. . . ORLANDO . . .
. . . ORLANDO . . .
DE: Hello folks. Sorry I'm a little late Soozy: Hello. DE: Hi Keith. Keith, I hope you don't mind me inviting others along. Kate: We are the space invaders... KeithD: Sure no problem! Shall we begin? DE: Basically I'll mainly address Keith's questions. others can chat away as they want and I'll do my best to reply to them as well. KeithD: Ok, off we go then...First of all, thank you for agreeing to this. You have the dubious honour of being the first band to agree to be interviewed by the Happy Hopper. DE: Really? Is this your first fanzine? KeithD: Yes, it is - just started it off with a few self-penned gig/record reviews. It's only on the internet as well - maybe one day it'll expand... KeithD: Your music is very refreshing and quite unlike anything else going about at the moment. Do you think that now 'indie' music has become almost mainstream it is much more difficult to succeed with something a bit different than it was, say in the late 80s? DE: Well Orlando's music is based mostly on ourselves. It arises directly from our personalities, so any "difference" is down to us as people. KeithD: So you'd say you don't fit into any specific genre? DE: No, we don't. Which is very hard for people when they want to describe us in print by comparing us to other bands. With Mansun's album going in at #1, it seems that to succeed you have to be as conformist as possible. I find Mansun a band so completely buried in what's going on around them that somewhere along the line they forgot to inlcude their own personalities. KeithD: I would agree Mansun aren't exactly candidates for a cartoon series a la Monkees...there's Blond Bloke #1, Blond Bloke #2, etc, etc... DE: I would agree that nowadays "Indie" is the mainstream as a sound.... and yet you have to have major label backing somewhere along the line or you won't get anywhere. Kate: Can I ask something please? DE: Go on, you don't have to ask. This is an open interview! Kate: I find it interesting that you pick out Mansun as an example of conformist music, but like Oasis...to me the former have more originality than the latter.
Soozy: neither Oasis or Mansun write songs that mean anything but Mansun do it
marginally more interestingly.
DE: Mansun? oh, no: they're a carbon-copy Oasis-sounding group. Kate: What I really meant was what attracts you to Oasis? DE: What I like about Oasis is the fact that they're first and foremost creations of themselves. Kate: But do you find anything new and/or meaningful in them? KeithD: Romo - if it existed at all - seems to have been no more than a brief flurry championed by a few and ridiculed by most, yet you have remained. How does it feel to be - no offence intended - that scene's Wedding Present? DE: oh dear...we've never been compared to the Wedding Present before! KeithD: Ha...the Weddoes are one of my favourite bands, so no offence meant. Of course, I don't mean it music-wise, but rather as a comparable 'band in the wilderness' DE: I used to be a massive WP fan myself, but tastes change. I've just been going through a slew of reviews by various university mags of our records....about a third of them seem incapable of mentioning romo...the rest either don't know or (like me) don't care. KeithD: Labels must be very hard to lose, especially when the music press have to slot in each band in a comfy place - possibly why Orlando have been largely ignored? DE: Well, yes, we were certainly aware of all that, but it means nothing to us or the people who like us so I give it little time myself. KeithD: I can appreciate how it must rankle - to have your work, over which you have spent so much time and effort, filed away in a frankly invented scene. DE: Well Tim today has just been recounting a MM review of our last gig at ULU with My Life Story. Kate: Is there one? This week? DE: ...comes out outside London tomorrow. Kate: Ah DE: It's not very nice apparently. Kate: :-( DE: Tim was so depressed by the review that he at once went round to a friend he knew had videoed the show and watched it....and was relieved to discover we were monumental. DE: I've just now been writing a letter to BACUS, a Bristol student rag that fabricated a story about me Kate: ! what did they say? DE: ...it's odd to get LIED about in print, it's odd to be so LOVED and yet so HATED DE: They said I was interrupting an interview they did with Kenickie at Bristol, to ask them to interview me...and they added that both the writer and Lauren (Kenickie) told me where to go, which is defamatory libel. Kate: indeed DE: It seems that (mainly men) resent our friendship with Kenickie, our closeness with girls in general. KeithD: Anyway, to move on...Your lyrics are all very introspective and full of frustration, longing and lust. I take it you would describe yourselves as a very personal and passionate band? DE: Yes, very much so....soulful is a key word too. Kate: And "parvenu" ? DE: That too Kate. DE: The album's not called Passive Soul for nothing. Kate: Is that name taken from a "Furthest Point Away" lyric? DE: Yes Kate: I KNEW i heard it. DE: In that one title is everything to explain about Orlando. Kate: Another question. how do you feel about people taping you and stuff? (taping as in recording live) DE: I don't mind at all. KeithD: Some of your lyrics (I'm thinking Fatal in particular here) are very Manics. How much of an influence was your Welsh namesake, the absent Richey Edwards? DE: Well suffice it to say that Richey was the only lyricist that write songs that meant anything to me, and so when he disappeared, i knew Orlando had to become serious.
