I started to get a bit excited when I met up with Tommy and Gaz at the bus stop. I’d been busy all morning try to sort out money (I’d just gotten married a week earlier), feeding myself (its apparently not punk rock to eat), and trying to pick which t-shirts to bring (I was heading to places much more punk than me). We got the bus out to the airport and checked in. I must have been a bit nervous because I actually buzzed in the metal detector, ending a streak that went back years. Gaz had a few tins in the terminal and scoffed a few of his home-made sandwiches. We’d had to talk them into letting us take Gary's guitar as carry on, so I didn’t feel like pissing everyone off by drinking in the terminal. And as for the sandwiches, there was no way I was going to start the trip with raw onions and the stink of eggs. The smell going in was bad enough. Gary luckily schmoozed his way onto the plane with his guitar. There was no way he could check it through, the case was in bits. It was held together with shoelaces. Even the shoelaces were tied together with shoelaces.
Rotterdam is a tiny airport, I think it only has two gates and one luggage carousel, so when our luggage didn’t show up, we knew it wasn’t going to. We had no idea what to do. We had no idea where we were staying, the women didn’t speak as good English as I had assumed every Dutch person did, and they were using a computer older than me. The monitor wasn’t even in colour for god’s sake. We had to identify our cases off a poster on the wall. Of course the closest looking case to Tommy’s bass case was an assault rifle case, which with all of the broken English led to even more broken English. I had plenty of confidence. The gear couldn’t just go missing, but Tommy was a bit more stressed. The fact that they couldn’t or wouldn’t call Dublin airport only made matters worse. Nothing we could do, but get on with things.
It took us ages to find a pub. We caught a bus to town, ended up in the financial district and couldn’t figure out where the coffee shops would be hidden. We finally decided to just sit down and have a few beers, calm the nerves and set the bags down. Thank fuck they lost the luggage, we would have been miserable carrying all that gear around. We found a few seats outside, the weather was nice and we all wanted to just do a bit of people watching. Gary grabbed the most expensive beers of the entire tour, 3 Euro a piece for bottle of Tuborg Gold Label. They were gorgeous and ice cold. The bar was actually pretty wild inside. An old man bar, full of very drunk old men at 5 on a Thursday, including a man in a wheelchair who seemed to relish his ability to make sure that it was nearly impossible to get to the jacks.
UTRECHT
The train to Utrecht was nice. No one talked much, we just kind of stared out the window at the darkening landscape. Irrigation canals every 50 yards for mile after mile after mile. Utrecht Central Station is enormous. It takes up a large part of the central business district. It’s a giant mall. It didn’t look European, it looked American and even worse, it looked suburban American. I was unimpressed to say the least.
Time for grub and somewhere not-so-neon to eat it. I’d been hearing about the ‘Pebo’ from the lads for ages and there it was. It’s a wall of old fashioned sandwich machines. You put in a Euro, open a hatch and food comes out. Unfortunately, it’s all written in Dutch so I had no idea what I was getting. I got something that looked like a burger and thank god I was absolutely famished. I looked at the cavity that my bite had made in it and it looked like a cocktail of worms and maggots. As I moved the ‘burger’ around to get a better view of what exactly was going on, the street lights made the intestines of my purchase seem to move. My first, second and third reaction was to gag, but I have eaten some funky shit in my life and was able to think rationally in time. As it was hotter than the inside of the sun, I knew it couldn’t be alive. I did have to question who was in charge the day they decided to put chow mien noodles in a burger. It was slightly gross, but I’d paid for it and I was going to eat it. I can’t remember the last time I’ve paid for food and not eaten it. I am a value junky of sorts.
Food out of the way, address in hand, general direction decided and we were off. Once outside of the train station/American shopping mall, Utrecht is a stunningly beautiful city. Canals criss-cross the town and as it was still basically summer, there were open air café’s everywhere. There are maps all over, but they don’t include all the streets and there are no street signs anyways, so they are useless. We followed a street which the map informed us wouldn’t fork; it did and then did again. Finally, after an absolutely stunning walk, I figured it all out and led us right to JW’s gaff. It was on a big square and there were old couples taking dance classes in the middle of it. Very continental and very civilised.
