Midasuno – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Johnny H & Gaz Tidey
Saturday, 10 October 2015 04:00
If you went to a rock gig in the early to mid-noughties chances are you will have seen the finest alt rock band to ever come out of Merthyr, the mighty Midasuno. Having originally split up back in 2008 next weekend the band will play one final show before they really do call it day as vocalist/guitarist Scott Lee Andrews moves to Australia to begin a new life upside down. Then again his lifetime spent in the company of guitarist Chris Morgan, drummer Matt Riste, bassist Gavin Jessop, keyboardist Lyndon Jones and guitarist Stephen Hopkins could never be described as being normal. This is a band who decided to call their debut album ‘Songs In The Key Of Fuck’ remember. Before they do have their last hurrah the guys gave Uber Rock’s Johnny H and Gaz Tidey the chance to fire some life searching questions at them just for old times’ sake, so this ladies and gentleman really is the start of the end for Midasuno.
So Sunday 18th October 2015 at Cardiff’s Globe venue Midasuno finally comes to an end. What do you personally want to get out of the night?
Chris Morgan: I honestly haven’t thought about it. For me, every time Midasuno took to the stage it was more about ensuring the people that turned up had a good time than anything else. When you can see everyone else in the room is having a good time, you tend to have a fucking excellent time yourself.
Matt Riste: It’ll be nice to get to play with the boys again, see people we haven’t seen for years and just give Midasuno a proper send off.
Lyndon Jones: You knew what you were getting with a Midasuno show, it was usually the unpredictable! We were, in my opinion, the original party band that delivered riff heavy tunes with an archaic performance to match! What wasn’t there to like about it? I just want to give a good account of ourselves and personally, just enjoy it!
Gavin Jessop: To be honest it’s just a nice excuse to get away from my kids for the evening, nah in all seriousness for me it’s about hanging with my friends, seeing old faces and getting back to doing what we do best, making tons of noise and enjoying a night of real music with real music fans.
Steven Hopkins: I parted ways with Midasuno about 10 years ago and did not do anything else with music afterwards except a reunion show a few years back. Part of me wants to experience being on stage with the boys again and do something that I used to love, something which was a huge part of my life. Although if the boys hadn’t asked me to contribute, I’d still be going to this show just to catch up with a whole lot of people I haven’t seen for a long time.
Scott Lee Andrews: It’s a bittersweet experience for me….I’m off to Australia to live with my wife within a fortnight of the show! I haven’t seen the boys together for years as I’ve been living in Brighton so it will be great to catch up with everyone. I think it would be great to tie up those loose ends and smash it out one more time. I think we’re all in a good place as in everyone is the right headspace for the show. In fact what makes this even better is that it spans the two eras of the band. Chris and Steven being on-stage for the first time!
I’ve read the excellent Dial M For Merthyr book a couple of times and the thing that strikes me most about it all is you guys seemed like good mates even at the lowest of times. How true is that friendship to this day?
CM: Whilst we’re physically further apart than we’ve ever been, I feel as close to this lot as I did the day I met them. It was always a gang mentality, more a family than a friendship. The fact that this show is even happening speaks volumes…
MR: I think we’re more like a family than a bunch of friends, we’ve had our fair share of ups and downs together, fist fights, slanging matches, shed blood, sweat and tears together but on the flip side I’ve shared some of the best experiences and had some of the best times of my life with these boys. A true testament of our bond is in the fact that we can go weeks/months without seeing or speaking to each other but as soon as we do, within 5 minutes it’s like we’re 16 again with dick and fart jokes flying around and piss taking etc. regardless of what the future holds for us I’ll consider these boys my brothers until I die.
LJ: When Midasuno were on the road we arrived as a crew and no one could cross that. There was a sort of primitive mentality where we constantly had each other’s back, we just seemed to adopt that persona naturally. It was a matter of us against the world, and to a certain extent, that was the case! Nowadays, I don’t get to see the band as much as I would like to. We’ve all gone our separate ways in life, marriage, kids, location and careers. We used to all live within a few miles of each other which is not the case anymore. I think the closeness will always be there and that has been evident with the few practices we’ve had recently, old habits just fall back into place.
