MUSIC
preview
preview MUSIC
The Pink Ladies Club
Cooler than a polar bear's dangleberries, KENICKIE are rewing up their hotrods with a new album. Be afraid.
Words: Fiona Shepherd
For the past couple of years Kenickie has really only meant one thing — three sassy lasses and one drumming brother straight outta Sunderland. sprinkling the land with their Geordie take on Motown epics, shouty pop. a smidgen of teen angst and a Boots counter-load of make-up.
However. in the forthcoming months a new challenger to the Kenickie title is set to arrive on the scene — a lean. mean but somehow still gormless machine. who looks a bit like that bloke out of Taxi. The twentieth anniversary re- release of Grease can only mean one thing — the return of the original Kenickie. Kenicksters the country over will face a quandary. Is this fictional character from. let’s face it. the best film musical ever. actually the begetter of our glamour heroines“? 'Fraid so. spiky pop lovers.
‘Greuse is just one of the best films ever made.‘ enthuses guitarist and vocalist Marie Du Santiago. ‘I grew up thinking that all girls were supposed to look like raunchy Sandy. I thought we‘d all be wearing Spandex but apparently it's not to be. I‘m probably more like Frenchie anyway. l dyed my hair pink the other day by accident.‘
While Kenickie can only greet the impending rivalry over their name with open arms. they have nonetheless girded their loins for battle with the release of ‘I Would Fix You'. a sweet. affecting pop song in the same vein as ‘Millionaire Sweeper’. which is about the pick-me-up powers of friendship. It is their first new material since debut album Kenickie A! The K/ul). unless you count their seductive version of Brotherhood Of Man’s Eurovision winner ‘Save All Your Kisses For Me’. which recently featured on the 50/1 g For [furotmsli jamboree. A fair number of people did count it because in the subsequent phone poll it finished third behind the
‘Waterloo‘ and Terry Hall and Sinead O‘Connor‘s
Everything‘. ‘I was pleased with bronze.’ says Marie.
'The All Saints song that’s out now is the shittest thing I've ever heard ever ever ever - and I mean ever. Do you know they've changed the words to make them not look like lesbians?’ Marie Du Santiago
specially-reformed Bananarama’s version of
tremulous run through Dana’s ‘All Kinds Of
Kenickie: slap. tickle and pop
‘Obviously I realised that with Bananarama in it. they‘re going to get the vote. but I think we was robbed with regards to Terry Hall and Sinead O’Connor who were frankly shite. I‘m sorry. but they were shocking. The country must be mad. that’s all I can think.’
Beyond writing and recording their second album. due out in August — ‘it’s Kenickie II. this time it’s personal.‘ promises Marie — Kenickie have been doing what they do best. hanging out and soaking up popular culture like the dream Late Review panellists that they are.
Who better than a member of Britain’s premier alternative girl group to comment sagely on her more mainstream musical sisters? So Marie. who rules — Spice Girls or All Saints?
‘We are so far in with The Spice Girls.‘ she says promptly. ‘The All Saints song that‘s out now is the shittest thing I‘ve ever heard ever ever ever — and I mean ever. Do you know they’ve changed the words to make them not look like lesbians? In the original they sing “the city. she loves me”. meaning the city is a woman. but they sing “the city. he loves me" in case they look gay. Puhlease! They’ve got lovely tits. thoughf
Move over Tony Parsons. And welcome back Kenickie — the pop world is a slightly more scabrous and amusing place with them in the fold.
Kenickie play King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. Fri 29 May.
Bi m o uth
Blungg it out all over the place. ‘I think people are all fucked off with indie bands. I mean how many bands have you seen with a scratchy guitar and some cunt whining over the top?’
Kelly Jones of The Stereophonics in characteristically forthright mode to Vox.
'I don't need the money, I don’t need the fucking attention. OK, sometimes I'm vain and I dress up like fucking Pamela Anderson and get on the cover of US magazine with my tits out and it's stupid and I probably won't ever do it again, butl had to learn . . .'
Courtney Love tells Vox of her tortuous learning curve.
'Acting, music, business: it's all me. It's all Busta Rhymes, man, 'cos my shit criss-crosses like a muthafucka.’
Busta Rhymes tel/s 0 why perhaps he should go to see a butt doctor.
'l'm in the pop business for God's sake — it's sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, baby, that’s the way it is. I don't have to pay for girls — what the hell do I have to do that for? I love looking at girls - naked girls, sexy girls - girls are gorgeous, girls are great. The point is, I’m not a client: I don't put money in their garters.’
Mick Huckna/l reassures Vox that some truths are eternal.
'I don't believe in God or anything but if Celine Dion ever arrives at those Pearly Gates, I believe she'll be stripped of her wings immediately, kicked up the arse, and told to fuck off and take her gold discs with her.’
Perry Blake articulates the feelings of the silent majority
‘Everyone was E’d up. Everyone in the place was on E and it made us look and sound better. I know they were all on E because we used to go out into the audience selling E like T-shirts.’
Shaun Ryder unveils a more unorthodox crowd-pleasing strategy to O.
28 May— 11 Jun 1998 TllEIJS‘I'fl