The squat was an enormous 4 story building at the end of it with a 3 story mural of a backbone painted on it. The place was even bigger on the inside. There must have been 30 bikes on ground floor. All sorts. Some had motorcycle tires on em, there were a few choppers, a bunch of the typical Dutch bikes that look like something my Granny would have ridden in the 50’s, and even a couple of those huge ones you always see in postcards of Amsterdam with the giant box on the front you could fit 3 or 4 people into. James’s room was 2 stories up, quite a walk at the time and an absolute hike in the morning to rock a piss. The room was lovely, a couch in one room and a bed in another. New carpets and not a speck of dirt. It didn’t fit the mental picture I’d had of ‘squats’. James is a nice guy, but he could talk for Ireland. We were dying to go to the pub. Finally, he got the picture and suggested that we go to the pub he worked at. Thank fuck!
The pub was a true rock and roll establishment. The clientele was 20's to mid-thirty-somethings, the décor was good, the sounds were great. In Ireland it is almost unheard of to hear good sounds in a pub unless you’ve paid a cover charge. It didn’t take us long to make our table look like a bar table straight out of Dublin. Within an hour or two the three of us had filled it with a crate of empty bottles. The bartender was impressed. We moved to the back room where the music was really pumping. It was a much bigger room with ceilings twice as tall and disco lights a go go. This was the point that I started dancing. Dancing my hole off. Dancing like there was something physically and possibly psychologically wrong with me. I think Gaz was dancing too. Tommy was trading a perfectly good shirt to some guy for a Suicidal Tendencies shirt. (He ended up trading all of his shirts, for a drawer full of crap he wouldn’t want to be seen in in a room on his own.) The bar must have closed because the next thing I knew we were out in the street. Half the reason I drink is for the walk home and this walk didn’t disappoint. It was all narrow lanes and gorgeous buildings back to JW’s. I collapsed against a wall as Gaz and Tommy ordered what looked to be the best Gyros ever assembled. I was holding on for dear life. Then it was back up to JW’s, onto a mattress and out. Day one complete.
Tommy had to go back to Rotterdam to pick up the missing luggage. We all offered to go, but it would be a bit of a waste of money. Tommy volunteered and as much as I knew it was unfair that he had to do it, I wasn’t going to fight him for it. Me, Gaz, and JW spent the afternoon hanging out in Utrecht. Along the canals there were two levels. One at street level with all of the shops and one below that. Along the lower level, on the banks of the canal are walkways about 20 feet wide and lined with houses. Amazing houses at that. It must be the most romantic place on earth to live. The sounds of boats sputtering by, drowning out any noise of the city. We sat along one of these banks on a log that an artist had started to carve into the shape of a naked woman. Boats full of people gently moved along the canals and people often hailed us in Dutch and made comments we couldn’t even begin to understand. Between trips to the jacks and refills on the beer, we wiled away a very warm and sunny afternoon.
We met back up with Tommy and started to get our shit together. This was a tour after all and we were expected to play gigs as well. The squat we were scheduled to play in was well out in the suburbs and we’d have to take a bus there. That turned out to be harder than it sounded. If it hadn’t been for a fellow passenger who actually got off the bus with us and showed us where we were going, we would have never found it.
Gone was the romanticism of Utrecht centre. Out here overpasses ruled the landscape. The cobbled streets were replaced by roads with two lanes in each direction. The squat was obviously an 80’s style office building much like the ones I used to skate around in Oregon. The whole complex was surrounded by a 15 foot tall fence and barbed wire. There were probably a half dozen vans in various states of disrepair littered around the grounds and a few dogs trotting back and forth. This was more of what I thought of when I thought of the word squat. End of the world type stuff. After a few minutes of waiting outside, trying to get someone who knew how to work the electronic gate, someone touched two bare wires together and we were in. The place was cool. Not nice, cool in a post-apocalypse kind of way. There was a big bar on one side of the downstairs room that looked to have been built using firewood and fag ash. We were handed beers immediately, shown the room we were to play in and then ushered upstairs to meet the lads from the Impregnators.
