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Some Fave Lyrics - "I really don't know what I'm doing here/I really think I should have gone to bed tonight/But - just one drink..." ('Open', The Cure)

Miss Black America - Page 2/2

Miss Black America?
The band name came from 2 things - firstly, I bought the Alec Empire album, 'Miss Black America', with a picture of him on the cover with his arms all slashed up and in stitches, wearing a T-shirt with the album's title scrawled on it and thought, 'cool'.
And then I heard the Curtis Mayfield song 'Miss Black America', the key lyric in which is "such a wonderful people/and so beautifully equal... God bless Miss Black America". And I thought you could apply that to any situation where one set of people is made to feel "lesser" than another, because no-one is worth less than anyone else.
We're all of equal value, and we all have it in us to do something fantastic, to make a difference. The problem is, most people never realise that, and just waste their lives doing nothing, because they don't think they can amount to anything, because that's all they've ever been told. And we wanted to show that that just wasn't true.

On the vibe, or what?! Miss Black America walk it like they talk it. It was the Adrenaline Junkie Class-A Mentalist EP (kindly sent by 21cpunx essential zine, R*E*P*E*A*T) and the rage-rant howl of it's accompanying press release - that caught my imagination even before the CD has blasted the stereo and caught me ears. (incidentally first track, "Human Punk" was in the top 15 of John Peel's Festive 50 of 2001)

MBA have blossomed from playing cow sheds to a taste of life in the fast lane of rock n roll...
We supported the Dandy Warhols and they were horrible, really up themselves. They had that whole American rock star arsehole thing going on. They took one look at us and just sneered. They wouldn't even let me borrow their eyeliner, some lame excuse about eye diseases. And we were like, "you're not even all that", y'know? For all their louche sub-Velvets posturing, they're really quite dull.
The Dum Dums were nice but stupid - I just sat barking at them for 2 hours 'til they left and we drank all their beer. Mathew Jay turned out to be a cardboard cut-out of someone's destined-to-be-a-doctor older brother with David Gray hiding behind it.
Fruitbat from Carter USM was a star, and sat in our dressing room with us getting pissed, and was nice to us, even when his girlfriend tried to get off with me.

And there will doubtless be more tales to tell, the reactions to Miss Black America are positive. Drowned In Sound recently promoted the band on tour, now MBA are touring the rock n roll isles again through January to March. Check their website (link at end of this article) for dates. They play NME "On" night (17 Jan. Camden Monarch, London). NME recently ran a great live review by Mark Beaumont (who often seems to like establishment unfaves with big underground followings like Mansun and King Adora)
Having seen him at the British Sea Power/Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster gig (Paradise Bar, Rocklands), you can only hope it means the mainstream media have enough enthusiasm to help the profile of home grown talent in 2002 and beyond... The "On" gig is with Sheffield's Hogboy (already getting day time Radio 1) and another rising act on the scene, the above mentioned Eighties Matchbox B Line Disaster - so it looks like the establishment are catching on to the vibe, fast...

Blind optimism aside, Rocklands Asked MBA about things that they think should be paid more/less attention by mainstream media by the media...
You can't expect the NME to start writing about current affairs, or Kerrang! to write anything that doesn't lick every orifice of every body that comes its way in the hope that it'll shift more units.
The problem is, the NME and Kerrang! have the monopoly; with the competition (Melody Maker, Sounds and Raw) long gone, they don't have to try and be 'cutting edge' any more, so they can get away with writing about whatever shite the major labels pay them to write about.
And most of the bands are dreadful, really, or at just depressingly bland - be it Linkin Park or Travis, they're all sucking the life and soul out of rock 'n' roll by reducing it to something dull, safe and formulaic.
Even supposedly OUT THERE stuff like The White Stripes just sounds like Jon Spencer b-sides. But I'd love to see the NME paying attention to bands like Antihero and Blue Gandhi and Venus In Furs, who don't have a PR company to lavish journalists with fine wine and bullshit.
Obviously, it'd mean wading through a sea of schmindie Camden bollocks, but, hey! No pain, no gain

The alternative media have continued their support for such bands through the rise and fall of various national publicationi over the last year and have recently organising themselves together, via chat lists etc (i.e. The Friend network) DIY takes away the dependence on "fashion". It is this section of the media that have supported MBA so far...
John Peel's been amazingly supportive, as have the PR listings people who do the listings for all the 'What's On' guides in the papers - they were giving us "Gig of the Week" before anyone had even heard of us. Richard Rose and Jazz from R*E*P*E*A*T fanzine have been absolute stars - they put out our first single, the Adrenaline Junkie Class-A Mentalist EP, which got us noticed and playlisted and signed, and Rob Dix from Dental Records, who put out our second single. Sean from Drowned in Sound helped us sort out our first tour, and Sean from Organart.com's just written a piece about us for Rock Sound. There's been loads of people, really - mainly people we knew, mates who've always helped us out, and still do.ntinued on one page)

continued... Miss Black America page 3/3

Some Fave Lyrics : "It was six o'clock on the murder mile when I came to my senses/And my only death wish was that I had me a sockful of fifty pences/A public execution that the whole neighbourhood can watch/Or just a phonebox, a phonebox, my kingdom for a phonebox" - ('Midnight on the Murder Mile', Carter USM)