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	Interview with Manfat Voodoo page 4
	Pete: Are you actively writing at present? You're just about to release a three-album box set, forty-odd tunes. Are you writing more right now? Dav: The last month, the last six weeks have been a bit of a pain because of the different stuff we've been doing that we haven't done before. But we've wrote a couple, three or four things that are still….. gestating. So we are, but we haven't. They need tidying up, they need getting together. Damo: I think we need to decide what we're going to do for the next record, basically, don't we. Dav: Yeah. Pete: But presumably the answers to those questions provide themselves, they come out of the - avoiding clichés, coming out of the air, like you've described some of the songs. Damo: They have done in the past. Hopefully they will. We're at the point now where we've just got a lot of things out of the way, and hopefully once we get this album launch out of the way, we can just start writing again and cracking on. Pete: Of course, you've got a particular album, which is the current stuff, to promote and so on, and so presumably you'll be doing that, will you? Will you be going around playing tunes from "Erasmus Darwin"? Dav: Yeah, yeah. Damo: As much as possible, yeah. As much as possible. Dav: Like that Michael Marrer gig we've got in about two weeks, that will be all from ... Damo: Is that the other guy that won that ATOM Award thing? (Dav: Yeah)That will be really cool, yeah. Pete: Yeah, look forward to that one. On that point - how did it feel, achieving the ATOM (Advanced Technical Originators of Music - awarded by the PRS Foundation - link to manfat page on PRS Site) award this year. There were only 15 awarded throughout the UK and I think you were the only North of England based musician to get one. Dav: I was fuckin' ecstatic. I was pleased just to be nominated - to win it was brilliant. It's been a learning curve. We've been able to afford to deal with people we normally wouldn't. So, like, we went to Cambridge and met Ian Shepherd at SRT (Sound Recording Technology) who mastered the album for us. He did a fuckin' brilliant job. We've learnt about different processes. So now we can create music with those things in mind. We'll see what happens. Damo: But yeah, anything that me and Dav do is pretty much just all new stuff. When we first started we used to dig into the old songs, didn't we, and knock them out, but they're written for a four-piece. They're written for the band. Dav: So you kind of do a version of it. Damo: But we never quite do it justice, I don't think. Some of the early, early songs was stuff that you'd written, just on your guitar, and they translate, they sit quite nicely back into being just acoustic songs. But some of the bigger tunes that we'd written as a four-piece, because they're so, all the melodies, even the bass and guitar are so intertwined, when you strip it down a little bit it does lose a bit of their impact a little bit. So we try and write to our present arrangement, as it were. Pete: What of practice routines, do you go, "Oh yeah, I must do an hour's excercises", what sort of routines do you have for keeping up to speed? Damo: I don't practise. Practising's bad for your elbow. Dav: Do you mean separately? Pete: Yeah, separately and collectively. Damo: On my own, I don't practise, I just write. Usually, if I get an idea and I can't play it, I'll practise what I've got in my head until I can play it. But there's nothing that I feel like I need to keep up to speed with. Pete: Not doing scales? Damo: No, I stopped doing that a while ago. Maybe…. occasionally I get the urge, maybe I'll just practise a few scales and stuff, but usually I just get an idea, and if I can't play it, I'll just learn whatever I need to learn until I can play what I want to play. I think that's how I've always learned. Dav: I don't rehearse singing. But with lyrics and stuff, I've always got a pen, I've always got a bit of paper to write on, so you have something that you can ... my memory's gone out the window. Since having kids and stuff, your memory just fucks up. I think that's one of the things that I don't like about what I do is, most of the gigs we've been doing, I've got a songbook in front of me and I'm reading. Some of it's safety, and some of it isn't. And I hate having it there, because I should know my own fucking songs, and I don't. Some of it I really don't know what the next line is, and that's fucking awful. I know maybe I'd written it ten, twelve years ago, but I should know my own fucking songs, you know what I mean? (laughs) Pete: What about that gig you