I checked out the kitchen and was then offered food. I am a middle class kid. I’ve worked in restaurants. I’ve passed food safety courses in any number of different towns. Any one of these experiences would have been enough to stop me from eating anything out of that kitchen. If you can’t tell what colour the counter top started as, get take away. This would be a recurring theme throughout the tour and would ensure that I didn’t eat any food that had been sitting out longer than I had or drink any water from a glass handed to me. Most urinals I encountered were actually sinks, so I relied on beer and smoothies for my liquid intake.
First impressions of bands you’ve never seen play are always funny. You spend all your time trying to figure out who does what and don’t actually listen to anyone’s name. Then by the time the band goes on, the guy you thought was the lead singer, is the roadie, the guy you thought was the roadie is the lead guitarist (and already doesn’t like you as a result) and the singer turns out some guy that has been in a different pub all night. The Impregnators all seemed nice enough. A bit excited and loud. It was good to see Pier. A familiar face anyways although I’d never really gotten a chance to talk to him much. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the rest of them. It would be at least a day before I would know anyone else’s name.
I spent the next few hours doing that pacing around you do to avoid talking to anyone for more than a few minutes. I was a bit intimidated, I’ll admit. There is something to be said for being in a band with more than 3 people in it. It gives you more people to talk to for one. The Impregnators were going to do their sound check so we headed down to check it out, might as well see what were in for for the next week and a half. Adam’s drum set had a 26” bass drum, just like John Bonham! Serious gear. It was old and beat up, but you could feel it in your chest from 50 yards when he kicked it. Travelling around Europe with a 26 is like a dream come true. The sound check was impressive. Adam is a hell of a drummer. Loud and confident. He owns the drums. Nobby paced around the place like a boxer psyching himself up for a fight. As soon as the music kicked in he started jumping and running around the empty room. This wasn’t just a sound check, it was a declaration of intent. And it was not lost on us. Tommy, Gaz and I were well impressed. I loved the tour with Fleas and Lice, but I never accepted the music wholeheartedly. At the end of the day, screamy Hardcore is a lot of screaming. The Impregnators were a proper rock band. Together we would be a slammin bill. The sound check put me more at ease. Now I knew where they were coming from and I liked it.
The place started to fill up. We yapped and drank through the opening band. Free beer for the band, sweet. You never get that in Ireland unless you robbed it from the offie and snuck it in. The Impregnators gig was stunning. We were pumped. The beer was going down very easily. It was even easier to lose track of how many we’d had. They finished and we were ready to go. The gauntlet had been thrown down and we were ready to respond. As I grabbed my gear from our sleeping room, I could hear another band tuning up. Some of the residents of the squat wanted to play a few songs and as much as we didn’t like it, there wasn’t much we could do about it without looking like rock stars. They were shite and put a dent in the crowd. Even worse, they gave us all another half hour of drinking we probably didn’t need. By the time we went on, we were well lubricated. Gaz and I kept it tight, Tommy threw the shapes. It was tough.
The crowd loved the gig. The sound was good, it was late and everybody was drunk. The gig was a success, but we’d have to do better next time. The evening went roaring on. I am not sure about what happened next. I know the drinking went on till the sun came up. I wrapped myself tightly in my sleeping bag to try to insulate myself from the filth in the sleeping room and went to sleep.
I woke up to the sound of Gary singing to people in the car park. I don’t know how long I’d been listening, but when I woke up, I knew I’d been hearing him for a long time. His voice still sounded strong, so I couldn’t complain. Tommy was asleep beside me and hadn’t done nearly as good of a job of insulating himself from the filth. I’m sure the dirt wasn’t going to hurt anybody, but all the lads back home joking about scabies weighed on my mind. It took me about 20 minutes to find someone who could let me out of the electronic gates. I did a bit of exploring with that funny hangover head that is really more just still being drunk. I knew it was time to start rounding up the troops and the gear by the time I got back. Gary was still singing, the same song even. Tommy was unwakeable, Adam was missing, he’d left with a lady apparently.
