Totally Wired

by Andy Wired (Part one)

When the phrase 'cash from chaos' was coined in the heady days of punk, seemingly nobody was listening. Prolapse, the best band around, both live and on record (and that's not even debatable) thrive on chaos. They rub against the grain of accepted normality with a gleeful glint in their collective eye and a razorblade stashed down their socks for when the going gets tough. There is no order, the music is just as likely to become like a heated argument involving the couple next door tearing each other apart, physically and verbally, over an incessant barrage of early Fall and Kraftwerk albums as its take on a Stereolab-like ambient blitz through stark, repetitive riffs and crazed collages of sound. Y'see, Prolapse are far from being one-dimensional and equally at home with dark, moody experimentations and demented amphetamine-addled stare punk blitz. Yet, as I conduct this interview, unbelievably, they have no record label. A damning indictment on the cosy safeness of blanket boredom we are being force fed. For fuck's sake, somebody must have enough suss to realise that Prolapse are never gonna be Top of the Pops/ Smash Hits one-hit wonders yet will undoubtedly rarely fail to pull the crowds. Totally Wired spoke to Linda Steelyard (L), Mick Derrick (M), and Dave Jeffreys (D).

The best band around, both live and on record...

First of all, what happened to the deal you had with Cherry Red?

L: As far as we know what happened was, you know they closed down their whole A&R department and then reopened it again cos they wanted to get back into modern music and they found a few bands - us, Blind Mr Jones and Tse Tse Fly - and then just completely out of the blue, after a year or so, we got a letter saying our contract wasn't gonna be renewed because they decided to close down the A&R department again. God knows why. I think they just panicked and I think they'd forgotten that you actually have to put money into bands before you got any back. It's daft really, even from a business point of view, but they can make enough money out of their back catalogue really, so they might as well do that.

D: They basically dropped everybody and felt it was safer to just go with their back catalogue. It was very last minute and I'm not sure if they're gonna regret it or not. It could be a blessing in disguise.

M: I think they were more interested in raising the status of the label and we just kinda did our job, so they got rid of us. We owed them £8000, so that's all been written off.

We're not gonna be on Top of the Pops overnight

There's been rumours circulating about a couple of major labels showing interest - are you about to sign to another label?

L: Oh blimey. There's been quite a few labels interested but we're not interested in going with any major label, just because it's not us. We've been offered a couple of deals, one's for a decent amount of money but we've decided we'd rather go for the one with less money simply because we think they'll be behind the music more and it's the enthusiasm and genuine interest in the music you need more than the empty promises and a bit of cash, that's rubbish. Plus, if we took the massive deal we're not gonna be on Top of the Pops overnight unless the attitude of the British public changes drastically and we're not gonna be able to put back massive advances quickly and we don't want some accountant sitting in his or her office, totting up the figures and saying oh dear, this is a bit of a deficit with Prolapse, they'll have to go because then we're just back in the same situation. So it's best for everybody if we take the smaller deal. It's with Flying Nun anyway.

D: It's still in negotiation at the moment, but it looks likely to be Flying Nun. We've had a bit of interest from America. I don't think that many people know what to do with us. A&R people come to our gigs but even though they like the band they don't wanna sign us, there's a climate within the industry that's quite conservative. It's an interesting development because both Urusei Yatsura and Bis used to write to the Prolapse Information Service and now our fans are becoming more sought-after than us.

M: We're gonna be releasing Backsaturday with PCP I think, but it's gonna have TCR on it too, just to add a bit of a poppy slant for those American underground ears. There's also talk of a singles compilation being released in America too. We're wrangling with Flying Nun here, and that looks hopeful too, but you never know. It's just one of those things that takes ages with all the contracts and shite like that, one of the most boring things in the world to do with music.

You've recorded with a couple of labels since you left Cherry Red: Lissy's and Love Train. There seems to be a lot of label-hopping and one-off records going on in the alternative scene at the moment, almost echoing what's been happening in the American underground for a while now. Is that a healthy thing?

L: I don't wanna use a phrase invented by the papers, but this British underground thing which is what's going on even though NME has trademarked it, I think bands in that category are having a bit of a problem finding deals because, like us, they're not gonna be on TOTP overnight but they wanna be, perhaps, with labels that have got a little money behind them. In the meantime, when you're trying to find that illusive deal, you wanna put stuff out and you go onto maybe some friend's label or something, but also it's kinda keeping the real indie ethic alive of small labels and DIY. It is happening loads with labels like Kitty Kitty, Love Train and Fierce Panda and the likes. A lot of people are doing it, and it's partly to bridge that gap and also it's making for something very exciting, however loosely linked.

