YOUR IDOLS KILL YOU
YOUR IDOLS KILL YOU
This article/interview was originally featured in Libeller's Almanac. The auther of this work is Fabian Ironside (also writer of The Hegelian and Curiousa Rubberlineana). You can email Fabain at:
fabian_ironside@hotmail.com
"Your Idols Kill You”(Wherein Fabian Ironside asks: “Do you remember Riot Grrrl?” - and makes his excuses)
“Huggy Bear is a teddy sewn up full of dynamite, doesn’t kiss you goodnight but goodbye, adios, a black power salute on your pillow, pull a cord and it repeats Viva Zapata. I could repeat revolutionary horseshit unlimitedly, Che, but it is mostly insincere, the ultimate revolution takes place in your head or at the end of time, depending on your religion; I was the destroyer of manifestos, the Revolution Within The Revolution, Mister.”-Fabian Ironside, Diary, September 11th 1994
Aimes-vous Brahms? Parlez-vous code fucker? The second question’s a knowing cute shibboleth to the girls in the hairslides with the cans of mace (where are you?), the duffel coat boys misquoting Huey P. Newton. That’s the “Huggy Nation”. And if in the 1994 film Thrift Store Gangsta (dir. Price, M.K.) I said “Merits of a duffel coat? There are none,” attentive students will recall that mere frames later I bought a Munich 1972 West Germany tracksuit top. So what do I know? And the third question might be, “Why a Huggy Bear interview in 2001?”
“Yet punk this year so many little things, not clunking and clanking stinking in off-key nostalgia overloads.”
So wrote “Chris C. Namor” in his last bulletin, last year, sounding characteristically like Ezra Pound crossed with Baboon Dooley (“Homecomings, The”, ca. May 2000). Ellip-ti-cal jive. Suffice it to say I don’t imagine Chris would approve of this revolutionary nosegay. Like unto a rogue issue of Mojo (a thousand Riot Girls spit) in which, instead of a 36 page star-glutted circle-jerk devoted to the recording of Ringo’s first solo album, we find the first Historical Retrospective on Huggy Bear. I was going to write one of those evergreen articles beloved of none, “Five Indispensable Records That You Don’t Own (But I Do)”. Which discs were going to be Bee Gees’ Odessa, Leslie Q’s Presque Vu, Paul Clayton / Songs From Moby Dick, Mountain Goats / Beautiful Rat Sunset and Huggy Bear / Our Troubled Youth. But then my dixie drool cup ran over, recalling all the unpublished anecdotes about Huggy Bear. I came to realise, eight years since they were around, that they were the finest band of the Nineties. If not ever! In view of this, I felt like the dog in the vaunted manger of fable, depriving rock’s already neglected globe of a classic sappy interview I once conducted with these dead-zzzarious rock pamphleteers. Since music is now possibly at its direst ebb since the PWL era, this action is apposite. Or would you prefer a symposium with the tired cream of Stereophonics, Coldplay and Travis?
At Rock Journalism School (I’m being facetious - it doesn’t exist! And if it did, we’d be compelled to sack & bomb it) they have a picture of Jessica Smerin on the wall next to the forests of Pete Frame Rock Family Trees. To remind them. Rule the first: remember, not every little child grows up weaned on the Rock Machine. The rudimentary adage is, “Imagine you are writing for Jessica Smerin.” I.E. for someone who knows fuck all about what you are writing. She is a “smart, legal lady”, fluent in several tongues and she can break wild horses and write high drama better than any man, but she is a tabula rasa and a goddamn dope about Rock, be it punk, AOR, cowboy ballads or Sacred Harp/hip hop fusion. She thinks Jim Morrison (ladies and gentlemen, I can only roll my eyes) is important to anyone beyond stoned students and dick flashers. So for the virgins, I’ll explain.
Huggy Bear made six seven inches (all sublime), half a split LP (with caterwaul idols Bikini Kill. The Huggy half is incredible), and a final full LP. Do the math, that’s 60 inches, 120 if you count both sides of a record separately. Do you? /// They lasted three years, 92 - 94, and then dispersed with dignity (an unprecedented virtue in Rock), having made a smash & grab Genuine Political Point on national TV while Terry Christian sat jawing with the blonde porno twins and Hank Rollins (and by-the-way the porn stars are more punk than old HENRY). They successfully defied the media eye while spreading subversion through the zines. Hall-e-lu-jah. While rock subversion traditionally amounts to eye-liner and faux-academic bloopers (Messrs Wire & Manic), Huggy Bear rather recalled, with Stereolab, May 68. Anna Karina with scissors in Pierrot Le Fou. And the records, Ms. Smerin, the records are like nothing else. I hate Thurston Moore but I know that Sister and EVOL are two great albums - Huggy Bear whipped Sister into a cocked hat with words-and-music not intended exclusively for the edification of the Artforum subscription list. No stoned solos, no self-satisfaction. No Lee Ranaldo! The closest “cultural comparison” (pardon my dreck) I can make to Huggy Bear, and Chris in particular, is Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Kevin Rowland (last seen wearing a tutu). But like I say, Jessica Smerin knows THE LAW (it’s an ass, you know) and when you’re in the slammer, how much is Rock Trivia going to save you from a whipping? A whipping perhaps some of you deserve?
