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Ash Latest

Melody Maker November 29 2000

Live in Kingston and Hastings

Wanna go see Ash tonight? Well, grab a cab into town, catch the first Tube south, jump on a commuter train directly out of the city and disembark at a secret location where a bus will take you to the rendezvous point. From there it's a six-mile hike across country to a hillock, where you wIll meet a man called Pedro who will ferry you across the mountains.
The password you must give to the mullet-headed guardian of the venue - a bouncer with the body of a provincial barman and the haircut of the 1974 First Division, more used to settling pool table altercations than guarding one of the biggest bands in Britain - is "local"...

And bloody right too. For too long now, pampered music journalists have been whisked in limos filled with crack to venues at the end their road for gigs that start "whenever you can make it", dwarves in leather blowing PCP up our arses all the way. Meanwhile, most bands who claim to be "doIng it for the kids" only really want to "do it" in major cities not too for off the M6, ta very much, so any kids outside of the smog generally have to go a f***ing long way for the privilege of having "it" done for them.

Ash, of course, understand such matters. They are The Kids, they come from Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, they have just completed a rumpus- filled Big Pop Record of no uncertain genius and they want to Give SomethIng Back. So they came up with a ruse whereby they'd Invite the fans to vote for their nearest venue on their website, pledging to turn up at the most popular choices to play a set also selected by the click-crazed punters! Brilliant! Electronic anarchy! The Russian Revolution of tour management! It's crowd- pleasing at the touch of a button and screwing the system at 35,600 blips per minute! One minor problem: it also puts your tour in the hands of the kid who knocks together a programme to type "Dangleberry Bogsnoggler. Submit. Dangleberry Bogsnoggler Submit" 15,000 times.

"I'd never heard of half of the places," Tim Wheeler admits backstage at the Peel Club in deepest, darkest Kingston. "I was siting there going, Where's Whitley Bay? Where's Stockton? Where's Ullapool? Where's Redditch? Where's Brecon? Where's Wrexham?' It was pretty crazy, but it was cool. We just wanted to get off the beaten track. We were sick of the touring game and the tried and tested route. You get a good vibe when you go out to play places you've never played before."

"The thing about it is, says bass Twiglet Mark Hamilton , "next year we're coming back with a big pop album and well he doing a big world tour, so we have to get good again. You go to America and you're playing against the American bands, they're so f***ing right on it, you can't look like another fey f***ing Indie band because you'll just be sh*t. You've gotta do the groundwork."

"It's good for the fans as well, says drummer Rick "Rock" McMurray. passing by sporting a haircut that's half-Mohican, half-botched lobotomy. Look, Rick, tell us who did it and we'll send the lads round.

"I've been thinking about it for years," he grins. "So while we were in the studio, we had a couple of drinks and got the clippers out and did it and It looked great."

"It was done the same night that Charlotte shaved her eyebrows off," Tim chuckles.

Ah, the larks! And then he's off, striding onto a stage no larger than the average hatchback in a venue starting to split at the seams, ready to begin his mission to systematically pulverise the provinces. Along for the ride? Hope you brought a compass...

This our tribute to Cliff Richard."

Kung fu, James Bond, "Star Wars", alien girlfriends, Ecstasy and alcohol! And, er, ageing Christians, apparently. A-ramalama-ding-dong, a-woo-hoo-hooo, oh f***in' yeah! Some nights you walk into the backroom of your local pub and onstage thre's a headbanging Peperami, the original Charlie's Angel, a Travis Bickle-a-gram and a singer sweating like a sauna full of rapists. They are Ash and they "rock" Kingston in the same way that the Enola Gay "made a bit of a dent on"Hiroshima. 'Jesus Says', 'A Life Less Ordinary', 'Goldfinger' , 'Oh Yeah', 'Jack Names The Planets': Ver Hits drip from the walls and Ash feel 18 again, over their "difficult" leather-keks-'n'-Mary-Chain-shades phase and remembering how to make their guitars sound like a ram-raid on Sellefield. It's exhilarating to watch, a warp-11 MIG of a gig.

And faith-affirming, too. New tracks like 'Walking Barefoot' , 'Shining Light' and the Little Hell-penned 'Warmer Than Fire' tear chunks from the 'Nu-Clear Sounds' chuggers, while 'Candy' is a whole new kettle of flaming 'Grease' - essentially 'Sandy' performed by...oh, you know. 'Girl From Mars' even prompts a full-on crowd-surfin' and lagerflingin' riot, during which the front row literally tear Tim's guitar from his grasp and loot his pedal rack.