GJ: This is a tricky one really as when you leave the environment of being in someone else’s pocket and them in yours you automatically want to drift. If you were released from prison after 10 years you wouldn’t spend your first Saturday night of freedom getting high with the prison guards. But that’s not to say we don’t still have love for each other, we been through shit times and some amazing times but when we talk the shit times never come up. Do we talk/hangout every day? No. Do we make up for that when we get back together? Absolutely!
SH: I lost touch with the boys after leaving the band (with no hard feelings whatsoever) but in recent years have found my way back in the circle and I don’t think much has really changed. Despite taking different paths we have remained good friends and being back in a practice room has felt very natural.
SLA: Sorry Rachel (Trezise) – I still haven’t read it! Although Duff McKagan has – He mentioned ‘Dial M….’ in his new book! There was an undeniable gang mentality within the team. We were young, quite naïve yet there was a very strong ‘brotherly’ bond between us all. Fighting together, even doing some other naughty things together. Pretty much as tight as you could get. Probably stemming from being in school together THEN forming the band. Since the end of the band and as the various lads left….It did get a bit like the end of Stand By Me (laughing). I didn’t (but almost) manage to do a Chris Chambers (laughing) perhaps more River Pheonix if I’m honest. One of Facebook’s only saving graces is seeing how the lads are doing which has been nice but not the same as chatting shit and being normal as I find it hard to communicate via computer/phone. However, the first practice was so easy, which was great!
So, just how did Lyndon Jones go from being webmaster to actual band member? Were his skills on the ping pong tables of South Wales and beyond so impressive that you thought he could make the step up from sports halls to rock clubs with consummate ease?
LJ (laughing)! I had a feeling that Gaz wouldn’t be able to resist dropping this in! It’s a little known fact that I used to play a lot of table tennis when I was younger. So just to fill in some background story, Gaz from Uber Rock used to work at Abertillery Leisure Centre where I used to play table tennis. Despite reaching the dizzy heights of number 7 (Yes, seven!) in Wales at a senior level I packed it all in to peruse a career on the road.
GJ: We realised that Lyndon looked like a small child so thought that might help us get a good support slot…..
SH: Lyndon has always been the lifeblood of the band, waaay before being inducted officially. Devouring ping pong opponents didn’t present the guy enough of a challenge but hours spent lurching over a table, paddle in hand, saw him develop the physical prowess and gut-wrenching perseverance needed to endure life on the road with Midasuno.
SLA: Lyndon did so much for the band as soon as he became involved. Artwork and websites he put together for us kept us in the game and was an extra member of the team because we all hung out and he was always there to keep up with our forward movement. Considering he had no musical background, he reluctantly got on keys/samplers which really added another dimension to the live sound and really set us apart, so kudos to him for jumping in the deep end and getting his ‘live’ hands dirty.
You originally split up in 2010 – and have played the odd show in-between. Looking back do you feel that Midasuno might have achieved more, if you’d simply buckled down and worked at it?
CM: I don’t think we ever stopped “working at it” so to speak. It’s like most things, no matter how hard you work at something, when what you’re doing isn’t sustainable, it can’t continue.
MR: I think all the luck/money/hard work couldn’t have stopped us from imploding when we did. We were all in very different and weird head spaces at the time and I think the Midasuno ‘machine’ was suffocating us and had sucked a lot of the fun out of it. If we hadn’t have called it a day when we did I think we would’ve ended up killing each other to be honest.