This interview was conducted at the Wiiija Christmas party, 1993. Huggy Bear had been one of the great controversies of that year, with a mystique compounded by a policy of talking to fanzines only. This precipitated (happily) chagrin in the mainstream media and (unhappily) cloying masturbations & personations of the Huggy Nation manifesto in the underground press. Huggy Bear’s own press blurb was non-narrative, zerox zealot chapbooks like Reggae Chicken and Parlez-Vous Code Fucker (both 1993), touting Modernism-meets-Miffy, Solanis studded with pixie pirouettes. The rare interviews had all been partisan: either virulently agin the band, or militant pro-Huggy gush. Propaganda for the gospel of Chris and Niki. I hoped to do neither, and had the apparatus to do so, which was a COMPLETELY EMPTY SKULL and a dictaphone. I foundered. There were important questions to be asked, now I’d contrived my way into the hurricane eye of their audience, and ask them I did: “Have you got the Hanatarash CD on Public Bath?”
“I asked some really lousy questions to Huggy Bear... they told me I was sad,” I moaned to Cornershop afterwards. I was the green guy in Don’t Look Back. The one who gets given a harmonica and doesn’t know what to do with it. That’s probably a useful index. I happily equate the shrewd smarts of Huggy Bear with Dylan. It was a canny, intimidating band. And I was a pretty naive, cumbersome (but fucking brilliant) intellect, knocking over nicety with awkwardness and choking slightly on the dregs of pubertal nihilism. I even looked like the Green Guy, wearing horn rim glasses and a bright red V-neck. I was still growing out my mohawk, which a few months previously had charmed Mambo Taxi. Didn’t charm nobody here.
Huggy Bear’s press blurb was non-narrative. All interviews had been partisan: either virulently agin the band, or militant pro-Huggy gush. Propaganda for the gospel of Chris and Niki. Their own printed word, zerox zealot chapbooks like Reggae Chicken and Parlez-Vous Code Fucker (both 1993) touted Modernism-meets-Miffy, Solanis studded with pixie pirouettes. I hoped to do neither. I claimed I thought I might send the interview to Maximum Rocknroll, which had recently published a freelance interview with another of my favourite bands, The Mummies. This interview, which I rated very highly, concluded in mutual recriminations between band and interviewer. If my ambition was to emulate this, as it turned out I wasn’t far off satisfaction.
Already myself and Laurent Rambler had been scourge of the Riot Girl media flea circus. And later, when this scene turned, as summer turns into autumn (as duffel coats aver to suits), into the Mod revival of 1994, we continued apace. Hair styles and colours changed - our irritating patter didn’t. In 1993 we’d developed this style, trading barbed stutters with Mambo Taxi in Canterbury, working our luckless groupie way up the hierarchy toward the prime mandarins. Meanwhile I’d “seduced” Lisa Carver by mail ( but who hadn’t? ), before she met her ex-boyfriend, the Nazi, and long before she had the implants and the conversion to the many-headed, one eyed Ghod of Yisroel (and Hell you can trace the times through La Carver’s cup size and creed). I’d swapped yucks and mumbles with Sebadoh - and then I sat on the interviews until they were all nice and obsolete.
With Huggy Bear (and I’m entirely pretending I had a plan) I hoped to scorch my merry way amid press confusion, parrying obscurantism while not over-simplifying. But not to kiss they ass either. I liked the band when the interview was essayed, but I wasn’t (and still am not) a convert to much of the Riot Girl caravan. Its worthy periphery, the lesbian workshops, inner city “community action”. Queercore and Saint George. There was shades of Greenham Common chic in some of the rhetoric.
Nor did I see any reason to talk to Chris about literature because I knew he liked claptrap like K. Acker and Stewart Home. If I’d wanted to talk about literature, I could have sat down with the brahmins in Canterbury. The old men with good taste. I despise your little would-be-Beat (/ should-be-beaten) heroes. I wanted (why?) to talk about rock and its crass dynamics. To rock stars! It’s the horse’s mouth!
