From June 28 - The Fixx

Cy Curnin and Jamie West-Oram of The Fixx visit The Box

Steve: In the studio, we have The Fixx.

Cy and Jamie: Good afternoon Steve and people.

Hello, hello, hello.

Steve: How are you.

Cy and Jamie: Alright.

Good, just waking up.

Steve: You just got in…when’d you get in to L.A.

Cy: A couple of days ago. Yeah, a couple of days.

Steve: From Maida Vale? Where’d you come here from?

Cy: He came from London, I came from France.

Steve: You live in France?

Cy: Yeah.

Steve: Where, in Paris?

Cy: No, in the (sounds like luar) Valley. Close to the cheap wine as possible.

Steve: Is that…in the country?

Cy: Yeah. I just got an old, bought an old…

Steve: Chateau?

Cy: No. An old, crappy farm, derelict farm that I’ve thrown all my money into and it’s still derelict and I’m broke. (laughs)

Steve: You getting it fixed up?

Cy: Yeah, it’s good.

Steve: Is it nice out there?

Cy: Yeah, its great.

Steve: What’s the weather like in the winter?

Cy: It’s um, it can be the hottest part of France, it can be the coldest part of France cos it’s right in the middle so the weather stalls out. We’ve got some sheep out there…so they’re nervous when I’m home.

Steve: Bud-dum-bum. (rim shot)

Cy: Bum. And it’s all good.

Steve: You have Wellington boots, then?

Cy: Yeah.

Steve: Put their back feet in the wellies.

Cy: Exactly, so they don’t run away. You know that one?

Steve: (slyly) Yes, I had a go at that. (laughs)

Cy: So, I found a goat there that was a little taller in the back and I don’t have to bend down as much now.

Steve: Goats are kind of dangerous.

Cy: Mmm hmm. I married a goat, actually.

Steve: They can be violent, goats.

Cy: They can be, but if you’re nice to them and write now and then, send flowers, they’re all right.

Steve: What…do you really have a goat?

Cy: Yeah, I have two.

Steve: Now, what do you use them for, to clean areas?

Cy: Yeah. To annoy me, when the roses just coming in and looking beautiful, they come along and eat them.

Steve: Yeah. I mean…what is the purpose of the goat? Well, the milk, they have goat milk, right?

Cy: And it’s meat, source of meat for a lot of…in rugged countries, Greece, the islands, they didn’t have any fields so it was an animal that could feed itself and go up and down the mountains and live quite healthy and then when you needed some meat…chop.

Steve: I’ve never had that…goat. I never had that.

Cy: Jamaicans love goat meat and I know that…

Steve: Have you ever tried it?

Cy: Yeah, it’s delicious.

Steve: What’s it taste like? Goat?

Cy: Goat. Yeah. (laughter) You know the smell of goat cheese? It’s got a slight, like, you know pork has a certain “pork” flavor? Well, it doesn’t taste like chicken. It’s one of the few meats that doesn’t taste like chicken, thank god.

Steve: Right, okay. Everything else…chicken. Even snake tastes like chicken.

Cy: Exactly, so you know, what’s the point. We have those goats and it’s very creative.

Steve: I always got the horn…(for? from?) goats.

Cy: buddum bum.

Steve: So you’re here from France and, where do you live, in London?

Jamie: Well, actually I live in Hampshire.

Steve: All right.

Jamie: So it’s posh.

Steve: I see. You’re a squire.

Jamie: With my lovely missus, yeah…and our son.

Steve: All right, Squire.

Jamie: Yeah, country bumpkins.

Steve: You must have Wellingtons as well, living up there.

Jamie: Must have what?

Steve: Wellington boots.

Jamie: Wellies, yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Jamie: Most people have green Wellies ‘round there.

Steve: And the oilskin jackets.

Jamie: A lot of people do have things like that and they have Range Rovers and things I don’t go in for…

Cy: People have green teeth where I am.

