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Andy Interviews... |
It's amazing what you can do if you try. For example, Dub Pistols mainstay Barry Ashworth claims "We just did it, got up, said we was going to be a band, made one, and was a f......' band. F......' dreadful." This was still at school. Then he put on acts like The Farm, The Happy Mondays and Ocean Colour Scene at The SW1 club in London. He's had many fun hours DJing with top progressive house night Deja Vu, three number one dance tunes, worked with Jon Carter and Krash Slaughter as Monkey Mafia, and with his new band is currently a highly touted next big thing. All this, and he's still willing to come to Bournemouth to see us. You've got to have respect for the man, really.
The night is Saturday, the venue Bournemouth Pavillion Ballroom. Somewhere I haven't been since under-18 discos in the summer of god-knows-when. The night is Skirmish In The Parlour, and Skirmish is what the tea-dancing regular clientele are going to get tonight. The Dub Pistols have just come back from America, with their blood supply currently under arrest for having broken several international drug laws. Ashworth has stories that would kill a pensioner dead in their tracks.
"We went to Miami, the music conference, and that was just shananigans. F...ing mental. You've got to be 52 stone and wear white socks to be an American DJ. They were all there doing loads of trading, and all us British DJ's were all over the place. I was up for three days, and me and Darren Emerson decided to go for a drink and a pizza, 'cos I hadn't eaten for two days, and f...ing end up passing out in a pizza. Waking up with mozzarella and tomato all over your face. It was like, 'I've gotta go home now. Enough's enough.' You know what I mean?"
Not really, no. I've never gone for three days without sleep, nor have most people. Normal people don't live the Rock 'N' Roll way. So Barry, enlighten us, what is such a hardcore lifestyle like.
"F...in' terrible. Honestly, don't try it kids. I love it, you know, I think I must be one of the luckiest people alive, to do what I like and to get paid for it. I get to travel the world, make loads of new mates, have a good time, and get plenty of birds to boot. Fill out the job application form....what do you want to do? I'm lucky. It's taken me a long time to get to the point where I don't have to work. It's been like ten years. I had to keep two jobs, even when I was promoting. Then I could be back tomorrow. The goalposts change. One day you're flavour of the month, the next it's all gone downhill. It's the nature of having a record deal. It's the nature of being an artist. At the moment we're going through a very favourable phase, but sooner or later someone's going to come out with a bat, and f...ing stick it straight over my head, I've no illusions about that."
The job application here was made through connections and determination. Through promoting clubs, artists were known. Through working with artists record companies were contacted. A deal was made as Deja Vu, whilst Barry was still involved with the clubnight. Things were not well however, and after overcoming obstacles both dead serious and downright silly, he finally got himself a comfy number as The Dub Pistols.
"I walked in to the record company, just after I'd finished working with Jon (Carter). Part of the reason why I didn't sign as Monkey Mafia, was that I still had my deal, so I just couldn't sign, so Jon signed as the artist. I was pretty headfucked at that stage, you lose all your f...ing confidence. I walked into Vanessa at Deconstruction, and said 'Look, I just really need some money to make a record.' She said 'Here's some money, go and make some records.' I disappear for about six months. She hadn't heard from me. Away with the cash, just phoning up and saying 'Yeah, yeah, it's coming, it's coming.' Then just sent it into her one day, and said 'Here it is, you'll love this one, I'm going away.' And she didn't call me back. Phoned her up, she said 'Barry, it's rubbish. It's terrible. It's the worst thing I've ever heard.' I was like 'What? You don't like it at all?' She was like 'No, I think you better come over here and see us.' A couple of days had gone and I'd really lost it, while she doesn't have a clue, 'cos she was listening to the digi-dump. Not even listening to the track, listening to the samples. She said 'I thought you'd gone all artistic!' I was on the verge of suicide thinking, 'This really ought to have gone out,' then Steve Lamacq made it his single of the week on Radio 1, which was 'There's Gonna Be A Riot.'
From Miami to Deconstruction, Barry seems to have a lot of friends. He was at school with Carl Cox and Dave Durrell from Bush. Such tenuous links come in handy when trying to keep your profile high, and remixes are one of the major ways of taking advantage of those links. The Dub Pistols so far have done twelve, including Bush. With the current highflying of the likes of long term remixer and ex-Housemartin Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), on singles such as Wildchild's "Renengade Master" and Cornershop's "Brimful Of Asha", it looks like a sound plan. So as expert remixers, do the Dub Pistols think it's possible for remixing to go too far?
"Not really. We've only done three releases, all of which have done alright, but you can only release so much stuff. Doing remixes is a way to develop our sound, without having to spend too much of our own time on it. We can take the good bits of the remixes, take them back and also find out what is and isn't working. It's possible to do too much. I know Norman, but I'm not gonna get drawn into it. I deliberately don't do too many remixes over here now. When you start off you're flattered, then you get to be flavour of the month, then all of a sudden your album is six months behind schedule. You just gotta be careful."
Tonight however, despite their dozen remixes, three releases and current media hype, the Dub Pistols find themselves surprisingly short of mates. A few tuned in kids come along and freak out in their own individual ways. Which is a shame, as the Dub Pistols rock the place pretty hard, but would probably have done better rocking more people. Looking slightly like the Essex boy with the bass turned up far too loud, bleached hair with black stripes and big fat ring saying "DUB", Barry Ashworth and friends Malcolm Wax and Lee Spencer took on ignorant Bournemouth, aged security guards and all, and kicked arse.
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