Interview with Sounds XP, October 2004
14th of October 2004, 11:07 pm
The Vichy Government are Jamie Manners (vocals) and Andrew Chilton (electronica), supreme pop ironists in a world that's lost its sense of humour. Coming to prominence on the two Angular compilations with 'Make Love to the Camera' and 'I Control Discourse' (one of Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe's 50 favourite songs!), their songs are characterised by a mordant wit and the capacity to go from political commentary to historical drama to love song in the course of a short set. They?ve also released 'Orange Disorder' on the Belfest 2003 CD and the third of the recent Filthy Little Angels EPs contains 'Oliver Cromwell in Weimar Berlin' and 'The Immortals'. At the time of 'Make Love to the Camera', NME described them as "a bunch of oddballs" and "scabrous" which is recommendation enough for us. We met Jamie and Andrew in a central London pub September 2004.
SXP: how did you meet?
Andrew: It was a club. There were two flights of stairs in this club and at the top of one stairs was a till behind which I usually sat most of the night, lamenting the music that was being played downstairs. It was a bog standard indie club with ideas above its station. I feel perfectly comfortable saying that because I was one of the people responsible for it. We were just interested in taking money off the undiscerning citizens, which we did quite well.
Jamie: The under-16 citizens.
Andrew: Yeah, the undiscerning and under age! And under the table by the end of the night. We used to gather at the top of the stairs and complain about everything basically. It struck us over the course of time that the nature of our complaints was relatively similar and we weren?t going to hit each other. We were just sitting around bored before Jamie's girlfriend was playing a gig. To pass the time the idea came up [to start a band] and we'd have split-up before anyone recognised us on the street and laughed at us. I?ve always had a crappy keyboard and a drum machine in my room so I thought: that'll do. And Jamie, I thought he?d do as well! So we decided on "The Vichy Government" as a name for the band and someone liked the name of the band enough to give us a gig, before we'd actually written any songs or heard what we sound like.
Jamie: So then we got six weeks to write six songs and the first five or six gigs were all going to be the last gig!
SXP: Do these songs survive?
Jamie: Well, the first song we wrote was 'Orange Disorder'. Second was 'I Control Discourse'.
Andrew: The third one was 'Make Love to the Camera'. The other three disappeared fairly quickly but those lingered for quite a while though we don't really play them on a regular basis any more. We wheel them out for special occasions, like the Crown Jewels or something. We're writing lots of new stuff and the idea of waiting around for people to catch onto your good idea has never appealed to us.
Jamie: A lot of people feel that they write nine songs and they should stick with these songs for three years and just play them in all the toilets and that will develop their character and integrity. But we just write so many new ones all the time.
SXP: Did you choose the name "The Vichy Government" to be controversial?
Andrew: I think we chose it to get noticed as much as anything. We didn't want a bland and anonymous name; we thought it would lead directly to a bland and anonymous band. We've often done things not minding the idea that we'll offend people but it's never been actually what we've set out to do. I always say that what we really set out to do is entertain people and there's ways of doing that other than being nice to them.
SXP: You wouldn?t go as far as "Selfish Cunt" in name and content then?
Andrew: I don't think that?s a particularly offensive name. It's just a rude word that raises the eyebrows of middle aged matrons if they ever get to hear them. My idea for an offensive name for a band would be something like "Queer Jew and the Dykes of Allah"!
SXP: Why did you call the Scissors Sisters "fraudulent cunts"?
Andrew: Because we hate them, basically!
Jamie: We were booked to play this gig before their records came out and the [promoter] thought "we'd better get a local band in" so he booked The Vichy Government. They'd had 'Comfortably Numb' two weeks before the gig happened and it sold out and moved to another venue.
Andrew: And then they got their dodgy glam band mates from Dublin on over us. And barred us from the backstage and stuff.
Jamie: We did a soundcheck and 5 minutes later [the promoter] says: you guys have to go on as soon as the doors open.
Andrew: I don't really care if they?re fraudulent or not. It just seemed like a good thing to say. I'm sure in some way they're lying to us; maybe the idea that they?re any good or worth listening to is the biggest fiction! Jamie did actually really used to like them; I sort of liked them when he played me their album, I thought I'd give it a chance and then I met them and I didn't feel inclined to give them a chance anymore.