This was my first chance to see the van. The tour posters were plastered on the back windows and inside and featured plenty of tough fonts and skulls. I nearly had to kick Tommy awake, but he eventually got up. We packed up and were sitting around waiting for Adam to return from a mystery girl’s house when Adam calmly walked out of the squat and asked what we were waiting for. The 10 of us piled in and we were off to the next squat, the next gig, the next session.
I have a few gig and tour diaries that I wrote years ago when I had a bit more time and a few less kids. I'm going to put a few up on the blog as I dig them out.
Sligo, what a wild fucking place. The first gig we played there was out of control and ended at noon the next day in a field in the middle of nowhere. The Leechrum festival was even wilder. Starting and ending in that same field. Playing to naked punks at 5 in the evening with Gaz so stocious that the songs became a stream of consciousness rant more akin to Ulysses than Ray Davies. Three days of mayhem pure and simple. So heading back to Sligo promised to be a treat. We ran into Jasper at one of our gigs in Dublin and he asked us to come back up and play in the Trades Club again. Gigs outside of town are always more fun, you don't have to go home afterwards to your regular life. And another gig as a four piece which is a different vibe. There's a lot of us now. Three guitars sticking out of bags. It just feels different especially when we are traveling together. I really loved being in a three piece for some reason. A power trio. Minimalist. But the music comes first and it sounds better with the four of us.
Everybody nearly missed the train except me. I got in a shower over at Sarah's as my bathroom only consisted of a toilet in the middle of the sitting room. And a lift to the station. The train was smooth. Gaz was the only one that brought beer, so it was mellow. Yeat's Country is beautiful country, it has to be said. It just gets more extreme the farther west you go. It looks like it has been scraped and pushed and pulled in different directions. Odd looking lumps loom out of flat fields. Hills rise straight up into plateaus that stretch on for miles. Golden and rocky, they make for an amazing background to a quaint little village by the sea.
That contrasts somewhat with the town itself. Sligo looks nice enough. It has a nice area down by the river and they have obviously spruced it up with a lick of paint and a few nice restaurants. But it's a tough fucking town. It's like so many small towns in Ireland. There are countless really tough small towns in Ireland. We grabbed a bit of food and a few cans and headed down to the river. Shot the shit and passed the time, then headed to the pub for the Ireland World Cup Qualifier match. It would be useful to know if the punters were going to be in a good or a bad mood later. It was a shit match, but Ireland won.
The first band were deadly. Kids playing metal. They started with a Slayer/Metallica medley and played large portions of Motorhead's back catalogue. Their average age was literally 15, I asked them later. They were great though, good to see kids giving it loads. The next band was a 25 piece samba percussion group. Marching band style. They were great even if they were too serious to appreciate Gary's antics.
We played one of our better gigs ever. We were tight and had great energy. We didn't have any silence during the gig. Just the added feedback of the extra amp fills a bit of space. It gave me hope that the GGI wasn't just a fluke and that we were actually improving. And we just sound so much better with 2 guitars.
The crowd loved it. We are always so well received down the country. We do well in Dublin, but the country people just seem to enjoy the gigs so much more. I spent most of the rest of the gig out on the fire escape drinking tins with the kids.
Getting more beer to take back to the party turned into a lot of hassle and even more cash, but it was sorted and besides Tommy falling down the stairs and completely hobbling himself, it was into the Taxi and off to Dessie's. No problem. The taxi driver said he'd never drive by anyone carrying instruments and not pick them up. Up to Dessie's, which was now in the middle of nowhere, and of course Dessie had fallen asleep in his house. We couldn't wake him to let us in no matter what we did. We could see him through the back door, we could hear him snore, heard his phone ringing, but no movement. Jasper handed me a shovel and showed me how to pry the wood off one of the windows in the back of the house. No problem on that and I was in. I must say at this point, that I knew that Dessie had neighbours very close and I guessed that they probably lived in the other half of the house. So as I was walking through the pitch black back of the house, I was sure that I was going to run into an old woman in a terry cloth robe wielding a rolling pin. Once I found the sitting room, though, it became obvious that I was in Dessie's. Records everywhere and newspaper sopping up recently spilled beer. Round to the front door, turned the latch and we were all in.