did with The Strawbs, and you thought, "Perhaps people were noticing this book on the stand", and so you showed it to the audience ... nowt written on it. Dav: Yeah, that's just a little trick, there's nowt written on it. I have a little page with nothing on it. I'm reading from a gig, you're doing a gig with something funny, and then you turn the page and go, "There's nothing on it. Put it back down then." "What? What the fuck? What are we doing here with this maniac?" I don't think they got it at that Strawbs gig. Which is even more fun, isn't it? (laughs). It's funny. Damo: It really is kind of seat of the pants, isn't it? Dav: It is seat of the pants. But a lot, a lot of people can do it as well. Not a lot of people. Damo: Not a lot of people can do this, you know. This is talent. Thirty years, man and boy. (laughs) Dav: People sit down and say, "Right, I've brought a song. You all do this, you all do that." What's the point of being in a band? Damo: May as well do it on your own. Dav: May as well fuck off. I wouldn't be in a band like that. Damo: If I could write on my own I probably would, but I can't. Dav: Thanks for that. You mean you're a leech. Damo: I am. I think I am. Pete: Something interesting, I think, for other musicians. "Erasmus" - how long did it take you to record "Erasmus Darwin"? Dav: There's about a year's worth of stuff on there. Damo: Do you mean time on the tape, or do you mean, how long have you actually spent doing it? Because it was like, "Right, have you got an hour? Right, let's do something. When can you do something this week?" But I think it was about a year, wasn't it. Dav: Yeah, it's took a year to get everything. I mean, we couldn't go, "Right, we've got a month, let's write twelve songs." We could do that, but it wouldn't be "Erasmus Darwin and the Chicken Ladder" would it. That took us a year to do. Damo: So that's the short answer. Dav: And the long answer is? Damo: We could write three songs in a week and not write anything for six months. Pete: Write and record. Damo: Yeah. Totally. Well, we've done it. We've done that. We've done three songs in a week and not written anything for weeks after. Dav: And then not been happy with something, and shelved it ... Damo: ... gone back to it ... Dav: ... and then gone back to it and said, "Let's do it like this instead of like that. Oh yeah, fucking hell, now it works better. But it takes that time to come up with that idea to do something else with it. That's probably the most frustrating thing, having something that's shit, and not knowing what the fuck to do with it. And the idea never coming at all ever, to do anything with it, like what the fuck, like "Sarah's Sound Advice". Stick it in the fucking bin. Damo: Yeah, fine example. Stick it in the bin. We had to do that eventually, didn't we. We slogged away with that for ages, and then we thought, "This is shit". Dav: We got to a point where we thought, "Right, something's got to happen here". Damo: It's going in the bin. Dav: And we just had no ideas. There was no ideas coming to do anything with it. We kept coming back to it and coming back, and it was, "Bollocks, let's get on with something else". Pete: And yet some you've done just like that. Damo: Yeah, totally. Dav: And at the same time….. I think that's when the song "Erasmus Darwin and the Chicken Ladder", and "Hunter's Moon"… it was all done that, so we were going, "Right, do this, do this, "Sarah's Sound Advice", fucking get it out the way, it's a nightmare, it's a nightmare, I have no idea what to do with it, fucking bastard bollocks. Anyway, we'll do something else. Right, "Hunter's Moon"." And go straight through with it. And do it. "Yeah, mint, that's fucking mint! Right, come on, let's go back to this. Oh, pile of shit! It's doing my fucking head in. I've got this other idea - "Erasmus Darwin". Spot on. Now let's go back to this. What the fuck's going on?" And it was like that all the time (laughs) Damo: We'd write six songs when we were trying to figure out one of them. Dav: Yeah. So maybe there's something in that. Damo: Yeah, so if it ever comes out, don't buy it, it's going to be shit. It'll have taken us five years to write it and it'll be crap. Pete: How long did "Trepanning" take you to do? Dav: I don't know. Damo: Seconds. Dav: It did. Damo: It was longer, it had about twelve verses at first. Dav: It's a loaded question, because it's only a minute long. And it didn't, it took a while. Because originally it had fucking loads of verses to it. Damo: Yeah it did, but they were fairly improvised some of them, weren't they. Dav: Yes they were. But some of them ... Damo: But it was the first verse wasn't it. It was