Go to Free City's Music Reviews page for coverage of the new Lucky Bishops CD Grimstone as well as Still by The Bitter Little Cider Apples and Let It Brie by Cheese.
There is no justice in the music industry. While N'Sync and the like ride around in solid gold private jets, warm in their diamond-encrusted sable champagne drinking gloves, England's Lucky Bishops sit huddled against the damp chill of their rat-infested cottage in rural Dorset, breathing lightly to avoid inhaling too many deadly mold spores. In a world guided by merit, the boy bands wouldn't be fit to shine the custom-made platinum rocket shoes of this freaky bloke band.
Photo: Left to Right Tom Hughes, Rich Murphy, Luke Adams above,Al Strawbridge below.
The first time I heard the Lucky Bishops' song "I'm Convinced" on the Woronzow Records compilation Like It? It's Yours, I was certain they would become one of my favorite bands. I next found the Ptolemaic Terrascope CD Succour, containing an early version of "Ashtralia". That good-natured slacker anthem hit me as even better than the first Lucky Bishops song I'd heard. With great anticipation, I waited for the band's self-titled debut to come out. When I finally heard it, my expectations were more than met. The Woronzow/ Rubric release Lucky Bishops consists of brilliant song after brilliant song combining a supernatural musical intuition between players with crisp pop melodies and a restlessness to always keep things interesting. "I'm Convinced" is included on the album as is a more elaborate recording of "Ashtralia". "She's Gone" plays with Beach Boys harmonies and progressive instrumental sections while "Right Direction" has a pristine Donovan folk sound. "Stratosphere", "Bad Time" and "Evil Thoughts" have the right balance of irresistible single potential and psychedelic originality. "Space 1949" adds an interesting twist to the mysteries of Roswell. All in all, it's an album that seems like a fresh revelation except you're somehow not quite sure it wasn't there the whole time before you tuned into its frequency.
Now that the second Lucky Bishops album Grimstone is about to be released, I thought I would take a shot at speaking with the band. I asked Ade Shaw at Woronzow for the band's e-mail address. He instead gave me a street address in Grimstone, outside Dorchester, in the Southwest of England, and told me that the band did not have access to computers or anything. I printed up some questions and sent them off to the band cold, hoping that something might come of it one day.
Around a month later, I received a package containing handwritten answers from three of the four Lucky Bishops (Al Strawbridge - bass, Tom Hughes - keyboards, and Luke Adams - drums. The whole band switches off lead and harmony vocals). Guitarist Rich Murphy didn't have time to take part (or, as Tom put it, "Rich was too indecisive to put pen to paper.") but the others gave me more than enough in the way of interesting responses. The cover letter (penned by Tom I think, going by the handwriting) was beautifully decorated with drawings of flowering vines, stars and sunbursts, along with a totally psychedelic band logo. These guys are such a dedicated bunch of British hippies that Al's answers were even written on the back of green copies of the Alternative Society free festival schedule for 1979. Among the listed events are "Avebury Freedom Festival - a stoned walk from Stonehenge to Avebury is planned, 30 miles" and "Psylocybin Fayre - Dyfed Midwales at Pontrhydygrofs, near Devil's Bridge". I suppose that Al and the lads could easily have falsified such a document for effect but it's a nice touch either way. The sheets of questions I had mailed to Grimstone came back to me stained and smudged.
Given the band's sort of madcap vibe, I took the chance to cut loose a bit with the questions I asked them. However, the Lucky Bishops' clever, outrageous and sometimes downright gross answers put me in the role of a stiff BBC-presenter straight man circa 1966, setting them up for one joke after another. As Tom wrote me, "Some of the answers are silly/more than a bit silly… This is what happens when we spend too long in an isolated cottage with mouldy pillows and hangovers. …And no hot water …And rats scuttling in our hair, etc.". I must warn our more delicate or squeamish readers that this interview does get a bit rough. After learning of the things the Lucky Bishops said about Nick Saloman and him, Woronzow's Ade Shaw asked me to include a statement of rebuttal at the end of the interview. Humorous squabbling between label and band aside, let's hope that enough people catch on to Grimstone to afford the Lucky Bishops the luxury of safe and dry housing before too long.
Al now has access to a computer on Thursdays, so I was able to e-mail him about contributing some music to Free City's compilation CD The International League of Telepathic Explorers. He kindly agreed on behalf of the Lucky Bishops to give us two fantastic tracks ("Silent Car" and "Animal Kingdom"), as well as the great song "Crocodile Head" by his other band Bitter Little Cider Apples, for the collection.
