The No-Fi "Magazine" Interview with The Leeches

Well, here I am interviewing another band that I really like. This time, it's a band all the way from the UK called The Leeches. Their CD entitled "Suck" is available now on British Medical Records. They were over here recently for a small US tour and while they were in lovely Silverlake, California playing at Spaceland I caught up with them to ask them a few questions...

L: Lizzi (vocals)
A: Andy (guitar)
D: Dean (drums)
C: Chris (bass)
Q: Quin (no-fi interviewer #1)
J: Jeff (no-fi interviewer #2)

Q: I am here outside of Spaceland with The Leeches. Hello Leeches!
Everyone: Hello!
Q: First of all, I'd like to know how long you all have been together and what brought you guys together.
L: We've been together approximately 2 1/2 years, apart from Chris who filled the shoes of the bassist about six months ago.
C: A year ago.
L: A year ago. Sorry, I'm very bad with dates and times and places and everything that is at all mathematical. Yeah...I answered an ad through a Lute advertisement. Lute is a paper in the UK where you buy anything.
Q: Like the Recycler here.
L: Yeah. And there's one in New York so people would know it. And they were advertising for two female vocalists but we couldn't find another one who was right...so that's how it happened, through an advert in Lute.
Q: You people are from London, what do you think of the new toll thing they got there?
A: For a band it's a pain in the ass because your sound check is normally at 5:30 and the charge is in effect until 7:00. So we get hit with the charge every time we play in the city. But, as a Londoner I think it's a good idea because the buses suddenly work and traffic is a lot lighter and they raise a lot of money to pump back into the transport system because our transport system is absolutely crippled and needs a massive investment. This is probably a good way of getting it. One of the things that I think about is if you are in New York City and or most cities with a bridge like San Francisco, you cross the bridge one way and then you come back into town. So if you go from like New York to New Jersey it's free and when you want to get from New Jersey to New York it's six dollars. In San Francisco I think it's three dollars on the Golden Gate Bridge. If you are a commuter in New York, you pay that toll every single day and think nothing of it and the city raises that money continually. For us it's the same thing. But instead of having a bridge as a boundary, we just sort of have a line on the road. We thought there would be a revolution and everybody would go absolutely mad, but they didn't and it just pays the money.

Q: Do you think it makes the streets safer or are people still driving like maniacs?
A: No, we all still drive like maniacs. The speed limit in the UK is a lot higher than it is in the US so we can drive a lot faster.
Q: And your driving on the wrong side of the road.
A: With manual transmission as well, so it gives you a bit more acceleration. Anyway, i think this is the best way to raise revenue because the more you use a car, the more you are going to be taxed. If somebody drives into the center of London once a month, they only pay once. But it catches the frequent users and I think that's fair enough. It's not taxing everybody on the same level, it's pay per use.
D: Of course, when it first came out we did look for ways to not pay.
A: You try to get a soundcheck a little later and you know, I think we only actually paid it once. We did it on line and it worked. Fair enough.
Q: Are you guys fans of British comedy and if so, who?
A: Either Monty Python or The Young Ones.
D: Ricky Jevazey.
L: I can't remember the guys name who I really like.
C: I still like Eddie Izzard. He's absolutely fucking genius. He does shows in French.
Q: He's a pretty good actor too.
C: Not so much in The Avengers.
Q: No, but he was amazing in Shadow of The Vampire. So who are some of your influences?

L: There's a bit of a conflict there in our music.
Q: A lot of people have said you have a Cramps sound.
L: I mean I'm a fan of dance music, Madonna as well as all the punk stuff. We like Rocky Horror. We like The Rolling Stones.
C: I have to say for the record I haven't heard The Cramps or The Rocky Horror Picture Show so I absent myself from that completely.
A: We always say our music is everything that's been subversive for the last 40 years. It's easy to say that all of us would probably have a favorite record and mine changes from week to week, but it will always be something from the last 40 years and probably something that a lot of people haven't heard.
Q: What is in your CD player right now?
A: What we left in the car was The Stranglers.
D: Also The Clash and Siouxie and The Banshees from our long trip down from San Francisco.
A: When you are driving down the entire coast of California you get through a lot of CDs.
D: Too bad you're on the wrong side of the road.
Q: The right side...
D: ...is the wrong side.
A: We figure if we get pulled over by the cops and we're playing The Beatles then they'll think "oh they're just cute english people" and let us off with a fine. The driving laws here are very very strange. Not just the wrong side of the road, but the fact that you can't turn the car around. Back home, part of our driving test is learning how to turn the car around anywhere you want. And it doesn't matter what way you are facing when you park...if you are lucky enough to find a parking space.
Q: My favorite thing you can do on the road in California and I know there are a lot of states that you can't do this in, is you can turn right on a red light. It saves a lot of time.
L: We didn't know about that.
Q: Well, now you do. Hey, Jeff, have I forgotten to ask anything?
J: You forgot a lot of stuff!

Q: I am sorry in advance if he offends you in any way.
J: Are there any American bands that you have encountered while you were here that you particularly enjoyed.
L: The Monolators.
A: I keep preaching about The Monolators. They might not be the best musicians on the earth but in terms of spirit, they just made us smile. Everyone else has been overly serious or down right pretentious. But The Monolators joke around and they have a sense of humor. Their singer Eli...I would call him a psychedelic genius. He's very similar to Syd Barret and he's just sideways. Such songs as "I'm an Office Drone" and "Feed Us a Live Insect"...and Mary the drummer, you've never seen a drummer like her. Everything is just absolutely riveting. So, for me they were the best band here.
D: We came across a band called The Detachable Kit on our east coast tour last October and they made a massive impression on us. The music was just absolutely brilliant.
J: (to Chris) How about the most quiet one in the band, do you have anything to add?
C: No.

J: If I were in a band, I'd be you, the really quiet one. Are there any bad habits that you have picked up while overseas?
A: I now speak American which is a really appalling habit and when I go home I'm going to have it ripped out of me. I even write American. I've been emailing an old friend and she sent me one saying that "You have lost your english accent completely, even in writing."
D: And also driving on the right side of the road, that's a terrible habit.
Q: Well, you better break that habit now.
J: Any weird stories from on the road?
L: We've had to sleep on the side of the road a couple of times.
A: Not too much weirdness this time around but we got a map and that actually works. And it turns out that if you ask someone where such and such a place is you can usually find it.
D: We've had two or three alien encounters driving down from San Francisco, but that's not unusual for us.
A: A really interesting thing happened...we went down to San Luis Obisbo where we had three shows in one day. A record store in the afternoon and a radio show in the early evening and a pie store that night. We get to the record store and they have a big poster advertising that The Leeches are playing. We walk in and everything is ready, except there is no P.A.. So we wait around for the promoter to show up and still no PA. Nobody can find the guy. So we decide to go looking for him down at the radio station and they're looking for him as well. He was the DJ meant to interview us. And these guys who had never met us. knew nothing about us, stopped their show and off you go. They basically put us on the radio and gave us our own show for an hour live on KCPR 90.3fm San Luis Obisbo, and we had our own radio show for an hour. The airwaves were ours...and we didn't swear. That is probably the coolest thing that's happened to us so far.
Q: Alright. Thanks for doing this interview, I think you guys are wonderful.
A: Anytime you guys need to invade a country we're always here to help.