the first verse that kind of summed it up, so we just left it at that. Dav: Yeah. And then we re-recorded it, and re-recorded it, and re-recorded it. Damo: That was the funny thing… that we wrote it off the cuff and it sounded really really good, but it wasn't really complete, it didn't have a start or finish. And we spent a long time trying to recreate what we'd done off the cuff, and making it sound like we'd done it off the cuff. Dav: And I still don't think we did. Damo: It sounds a little bit forced. Dav: The first time we did it, it was spot on. Pete: Don't say that, I'm not going to put this on. (laughs) It's perfect. Dav: The first time we did it, it was "Fucking listen to that, it's mint". But it was drifting, because we didn't quite know what was going on. Damo: Yeah, we had one riff, and it kept going. Dav: At the end, when we'd decided what was going on, it was, "Right, we'll go back, we'll set everything up the way it was, and we'll just do it." And we did it, and it didn't work. And we recorded it about ten times, didn't we? "Right, let's do it again. Right, let's do it again. Right let's do it again." Damo: We recorded it loads of times. Dav: And then we kind of picked the version that was bestest. Damo: I think we did with whatsit as well didn't we, "American Helium". Because you weren't happy with the harmonica thing that you'd done on it, so we tried to record it all separately ... Pete: Is that the bluesy one? Damo: Yeah. So that you could put a harmonica on the top. But it didn't work, it didn't sound right. So we actually recorded it over and over again, just live, trying to get it until it sounded okay. Dav: Because it started like just a normal song, just taping an improvised song we were doing. Damo: I nicked that off that whatsit, can't remember it now. Dav: Cool. "O Brother Where Art Thou". And I nicked the lyrics from my four-year-old daughter. (laughs) Which is mint. Damo: Yeah. Quite profound. Dav: Because when they came on and told us that James had died, and we were like, "Oh God, this is big," and we got it out of the way, and we all had gone out and got pissed, and the next day, we'd come in and Katie had laid out one of her poodle-woodle teddys , it was in the middle of the floor, and there was a sheet over this thing, and I said, "Is he asleep?" And she said, "No, he's died." And she'd been listening, and took it all in. Damo: You'd never said anything to her, though, you never explained to her, did you, what had happened. She just kind of understood. Dav: And it was like, Oh well. It's top. They're always listening, kids, they're always listening. Which is the point you were making. You're always listening. When you're practising and stuff, well not rehearsing, but you're listening to stuff, you've got to listen to things before you can start playing them. Damo: Yeah, if you can't listen to stuff ... Pete: But that enables the rest, if you can ... Damo: If you can translate what you're listening to, no matter how trivial, you might have heard something on the bus or something, but can you translate it into something, that's the way forward. Pete: Going back to the launch which we just mentioned a bit back, what's the prospect, how do you feel about it? Damo: I'm shitting my pants about that. It's been a nightmare from start to finish. (laughs) Dav: Yes it has. It has been a complete nightmare. I hope never to do it again in my life. It has been awful. Absolutely terrible. Pete: Launching a box set of forty tunes. Damo: I haven't lifted a finger, but my stress is feeding from Dav's stress. (laughs) I've told Dav to stop ringing me, because every time he rings me up it's something else that's not going quite right. So it's, "Don't ring me unless you've got something positive to tell me." It's just been freaking me out. Dav: Positive, yeah. But hopefully it'll be alright. Damo: But it's getting there. I think we're just at the point now where it's kind of, yup. Dav: I think we need a rehearsal, and then we'll be alright. Damo: A rehearsal might be useful. Dav: It really has been awful, I can't stress that enough. (laughs) I've never known anything like it in my life. Pete: Just a simple gig, isn't it? Dav: I never want to do it again. It's just like fucking ... Christ. (laughs) Damo: I was terrified by the fact that we're playing at Vivaz. And Vivaz for me, for years, since it was LTs, was a nightclub. Where you go and get smashed and you dance around. And we're going to go down there and we're going to play some quiet kind of acoustic songs. And it just terrified me, the prospect of it, it just terrified me. But, our lass said to me again…. she's a fantastic calmer of the nerves…. It's