Nick: When did you start playing music? Who were your influences? When did the band get together?
Al: I started on the drums when I was about six and didn't take up guitar until I was 15 or 16. I taught myself on my brother's semi-acoustic but instead of changing the strings around, I just learnt to play as it was from a Denny Laine chord book (I'm left handed).
I grew up avoiding as much of the '80s stuff as possible and instead listened to my brother's '60s collection. He got me into The Zombies, Creation, Electric Prunes, Misunderstood, etc., once he'd persuaded me that Showaddywaddy and Dire Straits weren't as good as I'd originally thought. The other bands of the time I loved were Firehose, Thin White Rope, Big Dipper, Giant Sand and a lot of other guitar bands from the same labels, as well as Soft Machine, Egg, Deep Purple and Rush (!?).
When I started playing bass, Mike Watt from Firehose was undoubtedly the biggest influence. I loved the way he propelled the band along whist playing such brilliant melodic lead lines. Him and Mark King from Level 42 of course.
Me and Rich started playing together at college in a band called Stonefish which was the first time we'd really started writing our own stuff though some early attempts are probably woefully inept if we heard them now. Around the same time I drummed in punk and goth bands and a really good band called the B.L.C.A. (who I have recently recorded an album with). Luke and I joined a band called Orange around 1991 and we toured the U.K. and recorded a good single which scraped the low end of the charts. But the band split when the singer decided he wanted to recreate his demos in album form utilizing session men. Ho-hum.
The Bishops got together after Orange split up when me and Rich started writing together again with Luke, who suggested getting Tom into the band and hey presto, lots of wine and joints later, Handstand Ambulance were formed in Luke's mum's shed.
Tom: When I was four or five, my mum bought a piano. I taught myself to play by ear on it and I've never read music (though I played only blues in 'C' for years which drove everyone nuts). When I was little, I suppose I was influenced by The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Dylan, etc. from my dad, and Pet Sounds - Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel and lots of '60s Motown from my mum. Later on, I really got into Big Brother & The Holding Company (and most of the other bands in the Monterey Pop Festival film). …Also Elvis, Ray Charles, The Small Faces, etc., etc. - '60s stuff really. I started gigging at about 15 doing lots of folk stuff on accordian mostly and some awful covers with 'Gastric Baby' which nobody but ourselves found funny.
Luke: I started playing when I was 12 at school with a friend. We wanted to be the next 'Stray Cats'. In the '80s my brother and I and various friends were in bands writing our own music. In the '90s I met Al and Rich while me and Tom had been playing together, then about mid '90s after the Orange thing the four of us got together and started powering out song after song.
Nick: What kinds of music do you listen to currently?
Al: Super Furry Animals, The Flaming Lips, Ben Folds Five, Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith, They Might Be Giants as well as all the '60s psych I usually do (Blossom Toes, Moby Grape, Lovin' Spoonful, etc.).
Tom: At the moment I'm listening in to lots of Nina Simone, Nick Cave, Bitter Little Cider Apples (Al's other band), Lucy 9mm, Calexico, and lots of Francoise Hardy.
Luke: The
theme from 'Amalie', Flaming Lips, Bitter Little Cider Apples,
XTC, Simeon, Serge Gainsbourgh, Eye, David Axlerod, Can, Fairport
Convention (early), Mercury Rev, Margo Guryan, David Ackles.
Nick: What is your new album called? When will it be out?
Al: Grimstone, doomsday.
Tom: The new album came out before it went back in. Now we're tapping the shell to get it to come back out…
Luke: Grimstone. It's very apt.
Nick: How does your new CD strike you as different from your earlier work? What are some of the new things you tried in sonic terms?
Al: The album was recorded on the same digital 8-track we did the first album on, but we had some decent microphones this time which seems to give the recording more "space". We didn't use any instruments that we couldn't play ourselves, with a view to recreating the songs live, but having said that, we still don't do a few of the new ones because they don't seem to come across live. - or perhaps we need to rehearse a bit harder, one or the other.
Tom: It certainly smells different and is of a slightly different temperature. We recorded the album telepathically whilst we were asleep in our magnetic capsules.
Luke: It's taken a long time to record. There seems like a lot of time between each track recorded. I actually seemed much younger when I remember the first songs recorded. I don't think it's that different to the first.