Steve: In France?

Jamie: Green Wellies, yeah. These people walk around in wooden clogs.

Steve: The French. They’re dirty sods ain’t they?

Cy: They’re nice.

Steve: Hairy armpits.

Cy: They don’t hate Americans as much as you’d think either.

Steve: What is that myth, anyway?

Cy: It’s just you know, CNN bollocks where they’ve just perpetrated the myth to keep people hating.

~~~ ~~~

Steve: What’re you actually doing here? You got…a new album out and you got a DVD, right?

Cy: Yep.

Steve: You’ve got a new album, “The Fixx, The 25^th Anniversary”. Oh, it’s an anthology.

Cy: It’s not really “new”.

Steve: Any new stuff on it?

Cy: No. The new stuff’s available on download at the moment. We’ve just been…we have such trouble going into a studio (laughs) we can ever get it together to record anything but playing ‘em live is…seems to be the way to go, you know?

Steve: Yeah.

Cy: So you get a document of how the song’s progressing by live recordings.

Steve: The Fixx dot com.

Cy: Fixx dot com, that’s where it’s all happening.

Steve: Where all your info is.

Cy: Yeah.

Steve: And you can download stuff from there.

Cy: Yeah. You can go through there, that will link to everything that you need to know.

Steve: TheFixx.com?

Cy: Um hmm.

Steve: Okay, cool. And you’ve got this DVD, “The Fixx In The Public Eye”.

Cy: “In The Public Lavatory”.

Steve: Yes. With Jason King. And this is…home footage from fans? Or is there any legit camerawork as well?

Cy: No, there’s no “legit” camerawork, there’s all, fans filming over a period of nine months and then they sent all the stuff in and we had it professionally edited by a guy that works at ABC, Andrew, put it together…fairly watchable condition, but it’s a good…you know, you get the smell, the dressing room, rather than the, just the front stage stuff.

Steve: Have you guys not played for a long time? Was there a period where you just, knocked it on the head?

Jamie: We’ve been playing pretty regularly over the last few years.

Steve: Yeah?

Cy: We stopped like, ’92 to ’96, just because…(we) felt tired and there were a lot of babies being born so it was just a good time and radio was really going grungy at that point so anything that was from the Eighties was like, taboo. Then they threw the baby out with the bathwater and now everyone kind of gone, gone back, “Oh, maybe there was some pretty original stuff in that period.” I mean, not all of it was good, there was a lot of crap, granted, in the Eighties, cos the whole visual side of things made it look like…

Steve: Right, right. Shoulder pads.

Cy: Yeah, god…what were we thinking? But some of the songs, though…

Steve: There was some good songs in the Eighties.

Cy: Yeah. You don’t have to look at it. You should just listen to it, it’s all right.

Steve: Exactly. There’s a whole new generation who’ve never heard it.

Cy: Yeah. I mean, there’s kids coming along to our concerts saying to me, “Where’s that suit?” (laughs) I don’t fit in that suit anymore and it’s mothballed now.

Steve: Yes. But you are going to do a new song right now, yes?

Cy: Yeah, going to fumble our way through it.

Steve: What is this song called?

Cy: It’s called, “Remember Me When I’m Gone”.

Steve: Okay. I’m going to play my stardust shakers on it.

Cy: Play your knackers.

Steve: Yes.

Cy: All right, then. We’re gonna crack it off…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

(back from 4^th set of songs, which included a song by BeBop Deluxe)

Steve: You big fans of Bill Nelson?

Cy: Oh, yeah. Absolutely right. He was a great sort of, halfway house in the early Seventies. He was like…the guy that gave that music a real serious tonic, he had a sort of a Celtic vibe to him and which, in a big country was more the popular side of that sound…but he’s (got) a really good set of fingers, doesn’t he?

Steve: Yeah, very good and he looked good back then. I don’t know what he looks like now, but I remember seeing him at the Fulham Greyhound. Seeing BeBop Deluxe…did you ever go down to Fulham Greyhound?