like… everyone who's going to be there, is going to be on our side. They're not going to be there to tell us to fuck off or anything. Dav: Eric, who's DJing, is setting the scene. And he's not playing anything lively, all acoustic stuff, for the first half an hour before we go on, everything's going to be quite low-key. And then the evening's just going to build up. Damo: It should be fantastic. On paper, (laughs) it's fantastic. Dav: But you know, it's like….. shit. Damo: It is difficult. I think the scariest thing is just the fact that potentially, we'll play to a bunch of people, and it's just me and thee, isn't it. And that's the scariest thing. Because we've always had the band to back us up. We did this thing, we bubbled up, didn't we. If we played to a man and his dog, we'd bubble up…. don't matter who we're playing to, we'll just play for ourselves and we'll get on with it. It's difficult when it's only two of you. Dav: Yeah, definitely. Pete: How did you enjoy the gig down the Tap you played not so long back? Dav: That was top, but it was too short. It was only about forty minutes or fifty minutes long, weren't it. Damo: What, when we were playing with the band last? Oh, it was superb. I was quite ill. I could barely stand up. I'd been ill for a couple of weeks beforehand, and I could barely stand. But it was really really cool. It was very loud, and probably didn't sound very good. Pete: It sounded alright to me. Damo: But it was nice to knock through the oldies, as it were. Pete: Paul did well, didn't he. Damo: Paul Tilley, special mention for Paul Tilley. Yeah, he's an absolute god. Luckily we got him to play for us at the Vivaz gig. It's probably the last time he'll ever speak to us, because Dav's been ringing him up every five minutes saying, "Can you learn this? Can you learn that? Can we rehearse at your house?" (laughs) And Paul's got his own career to think about. God bless him for doing that, it's really cool. Pete: There's only a few little bits now. I've got a thing jotted down here about business, who handles that. You were talking about ... Damo: David. Dav: That'll be me. (laughs) Damo: No, I don't do any of that. It stresses me out too much. Pete: You just get on with it, do you? Dav: Yeah, I just get on with it. When I came out of art college, I couldn't talk to anybody. I was from Mars I spoke a completely different language, and I felt like I was on a different planet. Then I got a job as a postman, and now I can talk to fucking anybody about fucking anything. Damo: You're a postman? Dav: Yes. Damo: Are you really? Dav: And it's fucking unbelievable. You can just go up to anybody and just talk fucking shit about anybody. And it's top. So I'm not concerned about any kind of communication at all. I'd go up to fucking Pol Pot and ask him about all sorts of fucking stupid bollocks. ------------------------------ Damo: It was always like that, though, wasn't it, even in the old days. Dav: In the olden days….. Damo: We'd always turn up at rehearsal expecting Dav to have sorted us a gig out. No, we would. Dav: "I'll get you a gig." Damo: "What news, David?" "Oh, we've got a gig at Hebden Bridge. Yadda, yadda, yadda. We've got some stoner to drive the van. And we're all going to die." (laughs) Dav: "And we're going to die on the way back." Damo: "We're going to wake up on the B fucking back of beyond." Dav: "And the van's going to be upside-down." Damo: "It will be stationary and the driver will be out of the window." Dav: "Oh, but I've got a plan. We've got fifty old mattresses from the top of the Talbot, all stained with piss, and they're going to cushion our fall." (laughs) Damo: What about when James nicked all them burgers? Dav: Oh yeah. James used to work at Burger King, and he came to this party, he came to the cottage on a night, and he had all these ... Damo: He had a sack of whoppers. Dav: A sack full of fucking whoppers. (laughs)(getting hysterical) Damo: A sack of frozen whoppers on his shoulders. Dav: A sack of whoppers. And we grilled about ... Damo: It was raining, wasn't it. Dav: He goes, "Grill them!" So we grilled about four or five of them and that was it, we couldn't eat any more. (laughs) "What are we going to do with all these whoppers?" So we were throwing them, playing frisbees on the cliff. We threw a bag of frozen whoppers off this cliff. (laughs) Damo: There you go. They're probably still there. Dav: It was a truly great evening. It was top. Pete: So you look after business, then? (laughs) What's your views on the music business in general? Damo: It's a shit business. ---------------------- Dav: It's a shit business. And the last six weeks has just fucking done my