SXP: Your songs are pretty angry. 'The Immortals' for example.
Jamie: I think it's just satirical. It's not crying yourself to sleep at night angry with anything. We just tell people what we think of them.
Andrew: They're just opinions really. They don't really need to justify themselves other than saying: this is what we think. What do you think?
SXP: it's not a cathartic thing, like a spraycan?
Jamie: No, that?s not where we come from. We're not like Slipknot: we wouldn?t say "people = shit" or anything.
Andrew: If we did, we'd say "people = shit but then so do we"!
Jamie: We're just trying to write good, well crafted pop songs like Smokey Robinson. It's just that we're really, really bad at it.
Andrew: We miss our spiritual homeland. Really we'd like to be in a cubicle in the Brill Building in the 1960s writing songs for Little Eva or someone. History and geography have dictated otherwise.
SXP: Most pop songs are love songs?
Andrew: Some of our songs are love songs. 'Portmeirion' definitely is. And 'Make Love to the Camera'.
Jamie: 'Portmeirion' is a homosexual torch song!
SXP: Your songs about Northern Ireland must be a difficult call to make. Politics there aren't the same as politics here.
Jamie: It's very sensitive. I just try to bluster my way through it in my songs.
SXP: I remember hearing Stiff Little Fingers, one of the first bands of the time that attempted this.
Andrew: Stiff Little Fingers had their lyrics written by an English journalist! They said it was really important that the kids in Northern Ireland could hear something they could relate to so they had to get some old hack to write it for them!
Jamie: I'd don?t buy into what everyone thinks, that if you're from Northern Ireland you should be into Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones. I don't give a shit about them anyway!
SXP: are you moving away from "destroy the icons" to more character-based narratives?
Jamie: 'Oliver Cromwell?' and 'Loneliest Man in Ancient Rome' are certainly character-driven narratives. I suppose 'Portmeirion' was the first song like that. I just like to have different kinds of lyrics.
SXP: Do you write in other media?
Jamie: I write bullshit on the internet but who doesn't nowadays? I try to save myself so I can write good lyrics.
SXP: Most pop music has little content to the lyrics. There's more to listen to your songs.
Andrew: Basically you can do both so why not do both? We'd like to write the classic archetypal pop song but we're incapable of that so this is what we do in response to our failure really.
SXP: Do you cherish your outsider status or do you want to embrace the mainstream?
Andrew: The mainstream has shown repeatedly that if it wants to it can accommodate anything. Whether it will accommodate us is another matter entirely. Three or four years ago, would anyone have said that the White Stripes are interesting: a pair of pseudo-incestuous art-hicks? Now they're quite possibly one of the biggest bands in the world and there're only two of them and one of them does virtually nothing except hit a drum every 30 seconds!
Jamie: Currently music is very conservative. I think it's fallout from the first Strokes record. That's what all the Angular bands and all the NME bands are.
SXP: Is Harry Potter the archetypal fan of the Vichy Government? 'I Control Discourse' was one of his 50 favourite songs in Q magazine.
Andrew: Or one of his publicist's 50 favourite songs. I mean there?s something wrong with a kid listening to Gram Parsons and lots of scrappy bands from Camden at 14 for fuck's sake!
SXP: Why do you donate books to the audience, as at Joyfest?
Jamie: Just to make it more of an event. Because you see so many unmemorable bands just get up and do their thing. If you do little stunts, it just makes you stick in people's heads more. We just go down to a closing down/bargain books and spend a tenner.
SXP: Is your album 'Carrion Camping' still available?
Andrew: It never has been available! There was a vague plan of releasing it but that seems to have gone up in smoke.
SXP: According to Hot Press you have a single coming out.
Andrew: That was 'Rubbish'. Someone started off a record company and got money from somewhere and it was meant to be out in May?
Jamie: And then June, July, August, September?
Andrew: And then in September he got the artwork done by a professional and got it mastered by some guy who's done the Monochrome Set and My Bloody Valentine. Then, two days before the pluggers start working, he loses all his funding and there's no record label. Great lost album, great lost single.
SXP: You're both football fans. (to Jamie:) Why Spurs?