We were keeping it very mellow. We had even talked Gaz into keeping the stereo down, which is usually virtually impossible. It didn’t take long for the stereo to edge up to a respectable level. Easy to hear, easy to talk. Then things got tricky. Dessie's girl Nessa is friends with a very camp gay guy from Hawaii. American guy from Hawaii, not that it matters. I heard him ask Jasper at the gig if he could come back to the house for a few drinks and Jasper definitely made it clear not to bring people back. No more than 2 anyways. So your man showed up at about 4 with 6 surfer dudes. Dessie went mad. He just started screaming at your man to get the Fuck out. Some of the lads came in cracked open a few tins, the rest stayed outside, I'd guess trying to see the lay of the land. Dessie was having none of it. He didn't want all of those people he didn't know in his house. It didn't matter that Nessa had invited them all and that she'd be home soon. Dessie's has that kind of aggro/sloppy drunk thing going. It doesn't help that his nose has definitely been spread across his face a few times in his life. Things took a turn for the worse when he grabbed the hatchet. It wasn't really a hatchet so much as a three-quarter sized axe. He was swinging it around as he kept screaming at your man to get the fuck out. The surfers had already legged it outside. Everybody was trying to calm Dessie down, but he couldn't hear or see anyone except the Hawaiian. He was too drunk to actually hit your man with the hatchet and he probably wouldn't. None-the-less, as soon as he dropped the axe, I grabbed it and hid it. It was all like watching a really mad movie. It didn't really seem like it was happening. I get that a lot. I read somewhere that moving to another country is like getting a free ticket. Nothing ever seems real. You can kind of look in in a way that you couldn't at home.
It was at this point that Conzo, on his second trip away with the band and undoubtedly a bit surprised by the evenings festivities, legged it off to bed. The Hawaiian had hung on to wait for Nessa, the rest had seen enough. Nessa came back and the music went all the way up. The party really picked up and rocked for a while. I did the math and figured that there couldn't be enough beds for everybody. I took my leave and after finding somone sleeping on the floor of an absolutely baltic room with wood half covering the absent windows, found a lovely warm room with glass in the windows, a bed and a sleeping bag. Score. Me sorted.
That was at 6. At 8-30, I woke up to the realisation that Gaz was sleeping on top of me. It was a single bed and he'd kind wedged himself between the wall and me. What an unbelievable snore. Snorting and sputtering. Every minute or so it sounded as if all of his breathing had stopped for a split second and then spent the next 5 trying to make up the time. After a while I had to move to the floor. I had managed to get into the sleeping bag so that was my own. I must have lay there for a few hours drifting in and out of sleep. The way that you think that you haven't gotten any more sleep, but time has passed so quickly that you must have. I got up and stumbled around the house. Tommy was of course sleeping in the most uncomfortable position possible. Basically doubled over in an armchair with a blanket wrapped around his neck. Cans littered every flat surface and newspaper stuck to my feet with every step I took. I took refuge in the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. I was almost immediately followed in by Gaz who turned The Exploited up to ten and grabbed a can of Guinness out of the fridge.
Dessie came out a while later and re-assumed his sloppy/aggro thing. He was pissed that the music was so loud, but got even more pissed off when I offered to turn it down. He gave out that Gaz was drinking his Guinness and grabbed the can off him. Gaz responded by opening a new can and drinking that. Gaz cajoled Dessie into chilling out. Gaz can calm people down by calling them names and telling them they're not punk rock. It only works for him, let me assure you. I busied myself making toast and tea for people as they woke up. I wanted to make sure that we didn't miss the train and I wanted a bit of food, so I arranged transport and we headed into town. The last image I have of that house is Dessie and Gaz locked in an professional wrestling style embrace, both with one hand on the last can of Guinness in the house, both trying to wrestle the last half of the can into their mouth.
The surfer lads had left Jasper a present on the doors of his car in the shape of two boot prints complete with large dents in the fenders. Jasper wasn't impressed and I’m sure he was glad to be getting rid of us so that he could relax a bit. He's a great promoter because he always looks after the bands. He looks after whatever he can and he works really hard.