LJ: In a word, “NO!” We couldn’t have worked any harder, I would say at the time we were the hardest working band in Wales and probably one of the front runners for that title within the UK. There’s some insane fact that the late James McLaren once said that we had done over 200 shows in a year! All off our own back without a label, tour funding, a booking agent or even a manager. We simply worked our asses off to get the success we had. Personally I think it was a case of the wrong time, wrong place for us. We were always going to be a stadiums or bust band. Another time and another place and I’m sure we would have been huge albeit with some serious drug addictions or dead!
GJ: I think any band no matter what size could always have done more, did we quit too soon? Possibly, but then when you’ve been hitting it so hard and so long there comes a point when you think where is my life? We gave up money, girlfriends, friends, family, and homes. What’s next to give up? The only thing I had left was these guys and (for me anyway) I wasn’t willing to risk losing that.
SH: I personally don’t think lack of work ethic was ever our problem. We’d become accustomed to playing a lot of shows in quick succession for very little money and we loved it. I felt we were always more concerned with the live performance as opposed to just playing our songs live and spending time in a studio. This got us a fairly consistent and loyal live following and probably pushed us more toward the underground scene. If by achievement you mean fame and money, I think we would have had to have taken a different direction as a band from the very start and I don’t think the end product would have been what Midasuno was.
SLA: I think Midasuno became as ‘big’ as we could have. This is due to the fact we (I) would have been unmanageable….Who in their right mind would allow an album with any commercial aspirations be called ‘Songs In The Key Of Fuck’? Our big debut album. I cannot thank Mike Darby at Sugarshack Records enough for having the mammoth balls to go with it. I think confrontational humour has been very important to me because I am a bit of an emotional wreck. I think we all got off on upsetting the applecart though and that ‘in-band’ crassness was an extension of our personalities, which people bought into and I feel is why we were liked with such fondness. The work ethic was undeniable though…..we were never freeloaders and probably had to work hard as we looked odd, sounded odd and on most occasions cut our noses off to spite our faces (laughing).
Or should you just have bought a more reliable tour van then? (laughing)
CM: That and more reliable equipment! I think our gear caused us more problems than any of our vans! (laughing) I remember our guitar tech Mike being close to tears every time we stopped off at his house for emergency mid-tour guitar surgery.
MR: (laughing) we had the worst fucking luck with vehicles!
LJ: (laughing), you have a very strong argument there!
SH: (laughing) it’s a consequence of very little money for the miles we used to cover in order to tour.
SLA: I still do not own a working guitar/amp rig! Donations via UBER ROCK please!
Of Midasuno’s recorded output which release are you most proud of?
CM: ‘Songs In The Key Of Fuck’. I’m mainly proud that we actually managed to get it out of the door of the studio after all the set-backs and frustrations that came with recording it, but I think all of that comes through in the performances on the record which gives it its cutting edge. Plus it still stands up well, I don’t think it’s dated at all.
MR: Personally it’s ‘SITKOF’ for me. Not only because I think the songs are so strong but also because it was so fucking difficult getting that album made, it was one shitty blow after another for like 18 or so months so I’m really fucking proud of the fact we managed to get it finished and released.
LJ: ‘Til Death Do Us Party’. It was at a time when songs were getting written that were more synth and sample heavy rather than being bolted on to older songs to make ‘work’. I think as a band we turned a corner slightly and upped our game. Everything on this release was a huge team effort and Dan at The Merch Asylum did an amazing job with the artwork! That release opened a few doors for us in my opinion.
GJ: That’s a good one, every release had a different feel to it. ‘Bulls’ was raw! Like as far as what the band were in to at the time the sound of that record was as close as it could be. ‘Songs…..’ had much bigger tracks on it but the production and time taken to record took all the fun out of it. From a personal stance I wasn’t involved in 90% of the process because life was already catching up to me. So yeah, ‘Bulls’ for me.
SH: I was in the band for the early years and parted ways after the release of ‘When Bulls Play God’. I’m definitely most proud of ‘SITKOF’.
