Interview: The Rubber Bandits

Interview: Ros Madigan

The Rubber Bandits are no stranger at this point to most to most people within Ireland. Having started with prank phone calls way back when as far as the year 2000. They have seen a dramatic rise in popularity since the success of a certain song that aired on RTE’s Republic of Telly in 2010. An assault and campaign was now underway to get ‘Horse Outside’ to the number 1 slot for Christmas. They were beaten by the inevitable success of the begrudging reality show contestant Matt Cardle and his awful rendition of ‘Many of Horror’, later renaming it to ‘When We Collide’.

Fast-forward one year, as Matt Cardle will soon be struggling to book gigs at his own local Tesco. The Rubber Bandits plan to make an assault on the Irish Christmas charts once more, this time with the album charts in their sight. After spreading their brand of Limerick laughs around Ireland and the UK with gigs and comedy sketches as far away as New York, the Rubber Bandits have no need to prove anything to the Irish and greater public alike.

‘Serious About Men’ is a double disc release from the Bandits who I caught up with last week to talk about the album, their plans and unsurprisingly anything else in between.

With physical music purchases floundering in recent times, an artist must be ready to offer a little bit more than some fancy album art-work and a list of the lyrics to entice the customer. Something the Rubber Bandits have clearly sat down and thought about as Blind Boy Boat Club explained: “In the album art, there is loads of photographs of tits, and make up tips and tampons for women.” If that wasn’t enough reason to run to the shops and buy the album, he continued: “In the album you can find the IRA members in the puzzle and there is a colouring in section. You can colour in a drawing of Willie O’Dea with an inspirational quote coming out of his mouth. So fuck it, you’ve got everything, everything.”

Their album ‘Serious About Men’, I would imagine will be a serious contender for the number one slot with competition coming from the usual X Factor band wagon crew such as Olly Murs having just released his album. I quizzed the bandits on whether they would ever consider conforming to the masses in order to spread the yuletide festive feeling, their answer was rather straightforward: “Nah, that’s for faggots.” Not even with the super powerhouse that is Michael Buble I asked? “I’d do a song with Buble, because he’s a nice man, and he is elbows deep in fanny, 24-7”. Their appreciation for the Buble was like any other middle aged women around the world: “I seen an interview with him on Jonathon Ross and genuinely, I wanted to fuck him by the end of it. Clean he is, you wouldn’t see a grain of sand underneath his finger nails after a weekend at the beach.” I began to wonder was this due to the Bandits fondness of his music? “He loves what he does and he probably knows what he does is shit. It’s very middle of the road, easy listening. It’s kind of like being really good at making fake poo. You can make it look as realistic as humanly possible but at the end of the day, there is no balls.”

‘Serious About Men’ holds many an interesting song on the track list, but the most bewildering track listing has to be ‘Danny Dyer’. “Danny Dyer is a true story about meeting Danny Dyer, and him being a big massive liar. We met him, he said he did a piss in a kettle, then boiled it and then got in a time machine. Went back in time, met himself when he was eight and made him drink boiling piss, which I doubt is true.” An interesting topic of conversation was about to take a more interesting turn as they enlightened me: “The last time I saw Danny Dyer, he was on television with a survivalist and he had to do a shit into a bit of cling film in the woods and he wouldn’t, that’s a fact, you can see that. Look up Danny Dyer shitting into cling film and its there. Judge Jules remixed it as well.” Unfortunately, they were not joking this time around. (Video)

Sticking with the Christmas theme. I thought I would quiz the guys on whether the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was inspiration for their recent single, ‘Spastic Hawk’. Surprisingly, this comparison had never been made to them before as Mr.Chrome declared; “Fuck, it is isn’t it? Jesus, it is quite similar. I never knew that now. Deep in my unconscious mind, it’s very like that, well spotted.” This led to a rather misguided synopsis of the story of Rudolph: “Rudolph, he has this tumor on his nose and all the reindeer’s said you can’t play with us, you’ve got a tumor on your nose and Santa said, that’s the one I want, you can drive.”

The Rubber Bandits have just returned from a tour of England recently and I wondered how songs such as ‘Up The RA’ would go down. This song involves the Bandits listing off members of the IRA. I wondered if the members themselves would mind being ousted to an English audience in this manner. “R2D2 is sound about it. Sylvia Plath had no problem being mentioned. Winnie the Pooh, we haven’t heard anything and we ousted him as the master of the IRA.” So the English crowd received them well? “The English are lovely, they come to shows and they don’t drink. They sit there and listen, they clap when there supposed to clap and they shut up when there supposed to shut up and that a lot more than I can say for this country.“ Although: “But we love playing here because their a shower of mad bastards here. They are mad. Its different shows, it’s a nice break.”

Upon questioning the Bandits on whether there has ever been a topic they decided was too controversial and therefore wouldn’t touch upon. I thought for a few moments that I must have been the first journalist ever to get a serious answer out of the Rubber Bandits as they answered: “Drink Driving. There is nothing funny about drink driving. No there is not.” That was until they continued: “It’s not even funny when a load of clowns are killed. Even if, here’s the thing, even if a load of clowns drank drive and got into a car and crashed their car, and that’s funny, a load of clowns in a car. Possibly by the time you got there, all their clown gear would have melted away, leaving just the man. Then you just have a car full of dead men. Sounds like a politicians nightmare.”

The Bandits most recent work has been for Channel 4 who commissioned the duo to produce a number of webisodes that involved the Bandits recording some videos for songs off the new album. The first release ‘Black Man’ was then followed by ‘Spoiling Ivan’, the last in the series. The Bandits clearly enjoyed the experience: “Fucking loved it. It was a good laugh. We done it down Limerick and it was directed by Declan Lowney. Declan Lowney, he’s a director, gas bastard, lovely boy. But he’s mad like all great geniuses are. One day he ordered a pizza to the set. There were no peppers on his pizza and he started bawling crying and he wouldn’t direct the rest of the episode for like two days and Channel 4 were paying for it. Really upset like. He clearly said peppers in his defense. He did but there is no reason to cry about it for two days and not do any filming. Fair play to him, spectacular in bed.”