GIGOLO AUNTS
"We wanna be good, we wanna
be better than good, we wanna be great. Too many bands are just satisfied
with being okay. I'd rather be terrible than mediocre" Fighting talk from
Gigolo Aunts singer Dave Gibbs.
Making classic songs is
the trademark of the fun loving, music mad, all round nice guys Gigolo
Aunts. Essential releases include a tearaway album of classic pop called
'Flippin' Out' and a collection of singles featuring the finest in three
minute power pop. The band follow the big hearty footsteps of Big Star,
Badfinger, Raspberries and Teenage Fanclub.
Their recording career has
been tragically short and sweet in the UK with just a solitary album released
on Fire Records.
Ready Steady Go! caught
up with the Gigolo Aunts singer Dave Gibbs and Steve Hurley during a rare
visit to the UK supporting the Wonder Stuff.
The music of Gigolo
Aunts is often solid, often very, very loud and rightly so. Pop songs
like this should be noticed. The louder it is, the better. But how do
they manage to keep a balance? Why doesn't it go all HEAVY ROCK the louder
it gets?
Dave Gibbs: "We can't
play softer! As soon as we can we will. There's something about loudness
when you're on stage that's exciting. There's exciting stuff that's quiet
too. We try to be loud and soft all the time. We saw Jeff Buckley last
night and it was great but I couldn't help the fact that after about three
songs I just wanted something a little more, everything was so slow, so
quiet, so precious. He was perfect, if he'd have sung three songs I would
have gone home thinking he was the greatest guy that ever lived. But sometimes
you've got to have something more, at least live you do".
Steve Hurley: "We
kind of grew up on contrasting things. Like really odd stuff and like
some hard rock stuff and I think it sort of over time manifested itself
on our sound".
"In America, people
who are out to see band are out to have a good time" says Steve talking
about the difference between American/British audiences, "Over here it's
slightly more serious".
"We have this weird
thing when we do interviews, people say, 'you guys are so fun and wacky,
you don't take anything seriously', but that's not the case at all" argues
Dave. "We try to take everything seriously but we try to make it so that
there's definite communication between us and the audience and we wanna
break down the barrier and show them, they are absolutely no different
than we are. Which is not a very cool thing to do. So we try to involve
them as much as possible. Sometimes it works but over here, sometimes
when we do that, people don't get it".
Ever modest, Dave
says they signed to a tiny indie label in the UK (Fire Records) to enable
them to tour and develop, moving at a slower pace than some of their inferior
major label contemporaries who wanted the instant attention and megabucks
that usually comes with it. The boys are clearly not ready to forsake
their art and become pretentious rock stars as Dave explains, "Maybe we'd
be more successful if we were different. It's a great thing if you can
get up on stage, if you are like a twisted, tormented person. You can
get up on stage and you can re-invent yourself and it's a beautiful thing.
But for us, it's just not the case at all. On stage we are exactly like
the way we are and we intend to stay that way. We couldn't change that
much 'cos we've known each other so long".
The Gigolo Aunts are
like a "weird family" according to Dave who points out all the band and
their parents grew up together, went to the same schools etc and like
brothers and sisters they "fight like cat and dog" sometimes!
"We're obsessed with
not being phoney and ever starting to do rocker type things. The other
three of us would probably slap 'em silly or make a video tape and make
them look at it".
Steve lets us in on
the Gigolo's secret to song writing.
"A lot of the good
ones tend to come along really fast but occasionally there's the one thing
that's been hanging around for a long time, maybe a year later, find some
way to use it"
"Steve and I both
write the songs" offers Dave, "and we both have direct opposite ways of
doing it, so hopefully that will be an advantage for us. So if he's dried
up for songs, I'll have a whole backlog ready to come out".
Speaking about the
lyrical content of their songs Steve says, "I think most everything comes
from personal experiences. They're not necessarily about personal experiences
but whatever observations come through one of our brains. A lot of them
are about characters, about somebody you might see".
One of the songs on
the album, 'Gun' offers strong sentiments on society.
"It's more of a commentary
song than a protest song" Dave points out.