Nor did I make the requisite salaams towards Olympia like I ought. Bikini Kill and Nation of Ulysses were fine by me, but I couldn’t fathom Chris and Niki’s devotion. I liked The Residents and Pussy Galore, you know? So for me, Huggy Bear trounced their attested idols. And while I invested in many crayon-cover one-off tapes of sundry boy-girl Casio operas, from NY’s most ‘Moomincore’ God Is My Co-Pilot, to glockenspiel tyros Avacado Baby, none of that was ever equal to Huggy Bear. Caught up in (and profiting from) a freak media tornado, a “movement”, they were actually musically incomparable with all the also-rans with whom they claimed solidarity. They were sui generis (Mr Depper, check pronunciation).
And re: The Nation of Ulysses, Laurent the Rambler and I were in Blow Up one time in 1996, in our customary avatar as gadflies to the rock underground. Or so we liked to think. “Annoying cunts” was the synonym around Camden. Ian Svevonius, patron saint of the K/Kill Rock Stars axis (and, as we were frequently reminded, Sassy’s Most Eligible Bachelor) was there, and we sought him out for a fun row. I swaggered up and recognised him, and then lit into his James Brown obsession. That was my “in”: I had nothing against Svevonius, I liked Nation of Ulysses and Cupid Car Club, but in the Make Up they were flogging a James Brown schtick, and I wanted to smash the J. Brown legend. Drunk on liquor and Laurent’s fondness for trouble, I got Svevonius rale riled. He took to spitting venom, retorted with contempt that what was I, I was some Kinks fan, and was in full rant when I realised I had no earthly reason to be arguing with him - I had a deal of admiration for him. I stopped and apologised and ceded sarcasm for candour - “I was trying to provoke you and I really oughtn’t.” Placated in likewise speed, he was soon praising my parka and we left on sweetheart terms. But this is a paradigm of my so-called “interview technique”. Trash the foundations of all diplomacy and then act the innocent.
The Original Introduction ( / - not bad ) , 1993/4.
“Chris Huggy Bear is, not wishing to take the phallocentric view but doing so nonetheless, the confident Machiavelli/Rasputin of the band, as far as I could tell, with the surefire responses unwavering before my colossal and thorough scrutiny, although bowing to the Medea-like forcefulness of the natural White Goddess fury of Nikki, who is perhaps his foil in my Phil and Ronnie Spector version of things. Jo Huggy Bear is the member of the cult who has endearing remissions of faith, and will ultimately leave the sick pack, older and wiser, to forge her own mighty way, only to be chased by the by-now Squeaky Fromme-esque maniac renegades of Skinned Teen and Pussycat Trash, XXOOs and Nation of Ulysses epithets scrawled in daygo on their foreheads. I imagine Jo will just make it to her car and slam the door before the first girl, who would have shaved her head but it would have left her with nowhere to put her hairslide, reaches the car, pounds on the window, the tattoo a refrain from a Slits B-side. Then again, perhaps I’m wrong. The sheer mesmerism evident on her face when she reads poetry on the Getting Close To Nothing video (B.G.F., 1993) smacks of Islamic devotion to one’s cause, although her voice cracks slightly as she offers threats. Months later, at a Boredoms concert, I would sourly stamp on a plastic cup, and who should look round but Jo, and give me a sweet smile. Jon Huggy Bear was also less the fanatic, come to that, and stayed notably aloof from the interview, moving like a shadow, but still emitting mystery. He only strengthened the mythos by offering the sole information that he liked Gabrielle. The drummer, in the nature of drummers, faded as though she had essentially never been. “Perhaps I dreamt the drummer from Huggy Bear.” - J.L. Borges. Before I fall into the inevitable journalist’s rut of lasciviously dumping on the Huggy boys and extolling the ladies - I should say that I came away from this interview with more respect for Chris than when I entered; which isn’t saying much since I began by comparing him to Einar “the Weiner” from the Sugarcubes, so I will simply qualify this slur by insisting that Huggy Bear are far and away the finest band in British music today “... since the Smiths,” as the cliche goes. The point of antagonism centres about what questions I asked; Chris would have preferred innocuous, lazily compliant ones, which I am pitifully capable of, while I was in the curious position of the eye of a storm, the reality behind a media controversy, and so gushingly went for the jugular, which apparently bored him silly. The matter remains, if the music papers (or any mode of communication) distort, it is up to ascetic morons and seers in red V-necks and National Health glasses to expose the media carnival and drag the real Huggies screaming, kicking or indifferently walking off, into the glaring light of truth, and the beloved pages of [Libeller’s Almanac]!”
FI: Okay everyone introduce themselves.
K: I’m Karen - drummer.
FI: This is the Maximum RocknRoll type interview.
C: That’s fine.
FI: Do you read Maximum RocknRoll?
C: Yeah. We love Maximum RocknRoll.
FI: Who’s your favourite columnist?
C: Karin Gembus because she likes our records.
FI: Do you like Mykel Board?