SLA: As the songwriter, I have that “choose your favourite child” syndrome to this question. Which should be easy because I fucking hate kids (laughing). My brother recently made me sit through the back catalogue and it actually made me feel ill because it took me back to a time where my memories are clouded by a certain ‘madness’ – I felt totally disconnected from the songs. It didn’t feel like I had written them and it scared me, but that said, on reflection our recorded output was VERY consistent and solid. So it’s ‘SITKOF’ probably for me as it was our first full album, and that was always the achievement box to tick. I wanted 10 singles, each with enough variation and separate identities on there and I think they all could have been.
Is there anything you would have changed with those releases…with the benefit of hindsight?
CM: They say hindsight is 20/20 but the things that grip my shit about the records now are the same things that gripped my shit about the records then. Whilst it’s probably me being fussy/an arsehole (delete as appropriate folks) I’m sure the boys agree that there are rough session mixes/demos lurking around that we prefer to the final mixes of certain songs but it is what it is, but you know what? It’s still a great record. If I could get my flux capacitor working I would however go back and push for a ‘1997’/’The Continental Length’ double A-side.
MR: As far as ‘SITKOF’ is concerned, as I mentioned we took way to long recording that album. I think the producer may have been going through a bit of a meltdown personally, so wasn’t in the best headspace so we would record the drums, then he would decide he didn’t like the sound so we’d scrap them and start over etc etc and this was the same for every instrument. At times it was soul destroying! So with the benefit of hindsight I’d love to re-record ‘SITKOF’ with the energy/urgency/rawness it deserves.
LJ: Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but in all honesty, “no!” I know it’s a little cliché to say that but what we achieved from the industry was a lot more than most. You just need to look it that way and be grateful.
GJ: There’s so much I’d change on ‘SITKOF’ as I eluded to previously. The songs are there, the choruses, the riffs, the intricacies, but the production and enjoyment completely disappeared.
SLA: This is a good question. I think we were using other artists/recordings as yardsticks to ensure our finished recordings could hold their own with our idols or be commercially/aesthetically pleasing work to us. Everything we released suffered for a little too much over-production in places. ‘SITKOF’ was toyed with within an inch of it’s life due to the sporadic nature it was recorded in. Now we are releasing the ‘Cascade Records’ version of ‘When Bulls Play God’ which is pretty raw. The intention following ‘The Art Of Fear’ single was to release a mini album. James (McLaren) and the Cascade lads put us in with Joe Gibb at Mighty Atom in Swansea. He was the go-to guy at the time having worked with Funeral For A Friend, Brigade et al of the new breed of UK rock. It ended up sounding (to me) very ‘live’…..very rough to the point of non-releaseable as our demos with Stu Richardson were so good. In retrospect, he just pressed record. There was no production value – or ‘turd-polishing’ – and when faced with our ramshackle, ACTUAL performance I recoiled in horror at the time. It was such a great document of where the band was and it was scrapped for the Lockjaw Records lads to record and clean all the edges up. It will sound EXACTLY how we sounded back in 2003. It was rough, but pure and exciting. Which is why we have teamed up with Jen Long’s Kissability label to release is for the first time. They are also releasing ‘Songs….’ in it’s originally intended 12 track version. We dropped some tracks to complie ‘Til’ Death….to release as the album was taking so long to put together’. Aled from Kids In Glass Houses, who actually ran our first fan site is doing the artwork too.
South Wales has been a real hotbed for musical talent for decades, I guess reaching its peak when TJs was at its most popular. Who do you think should have made it (how didn’t) from the bunch of bands you grew up gigging with?
CM: There are so many bands that didn’t get a fair crack of the whip/the attention they deserved but the stand out bands for me were always Pete’s Sake, Haddonfield and SKWAD. It was like having Thrice, Alkaline Trio and Therapy? on your doorstep, only better.
MR: Pete’s Sake 100% they are one of the best punk bands I’ve ever heard, how they didn’t ‘make it’ is beyond me! Also I think Hondo Maclean should’ve gone way further than they did. I always thought they should be up there with the metal big guns.
