
which was done kinda just after it.
Yeh Porn Stars gets a lot of play in the
clubs around here.
Really? Porn Stars? That's great! That's really cool.
Now you know why everyone was singing
along to all the songs because we could all say … hey we know these
words!
You know that's one thing I've noticed, everybody was calling out to
Wild Angels and we've never done it before live. I've never played it
live till this tour and then all of a sudden it was like yeh we do this
acoustic version of it and the whole place, well it's just craziness.
Just then we hear Faster Pussycat play
their opening lines from across the club and decide that the front of
the club is the place to be. We wrap up the interview there and then and
head for where all the actions gonna be.
We'd like to thank Dish for taking the time out to talk to us and look
forward to seeing them all next time they visit.
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