TALKING ABOUT STUFF
ENDURING ENGLISH ACT THE WONDER STUFF IS BACK IN AUSTRALIA AFTER MANY YEARS. FRONTMAN MILES HUNT DISCUSSES THE BENEFIT OF DOING THINGS INDEPENDENTLY, AS WELL AS THAT SONG, WITH BRENT BALINSKI.
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t’s been nearly two decades since we last saw The Wonder Stuff here, with a different line up and off the back of a hit single. Miles Hunt, the exuberant frontman for the West Midlands indie rock outfit, believes that things have changed for the better. “Well, the line up’s changed considerably. We have a different drummer and a different bass player,” he says. “I would imagine we were awful company 20 years ago for anybody who had to have anything to do with us. I don’t know, we didn’t particularly get on with each other back then. These days we’re very, very good friends in the band and we enjoy each other’s company.” Hunt has been a full-time musician nearly his entire adult life and believes things are more laidback and friendly now that the band is doing things independently. “Sadly, back then we were tied to a major label that turned us into little salesmen and sent us around the world trying to sell our records and we were all a bit shocked that that’s how it worked,” he says. “We were pretty naive back then... And therefore weren’t particularly the nicest people to hang around. So that’s really changed – not that we’d welcome an audience with us in the dressing room.” You probably know The Wonder Stuff from their early ‘90s hit, a cover of Tommy Roe’s Dizzy. It’d be a stupid person that believes a band that has been around for over two decades can have its entire creative output represented by one big hit (and one which was performed with a guest singer, comedian Vic Reeves, no less), but there’s no severing the band’s attachment to the track. It’s always there, included in pretty much every mention of the band in its press. Hunt is too sensible to care much about a song that the band doesn’t even play live anymore. “I had very little to do with it, to be honest... I sing a backing vocal at the end of the song,” he points out. “I thought that period was really great for them. I’m still very good friends with Vic Reeves as well. So in terms of the effect it’s had on my life I have nothing but good things to think about it. In terms of the publicity – if we get any at all these days – it tends to go straight to Dizzy.” Hunt also says it makes things interesting when he catches a taxi. “And one thing it’s given me, is that if I jump in the back of a cab with a guitar case and the cab driver might say, ‘Are you a musician, mate?’ Yeah. ‘Anything I’d know?’ Without Dizzy, I’d say I’m in a band called The Wonder Stuff. ‘Never heard of you, mate.’ But I get to say, ‘Remember when Vic Reeves did Dizzy? Well I was in the backing band’ [laughs].” The Wonder Stuff has had several different line ups and their original rhythm section of Martin Gilks (drums) and Rob Jones (bass) has passed away. The only two original members are Malcolm Treece and Hunt, who are currently joined by Fuzz Townshend (formerly of Pop Will Eat Itself) on drums, Erica Nockalls (who is Hunt’s partner and performs and records with him in a duet format) and Mark McCarthy (formerly of Radical Dance Faction) on bass. The band will only be performing material “from the last century”, says Hunt, ruling out songs from the albums Escape From Rubbish Island (2004) and Suspended By Stars (2006). This is mainly because there hasn’t been time to rehearse everything with Townshend. “Not necessarily all singles, but there’ll be a few singles in there. Album tracks from the first four albums, a couple of B-sides,” says Hunt. “They’ll be pleased there’s nothing in the set that we wrote and recorded this century... We haven’t had time rehearse the entire Wonder Stuff song book with Fuzz, really. So we’re just concentrating on the ones we know go down well live.”
Some of the material The Wonder Stuff currently performs is from their breakout album, the bluegrass flavoured Never Loved Elvis, which turns 20 this month and is a favourite with longtime fans. Despite the anniversary, the band has no plans to re-record Elvis, as it has with the last two albums that have had double-decade anniversaries. “We’re going to do some shows in the UK in December that I think will probably be filmed and put out as little souvenir DVD in early 2012,” explains Hunt of the plans to mark the album’s age. “There’s a few songs in our set, there’s [Welcome To The] Cheap Seats, The Size Of A Cow, Mission Drive, Here Comes Everyone. So four or five probably from Never Loved Elvis that we’ll be playing when we come to Australia.” After all his years as a performer, Hunt still lists never having “had a job” as an adult as his happiest accomplishment. Not that he’s lazy, of course. He just struggles to imagine a life that doesn’t include playing music as a way to pay the rent. “I suppose I had a couple of jobs when I was a kid before The Wonder Stuff, but my imagination and my passion was always to get into a band. By the time I was 20 I’d pulled it off and by the time I was 21 we were signed to a major publisher, a major record label and didn’t have to work a day job anymore,” recalls Hunt with more than a little joy in his voice. “At the same time, you have to perhaps work a little harder than you did ten years ago. To keep selling CDs you need to be on the road constantly. Erica and I are on the road every month. And I think it’s sort of made a better person of me... “CD sales are down everywhere and everyone’s just got to work a bit harder. I was raised in a socialist family, so I’m sort of proud of the fact that we go out and we graft for our money, rather than sit back with our feet up becoming more and more useless every day and less and less in touch with our audience.” WHO The Wonder Stuff WHEN & WHERE Saturday 20 August, Enmore Theatre • 42 • THE DRUM MEDIA 28 JUNE 2011
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