C: Um, we met him, but, I don’t really know if we really got on with him... he said nice things about us when we played in New York but I don’t know him personally.
(Someone passes and shouts “Rock’n’roll, DUDE!” The Huggies laugh)
C: (To the others) Do the interview and stop chatting... do this, because I’ve got to leave in ten minutes.
FI: So, have you stopped doing interviews?
N: No.
FI: Am I asking boring questions?
C: No, you haven’t started yet, but... (laughs) the minute you do, you’ll know.
FI: What’s a boring question?
C: Um...
(He and Niki splutter to deliver the same punchline)
FI: Shit, that one’s gone then. Do you still call yourselves Riot Girls?
C: Personally, yes.
FI: (Perceptively) Even though you’re a boy.
C: Well obviously I’m a boy. I can’t apologise enough for being a boy.
FI: Why bother apologising?
C: No, because like obviously, I’m not a girl.
FI: Yeah but there’s no need to apologise for it.
C: No, but I’ve got no right to call myself a Riot Girl at the same time.
FI: Whenever I talk to anyone about Huggy Bear, they say ‘I like the songs the girls sing on’ and you [Chris] sort of get treated like Einar in The Sugarcubes.
N: They say...?
FI: They say Chris is annoying...
C: I ruin it.
FI: That’s the man in the street’s opinion.
C: It is, it’s true, I can understand it as well.
FI: I like them all... well, not all of them... I think ‘Her Jazz’ is probably your best track...
N: As Chris very aptly put it, that is our ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ now, we won’t even sing it any more.
J: Yeah, but it’s the thing that’s round your neck, and you have to, you know...
N: It wouldn’t exist without us five of us people, and that includes him. And if you can’t deal with that, sorry. And if they can’t deal with feminism that at some point is inclusive of some of these people, then they should read more books and get an education. He is cool, and people should trust that in a way.
FI: (Persisting) Doesn’t that mean he has to be careful what he says around women?
(Disapproving gasps’)
FI: He’s never said anything...
(Further chorus of reproach: ‘That’s so shitty!’ etc.)
(The band is moved on by security to the cloakroom. Conversation turns inexplicably to Debbie Smith, an unwelcome presence throughout the interview, who the band had befriended. Something of the hack session musician, she kept nagging me in the interview over my every political gaffe. Paltry sport, Smith! You might as well take to shooting fish in a barrel! I have excised those particular exchanges from the interview, partially because they are simply too embarrassing, partially because Debbie Smith was a hack in Curve, which band I was not there to interview. I think she next cropped up in Echobelly. She now works in Notting Hill Music and Video Exchange, which is meet employ indeed for a washed-up pedantic muso.)
N: She’s in Curve, by the way.
FI: She’s what?
N: She’s the guitarist in Curve.
FI: Is that a joke?
C: She’s the bass player in Curve.
FI: So what bands do you like at the moment?
Huggy Bear (in unison): Sly and the Family Stone, Specials, Last Poets. Universal Order of Armageddon, Bikini Kill. Cupid Car Club, Skinned Teen.
C: We like a lot of dead bands.
FI: So do you like uh, Japanese noise rock?
C: Uh. no.
FI: Have you got the Hanatarash one on Public Bath?
C: I’ve seen the cover for it, I don’t own a CD player and everything by the Boredoms is on CD. But I don’t think they’re noise! I think they’re probably as well orchestrated as the best classical music is... totally choreographed and totally well thought out...
FI: Do you read Bananafish?
C: Um, Sometimes, yeah... I met Seymour Glass . In America. He’s a bad kisser. He has a mole on the left-hand side of his chest, it’s really big, and when you wobble it he moans.
FI: Do you like Butthole Surfers?
C: (Fast) No.
FI: You sound a bit like Gibby Haynes.
C: Oh! No, I don’t like them. I don’t like stoners.
FI: So what if I asked you about Everett True?
C: I don’t know him.
FI: You don’t know him? Someone I know says you live with him.
C: I live with him? Credit me with a little bit more taste in the people I live with than that.
FI: You don’t like him?
FI: Be honest.
J: I would be honest if this wasn’t in an interview, I’ve got nothing to say about the man. He’s not interesting.
FI: I know. But he latches on to things and you become an ‘Everett True band’.
N: Look, we’re talking about the mainstream music press, we’re not interested in talking about that shit.
FI: That’s what everyone reads though.
N: No it’s not, that’s bullshit, no one - well, not everyone reads that.
FI: People removed from the scene, the Rough Trade shop, can only read the music papers.
J: They read other things too.
FI: I do. I still do. I know they’re corrupt, but I still like it.
C: I’m not bothered about corruption, but...
FI: I know. I can be removed from it and enjoy it. But people like Everett True annoy me.
J: You ought to write about it.
FI: I’m not doing well here, am I?
