Emmy The Great played for us at The Dog And Parrot, Friday September 21st. It was one of the smallest shows we've done in aaaaaaaaages, the last time i'd put a gig on at dog and parrot was a good two years prior....and i think if i remember right Rachel hadn't since last December's Big Scary Monsters tour. it was odd to be back. arrived super tired and stressed, but everything fell into place and Emmy, as well as supports Richard Dawson, Aaron Mcmullan and Sunday School Adventure Club put in a blinder.
Here's a characteristically sharp interview from the show, as written by The Cluny's own Tom Bagnall. enjoy!
David
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...As I walk into the dimly-lit upstairs of the Dog And Parrot, the first thing I lay eyes upon is the merch table, laden with CDs, cough syrup, cuddly toys and badges. Because of the darkness and my poor eye sight, I lean down to get a bit closer as I try to make out the curious design on the badges.
“It’s a fanny,” says the girl manning (womanning?) the table, not a hint of a smile on her face, as though saying “it’s a fanny” is the most natural thing in the world to say to a complete stranger. “Ok,” I stutter, more than slightly nonplussed by my first meeting with Emma-Lee Moss, more popularly known as Emmy The Great.
I’m here to interview her prior to her first Newcastle headline show, and I was expecting a quiet, timid interviewee, not someone who will happily throw words for the female part casually into an opening conversation. But once I get past the initial ‘fanny’ shock, I go with Emmy and her guitar-playing cohort Euan (also an artist in his own right, under the name young*husband – check him out) to a kebab shop next door.
I know what you’re thinking, and you’d be right – that is a stupid place to conduct an interview. First off, you have various drunken louts hollering in the background about Bacardi Breezer and who they’ve just fucked behind a skip. Then you have the problem of how to not rile the owners by using their establishment not to line their pockets, but because it’s too cold to do an interview outside. I solve this by buying a can of Coke, which they seem happy enough with.
But perhaps the most pressing problem of doing this interview in this kebab shop is the blaring music – shit dance music, with even shitter rapping over the top. Not only will it make whatever is said rather difficult to hear on my Dictaphone, but it’s also rather off-putting for someone trying to think of witty answers to the same old questions.
“All these lyrics I want as direct quotes,” says Emmy, noticing the over-bearing music. “You’ll be like ‘how did you start making music?’ and I’ll be like [mock butch accent] ‘I’M FEELING HORNY’!”
Which, just to clarify, I don’t think she is. In fact, a rather more pressing emotion is tiredness, because Emmy has just driven herself and Euan up from Manchester, and taken six hours about it (don’t ask).
Driving yourself? Isn’t there someone you can pay to do that?
Emmy: “I booked this tour on my own without consulting anyone, and when it came down to it I was like ‘I’ll drive!’ but now I think Euan regrets me deciding to do it.”
Euan: [without a hint of sarcasm, honest] “Emmy’s a brilliant driver, she really is.”
Emmy: “We got in this road rage with a taxi driver…”
Euan: “His car growled at us…”
Emmy: “I was like ‘fuck you’ and he tried to hit us!”
Euan: “On the lane down the side of the pub, the taxi driver came towards us and Emmy was going ‘it’s one way! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ and starts beeping her horn…”
Emmy: [in fits of giggles] “…it was one way the other way!”
Euan: “And she goes ‘get out and tell him it’s one way’, so I walked up and looked at him – he was a Newcastle taxi driver, and he has a Newcastle football top, and I went ‘it’s one way isn’t it?’ and he went ‘yeah…’”
Emmy: “…and he was going ‘come on then! Come on then!’ It was amazing.”
Euan: “You could have reversed out…”
Emmy: “No, my shit driving meant we won, because I couldn’t reverse out.”
Euan: “He did say ‘why aye’ though.”
Emmy: “And I also kinda fell asleep on the motorway…”
Euan: [shocked] “Did you!? I didn’t know that.”
Emmy: “It was when we were listening to Fantasia, and I was like ‘zzzzzzzzz’. And the weather on the way up was terrible. I called up my manager today and said ‘it’s severe weather conditions, we can’t go’ and he was like, ‘it’s raining!’ I actually thought we were going to die today, because of my driving, and I thought ‘well at least I was quite happy yesterday’…”
So, moving swiftly on. It’s not your first time in Newcastle, is it?
Emmy: “I played at the University, with some girl called Beth Horton Miller…”
Beth Jeans Houghton…
Emmy: “Yeah, her. She wrote me this mental Myspace message afterwards. It said ‘I’m so sorry I was hostile towards you. I was pre-judging you on the way you looked.’ And I was like ‘she didn’t act hostile’, and then I got another message going ‘someone hacked into my account and sent you that Myspace’, and I was like…”
Euan: “…weird…”
Emmy: “…‘what?’”
How was Glastonbury?
Emmy: “Glastonbury was shit. Sound was shit. Our soundman didn’t show up. It rained. What else? My boyfriend snogged my mate. I took acid…I went mad.”
Was it your first time at Glastonbury?
Emmy: “I’ve been married at Glastonbury.”
Properly married?
Emmy: “Well I didn’t think it was, but then he introduced me to his family. I was 18, I had just finished my A Levels, and I got a call from my friend’s dad’s friend, saying ‘come to Glastonbury’ and I was like, ‘alright’. He was about 40 years old, and then he got me really fucked and married me…”
[Long silence]
Emmy: “…but we didn’t have sex…”
What would you describe as your influences?
Emmy: “Have you ever seen ratemykitten.com? Not ‘rape’, ‘rate’.” [descends into fits of laughter again]
[to Euan] “Have you had enough? Do you quit?”
Euan: “Four days of this…I’m cancelling myself! I’m gonna call myself on my own phone and leave a message.”
Emmy: “‘Euan has cancelled his appearance’. But that’s honestly my main influence.”
Euan: “I think Emmy’s influenced by the insignificant things in life, like motorway service stations.”
Emmy: “Yeah! Marks And Spencer…and my horrible life. But I’m not going to get into that. Probably my first influences were pop-punk, and then I realised what I was doing was folk music. I guess now I mainly get influenced by reading books. I wanted to be in a band like Lightspeed Champion are now, but back then I didn’t know anyone who sounded that. So I thought I’d do some songs and wait until I found a band, but I never found a band. I really wanted to be the front girl in the end song of Empire Records.”
But you have your own band now…
Emmy: “I just borrow them.”
Euan: “I’m on permanent loan. From myself.”
Emmy: “But he’s cancelled himself now. He’s void!”
It’s at this point that the interview collapses around itself, through a combination of bad location and frazzled interviewees. Following this ramshackle chat, Emmy and Euan go on to perform a flawless, endearing set in front of a rapt Dog And Parrot.
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