head in. And we've just scratched the surface. What the fuck's it all about? It's unbelievable. It's about ten jobs all rolled into one barking little fucking insane little mess. It's barking. It's nothing to do with anything. It perpetuates its own fucking thing or whatever the hell it does. It makes its own little monster really. I haven't got a fucking clue, it just does my head in. I got something from that sound company thing- did you get something? That UK Performing Rights Society this morning, about something to do with Germany? Paul: I delivered it. Dav: Did you? Good man. I read it. I have no idea what I was going to do with it. Damo: No, I've got no idea. I stay out of it. Dav: You'll get it in the next couple of days. I thought, "Oh shit". Pete: You've got to let them know which of your tunes you've played on, because Germany has a different collecting system than the international system. Damo: See? See, that's just it. See? You play in a pub, you turn up, you get your gear, you play, you fuck off. You don't expect to get things in the post. (laughs) From Germany. "What is it you've played again?" Dav: "Ya You Licker Mien Helmutt Ya?." Damo: Ja, Manfat Voodoo. Dav: (laughs hysterically) Damo: Oh God. He's gone. Pete: Alright Dave. Last couple coming up. Dav: Come on then. Pete: What do you want to achieve? What views for the future? Dav: It would be good to write songs and get paid for it as a job. Damo: As a job, yeah. (laughs) Dav: But it's not going to happen, is it? We're in the wrong country. Damo: I don't know. Just keep doing what we're doing. Keep writing stuff. Keep writing stuff. If the writing dries up, then it's all gone, hasn't it. Then it's just useless. As long as we can keep writing stuff, then we'll be alright, I reckon. No ambitions. If you have an ambition, you can only be disappointed, can't you. (laughs) Dav: If you're writing stuff, and you've got a shit job, then it makes the shit job alright really. If you're going away and writing your own stuff, then who gives a fucking shit what you have to make money doing? I'm writing fucking songs and putting them on a tape. Damo: Yeah, as long as we can keep doing what we're doing. Dav: It's better than going to the fucking George and fighting. (laughs) Damo: I don't know. I've had a couple of good fights down the George. Dav: Have you? (laughs) Damo: Yeah. Fingers up the nostrils, rabbit punches on the back of the head. No worries. Dav: (laughs) You've never had a fight in the George. Damo: No, I haven't. Pete: To conclude then. Though this might be the lengthiest response ... if you were sitting here, in my position, asking you the questions, what questions would you ask of yourselves? Dav: Oh hell. That's interesting, isn't it. I don't know. Damo: Would you like another drink? (laughs) I don't know. Pete: Is there owt we've missed out, in other words. Anything that should have been mentioned, or something I just missed the point of. Damo: I don't think so. Dav: I mean, how are you going to put all this together? Damo: He's going to stitch it all together. Dav: He's going to stitch it all together. Damo: And make us look like Nazis. (laughs) Dav: That's happened before. (laughs) We did that thing for Nutmeg, do you remember that? I picked it up, I found a copy of it, it was an old interview and I read it. Damo: Oh, was that "On the Piss with Manfat"? Dav: "On the Piss with Manfat". And we thought we sounded fucking mint. Paul: Did I write that? Damo: Just like we are now. Dav: No you didn't, it was Steph and Roger. Yeah, just like now. And then they just stuck it straight in. They typed it up - but they didn't type it up as they typed it up. "We'll type it up" means "we'll type it up". It doesn't mean "we'll miss bits out and stitch it again differently on the page." Damo: Misrepresentation in the press. Dav: "And mishear things, and not really hear what we said about this, that and the other". And basically making me sound less cool than I think I am. (laughs) And all that shit. And we just looked like fucking tossers. So there you go. Shall we end on that? "Tossers". Damo: What a pair of tossers. Dav: (laughs) What a pair of tossers! Paul: I'm glad you got Nutmeg in at the end. Damo: Oh, Nutmeg. Dav: Yeah, he made Nutmeg. Which was a little fanzine that was going on at the Talbot. Damo: You forced me to buy a copy of Nutmeg. Forced me. Paul: I think it was compulsory. Dav: So there. Yeah, cool. Paul: For one pound fifty, I think it was. Damo: Fucking hell. One pound fifty. Dav: They had a tape with it. Anyway, cool. Damo: I think we're there, aren't we. Dav: Yeah, I think we're there.
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