C: No... but it’s okay.
FI: Okay well, what’s a good question?
J: I don’t know, what do you want to know about us really?
FI: What are you trying to achieve? (Pause) Is that a boring question?
J: No... it’s very general though. It’s obvious that we’re trying to achieve a lot of things.
FI: What’s the point in forming a band?
J: There was no point, apart from it’s fun. (In breathless tabloid voice) ‘What do we want to achieve as Huggy Bear?’
FI: Who isn’t.
C: No but that’s the truth. I would. I would, I would be dead, even if not physically dead, if it wasn’t for the fact of being with people I love in this band causing the aggravation we cause.
FI: That’s what everyone wants to do though. Aren’t you trying to achieve anything else?
N: Who?
FI: Anyone in art...
(Giggles of disbelief)
FI: In terms of : “Stop racism and homophobia...”
N: We’re not trying to stop it...
FI: Do you think that you have achieved something?
N: I don’t give a shit! We exist because we need to do it.
FI: You get the argument going, even if you’re totally misrepresented.
N: These arguments have been around for fucking donkey’s years.
FI: So what’s the difference between you and Rage Against The Machine?
C: They’re prettier than we are. (Pause) What’s the difference between us? I don’t know. They’re on a major label, they have tons of boys jumping up and down to their records...
FI: But they’re saying all the same things...
C: No they’re not.
FI: So you’re a reaction - - no, I was going to make another ‘Rock Comment’.
C: Is it a reaction against what.
FI: I was going to say, bands like Slowdive.
C: No, they exist, and they’ve got every right to exist. I don’t know what -
FI: I know, I can’t help bringing the music press into it.
C: I think... you’re being really scattered, yeah, it’s obvious your whole reality resolves around the two corporate papers.
FI: It doesn’t at all. That’s a lie.
N: It does...
FI: I know, because that’s all I’ve read, about you, from... I know fully well the image I’ve given so far is of somebody who obsessively reads them...
C: But that’s been your frame of reference...
FI: I know. I don’t know why I did it.
C: ... you haven’t asked questions about any other kind of art, any other kind of, like... Reason For Being, it all seems to revolve around what comes out every Wednesday.
FI: I know. (Laughs) It’s a bad start.
C: I think that’s particularly tragic.
FI: Particularly.
C: Yeah. I do. It’s the kind of thing, if you wasn’t holding that tape recorder now, and this wasn’t for a reason we’d already agreed to, I’d think you’re sad.
FI: You think I’m sad, huh? Well what do you read every week, how do you spend your time?
C: I try and read as many books as possible, I try and read as many letters from people across the world as possible, I’m not interested in reading about bands, unless they’re particularly adventurous bands, which you don’t read about in the music papers.
FI: Yeah, but there’s a subculture that doesn’t care about the bands, just enjoys the whole thing.
C: Yeah, but that’s like the same people who always read Private Eye or the Guardian, and can tell you the best journalists...
FI: I think you’re patronising them...
C: I am patronising them, cause I hate them.
FI: You hate the readers, or the papers themselves?
C: I hate it if that’s all their frame of reference is, yeah.
FI: (Taking it personally) Well it’s not, I read tons...
C: You’re talking about you, I’m talking about everybody...
FI: I mean, I could say something about... Jean Baudrillard or Dostoevski if you wanted...
C: Then why didn’t you? You just talked about Everett True and the Melody Maker...
FI: (Rasping sarcastically) Cause they’re more interesting. Because that’s the sort of question people always...
Debbie Smith: Did you just say Everett True is more interesting than Dostoevski?
FI: The point is, what I’m trying to do is establish that there’s a difference between your image, which is all we can know, like it or not, that’s all I do know, and the actual you. That’s fair enough, it doesn’t make me ‘sad’.
C: It’s just not very interesting.
FI: Okay.
C: No, but we’ve been honest. And you’ve given us the chance to talk and you’ve asked us questions. And like, now your time’s up.
FI: Just one more question. Who’s your favourite writer?
C: I don’t have one favourite writer, but I really like Kathy Acker.
(Laurence Remila enters)
FI: (To Laurence) I’ve messed it up again. (To Chris) Kathy Acker. Why’d you like her?
C: Because... she’s the punk that even the punks don’t like. That’s the end of my questions.
FI: Right.
C: Thank you!
* * * * * * * * * * *
Epilogue 1. Smog, Rough Trade Shop, Saturday 19/11/94, c. 4:30 PM (In which much attention is given to “matters sartorial”).