Jamie: Just that 95% of Northern Ireland supports Manchester United or Liverpool so I was trying to be different. Spurs always had that air of glamour and were named after a Shakespeare knight and they always got the top foreign signings. Then when you move to London and you're on the Seven Sisters Road, you think: "This is a shithole. This is worse than the Shankill!"
SXP: (to Andrew:) You're a QPR fan and so is Pete Doherty.
Andrew: I was a QPR supporter before he was born and I'll be one after he's dead. So that will take me through to the end of the season!
-Ged McAlea
Andrew: It was a club. There were two flights of stairs in this club and at the top of one stairs was a till behind which I usually sat most of the night, lamenting the music that was being played downstairs. It was a bog standard indie club with ideas above its station. I feel perfectly comfortable saying that because I was one of the people responsible for it. We were just interested in taking money off the undiscerning citizens, which we did quite well.
Jamie: The under-16 citizens.
Andrew: Yeah, the undiscerning and under age! And under the table by the end of the night. We used to gather at the top of the stairs and complain about everything basically. It struck us over the course of time that the nature of our complaints was relatively similar and we weren?t going to hit each other. We were just sitting around bored before Jamie's girlfriend was playing a gig. To pass the time the idea came up [to start a band] and we'd have split-up before anyone recognised us on the street and laughed at us. I?ve always had a crappy keyboard and a drum machine in my room so I thought: that'll do. And Jamie, I thought he?d do as well! So we decided on "The Vichy Government" as a name for the band and someone liked the name of the band enough to give us a gig, before we'd actually written any songs or heard what we sound like.
Jamie: So then we got six weeks to write six songs and the first five or six gigs were all going to be the last gig!
SXP: Do these songs survive?
Jamie: Well, the first song we wrote was 'Orange Disorder'. Second was 'I Control Discourse'.
Andrew: The third one was 'Make Love to the Camera'. The other three disappeared fairly quickly but those lingered for quite a while though we don't really play them on a regular basis any more. We wheel them out for special occasions, like the Crown Jewels or something. We're writing lots of new stuff and the idea of waiting around for people to catch onto your good idea has never appealed to us.
Jamie: A lot of people feel that they write nine songs and they should stick with these songs for three years and just play them in all the toilets and that will develop their character and integrity. But we just write so many new ones all the time.
SXP: Did you choose the name "The Vichy Government" to be controversial?
Andrew: I think we chose it to get noticed as much as anything. We didn't want a bland and anonymous name; we thought it would lead directly to a bland and anonymous band. We've often done things not minding the idea that we'll offend people but it's never been actually what we've set out to do. I always say that what we really set out to do is entertain people and there's ways of doing that other than being nice to them.
SXP: You wouldn?t go as far as "Selfish Cunt" in name and content then?
Andrew: I don't think that?s a particularly offensive name. It's just a rude word that raises the eyebrows of middle aged matrons if they ever get to hear them. My idea for an offensive name for a band would be something like "Queer Jew and the Dykes of Allah"!
SXP: Why did you call the Scissors Sisters "fraudulent cunts"?
Andrew: Because we hate them, basically!
Jamie: We were booked to play this gig before their records came out and the [promoter] thought "we'd better get a local band in" so he booked The Vichy Government. They'd had 'Comfortably Numb' two weeks before the gig happened and it sold out and moved to another venue.
Andrew: And then they got their dodgy glam band mates from Dublin on over us. And barred us from the backstage and stuff.
Jamie: We did a soundcheck and 5 minutes later [the promoter] says: you guys have to go on as soon as the doors open.
Andrew: I don't really care if they?re fraudulent or not. It just seemed like a good thing to say. I'm sure in some way they're lying to us; maybe the idea that they?re any good or worth listening to is the biggest fiction! Jamie did actually really used to like them; I sort of liked them when he played me their album, I thought I'd give it a chance and then I met them and I didn't feel inclined to give them a chance anymore.
SXP: Your songs are pretty angry. 'The Immortals' for example.
Jamie: I think it's just satirical. It's not crying yourself to sleep at night angry with anything. We just tell people what we think of them.
Andrew: They're just opinions really. They don't really need to justify themselves other than saying: this is what we think. What do you think?
SXP: it's not a cathartic thing, like a spraycan?
Jamie: No, that?s not where we come from. We're not like Slipknot: we wouldn?t say "people = shit" or anything.