So it was into the pub for a pint, next door for a couple of sambos and then onto the train. Tommy tried to make a run to the off-license for the way home, but had to pull up lame half way there. His leg was looking pretty broken, his limp complemented by a drunken hangover meant that he was lucky to make the train period. Gaz tried to make a run as well, but left it too late and could only get a bottle of wine. They both made the train with seconds to spare, but we were all on.
Gaz had no corkscrew so he pushed the cork in with a key. It opened the bottle, but every time he tried to take a gulp, the cork would re-adhere itself in the neck of the bottle. So he had to push it with his finger and drink the wine that flowed around his digit. It did the trick, but not without spraying wine all over his face. He looked absolutely demented. After about an hour, he fucked off to the jacks. Thankfully, he got lost and ended up passing out for the remainder of the journey in someone else's seat.
As we pulled into town, Gaz reappeared. Rolled a smoke and brazenly smoked it out in the open. He was taking a long drag off the fag, pressing himself against the dividing window and giving us the finger when he was caught by the conductor. After numerous threats of arrest, the conductor realised Gary was mental and his threats were falling on deaf ears.
Conzo got the DART out to pick up his son as soon as we got off of the train and I headed out of the station. It was taking Gaz and Tommy ages. Gaz was holding Tommy up with one hand and drinking a beer he had mysteriously just found. Tommy's leg was fucked and they were giggling like a couple of idiots. I'd had enough and grabbed Gary's bike and headed home to a bit of sanity and a bit of peace and quiet.
The following is an interview we did with Fenster for Connected Online Magazine in December 2008.
When one is the furore of youth, rocking comes almost as second nature, one has the freedom and proclivity to devote large swathes of time to this most fundamental of activities. As one progresses in years, the periods allotted to this endeavour can be impeded by the urgency of “other stuff”. Rocking is still a priority but becomes part of a time managed schedule, balancing the rocking against the ever demanding “other stuff”.
The years pass and the rocking becomes more and more marginalised, until one faithful day the rocking falls off the radar and the “other stuff” lays claim to ones entire life, alas we rock no more. Thankfully one band are around to buck this trend, nada, zilch, nil, not children or mortgages or marriages, nothing, is going to stand in the way of Dublin’s finest street punks Moutpiece, when it comes to ROCKING THE FUCK OUT!!!
Just glancing at the cover of their recently released, eponymous, debut album, a semi naked Adonis like character stands resplendent, with guitar, in his underwear outside a fruit market, tells you in no uncertain terms, a good time is about to be had.
It’s one of those, straight for the jugular, no messing about, 12 songs in 25 minutes, tales of excess and debauchery direct from the society’s underbelly, kind of affairs. Marvel as the band lay down their modus operandi in “Out of our Heads Again” and “Battle Hymn of the Alcoholic (Part 2)”
Speculate as to the identity of the enigmatic “Tony Delaroni”, consider the antics laid down in “Gary”, and simply be in awe of “24 Stella”, the greatest tune written in honour of an off licence special offer that has ever and will ever exist. All ushered in by blistering guitar, low slung bass, resounding drums and played with an energy and passion that rarely makes an appearance in this day and age. It’s quite simply one of the finest records you’ll hear all year. Gaz – lead guitar and vocals - and Derek aka The Yank – drums – tell it how to do it right.
So, how’s it going? G: Thanks for asking. Well to be honest, I am just over the worst dose of the scutters I've ever had. And as a matter of fact, there was an article about it in a recent Sunday Times. Well, not my arse exactly, but there was an article that said all the Holy Joe's who brought their sick mates to Lourdes copped a load of the winter vomiting bug and transported it back to digestive systems around the Finglas area. Cheers lads.
So how did it all begin? D: It all started in the long hot hazy summer of 'O2. After a stint living in the States, on a complete wobbler, Gary returned home and the wobbler intensified dramatically. This was when I met him and we got a band together after he played me a couple of tunes he'd come up with, on a two string guitar in my front room after about 16 cans. I could see the potential, we went for it.