“Coming into Rough Trade, it was packed, with usual post-Riot-Grrrl pre-Mods, not the same scene as a year ago, but reliably enough, coming round the counter as I stood orienting myself, Jon (ex-) Huggy Bear. In a red v-neck and white shirt. I said, “What’s happened to Huggy Bear?”, he said they were splitting on the 6th December; I asked if it was of any astrological significance, he said it was going to be the 20th, now it’s the 6th. Bill Smog was about to play, there he was in the other half of the shop, with amps, a sound engineer w’ slicked back hair and glasses, and Cindy Dall. I went on talking to Jon while Bill set up, about Gabrielle, I said I liked Whigfield, Jon couldn’t see it. He later introduced me to a friend, saying “He likes Whigfield, but not Andrew Lloyd-Weber!” I asked why he left Huggy Bear, he said he couldn’t travel, although talking later it transpired he travels all over the place - when I said I saw him at the Jericho Tavern, he said “I get about”: he was going to Aylesbury tomorrow, and would have to take a bus some of the way, which aggrieved him. He failed to communicate to me where Aylesbury is; said “near Stoke Mandeville” hopefully, but no luck. Still smarting from the previous year’s debacle, I said he seemed to be the coolest member, he said no, “the coolest member was a boy called Matthew... he left in 1992, he was so cool.” I told him about my disastrous interview with Chris, how I’d defended the music papers. Somehow I got to telling him the best records were the Caroliner ones; he looked oblivious, said “Caroliner?”, I was incredulous - “In the Forced Exposure rack, the best records in the shop,” and he said he never knew what to buy here; he always had to ask. When I asked him what advice they gave, he looked plaintively at the Dub Narcotic K ones on the wall and said them, “but they’re just the ones they want to sell.” I then noticed the new Huggy Bear LP (Weaponry Listens To Love) on the wall by them. He said it was very good, some joke about not being on it. I said I saw him at the Wiiija Christmas thing, he said “I wore a yellow cycling shirt that night, I remember.” We talked about charity shops, he said they were bad in Brighton. I said about Herne Bay. About his duffel coat the riot girl with him, sucking the requisite lollypop, said “he wears that all the time.” I went off to see Smog better. I reported later that he “looked like he was in pain... didn’t want to be here.” Bill was very quiet and impassioned: sang for 20 minutes. Cindy Dall was small & in a black C&W shirt. He sang “Your Wedding” near the end. They both had their eyes shut when they sang, he had on a brown jumper, a collar of shirt underneath, escaping over (this is what is known as a ‘gambit’). I engaged him in pointless conversation about Lisa Suckdog (see Ballyhoo, 3 , Summer 1995 ) until I gave up and went back to old Jon. I relayed my bluntness, said “It’s all a hoax. He’s hamming it up.” Jon agreed, all pop stars do it, but I insisted it was “Drag City. They all have to act like they’ve just come out of the woods and never saw a human before.” I spluttered “He’s an intellectual really.”
Epilogue 2.
A few years after this, I moved to London. I occasionally saw Chris in different places - Selectadisc, Tottenham Court Road (where he was “watching the girls ...and the boys”) and the legendary “porn kiosk” on the corner by Tower Records (see The Hegelian, 6, 1999). He was buying Playboy with the Drew Barrymore centrefold, “for my brother”. I “developed an itchy chin.” He found it amusing that I’d been telling Jon to listen to Caroliner. I was now crooning and gushing about Palace and Blur. He had no good things to say about Palace, having played with them in America. And Jo Huggy Bear was going out with Graham Coxon, so I pestered him about what Alex James was like. No good things to say about them either.
Epilogue 3. Letter to Tom Muir.
“On to other matters. Minutes of the meeting dated January 29th 1996. I was in Selectadisc, and Stereolab came in the door with me, so I was checking out Laetitia up close - sexy voice, especially in the flesh, but I’d fancied Lisa because she reminded me of Laetitia in part, & realised actually Lisa’s a lot better & (again) a very amazing doll - but then, while they were in the shop in strolled Chris Huggy Bear, said he’d quit the business. I said the last time I saw you you were about to buy a copy of Playboy, he said “I bought it... that was Christmas, wasn’t it?” and then I told him what I’d told Pricey in a letter mere days earlier, that he was “Brett Anderson’s bastard cousin,” he said “that’s not a compliment,” and although I said “yes it is,” I have yet to meet anyone else who actually thinks so. He was wearing a blue parka, and I’ve been known to don one of them, so let’s form a circle & thank the God of the Portobello Road that I was in my ski jacket.”
Epilogue 4.