KeithD: How do you feel the Manics have got on without him? Personally, I miss the fake-fur and eyeliner days... DE: They're getting on, they needed to change. I only wish they'd changed the name a la New Order. KeithD: Good point, that would've been a fitting tribute. Kate: But they were still using Richey's lyrics... DE: Richey was the frontperson, and yet he did so little practically...I really admired that and based my role in Orlando to a certain extent on it. Kate: Do you worry about there one day being a cult of Dickon? KeithD: You go so far as to emulate the Manics' original "release one album then split up" masterplan. Wonderfully romantic as this is, would you in all honesty stick to that promise? DE: Well, it's just....so....HARD getting one album the way things are going....we've had to fight so much. I still think Generation Terroists is a much better album than any of the others..including the (Brit) award winning EMG. I would ideally like to do the one album, then one posthumous one like Sylvia Plath. Also I do like the idea of Orlando being self-destructive...like a timebomb Kate: But being self destructive is always more enjoyable before the event.....than after. KeithD: Yet could you survive without the catharsis that being in a band must give you? Unless your posthumous LP response just answered that... DE: Whether I'd survive without Orlando is irrelevant. Kate: Your survival is not irrelevant to the people who will have loved Orlando. DE: You have to realise that I envy the terminally ill! DE: The Manics argued that the reson they didnt split up after one LP was because they hadn't become as big as they needed to....I'd stay in Orlando for as long as this was true too. KeithD: How big do you need to be? TOTP? Posters on every bedroom wall in the country? DE: well....big enough to be recognised more often than not would be nice. Note how i veil my self-hatred with vanity! KeithD: But even if one person is affected enough by Orlando to add something to their life, surely then you are obliged to keep going? DE: It depends Keith. I always admired Virginia Woolf's "tidy" suicide... last letters three days before the deed. Anyway we're not here to fuel these sort of feelings. KeithD: You then regard suicide as the last great work of an artist? DE: Of course...but I do worry that it IS so selfish...hence my longing for a terminal disease. Full stops are tidier than ellipses. Soozy: Whats so great about tidyness? KeithD: I would imagine those in the cancer and AIDS wards of the world would gladly swap places. DE: Yes. I'd gladly swap if I could. I so envied a boy at school who got leukaemia at 13 and died. That's such a TERRIBLE thing to say, but it's true! KeithD: And just as selfish surely - if not more so - than contemplating suicide? DE: Well I envy those whose death ISN'T their fault. Soozy: If you so want to die then what has kept you alive so far? DE: Fear, caffeine and Galaxy Caramels. DE: We had a letter from a girl dying of cancer...we must have meant something to her. Kate: What if a fan sent you their suicide note, though? DE: I would read it and feel flattered, not to mention jealous! KeithD: Not saddened at all? Soozy: But not sad? Not at all? DE: No of course I wouldnt feel sad; they've found happiness somehere else than it was promised. Kate: You're absolutely sure that would be your reaction? DE: After the initial shock if it was out of the blue. It was my reaction when I heard about Kurt Cobain, and Mathew Fletcher, a drummer I knew in a band called Heavenly. With Mathew there was no shock, just solace. KeithD: If that letter had said specifically that Orlando had been the final catalyst, you would still be flattered? DE: I would get a slight thrill if that were the case! Imagine! To me that would be like a knighthood KeithD: Surely a cursed knighthood? Could you truly sleep knowing that - even in a minor way - you had contributed to someone's death? DE: You make it sound like murder... I see it more like euthenasia. KeithD: I overlooked a previous answer, Dickon, sorry...You would think that person has gone on to a better place and thus feel glad to have assisted them? DE: Well not so much a better place, just somewhere that CAN'T be worse. Soozy: But how can you know that their life wouldn't have got better? If they'd had the chance.
DE: Its important however, that I dont come across here like Judas Priest! Kate: who? DE: Judas Priest: Brummie havy metal band whose records were used in a court case involving two american youths in a suicide pact KeithD: Play Orlando records backwards and see what you find... Soozy: lol DE: Didn't someone die in sympathy with Kurt Cobain? KeithD: At least 2 people shot themselves in a similar manner to Kurt. Kate: Cult of Richey... KeithD: To move on slightly, do you think you'd be able to cope with success - and I'm talking success on a Spice Girls scale here? DE: Actually if its okay to stick with this subject just a little more Keith, I want to make my position clearer. KeithD: Sure...I would say 'give him enough rope', but that's maybe not appropriate... DE: Because right now Tim and I are debating whether to put a song on the album that is VERY depressing indeed. And I dont mean my guitar incompetence! Kate: How depressing? Manics? more than Manics? Worse? It sounds like something that needs to be heard. You think it could push people over the edge? DE: Have you seen the film Heathers? KeithD: Yes... Soozy: Yes. Kate: No. DE: See it. Kate: I will. DE: It's about how suicide becomes a fashion accessory at a school...and how it makes saints out of swines. I'd hate it if a right bloody IDIOT killed themselves on my account. Kate: BUT YOU JUST SAID YOU'DE BE FLATTERED!!!!!! KeithD: But you'd like it if someone intelligent did?? DE: It depends....If they kill themselves cos they think it's a "cool" thing to do then no. KeithD: So tell us more about the song...is it basically the same premise as Heathers? DE: Of course, the problem is that most teenagers who kill themselves ARE thought of idiots de facto. Such a quandry. Soozy: So you're saying that if someone really hated being alive and you gave them the impetus they needed to die then you'd done well...I can almost understand that. DE: Well...actually Orlando is meant to be there for those that feel that way....to lift them out of that gloom by catharsis. Kate: I've never found that suicide is seen as cool. Someone told me if i killed myself they'd spit on my grave.
At this point the channel crashed and we had to move to another. The second part of the interview is presented on the next page. |
Visit Orlando's website, maintained by Dickon himself.