Cy: Yeah, we used to play there.

Jamie: Yeah. My first gig with you was there.

Cy: Yeah, it was. I remember that very well.

Steve: Really. I saw so many bands there. Great place.

Cy: It was great in those days. Golden Lion in as well, Fulham. That was pretty good for seeing things. Now you go past there, I cry every time I drive past it.

Steve: What is it now?

Cy: Just one of those corporate pubs. Lots of brass everywhere and karaoke and…

Steve: Football games and sports bars. It’s so depressing, innit?

Cy: It’s gone pear shaped.

Steve: Aussie “Outback” place or something.

Cy: In those days, you never knew what you were going to stumble on.

Steve: Right.

Cy: You know, a lot of the time it was crap, but every now and then it was just genius and you’d see somebody…like, one minute there’d be four people in the audience and then, two weeks later, you couldn’t get in. It was jammed. It was like, you know, when you guys took off.

Steve: Remember the Clarendon in Hammersmith? The other side of where the Hammersmith Odeon - which is now the Apollo - ‘round the other side, there was a boozer ‘round there called The Clarendon. It’s abandoned now. I remember seeing The Stranglers in there. They were a great band, you know…they never get any credit, Stranglers.

Cy: Really good writing. They’ve just put out a new record, they’ve got a new record that’s actually really good. Gary was playing it to me the other day.

Steve: Some other bloke’s singing though, right? Its not Hugh Cornwell.

Cy: No, it’s somebody else. He’s not a bad singer, though.

Steve: I loved, I loved Hugh Cornwell. I thought he wrote some brilliant songs.

Cy: Yeah.

Steve: So, you’re…how old are you? You’re kind of the same age as me? I’m fifty.

Cy: Yeah, I’m forty-nine.

Jamie: Yeah, I’m fifty-two.

Steve: And you lived in London, back in like Seventy, early Seventies?

Cy: Yeah, grew up there. World’s End, all that stuff, you know.

Steve: So you went to all the pub…on the pub circuit. Do you remember The Winkies?

Cy: The Winkies?

Jamie: Yeah, I used to play with Phil Rambo (sp?)

Steve: Exactly. And the guitar player kind of had that Keith Richards thing going, remember? Did you you ever see him? He had like, the (?), he had like a Keith Richards thing…

Jamie: I never saw The Winkies. I just worked with Phil Rambo after that.

Steve: They were a great band, The Winkies. Them, and Dr. Feelgood were like, the main bands at that point. They were the like, the two bands that you had to go and see. Remember the Kensington…down that long road across the street from Olympia?

Cy: Yeah.

Steve: I used to see them there all the time.

Cy: That was good and there was that other one, that Fuller’s place on…

Jamie: Oh, The Nashville.

Cy: The Nashville.

Jamie: That was a great…I lived ‘round the corner from there.

Cy: How many times I vomited outside of that place.

Steve: I’m with you there. We probably vomited over the same.

Cy: “Do mind if I share this piece of sidewalk?”

Steve: “Please, after you.” “No, after you.” (Cy supplies sound effect) That’s where we played uh, with Joe Strummer. We opened up for the 101ers who Joe Strummer was singing with. And that’s where we had that, on the Melody Maker, that famous picture where we’re all fighting on the stage. That was at The Nashville.

Cy: Yeah yeah. That’s right. I remember that whole era, I was there, tempting my fate and, but we did sort of pierce out…later. We were a later incarnation (by) the time we got our egos sorted out, we were in the Eighties time-frame.

Steve: Yes. But nevertheless, you experienced them good times.

Cy: Yeah, the explosion. Ripping off the glitter to get another kind of expression. It was good.

Steve: I did enjoy…was you, was you into like, glitter when you was like fourteen, fifteen?

Cy: Yeah, I was into early Bowie, definitely. The platform things…