And how did the legend progress? D: Subsequently, we looked around for a bass player and that took, what at the time, felt like fucking ages. Initially, Conzo was on bass, which was great because he would give the band a bit of extra gravitas with his unkempt hair and nonchalant swagger. But due to prior commitments, being a total ledgebag with the legendary Female Hercules, he kept turning up late for practice. So we asked Tommy Trousers, of legendary hardcore crust band Killercrust and even more legendary hardcore crust operators, Brawl, to step in on bass axe and provide that solid backbone we so desperately needed to solidify our position as the anti-crust messiahs.
It all came together nicely then and before we knew it we were playing our first sold out gig in THE LEGENDARY Mother Redcaps and from then on we've literally done a good few gigs. A few good gigs mind you. Later on, Conzo rejoined on rhythm guitar. We've been together for a few years now, ramshackle bastards to it man, but somehow we keep managing to up the ante musically, even though we never practice and spend most of our time on the internet. But we have a core belief that anything that comes this easy can't be bad. Like, man we are DOING it, there was something like 48 people at our last show and we are only going 6 years. That's some progress isn't it?
Who’s running things? D: To be perfectly honest, if it wasn't for me there'd be no band. The other three do whatever I tell them. That's not necessarily true. For instance, Tommy Trousers doesn't listen to a word I say, although I was best man at his wedding, in his speech he mentioned the band, which was nice. And as for that way out Conzo fella, I don't know how he can afford to go to pubs so much. And Gary's usually locked enough to agree to virtually anything whether he likes it or not, which is handy. Oh yeah. I play the drums and I'm from America. Portland Oregon, big town but you wouldn't think it.
Describe the band’s sound?
G: It's scuzzy punk sounds, obviously, played by experts, but not in a wanky kind of way. Suffice to say, we're all about the hardcore rock and roll, four to the floor, let's go, took too much acid, shouldn't have had that last pint of turps, can't skin up cos I'm too greasy, devil horns in the nip, stereo up to 90, neighbours going mental, good times.
If Moutpiece were a global multinational company, what would its mission statement be? G: Don't JUST DO IT, just talk about doing it.
Tell us about getting the album together? D: We used to practice for ages in Estel's practice room and it was cool. We had a list on the wall with 60 song titles on it which were eventually honed down to the 12 on the album. Gary would be the first to admit that all of these 60 songs were absolute classics, but he would also be the first to admit that he's got a drink habit that skews his judgement. Another factor in the conception of the album was that fact that we stopped practicing there and never took the list with us. And therefore we forgot most of the tunes except the chosen few.
And the recording process itself? D: We ended up getting friendly with a great band called Kidd Blunt, two of whom, Eoin Whitfield and James Eager, are not only deadly musicians, but also sound blokes and stunning sound engineers who could record the shit out of anything. After a lot of agonised head scratching about who we should get to master the record, James emailed us and said that it was done, don't worry about it. We didn't worry about it so, had faith in the lad and went ahead and got it pressed in GZ, which is in the Czech Republic and was a complete pain in the bollocks. The iconic images for the sleeve were conceptualised by Conzo and executed by a couple of hot chicks with an umbrella and a fancy pants camera. HMD helped out with doing the writing on the sleeve. Fair fucks to him. Kid on the way and all.
The album has been out for a few month’s now, how has it been received? D: I'll tell it like it is. Remember those 48 people I mentioned earlier...they all think it's deadly. There are another couple of hundred people that feel they don't know me well enough to just come up and tell me how good it is, so they must think it's brilliant. We've gotten extensive airplay on 2FM and Dublin City FM 103, ganzy loads of hits on youtube and I play it whenever I've been drinking. It's all going very well. Dave in Road Records is sending his kid to college on the back of this record.
