The Rubberbandits are back from performing in Venice for ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ and preparations are well under way for their first theatrical performance in their native city.
Blind Boy Boatclub answered Limerick Post’s enquiries.
by Eric FitzGerald
eric@limerickpost.ie
Limerick Post: We have seen The Rubberbandits rock a full tent at Electric Picnic at 2am in 2010 and rap with MC Daddy Earl at The Salty Dog ’til the wee hours the year after. Now you are playing theatrical shows in The Abbey, International Art Exhibitions in Venice and Lime Tree !!!!
Are The Rubberbandits all grown up these days? Is this change of direction a deliberate decision?
Blind Boy: “Those shows reflected where we were then and these shows reflect where we are now. If you’re in any way creative you have to keep testing yourself and moving into new areas to keep things fresh.
We’ve been doing this together since we were children. We started off with prank phone calls, then moved on to songwriting and music production, then moved on to TV writing and directing and now we’ve gone the full journey up our own holes into contemporary art.”
LP: When you had a pop hit with ‘Horse Outside’ you have said The Rubberbandits were perceived as a “cursing Jedward”. Have ye been put under pressure to write more pop hits and clean up their act for a mass audience?
Blind Boy: “Ya, Horse Outside was a deliberate pop song, because that’s what we wanted to do at the time, but we never thought it would be popular. It was an exercise in the craft known as pop music if you get me, just another musical genre to have craic with. We weren’t expected to clean things up after that, but rather dumb things down and make the work accessible to a majority audience. Which is grand if that’s what you’re into, but we prefer making stuff that we like rather than thinking of audiences. So F*ck that, we turned it all down and went over to the UK to start from the ground up, doing what we wanted to do in the presence of craic and tans.”
LP: How do you think the audience will react to witnessing Continental Fistfight at the Lime Tree Theatre?
BB: “It’ll be grand, it’s just Mary I at the end of the day. One of the worst gigs we ever did was at Mary I rag week in 2008. A load of red faced girls in the front row wearing dresses that didn’t fit asking us to do Kings of Leon covers.”
LP: Apart from killer Brazilian Wandering Spiders, what should the visitor to Limerick watch out for this summer?
BB: “There’s a family of fag robbing crows that perch on the roof of Arthurs Quay. They will rob the fag out of your mouth. I looked into it, and apparently they want smoked fag butts to line their nests as it keeps out parasites. Switch over to electric fags or you’ll be attacked by a crow outside burger king, mark my words.”
LP: and finally, Blind Boy, what will The Rubberbandits headstone read ?
BB: “There will be no headstone. We’re going to have our ashes broken down so small that they can be put into the Large Hadron Collider. We want our ashes smashed off subatomic particles, going around the place jocking quarks and making sh*t of the Higgs Boson.”
The Rubberbandits ‘Continental Fistfight’ plays at Lime Tree Theatre on Saturday May 23.
