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Apparently it’s Rotherham season on Articlemagazine.co.uk. Today we interview the city’s finest, The Heebie Jeebies as they promote a free EP download, just in time for christmas.
Introduce yourselves preferably by making comparisons to historical figures (non-musical ones)
Thom: I’m pretty much the living memory of Jacques Anquetil, but hotter!
Del: Fuck knows, I’m my own man. Maybe Ghandi? Maybe Hitler?
Owen: Leigh Bowery. That guy had style out of this world! I heard he was a prick though! Perhaps a matter of Style over substance! Although I never believe rumours!
Rotherham born and bred. What’s the plan for a night out there?
Thom: Basically, a Fuck or a Fight? You decide.
Del: I’m from Swinton, where you start at the top of the hill and end up swimming in the canal at the bottom of the hill.
Owen: The Rotherham opera house for some neo opera and then a bag of chips from baz’s chippie in Clifton.
Is there any vocabulary/typical Rotherham idioms you can give to help us fit in with the locals?
Thom: Fruity! It’s my favourite local word.
Del: Reyt Gud! Works for every response.
Owen: what thy on abart thee scrubber toof!
Having done a fair bit of touring, have you ever found anywhere quite like home?
Thom: France is nice but too many red wine stained teeth down the west coast.
Del: Beighton Village, ￡20 all you can drink.
Owen: No where can compare to Rotherham! Not in a million years! The only way anywhere could remotely have an essence of Rotherham is if the Chuckle Brothers travel there.
Best and worst thing that’s ever happened to you on tour?
Thom: Best thing; having sex up a tree, worst thing; realising it wasn’t my girlfriend.
Del: Dressing like Freddy Mercury was both the best and worst thing I’ve ever one on tour.
Owen: Sleeping in the Knacker Attacker (our people carrier) in a posh area in Paris. The claustrophobic feeling of being so close to other peoples energy resulted in me been sick, which triggered tom to be sick. Leaving the vomit-less Del to wallow in the stink of it all. Poor Del.
What’s the most bad ass/rock star thing you’ve ever done?
Thom: Turning down a threesome whilst refusing to get drunk.
Del: Fitting my genitals into a tumbler, whilst riding a wardrobe.
Owen: I’m extremely anti alcohol and drugs, so the most true rock star moment was at a gig in Coventry. In which I managed to de cap 1000 bottles of Heineken and WKD blue, ruining them all… I like to see this as the yang to Keith Moon’s throwing the telly out of the window! Long live sobriety! Death to those who cant handle it! And fuck all landlords who rely on alcoholism to fund their foreign holidays!
What about the least rock and roll thing that’s ever happened?
Thom: Did too much drugs and alcohol before a show and although played really well, felt like a Chris McClure, which is never a good thing. Nice kid though.
Del: Nothing, I am the embodiment of rock and roll motherfucker!
Owen: Probably, been witness to Del and Thom get stoned with the great reggae superstars Skatalites in Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain whilst on tour. My hope that a great reggae act may just create music sober was shattered! Fuck all landlords.
Last weekend saw the Drifter photo shoot for issue 1 take place in the industrial nether region between Sheffield and Rotherham, the humorously named Brightside. Focusing largely on workwear and warm clothing the shoot stems from the issue’s theme Drift: an allusion to hitch-hiking and hobo-ing, being a drifter.
After cruising in the van for thirty minutes, we settled on shooting on Stevenson Road. An industrial back street which provided a suitably run down industrial vibe. We figured at 10am on a Saturday it would be a good quiet spot. This proved not to be the case. Cars constantly whizzed past, usually aiming at our photographer, Jodie Blackburn, snapping from the road, and bemused looking locals carried plastic bags full of god knows what as they walked god knows where.
Clothes for this shoot included Carhartt, Acne, Libertine Libertine, Penfield, and women’s designer Harriet Gould. The models were the Heebie Jeebies and Sophie Bailey. Photography was by Jodie Blackburn. Assistance and documentation Anna Westerman. Clothes courtesy of Ideology and Carhartt. Issue 1, the Drift issue, will be out in mid October.
Phlegm is a Sheffield based painter/illustrator/comic book maker whose works can be found in many of the corners of both Sheffield and Manchester. Recently he painted several walls for the Rotherham Open Arts Festival. 95 hours of painting have been squeezed into this ten minute film.
It’s really cool watch your process of painting in the timelapse. When it comes to blocking out your images on these large walls do you plan it out before hand or does it come to you there? How much do you let the space dictate the piece?
I’m painting a comic so I do have to have an idea of what I want to do. Generally I go to a wall with five or six frames I could paint and just hope that the space suits one of them. I tend to work form my head so as not to make the picture looked forced into a space. Like you say, let the building dictate it.
Telescopes, trees and people in strange hoody type things feature heavily in your work. Where does it come from?
I started using the simple hooded characters for cartoon strips first, they where just simple featureless faces that where easy for me to draw over and over. After a while they became quite stylised and they came through in my wall work. Most of my inspiration is passed down from my drawing. I tend to be heavily influenced in my by old etchings like Hogarth or pen and ink work by Gorey and old medieval maps and things like that. This influences my drawing and then gets passed down to my wall work.
The video has got all over the place since its been up, what do you make of it and being internet famous?
It’s nice when you capture peoples imagination I suppose, it’s what artists are meant to do. It’s easy to get carried away by people’s reaction but at the end of the day there’s videos on youtube of cats falling over that wipe the floor with anything I could do.
Bonus image. This is Phlegm’s latest pieces from down Sidney Street, the area I wrote about last week, what is quick becoming one of the best spots in South Yorks. The photo almost does it justice, this thing is huge!