Nick: Each of you writes songs alone and together. How does the arrangement and recording process work?
Al: The songs we write together tend to be pieced together in rehearsals until it feels complete with each of us pitching in ideas. In the case of "Rock Stars" on the new album, we simply welded two separate ideas together and I think it turned out really well. Occasionally we've done this before and if the join is too noticeable it sounds like exactly what it is - two unconnected songs attached to each other like unrelated Siamese twins.
Even when we write alone, the arrangements tend to get chopped and changed until we're all happy.
Tom: We first release our musical dogs into the room. We all pat each other's dogs until they are covered in our dead cells. Then, we either take the dogs for a walk or to the vet's to be put down.
Luke: I think half the songs sound like collaborations all taking the lead at different points, a verse here, a middle bit there, a line here, a word there. We all take it in turns to baby sit the song but rarely together. Al's a good parent.
Nick: With your ancient but trustworthy van and your rustic garden shed studio, you seem like the very prototype of a modern psychedelic band. Did all of you always know you wanted to be musicians or were there other ambitions?
Al: I've always fancied being involved in the film industry but rumor has it, it's as hollow as the music industry so maybe not. Also, I have no talent for that sort of thing, although I spend more time watching movies than listening to music!
Tom: I've always wanted to be a musician or an inventor. …I still haven't invented anything.
Luke: I've always wanted to make music and be a spaceman with guns.
Nick: The long jam "Negative Blooty" from the Acid Jam 2 collection is one of my favorite Lucky Bishops tracks. The fact that it was written by Rich but is not dominated by his guitar part seems to show a high level of generosity within the band's playing. Do you think that accurately reflects the way you interact as musicians?
Al: No comment.
Tom: Rich was feeling particularly generous when he composed "Negative Blooty" - That very day he gave us each 20 pounds and a go on his B.M.X. He then baked us a feast of nostril resin and arse juice.
Luke: When Nick Saloman phoned us to ask who wrote that one for the album credits, Al said Rich wrote it for a joke, but I can't remember what the joke was.
Nick: For our readers who don't know your home area, what is life like in Dorset these days?
Al: Once you get used to the 6:00 p.m. curfew when the army takes to the streets, things aren't so bad. You can get used to the locals too once you learn to ignore their tails and webbed feet.
I personally get very bored in the country and much preferred living in Weymouth (by the South Coast) but our cottage is extremely cheap to rent by Dorset standards and where else can you take to the streets at midnight completely naked and pretend to passing cars that you are a zombie?
Tom: There are pros and cons: It rains a lot, it's full of snobs, nothing much ever happens, and my pillows and a jacket went mouldy from the damp. …And now the cons …ha, ha! Dorset is really pretty - Hills, woods, rivers, beaches, and our cottage is lovely despite being dilapidated and swollen.
Luke: Life in Dorset is great if you come from Dorset. It's very quiet and lovely walks sort of thing. It's a bit "Wicker Man" if you're used to London or big cities.
Nick: Have you been to the U.S.? Do you plan to come over here in the future?
Al: Yes, we "toured" (two gigs) last March. SXSW in Texas - great place, great festival, shit gig, and CBGB's in New York, great place, great gig. While in New York, we hurriedly visited the World Trade Center on our half day off before the flight, and after the tragic events of September 11th we realise how lucky we were to see Manhattan from the Twin Towers. If we hold Rubric to their word, we'll tour the U.S. once the album is out.
Tom: We spent five days in Austin, TX. I kissed the receptionist of the hotel we stayed in. She's very pretty. We also spent two and a half days in N.Y. I didn't kiss the receptionist - He was a man.
Nick: I read in Phil McMullen's article in Ptolemaic Terrascope #30 that you make much of your living playing covers of popular classics. What are some of your band name aliases? What are some of the songs you most enjoy covering? Do you ever get the chance to stretch them out and improvise in that kind of a situation?
Al: Me, Luke and Tom are in "Gothic Chicken" with Marco Rossi (see Kevin McDermott Orchestra and Cheese on the internet) who lives in Weymouth and is a good friend. We play a mixture of '60s psychedelia, lounge pop and The Doors, Monkees, Beatles, etc. I mostly enjoy doing stuff like "I'll Be Late For Tea" by Blossom Toes, "Watch Me Burn" by The Easybeats, "Do You Remember Walter" by The Kinks and "My Name Is Jack" by Manfred Mann. The set list is huge though, so I've probably forgotten other classics. "Kites" by Simon Dupree & The Big Sound tends to get stretched out to 15 minutes or so, like stretching a virgin arse with a professional dildo.