LJ: I think the most obvious band for me was our good friends in Petes’ Sake. I still have no idea how this band didn’t get huge! As you say, South Wales around that era was a hotbed for talent. Notable mentions have to go out to Adequate 7, Panel, Said Mike, Flailing Wail, SKWAD, Trip, Her Zombie Bones, My Little Murder… The list could go on and on.
GJ: So many good fucking bands man!! I’ve just come back from Reading Festival and some of the acts were laughable. When you look back at bands like Pete’s Sake, Hondo Maclean, Jarcrew, Keiko, Dopamine, these bands were real! I mean PETES SAKE! I watched NFG, All Time Low, Neck Deep, none of those hold a candle to what this band had, none of them.
SLA: Pete’s Sake were criminally under-rated and wiped the fucking floor with any punk/pop/whatevercore band of the time. Absolute travesty. I wasn’t into ‘heavy’ music but Hondo Mclean won my heart thanks to the sheer abandon they performed with. SKWAD started my man-crush on Todd Campbell (aka the Dave Grohl of South Wales) and wished I was in that band. The Martini Henry Rifles were THE gateway band for everything weird/anti rock I needed. Jarcrew were also super exciting and a ‘sore-thumb’ we fell in love with.
Talking of TJ’s I remember seeing Midasuno playing with The Drips there to about 20 people and Scott apologised to me for the lack of people there that night….some things never fucking change eh? What is wrong with the gig going public these days? Tribute bands sell out venues, yet young bands struggle….what’s your opinions on this?
CM: With Pretty Vicious recently exploding out of nowhere, we’re possibly/hopefully witnessing the turning of the tide.
MR: I think it’s just laziness and the Internet. When we were younger you HAD to go to a gig if you were into a band to get to hear new material or even just to get to watch them perform – unless you were lucky enough to find a video of them in a record fair (laughing). These days though you can be watching your favourite bands performing live from your living room in a few clicks!
GJ: I think there’s too many average bands.
SH: Late 1990s and early 2000s was the transition time for rock music into a more socially present state. Since then it has become incredibly commercialised and rock bands are being manufactured, managed and marketed as if they were boybands on a large scale. There are so many different channels for listening to rock/metal/punk these days but they are over-saturated with these plastic rock bands. Focus on young bands is still as sparse as it always was except now people don’t have to go out to gigs and rock clubs to enjoy music, they can stay at home and listen to ‘Sex Is On Fire’ on repeat courtesy of Kerrang! or go get their Chili Pepper fix from the local rugby club jukebox. The tragic thing in all this is that everything has become synthetic, there is not enough attitude or excitement or fire or originality in what people are being fed and they don’t appreciate the essence of what they are missing. Rant over!
SLA: I think a good struggle is good for building your character. Everyone should try it! Free(ish) practises, learn your craft in terms of how to engage a tough crowd. Fundamentally, you used to have to be an EXCITING band live to attract people. Gigs still pull in punters, but only a small majority of ‘successful’ bands I’d bother getting out of bed for anymore. I cannot comment on local scene but the word is that they have had a knock back. Perhaps the lack of venues (particularly Cardiff) factors in? You mentioned tribute bands. Parallel this with the amount of movies that are being remade. It’s not so much the lack of credible, new inventive people out there creating progressive art, but the general consensus becoming so battered with choice and little in the way of filtering the quality that most want the safety of familiarity. There ARE awesome bands out there, just get used to wading through a sea of shite to find them. YET same can be said about all these bands reforming, jumping on the cash cow and pretending to like each other for a small window of opportunity. (laughing)
I wanted to go back to your back catalogue for a minute and ask you if Midasuno could be remembered for one song what would it be? Just out of interest my fave tune by you guys was/is ‘Taste The Virus’ a truly fucking fantastic song that reminds me of Japan…the band not the country (laughing)
CM: Fucking hell boys we’ve found someone who likes ‘Taste The Virus’! (laughing) Joking aside, before I joined the band, you associated Midasuno with one thing… Starting the riot, which is something I still think sums up the past, present and potential future quite aptly. People will probably remember us for being ‘Face Down’ mind.