"It was more of a
reaction from what is on the television" says Steve, "It was more about
how different companies cram people's fears and was supposed to be about
guns or could be one or two different things".
As far as influences
go the Gigolo Aunts are music maniacs. A feature in the CD/Magazine Volume
(Issue Ten) featured an article listing their all-time top 100 recording
concepts. The list was littered with rockers Kiss, Mott The Hoople, Boston
and Aerosmith at the lower end of the 'hot' 100 and the Byrds, Teenage
Fanclub, Big Star and the Beatles at the top end. The CD included a cover
version of Tracy Ullman's 'They Don't Know' and the band turn the quirky,
throwaway ditty into a heartrending, melodic pop beast of titantic proporations!
No, really!
"We are influenced
by anything we think is good. Some of it is modern but a lot of it is
older" says Steve, "There is good stuff out there but you've got to search
for it"
Steve names his 'older'
favourites. Showing impeccable taste, he goes for the Beatles, Beach Boys,
Kinks, Big Star, Byrds and Neil Young. Dave goes for his favourite 'new'
artists. Like a true Anglophile he plumps for Whiteout, Thrum, Scarce,
Dambuilders, Lenny Kravitz ("The band are divided on the Lenny Kravitz
issue" he laughs!), Teenage Fanclub, Eugenius, BMX Bandits and millions
of fellow fledgling bands from his hometown of Boston.
"We've recently got
into dance music, since we've been over here" laughs a half mocking Dave,
"We never heard that stuff like the Aphex Twin. But we don't like Orbital".
Like any sane person,
the sound of clocks ticking endlessly away over synth licks is not the
Gigolo Aunts idea of fun!
"We're going to start
our own dance label called Orb-noxious" jokes Steve.
"Some of it's actually
pretty good, but I wanna go on record and say, I don't like M People!"
A nation of bored
housewifes sigh! Don't ever dare suggest the Gigolo Aunts don't know where
the needle hits the groove though. After all they both picked out the
Stax boxed set as high as number four in their all time top 100 calling
it "essential listening for white boys".
They do have an obvious
respect for British bands and they overcame a genuine fear of meeting
up with the Bernard Butler era Suede to eventually become firm friends.
Dave takes up the story.
"We like Suede a lot.
There was this one article that came out in the Melody Maker where we
got accused of slagging them which is ridiculous 'cos we'd never heard
of them at the time, as they didn't have anything out in the states. They
just had one record out over here and so, we could only buy it on import
only sadly. We finally heard them on the plane the first time we came
over here. I really like that song 'The Drowners' a lot. We got that tour
with them and there was so much hype on that tour and we were like, 'Oh,
they're gonna be really nasty people' but they were really nice, friendly,
watched our sets".
They even went a step
further than that when Bernard Butler started playing live with the Aunts
showing a mutual admiration.
Gigolo Aunts are mates
with a certain Evan "the hunk!" Dando?
"He used to live across
the street from the store that I used to worked at and he used to come
in and stumble across the street, Juliana Hatfield used to work in the
same store" says Dave. "He'd come in have some coffee, smoke and there's
no smoking in the store, so he can't smoke so he'd stand outside and look
at the records. Nice guy".
What things bug you
the most?
"Busy signals drive
me up the wall, waiting in lines drives me crazy, people being nasty and
people that say, 'Oh I love the rain', when you know that everyone in
the whole, wide world hates the rain! I hate rain, I hate getting wet
unless I'm in the shower" says Dave.
What do you think
of MTV?
"It's a huge influence
on TV in America and in Europe. I don't really like either of them. But
here, the amount of dance music just drives me up the wall, 'cos I'm a
guitar freak. I collect guitars from all over the world. My guitar is
like my best friend! And of course with dance music there's just no guitars,
so I get really bored with that".
"MTV can be pretty
interesting these days everything is really tongue in cheek now, everything
is making fun of itself, like Beavis and Butthead going round saying this
sucks while showing a video".
Finally, do you find
the American sense of humour different from the English?
"It's more physical
I think. Less ironic".
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Page Last Updated : 6th
September 1998
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