Chris made some typically obscure intimations last year that he and Niki were to return with a band called The Homecomings . Apparently, to the dismay of his fanbase, he now has a beard. He’s also stopped calling himself Moebius, and is now “Chris C. Namor”. Clearly, he is still reading Marvel Comics. Grow up! - And if you have Secret Wars II, The Nth Man, or late G.I. Joe, I’ll trade my Yummy Furs for them - Yrs, “Damian Hellstrom, the Son of Satan”. Adelaide Kelly, I think, knew Huggy Bear. That makes sense. She wears hair slides and knee socks (nice knees) and probably owns the S.C.U.M Manifesto. It’s a fact that she owns the Skinned Teen/Raoooul split mini-LP on Lookout, and apart from myself I’ve only met one other person who owns it too (she’s pretty too). Miss Kelly doesn’t go down Rough Trade, but that’s cause she knows people who work in Selectadisc.
(Reflects on the last sentence) Yeah you’re right Chris, it is yet a too-teeny world. I still am hypnotised by all the pygmy tractor-pulls, rather than the plight of London Labour and the London Poor. But aren’t you too? Like Niki said, people need to be curious about their culture. But that includes the corporate presses and their works. Popular Culture is now part of the academic canon. P.T. Barnum, Pepper’s Ghost and the Gnome Fly! But in truth I haven’t read the music press in ages, and I no longer compare everything in life to indie rock bands. I have no TV. My forebears are the unlamented Jacksonian humorists - Doesticks, Squibob, Artemus Ward. Do you speak Hoosier, you twit? The last books I read were Searches and Seizures by Stanley Elkin and New English Canaan by Thomas Morton. I too tried growing a beard, but Damian “Oregon” Morgan has me trumped there. He’s got more to hide! I am up to “Canto LXIII” (the Adams Cantos) and all my analogies are about ex-girlfriends. Tawdry stuff. What does it mean? Where are you now?
- The Usual (Jones), Norwich, Spring 2002..
Epilogue 5. One more note on Huggy Bear.
I told Adelaide Kelly that “I am writing up my interview with Huggy Bear. It's grizzly (pun intended). This entails looking back over my Old Diaries and that familiar shame at past actions. I have done a lot of people a lot of wrong. You knew Huggy Bear didn't you? Do you have any Funny Animal Stories or anything? ENNNyway, reply would you cause I've always wanted to meet you. Fabian.”
She replied that “well that's all very well now i am suffering from tonsillitis and ear infection, isn’t it. have to be next time, soldier . My friend knew huggy bear, i'll ask him to email you if he remembers any good stuff. tho he interviewed them in, like, 82, or something. what are you doing? They aren't even together now are they? see ya soon plumby. X”
Lo y’all & he done it. Thanks very much to Adelaide and Howard. A cursory glance will evince to the perceptive reader that this is an Insider’s view. Where mine was ... definitely ... not.
Epilogue 5. From : Howard Mollett Subject: Re: huggybeardon’tdie!
huggy bear gossip for your column !
huggy bear used to discriminate against long-hairs. Jo had long hair in 1998.
huggy bear drumming inspired by russian classical music
mark lamarr biffed terry christian in the nose because he dissed jo and nikki. but don't mention that episode to them now. nikki punched a BNP skin in the nose and got chased down the street.
chris' favourite record is unwound and he likes jerking off over skater boys.
huggy bear were anti-intellectual.
woman's own wrote a feature article slagging off huggy bear
jon only travels by train and boat.
huggy bear like spazz dancing, i discerned a belgian influence when they shook their booty asses.
heroes ! / i don't remember anything else.
Iconoclastic columnist for MRR. A brave defender of pederasty, he taught little Japanese kids to speak English. His column, “You’re Wrong”, followed his exploits in Japan as he battled sexual mores and stomach bugs. I briefly tried to correspond with him, which effort swiftly thwarted my enthusiasm for the project. G.G. Allin, his friend, died amid this correspondence, and I made a passel of off-colour jokes about this. He repeatedly requested nude photos before he’d answer any more of my questions about Kramer, Albini and Pussy Galore. I became ever so coy, a rare instance. Ask the girls.
Means “the snot-nosed”. I was ever-so-flush at this time, spending my every last red cent on every last side-project Yamatsuka Eye could “knock out”. Thus I went bankrupt. I have spared the reader my witty aside about Gerogerigegege, the Japanese duo who made tapes of themselves masturbating and performing coprophagia. Suffice to say, this arch scatology was then a staple of my classy table-talk.
Sample erudition: “Hey buddy, d’you wanna see my penis? It’s got cancer!” Arch scatological periodical. Seemingly crossed the sensibility of Gibby Haynes with the pedantry of a PhD Literature student. I loved it. Made an art form of interminable, prattling interviews which invariably declined into fart contests. Years passed, and what endured was squalor. By the time they were celebrating the advent of mighty Prick Decay
C: I’m Chris, singer. (Laughter)
J: I’m Jo, er, guitar player.
N: I’m Niki, I’m, er bass player ...and singer.
J: We’re selective, we look at each offer for its own merits.
C: (Meaningfully) We’ve got short attention spans if people ask us boring questions. (Laughs)
C: ‘Why do you have a boy singing in your band?’