D: I thought that maybe at the beginning of 95 there were all the majors looking for their token indie band and that was really unhealthy, but some of the indie labels were more interested in finding the next Blur or Oasis and not mush else. The thing about record labels is that you have to get everyone from the label to your gig because one person can't make a decision on their own. I think the major music press have been really bad recently. It's always Oasis, Blur, Pulp and that kind of 'we want stars' shit that's still going on. They're not interested in the music. There is a certain way to sound to get you into the music press and it's so conservative. All the bands sound like Freddie and the Dreamers, rather than the Beatles and they're all exactly the same. I hope we're not destined to be one of those bands that everybody likes but never get anywhere.

I've got friends who are into dance music and the word indie is a swear word.

We do actually write pop music and it is catchy but it's not bland enough for these times. I've got friends who are into dance music and the word indie is a swear word. No offence to Lush but that's what everyone thinks when you say indie. I do like the word because there's a plethora of really good music out there every bit as exciting and inventive as dance music. I do think, since the dance revolution, that bands really have to try harder to be special. People are used to having a really good time at the weekend and perhaps gigs aren't that exciting anymore, but they can be. The gig is getting close to being obsolete, there are places where people actually don't like going to gigs anymore. Leeds is awful, I've had so many really shitty times there. I think that everything is still too centred in London and all that Camden shit only perpetuates that. Thankfully Glasgow is getting written about but they do still have to make that London connection to get the seal of approval.

M: We're thinking of doing more one-off singles. We wanna do one for Guided Missile with Donkey, basically cos it's a pal. But I think it's got more exciting during the past year with loads of really cool small labels and hundreds of great 7" singles. People are being less and less tied to the big labels and in turn the major labels are more out of touch and less sussed about what's happening in the indie world. They're getting a lot more cautious as well, which is a great thing for smaller labels. There seems to be a really big marketplace for alternative music again and one that's not really elitist, but something that's kept smaller scale with 7" singles and limited editions simply because of the nature of the bands and the majors' unwillingness to take risks. The majors go for the obvious because they need to make the money back. They use the indies as a breeding ground - kind of like non-league football and the professional leagues. 1995 was such a good year musically, especially singles. There's so much going on now. It's no good, businesswise, for bands like us cos there's so much competition, but it's so exciting.

Your two most recent releases, TCR and Backsaturday, have shown the very contrasting sides of the band - is that something you like to play around with?

L: Yeah, we've got so many different sides to the band that are all equally as important and it's nice to be able to show all those aspects. Do you know about Backsaturday, the story behind it? Jamie from Lissy's gave us £300 and he told us to record something for him. That bought us three days in a friend's studio and so we went in with no ideas apart from five minutes of Flex. So we just started at the very beginning, bought in some extra instruments and bits of equipment and just all farted about and didn't really do much, and then somebody would just start playing guitar or banging something and the rest would join in and the results were recorded, and that's Backsaturday. We started on Friday morning and by Sunday night it was mixed. I really like it, it was nice to do something other than just vocals, I played keyboards and recorder and even though we know TCR is more poppy, we thought it was a good idea to let them both come out at the same time so that people didn't think we'd gone in any certain direction. We knew that TCR would set the balance straight.

M: It's been a bit of an experimental stage, if I can say that without sounding something poncey like Steve Hillage, because we're in between labels so we wanted to use this time to try out things. Backsaturday has sold really well too. I think it's one of those records that you couldn't get into right away.

So you still record things in that spontaneous way, making things up in the studio?

M: Aye. The last thing we recorded was Backsaturday. Most of the tracks didn't have any vocals until I went in and shouted a load of nonsense but yeah, a lot of that spontaneity is still there. You get the odd one where we've practised. We practice a lot of the stuff live, that's when we do all the new ones. You get the odd disaster, like when we were in Amsterdam and we had to do a live broadcast and we were saying to the guy, oh we're dead cool we'll just make things up as we go along. And we did a few songs that we knew and thought we'd make a few up and we did this song that was the most crap thing you've ever heard in your whole life. So it doesnae always work. It was complete mince!

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