Steve: You had the look going and everything?

Cy: Yeah. Some of my mates at school took it a bit further than I did. They had the whole Bowie haircut and wore the makeup all day long.

Steve: Right, at school and that.

Cy: I couldn’t get past my parents to go to school, cos they used to drive me there so I couldn’t do it, you know.

Steve: Did you ever see that movie, “Velvet Goldmine”?

Cy: No.

Steve: There’s a great, there’s a great scene in it where the kid’s obviously…it’s kind of from what we’re talking about, and that, what’s his name, the actor, who is it…I can’t remember his name. He’s a decent actor…where he’s in the bedroom and he’s got the album cover and he’s like staring at it and he starts kind of playing with himself a little bit. (they laugh)

Cy: I did that, to “Aladdin Sane”.

Steve: Yeah, it’s that kind of…and that was so cool that this, whoever wrote it, obviously had the same experience. But I used to fantasize, not having a wank to it, but…my thing was Roxy Music, Brian Ferry. I always had this image in my head that he was in a penthouse in Knightsbridge in like a tuxedo…I wanted that. That’s what, that’s this fantasy that I thought I wanted, you know. It’s so weird when you’re a kid, the things you think of.

Cy: Yeah, it’s true. That “Aladdin Sane” album just took me, you know and “Lady Grinning Soul”, that last track, how I used to sit and listen to that and just be, my emotions would just be oozing out of me and the fantasy side of…I wonder where the younger…I hope kids today are getting the same thing…they probably are…

Steve: I’m sure they do…

Cy: …there’s just a lot more competition with the video games and the computer games.

Steve: A lot more distractions.

Cy: A lot more A.D.D. around.

Steve: Attention spans not much…

Cy: A lot more doctors writing prescriptions for “diseases” that would go away anyway.

Steve: That’s the problem. I think that is a…major problem in the world.

Cy: Nothing wrong with a wank. Don’t need a pill to stop your wanking.

Steve: Viagra. I still have no problem. I don’t need Viagra. I’m good for at least five minutes.

Cy: That long?

Steve: Yeah. (all laugh) What we doing, Shovel?

Mr. Shovel: Giving it away.

Steve: Oh, we've got the Anthology Fixx cd’s, we’ve got two of them and we’ve got a DVD to give away. Should we just give them away, or do like a little quiz? It’s a bit late, innit?

Cy: You can give them away to that tramp. There’s a tramp that we just saw outside. He had one shoe on.

Steve: What’s he gonna play it on?

Cy: I said to him, “You’ve lost a shoe”, and he goes, “No, I found one!”

Steve: Excellent! Glass half-empty or half-full?

Cy: Yeah. But to the engineer, the glass is just too big.

Steve: Let’s go down and give him another shoe. I’ll give him a good kick up the ass.

Cy: (?)…but you could say it that way.

Steve: Move along. Go on. Sling your hook. Go and bother someone else, you old tramp.

Cy: Take a bath.

Steve: We can go down and sing a song to him. “We’re singing in the rain…”

Cy: Show him your house keys and make yourself feel really good about yourself.

Steve: (laughing) All right, we’re with The Fixx, we’re gonna vis…is that, I think that’s the end of it.

Cy: God, that was quick.

Steve: I was hoping we could do one more song, though.

Cy: That was longer than five minutes.

Steve: (disappointed) I know.

Cy: We could do another song, but then people could just go and download it anyway, if they want to hear some more.

Steve: Well, we’ll give ‘em away to whoever calls up for ‘em. And I guess I’ll be back tomorrow at twelve bells and thanks for coming by, lads.

Cy: Our pleasure, Steve.

Steve: Good luck and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Cy: Lots of flashbacks. Thanks for that.

Steve: Yeah, it was good. It’s a therapy lesson when you come up here.

Cy: It’s all good…

Steve: Exactly. See you tomorrow, boys and girls. Bye bye.

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