MR: I’d say ‘Sleepwalkers’. For me it’s got all of the elements I love about Midasuno all in one song, huge riffs, huge choruses, weird, disjointed bits, synths and samples, and it’s just a super powerful song.
LJ: ‘Taste The Virus’ reminds me a little of At the Drive-in and Guns N’ Roses, but that’s another story. (laughing) No doubt the fans will have their say of the classics such as ‘Tear’, ‘Cut Ribbons’, ‘Start A Riot’ etc. but for me it has to be ‘Rhythm Thief’. It’s a perfect balance of all that encapsulates Midasuno during my time with the band. Huge riffs, catchy vocals and that subtle electronic undertone to it.
SH: ‘Cut Ribbons’. It’s not my favourite song but definitely my favourite to play live.
SLA: (laughing) I just listened to ‘Taste The Virus’. That tremolo solo is fucking ripped from Muse’s ‘Time Is Running Out’! To force a choice I’m gonna say to listen to: ‘Sister Temptation’, but to play live: ‘Cut Ribbons’.
So Scott seeing as I’ve just mentioned ‘Til Death Do Us Party’ in passing this one I guess is just for you. Was the genesis of the Exit_International sound in that later Midasuno material or did you dream of turning the mental up a notch and feel like you had to do it with a different musical project altogether?
SLA: Just before we split, we recorded a track called ‘Bring Me The Heads’ which was much more snappy – I had got my editing a little better so there wasn’t 500+ parts to the song. (laughing) I struggled to write anything afterwards. When Fudge (bass – Exit_International) formed E_I, it was a completely new experience for me. Everything was written in the room. The only hard-line rule was ensuring at least 80% of our music was written in real time which was such a foreign concept to my control freak, prepared-in-advance formula. I just wanted to find some fun in music again. So by having two basses ticked the ‘weird/unconventional’ box and finding a writing partner who was the yin to my musical yang was essential to me. To explore different extremes of music, to branch out and tread uncharted waters really appealed to me. The irony being we intended for E_I to be far more uncommercial and disgusting musically than Midasuno/The Martini Henry Rifles but that backfired spectacularly. (laughing)
And back to Sunday 18th October 2015, what can Midasuno fans who have a ticket for this show expect to see?
CM: Beautiful carnage.
MR: The unexpected……(laughing)
LJ: I’m not sure if we even know what to expect ourselves. All I can promise you is a Midasuno show, that’s all we have ever promised and maybe that’s what people liked about us… they simply didn’t know what would happen next!
GJ: I’d say a bigger animal is coming. More focussed, stronger and a lot more pissed off. Our shows always went one of 2 ways insane or bizarre, let’s see what happens when we mix the 2.
SH: Friends getting together to do something they love once again and hoping that the people willing to pay to see it enjoy it as much as them.
SLA: Well I have only made one rehearsal so far due to funding/time and Greg (Sound Nation) flat out refusing to reimburse me for my needs now Megabus Gold has stopped it’s route to Cardiff. It’ll also be first time in years I’ll get to see some people and probably the last for some time. Expectations? At least one bottle of Cava/Prosecco/Lambrini hurled toward Matt’s head for old times’ sake!
Finally, just to bring this all to a close. What final message do you have for your fans?
CM: Never drop your guard.
MR: From the bottom of my heart, thank you! It’s been a fucking blast!
LJ: Thank you!
GJ: Mines a gin, let’s all have a good cry (laughing)
SH: Love your scene!
SLA: Thanks for your support over the years, it is really appreciated. Oh, and if you see me at the show, no hugs thanks.
Thanks for doing this guys….all the best for the future.
To pick up your tickets for the final Midasuno show at The Globe in Cardiff on Sunday 18th October follow this link!