I'm in a couple of acoustic duos as well: Itchy & Scratchy (a condensed version of Gothic Chicken) and The Piano Dentists (Aimee Mann, Todd Rundgren, James Taylor, ABBA covers).
Luke: Gothic Chicken, Itchy & Scratchy, Saiba Bobbies, Lady Boys, Wilder Snout, Handstand Ambulance, Prince Of Fools, Lift Your Legs Up, Mr. Bruce & The Bunty Boys.
Nick: I detect somewhat of an early Yes vibe in your music. Whether or not they are a major influence, you seem to be familiar with their output. We have a new phrase over here "jumping the shark", a reference to the time that Fonzie jumped his motorcycle over a tank of sharks when the show Happy Days got desperate for plot lines. It basically means the point at which a show, band, celebrity or politician lost track of their vision and suffered a drop in credibility. When do you think Yes jumped the shark? It's a hot topic of discussion because there are so many points that can be argued convincingly (from when Steve Howe replaced Peter Banks all the way to when they joined forces with The Buggles or put out "Owner Of A Lonely Heart").
Al: Unfortunately, instead of just "Jumping the shark", Yes fucked the shark and filled its hollowed out corpse with faeces when they wrote and recorded Tales From Topographic Oceans. From then on, it was all down hill.
Tom: I know nothing about Yes. The bit where Fonzie jumped over the sharks sounds great. Were Happy Days really desperate?
Luke: We had a similar phrase in the U.K. to "Yes jumped the shark". It's when "Bronski Beat licks the groundhog". Work it out.
Nick: The Bevis Frond and Adrian Shaw's solo work have been greatly influential and inspirational to me. I hope that Woronzow Records will not be flooded with annoying requests from fans because of what I'm going to say but, since I first contacted Nick Saloman ten years ago as a fan with sincere praise and ragged demo tapes, he has been friendly, encouraging and helpful beyond the call. He put me in touch with Ade Shaw a few years back for some advice on digital recording and Ade has become a good friend as well. How did you meet up with them? Do you enjoy working with their label? (While I'm at it, I should also point out that Dave Gwiazdowski at your American label Rubric is also a real stand-up guy).
Al: After the Bishops had done our first home 4-track album, I got Nick's home address from a friend who lives in Weymouth who had been to college with Nick when he lived down there (about 40 years ago). I sent the tape up and Nick was really encouraging, eventually asking us to submit a track for Succour and the the first album a while after that. As far as working with them though, they are both filthy swine.
Tom: Woronzow upside down is mo2uojom (turn your screen upside down). Rubric nearly becomes cijquj. - Do it again. Sorry for ignoring the question.
Luke: One of them is good one is evil, pure evil.
Nick: Aside from your first self-titled CD and the new one coming out, I know of the following Lucky Bishops tracks: "Ashtralia (alternate version)" from Succour, "Negative Blooty" from AJ2, and "Gone Is The Sad Man", "Cow Statue", "Pigeon On A Stick", "Sleuth" and "Time Of The Season" from CDs included with recent issues of Ptolemaic Terrascope. Is anything else available?
Al: "New Deal" is available on Ear Candy, a Pink Hedgehog compilation released in 1999 (see website) and an extremely bad recording of "Pigeon On A Stick" is available from the same label's previous compilation. Aside from those, me and Rich are on "Let It Brie" by Cheese (the aforementioned Marco Rossi's band) and you might find a copy of the Orange single in a bargain bin somewhere.
Tom: There's also "We Are Gems" - a waltz on a German vinyl compilation called A Swamp Room Happening - 2000. Difficult to find though… especially in the dark.
Luke: Question covered.
Nick: My wife Heidi first heard "I'm Convinced" from the Woronzow sampler Like It? It's Yours (later also on your first CD) when she was pregnant. We both liked the song right away but, in the middle of the night, Heidi woke up singing it with the whole song in her head (all of the complex changes and lyrics) after having heard it only once. Our daughter Janine has been a big fan of yours since birth. When we play your music (especially "I'm Convinced'), she yells happily and dances around in a hypnotic frenzy. As a result of all this, we feel a kind of mystical connection to the song. How did you write it, were there any mysterious visions, revelations or inner truths involved?