"I had his guitar," confesses 19-year-old Andy from Aylesbury, "and my mate nicked his pedal. But I gave the guitar back."

"I've got his pedal!" yells a Caucasian male in his late teens calling himself Corky hot goods. "It's not stolen, it's acquired!"

Alright, sonny Jim, you're coming with me. Anything you say may be taken down and published in a humiliating vox pop.

"No!" cries the perp, slipping from our headlock and cunningly avoiding our camera. "This is my pedal!"

The Maker's file has been passed on to Scotland Yard. As have our pictures of 22-year-old James from "near where Charlotte lives", who is so overcome by Ash's performance that his unnaturally pendulous testicles have fallen loose from their trouser mooring and inadvertently waggled about in The Maker photographer's frame.

"Y'know that Marilyn Manson photo that no one likes?" he drawls. "I want to replace that. I wanna be in Your Shout every week. Marilyn Manson's arse and me standing behind with my quivering member!"

Er, thanks for the reading.

"All bands should be tested," he continues, "it's like a trial. Brixton Academy is massive, Wembley and all the big venues are a joke. People should really take on their audience in a small place and they've done the job admirably. Fantastic."

Ash in Kingston then: the bollocks.

"Oh, you're on the guest list, you say, coos the white-haired old dear comprising the front-line of the tour's second night security battalion. "My my....well done."

It's been a while since Hastings St Mary's in the Castle has been rocked. Not since 1066, to be precise, when William The Conqueror laid down some hardcore Norman riffage nearby, but even that was an open-air gig. Since then there's been 934 years of pretty much just being a castle, then the odd jazz night or Help The Aged tea evening.

"I worked here for a while as an usher," says Mimi Goddard, 18 and "Hastings born and bred", sweeping a practised hand around the Colloseum-style hall. "It's an arts centre and before they've only had classical concerts, jazz recitals and some plays."

"There's quite a few bodies in the crypt downstairs," says her mate Natalie, "ancient people. It was built out of the castle that was on top. I was well chuffed when I heard Ash were playing here. Nothing ever plays in Hasting, only Abba cover bands and stuff."

Tonight, Ash get medieval on Hastings' ass. As scenes of bacchanalian moshing unfold, the world record for Longest Crowd-surf is resoundingly smashed and someone attempts to eat their girlfriend, tonsils first, to 'Girl From Mars' , Ash hit their stride and shake the catacombs. "F*** it, we'll do two more songs," Tim says twice and an eyebrow-searing 'Petrol' follows the first ever live airing of the, ahem, explosive 'Cherry Bomb' . And this is only 10 minutes after the same man sang 'Lost In You', a song so disarmingly twee that it should only really be performed by a cartoon mouse. With a mohican. It's the dawning of a multi-faceted, five-dimensional, sophisticated Ash, the first rock band on earth that sound as though they belong in the 21st century.

"They were excellent," says Ian, rubbing his chin. "I think I've broken my jaw."

Bit tame compared to last night, though. No actual pillaging of stage gear at all.

"It certainly wasn't tame for here," his companion Phil, 18, from Eastbourne chips in. "You wouldn't see that kind of moshing at the old ladies' tea evenings."

In their dressing room, Ash are in playful mood, cheerily shooting each other in the head with a pellet gun and marvelling at the size of their peanut rider, on which an army could munch for a month.

"I could hardly breathe onstage tonight," says Mark, "it was so hot last night that I had no energy left. I was really fighting all the way throught the gig. Tonight was a bigger room, more atmosphere, more room to move. It was brilliant, y'know. The vibe was there, and rather than going for it and tailing off like last night, tonight I was getting more into it."

"I enjoyed it last night," adds Tim. "Hot, crazy, hard to hear my singing, but I got away with it. Some bastard got my guitar as well."

No, they gave the guitar back. A bloke called Corky from Aylesbury definetely got one of your pedals, though. I reckon I could pick him out of a line-up.
"Bastard!" Tim laughs. "But we were really buzzing on it. It's great having people in your face, grabbing on to you or stuff."

"That was the best workout I've had the whole year," says guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, as Rick holds the pistol to her temples in some bizarre game of Unloaded Russian Roulette, "it was so outrageously hot. It was a good start. All the mayhem's starting again and it's all really exciting."

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