By Matthew Shepherd
It’s always gratifying to know that somewhere in the world, someone has a miserable a cold as you do. Even if that someone is in Hull, England and you have to snuffle at each other via a phone connection across the Atlantic.
So it comes to pass that a tired and ill reporter is throwing questions at a tired and ill David Hemingway, vocalist for the British cynicism machine The Beautiful South. There are few places on earth that I would rather be than in bed…but I have a mystery to solve. Carry On Up The Charts, The Beautiful South’s new “best of” album, has been doing extraordinarily well in Europe and has just been released here in North America. The Beautiful South? A GREATEST HITS album? There’s a story to be told here. After the obligatory “nnngs” and mutual sympathy session, I ask him the one burning question on my mind: As part of the Beautiful South, press-released as “the iron fist in the velvet glove,” how—
“—oh, that,” Hemingway groans. This is the closest thing I have ever heard to a grimace over the phone line, Apparently, the “velvet glove” no longer fits.
“I’m not too fond of that. It’s a few years old, and these things come back to haunt you. I guess it is accurate, the music is nice melodies with lyrics which are hard hitting.”
Regardless of what you call them, few groups are as openly sarcastic about The Industry than The Beautiful South…something that is bound to alienate them from their peers.
“We certainly don’t take the music industry too seriously,” Hemingway says. “We don’t have much respect for the people that do. We see them around, and there’s lots of egos around, and we like to avoid that.”
So do they just avoid everybody? Hide in a basement somewhere and write music? Hemingway draws the line at that. “We know who we like, and there’s quite a range of people we admire. We just don’t tend to mix and socialize with a lot of people in the music industry.”
Okay, so it’s been confirmed: The Beautiful South are as iconoclastic, skeptical and contemptuous of industry cheese as, well, anybody else on the planet…so here’s the mystery. What’s with a GREATEST HITS album? Isn’t that precisely the kind of bloated musical excess that The Beautiful South were born to mock and condemn?
Silence on the other end. I begin to wonder if David’s cold has overwhelmed him and if he is perhaps drowning in his own mucous in a damp town in England. Then he speaks.
“The album wasn’t really our idea…the main reason we said yes was that we have no dealer in America. This album will get someone to distribute us in North America. Elektra has expressed an interest…GO! is meeting with Elektra next week. If they don’t work something out, we’re going to be, well, pissed off. We may retreat for a few years, do nothing and see what happens.”
“Also, we’re quite proud of some of our songs. This is not a ripoff album. We’ve had twelve singles released, and we’ve developed some decent songs.”
And if the Elektra deal doesn’t happen? Would this be the end of The Beautiful South?
“We’ve lost enthusiasm for aspects of the band. Certainly, playing around isn’t as appealing as it used to be. We’re getting a bit old for that sort of thing, I suppose. If this American dealer comes through, we should get more of the enthusiasm back. If there’s no deal, we’ll be disappointed. We may decide not to do something for a while, and retreat. It wouldn’t be ideal, but we could.”
My nose has started to dribble and my right arm no longer works. Interview time is over. Hanging up the phone, I gradually begin to realize what Hemingway’s tale of American distributors means. The ‘South are players too! So does this mean that the great detractors of musical excess are guilty of what they condemn? Does using a system you despise to get what you want make you a hypocrite?
Then I pass out.
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