Al: "I'm Convinced" I wrote straight after Orange split up as a reposte to the singer and, at the risk of destroying any mysticism, the chorus is a sarcastic comment of the rest of the band's enforced creative constipation. Musically I'd heard "50 Years After The Fair" by Aimee Mann and wrote a much heavier psychedelic riff from a similar idea inspired by that song.
Tom: Janine - Thanks for the dancing and yelling. Keep doing it - it's good!
Luke: Al wrote it - that's his business. It's about Orange - that's our business. You made a mystical connection - that's all our business.
Nick: Everyone knows that, in The Beatles, John was the angry clever one, Paul was the cute romantic one, George was the distant spiritual one and Ringo was the comical everyman. Without pigeonholing yourselves uncomfortably, can you provide some general idea of your respective personalities to give our readers a sense of the Lucky Bishops as individuals?
Al: No comment.
Tom: Luke is the Embassy No. 1, Al is the Golden Virginia, Rich is the Cutter's Choice and I am the Gauloises. Are any of these tobaccos popular in America? (Nick: Not really, though we know Gauloises as the brand favored by John Lennon, so I suppose you must be the angry clever one.)
Luke: Rich is Tinky Winky, Luke is Dipsy, Al is Lara Croft, Tom is poo.
Nick: We like to give our interview subjects the chance to speak out. Are there any causes you support or issues you would like to mention?
Al: I believe at least 80% of the general public are idiots and these people should be farmed and slaughtered to make expensive leather hats and tasty soup.
Tom: Always check the dishcloth for slugs before you squeeze it.
Luke: It's cold.
Nick: Have you started working on any new songs since finishing your second album?
Al: We've already recorded four tracks, two of which are in the live set at the moment and the other two are old songs given fresh treatment, so some or all of these could end up on the next album. Another three are in the musical sphincter ready for evacuation and a sample based track called "Anus Soft" is nearing completion. There seem to be rather a lot of back door references cropping up.
Tom: Yes.
Luke: No.
Nick: Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer these questions and to mail them back. You have an exceptional band. Continued success for the future.
As the co-owner of Woronzow Records I feel it is essential I clear up some of the misconceptions that the Lucky Bishops seem to be labouring under. The Bishops are as fine a bunch of young men as you will find living in deepest rural Dorset. However, as with many outlying areas, the inbreeding that is prevalent brings certain unfortunate tendencies, not least of which is an inability to understand the ways of the world outside of their somewhat sheltered environment. When we first received the demo tape of the Bishops, we thought it was a very good attempt at producing a pop record. The fact that none of them could play their instruments was intriguing as that level of ineptitude took us into previously uncharted waters. However their child-like enthusiasm was endearing and so, rather like Professor Higgins in Pygmalion, we set about seeing what we could accomplish with such unpromising material. We spent untold months teaching them how to use cutlery and to speak in a way that would be decipherable to people born outside of a 10 mile radius of Dorchester. This task we achieved to a degree but we then had to set about teaching them the rudiments of music. Unfortunately this involved trying to teach them (or "learn them" as they would charmingly put it) the alphabet first. We soon discovered that this task was beyond us despite our best efforts so we resorted to showing them chords by saying "you put your thumb finger on the big string" and such like. After some years of unrelenting effort they managed to retain enough knowledge to make a quite acceptable noise. Without delay and before what little they had learnt evaporated again, we got them to record what became their first album.
Now we have their second album to contend with. At first they just sent us the first one again. We patiently told them that this is not how the music industry works and that they would have to come up with something completely different. They then sent us a carburetor from a Massey Ferguson tractor. We pointed out that when we said "something completely different" we meant another collection of songs. After months of silence their new album Grimstone arrived on our doorstep. Somehow they have managed to come up with a really quite satisfactory offering which will be let loose on an unsuspecting public sometime in the New Year.
- Adrian
Shaw, November 2001
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....JELLIED EELS....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....PEARLY KINGS.......ha ha ha ha ha ha...GARY BUSHELL.......ha ha ha ha ha......BARBARA WINDSOR.........
Ha ha ha ha Acker Bilk…..ha ha ha Adge Cutler…..ha ha ha ……oh, that’s it, I’ve run out of famous west country celebrities!
Interview © 2001 Nick Bensen, Lucky Bishops and Adrian Shaw.
For more information, look at the Woronzow and Rubric sites.