What’s the bleeding story with the jocks? G: It's very simple. Being the brains of the operation, and personally possessing a profound belief in the uncompromising kick arsing-attitude of the record, I was racking me brain for a way to spread the word and get a few bods checking the music. I'm an internet junky and, amongst other things, I like drinking in the daytime. Unfortunately, I have a full time job as a career guidance counsellor for the local girls school so if I get a chance to let my hair down, especially if my daughter’s having her afternoon nap, I like to do something creative. So, one Saturday I danced around the kitchen in me jocks in time to 24 Stella and lashed it up on YOUTUBE. I didn’t know it was gonna end up being viewed by thousands of people all over the world!
We were brainstorming one night about the album sleeve and Conzo, in a moment of clarity, came up with the Ziggy Stardust-esque image of me standing, looking sexy, in me jocks, on a rainy Tuesday, off Capel Street. So the jocks now have a life of their own, I tried later to sell them on e-bay as rock memorabilia and was sent a warning from e-bay admin that the sale of both used underwear and erotica was forbidden under the terms of service and that any further infringements would result in suspension of my account. And would you believe it, I was bid €52 before the plug was pulled. The jocks are no longer for sale.
Moutpiece are youtube video heroes, what’s the story behind them? G: Right, the first one was me in a shower cap in front of a big tie dyed sheet with the contrast turned up full. The second, I’ve told you about already. The third one was me in me jocks on mushrooms and Buckfast on a mountain in Sligo. The fourth one is me with a pair of tights on me head and white overalls dancing with me dog in me kitchen. What’s not to become an internet sensation about!?!
What’s “The Frog” all about? – carousing garage rock tune with the lyrics “this is the place where the flies come to die”. G: It is a biographical tale of my time living with – Kaboogie resident - DJ PCP. We lived in this mad gaff on Parnell St. in what is now Dublin’s Asian quarter. Well, PCP is one of the craziest mongos you could ever share a gaff with. It was basically just one small room, mine, and one giant room with the decks next to the sink, his bed next to the decks and a pig pile of stinky socks next to his head. I think the poor bastards downstairs would verify that the hoo-haa was relentless. It was in this pile of socks I got the inspiration for the song, just imagining a load of flies just going there to meet their demise.
Ask and answer you own question: G: Who's got a head like a snooker ball? Tony Delaroni!!
With all of the new sites that everybody just has to be on, this site has been seeing very little action. While it is a Wednesday morning and I am feeling like updating this bad boy and taking on the world, that feeling may fade and once again, this site will languish on the periphery of the Moutpiece Empire.If you want to contact us and/or keep up to date with the goings on of Dublin’s finest Alco Dadz, befriend/check out our myspace site or our Facebook site.Conversely, keep an eye on this site and I’ll try to keep it up to date.
So what has been going on?
2009 was very good to Moutpiece.We played some great gigs, sold a good few records, got a bit of travel in, and still managed to increase the Moutpiece family’s family by one.We started off the year with the Rockfest II, which was one hell of a partay and a great gig to boot.
We played an all-dayer in Galway with loads of bands, although we were back on the train to Dublin by 7 with a tray of Lager that sadly, didn’t make it back off the train.
We rocked the balmy summer evening that was The Night in the Stix, going on just before Coitus featuring our dear friend Skinny RIP.
We took part in the seshooooon that was this year’s Punx Picnic.
We played the GGI in Glasgow, which nearly cost us our Gaz.(Photos courtesy of Cinderz)
We played the Freebooters and the Excuses possible last gig in Fibbers.Too bad the Excuses couldn’t make their own last gig.
And we ended the year with the annual Moutpiece Xmas all-dayer which again proved to be one of Dublin’s drunkest days. Due to a snow/ice related incident, young Mr. Trousers was replaced by young Damo of some of Dublin's finest Punk spectacles. He did a stand up job and is a truly stand up bloke. Trousers was missed as it was a outstanding day of debacherous behaviour.
2010 looks to be picking up where ’09 left off.Two gigs in and they have both been smoking.One with English 80’s hardcore enthusiasts- The Shitty Limits
and the other with Medway’s finest garage rock outfit, The Len Price 3.
Photos for both gigs to follow.
We’ve also managed to record 5 songs for what is to become the next Moutpiece Long player.Don’t hold your breath for a release date, but if the tracks done are any indication, and they are, this record is gonna kick ass.