Andrew: If we did, we'd say "people = shit but then so do we"!
Jamie: We're just trying to write good, well crafted pop songs like Smokey Robinson. It's just that we're really, really bad at it.
Andrew: We miss our spiritual homeland. Really we'd like to be in a cubicle in the Brill Building in the 1960s writing songs for Little Eva or someone. History and geography have dictated otherwise.
SXP: Most pop songs are love songs?
Andrew: Some of our songs are love songs. 'Portmeirion' definitely is. And 'Make Love to the Camera'.
Jamie: 'Portmeirion' is a homosexual torch song!
SXP: Your songs about Northern Ireland must be a difficult call to make. Politics there aren't the same as politics here.
Jamie: It's very sensitive. I just try to bluster my way through it in my songs.
SXP: I remember hearing Stiff Little Fingers, one of the first bands of the time that attempted this.
Andrew: Stiff Little Fingers had their lyrics written by an English journalist! They said it was really important that the kids in Northern Ireland could hear something they could relate to so they had to get some old hack to write it for them!
Jamie: I'd don?t buy into what everyone thinks, that if you're from Northern Ireland you should be into Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones. I don't give a shit about them anyway!
SXP: are you moving away from "destroy the icons" to more character-based narratives?
Jamie: 'Oliver Cromwell?' and 'Loneliest Man in Ancient Rome' are certainly character-driven narratives. I suppose 'Portmeirion' was the first song like that. I just like to have different kinds of lyrics.
SXP: Do you write in other media?
Jamie: I write bullshit on the internet but who doesn't nowadays? I try to save myself so I can write good lyrics.
SXP: Most pop music has little content to the lyrics. There's more to listen to your songs.
Andrew: Basically you can do both so why not do both? We'd like to write the classic archetypal pop song but we're incapable of that so this is what we do in response to our failure really.
SXP: Do you cherish your outsider status or do you want to embrace the mainstream?
Andrew: The mainstream has shown repeatedly that if it wants to it can accommodate anything. Whether it will accommodate us is another matter entirely. Three or four years ago, would anyone have said that the White Stripes are interesting: a pair of pseudo-incestuous art-hicks? Now they're quite possibly one of the biggest bands in the world and there're only two of them and one of them does virtually nothing except hit a drum every 30 seconds!
Jamie: Currently music is very conservative. I think it's fallout from the first Strokes record. That's what all the Angular bands and all the NME bands are.
SXP: Is Harry Potter the archetypal fan of the Vichy Government? 'I Control Discourse' was one of his 50 favourite songs in Q magazine.
Andrew: Or one of his publicist's 50 favourite songs. I mean there?s something wrong with a kid listening to Gram Parsons and lots of scrappy bands from Camden at 14 for fuck's sake!
SXP: Why do you donate books to the audience, as at Joyfest?
Jamie: Just to make it more of an event. Because you see so many unmemorable bands just get up and do their thing. If you do little stunts, it just makes you stick in people's heads more. We just go down to a closing down/bargain books and spend a tenner.
SXP: Is your album 'Carrion Camping' still available?
Andrew: It never has been available! There was a vague plan of releasing it but that seems to have gone up in smoke.
SXP: According to Hot Press you have a single coming out.
Andrew: That was 'Rubbish'. Someone started off a record company and got money from somewhere and it was meant to be out in May?
Jamie: And then June, July, August, September?
Andrew: And then in September he got the artwork done by a professional and got it mastered by some guy who's done the Monochrome Set and My Bloody Valentine. Then, two days before the pluggers start working, he loses all his funding and there's no record label. Great lost album, great lost single.
SXP: You're both football fans. (to Jamie:) Why Spurs?
Jamie: Just that 95% of Northern Ireland supports Manchester United or Liverpool so I was trying to be different. Spurs always had that air of glamour and were named after a Shakespeare knight and they always got the top foreign signings. Then when you move to London and you're on the Seven Sisters Road, you think: "This is a shithole. This is worse than the Shankill!"
SXP: (to Andrew:) You're a QPR fan and so is Pete Doherty.
Andrew: I was a QPR supporter before he was born and I'll be one after he's dead. So that will take me through to the end of the season!
-Ged McAlea