[iheartau.com] With a second album in the bag and gigs lined up, it’s about time we uploaded our last feature with LaFaro, from this Spring. In an entertaining and revealing chat, the Belfast band tell AU about touts, tours and Tuppenny Nudgers.
It’s 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon and three quarters of LaFaro are sitting in a poser-filled pub and talking about performing fellatio on the boys in blue. As you do.
“Dave sucked off a cop once and he loved it,” laughs LaFaro bassist Herb Magee, much to the embarrassment of some of the be-suited businessmen behind us.
Now, before any Mary Whitehouse types in training begin to get up in arms with the story, we hasten to add that the band are having a laugh and are explaining why they always seem to avoid getting their collars felt by the peelers whenever they’re in England.
“We keep getting pulled over when we’re on tour,” explains Dave, Herb’s guitarist brother. “The first time it happened was outside Buckingham Palace. When the police opened the back of the van they saw Herb and Alan sitting there holding cushions and looking like refugees and we got a fine. We got pulled over in Liverpool recently, too. I stopped at the lights and saw a cop car beside me and I get this fear whenever I see them, even though I’m doing nothing wrong, and I couldn’t get into first gear. As soon as that happened I think they decided to give us a hard time and I had to put the charm on them. We’re prepared to face the wrath of the cops any time we go to England, though.”
While it’s entertaining to hear the boys (who are sans tub thumper Alan Lynn today) talk about their road stories, the real reason why we’ve met up with them is to talk about their long-awaited self-titled debut album which, by the time you read this, will be sitting in record shop shelves primed and ready to pervert your ear-drums with songs that could score a dance-off at a mutant disco in Buttfuck, Alabama.
“We’re just really relieved to have it out there,” confesses Jonny. “We’ve been sitting on it for the guts of a year. We recorded it with a view to putting it out ourselves, but when we got the masters back we gave it to a few people to hear and one of them was Smalltown America who really wanted to put it out for us, so we let them plan their strategies and fit us into the release schedule. We’ve been like kids who know that the ice cream’s coming after dinner and we have to wait for it. It was for the best though.”
While the likes of ‘Tuppenny Nudger’ (more on that later) helped LaFaro carve a name out for themselves in the UK and Ireland, the record offers many nuggets for listeners to sink their metaphorical teeth into. For AU, the highlight has to be the fantastically named ‘Chopper is a Fuckin’ Tout,’ though and it prompts us to ask: what did poor old Chopper ever do to them?
“‘Chopper is a Fuckin’ Tout’ is named after the best bit of graffiti in Belfast,” says Jonny of the legend which appeared around South Belfast around two years ago. “We sat one night drinking and tried to come up with stupid stories about who Chopper might be and what he might have done to deserve that. He’s been a source of endless hilarity.”
“It got to the stage where when we were recording tracks we didn’t have names for we’d call them things like ‘Chopper Dead Man Walking’ and things like that,” grins Dave.
READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE!!
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