N: ‘What’s your mess-age?’
K: He’s a boy.
C: I’m a Riot... I’m a Riot Boy...
K: It depends what your perception of Riot Girl is, if you see it as a fashion, no, if you see it as a ... um a load of ideas which provoke you to doing action, yes, I’m a Riot Girl, definitely, and I think with people keep telling me we’re not feminists, and that’s really , like it - we’re feminists, okay, Riot Girl is the coolest thing that has ever happened, probably, and... so...
(Trails off and laughs at her oratory)
C: That’s what I would say. People would say ‘Are you a Riot Girl?’ and they expect you to say Riot Girl’s finished. But, it’s like it’s only a phrase and the things it stands for are the coolest things ever, and if I’m associated with that in a productive way then, yeah, I’m a Riot Girl.
K: What do you think about it?
K: It’s our ‘My Generation’.
C: My Generation’s a bit cooler than Ferry Cross the Mersey.
N: He’s never careful, he didn’t have to. That’s the first thing, he didn’t have to decolonise his mind, he didn’t have to ‘learn’ feminism, as long as I’ve known, it’s always been...
J: The idea of having to be careful about what you say, not saying what you feel, that’s totally shit, you’ve got to say what you feel, even if it comes out...
N: There’s no such thing as Political Correctness...
J: ... all wrong. You should... just say it, I mean people don’t understand that sometimes your mouth shoots off ... D’you know what I mean? You should never be careful about what you say... say what you feel.
C: I think, even if you say ‘I don’t agree with the whole idea of Political Correctness’ you should be answerable for what you say, but I don’t think you should adhere to guidelines about what’s right and what’s wrong because it’s not productive. If you don’t say things which are wrong and people take you up on it, then how does any ideas progress, because you’re always walking along... treading on eggshells. I’d rather smash a load of eggshells and have people say ‘That’s wrong, you can’t say that’ so I can find out why I can’t say it, or why it’s offensive, or why it might be... dodgy territory, so to speak.
C: Bass player.
N: She made an interesting and valid point.
J: We like the Boredoms.
C: I like the Boredoms, but they’re not noise.
C: I don’t not like him.
N: Don’t you remember that time you slept with him so we could get into the papers?
C: Oh yeah! We slept with him so we could get into the Melody Maker. We got Single of the Week. It was worth it.
J: We don’t care.
C: He’s not anything I ever think about.
J: He’s in another world. What’s he got to do with us?
C: He used to write about us and he said favourable things.
C: A lot of people do read it, but - in England, in England...
C: That’s probably the truth, but it’s a sad truth. That there isn’t a more varied choice of fanzines and literature for young people to read. And it probably is true that in England Melody Maker and NME do have a monopoly, but it’s a boring monopoly... it’s not interesting to think about. I don’t think about what day the music papers come out or what they’re talking about.
J: It’s a habit you have to break, innit, like it’s a pattern every week, going down and getting it, all that shit.
C: I’m more annoyed by people sleeping on the streets than I am about Everett True.
J: Any way... let’s talk about something else! (Laughs) If there is anything else!
C: Make it interesting otherwise we’ll get bored!
J: Karen and Nikki have already dropped out.
C: (Aside) About Everett True...
C: I personally have tried to hold off suicide.
N: We just want to generate as much discussion in British music...
J: We want to exclude a bunch of idiot... people.
N: Yeah. I.E. people who are racist, homophobic and sexist. Everyone who’s discriminating of people who are just different to them.
J: Yeah. Can’t understand difference.
N: But achieve what? What are we talking about?
J: We are trying to stop it, but we realise we’re not going to change the entire world with Huggy Bear.
N: I don’t want to change the fucking world, it’s too fucked up anyway. One band is not going to do that. That’s what I mean, this British culture doesn’t teach you to investigate. I want to see - I don’t give a shit if they hate our music, but kids starting to get investigative again, curious about their own culture. But Britain is, like, so rich of people doing stuff but just we’re not aware of it, and that’s why the NME and Melody Maker fucks up. Well it is, there’s a really rich ska culture, mod - there’s loads of different little cultures, the reggae culture, it’s all there. But it’s not seen as important.
C: It’s not like an argument about solving, because it’s like they say in Black Flag: the only way to solve these problems is with an atom bomb. And that’s like the truth. It’s not gonna go away. All you can do is exist, in your own gang or in your own space and cause as much trouble, in terms of provoking things, provoking yourself, as possible. And keep on doing it, don’t get lazy. Like pick up on stuff, stir stuff up all the time.
J: No, you speak by your actions, not just by your lyrics.
C: If we’re trying to achieve anything, it’s the destruction of apathy, even if it’s only for ourselves.
C: All your questions have revolved around the music papers.