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Six Inch Killaz; April 1996. Photo: Pearl.
The following article first
appeared in my
dear friend Mona Compleine's very own fanzine, "Girly" (which I used to
write for, by the way!)... When you've finished reading it,
go directly to
"Girly
Online", where you'll find a whole host of great articles on
a
wide range of subjects, from transgender politics to Jayne Mansfield to
the SLA! So what the hell are you... aaahhh, fuck it; I can't be
bothered with finding a way to finish off this introduction! NOW READ
ON...
Luis and Jasmine performing with tha Killaz @ Club Alcohol; 28/9/96.
Photo: Pearl.
What are we doing being in a band anyway? We formed on a whim, then realised it was good and carried on from there. I get really excited sometimes when I listen back to some tape or other and say to myself, 'this is fucking great!' - I mean I don't do it all the time, but sometimes.
I met Luis one night at the WayOut and he asked if I played the guitar - at first I denied it but told the truth a week later. Luis had recently discovered punk rock via Holly's Sid Vicious T-shirt and (somewhat precociously but with admirable spontaneity) wanted to form a band to enter the club's "talent search" competition a few weeks later. I went to Luis's remote suburban home with a cheap drum machine and we tried "Born To Lose", "I Don't Wanna Be Learned" (a super-primitive Ramones song) and "Way Out Was A Horse" - Luis' variation on "Belsen Was A Gas". He bought a guitar, but ended up playing the bass I bought when I was 13, which he soon lost. The next Saturday he approached Holly and asked if she wanted to sing in the un-named band - she said she couldn't sing at all but would do it if her friend could join too. So, Holly and Jasmine got a taped backing track of me playing "WayOut" in Luis' bedroom to learn the song from for the following week. They didn't like the words and wrote their own - the song became "Teenage Whores". 'You must be Mona,' they said, introducing themselves a week later. We couldn't play the song anyway in the end, because the PA was so super-tiny that it cut out every time we started to play. But it was a beginning, and our next (first) proper performance was only a week away. I think we even had a practise.
Luis, Holly and Jasmine @ Club Vaseline; 20/4/96. Photo: Pearl.
After that I wrote some songs, we did a few more gigs and Miss K came aboard, making us sound ten times better overnight. I guess we're in that outsider gang tradition in rocknroll, out of time, self contained. We're not really much like a band-type band though, we don't really take our "musicianship" seriously, and it's not like we rehearse for six hours every day or share a house or anything, like the MC5 or the Monkees, but we do share a certain outlook, and we all like Blondie. We do "jam" a bit sometimes but it gets embarrassing if it goes on for more than a couple of minutes. Drag-wise we are quite individual - to the untrained eye we might be just five mad people but there are different styles and approaches and role models and everything else in the band. I can't see us in matching outfits, but maybe we could do a general look and adapt it to suit our different personalities, like the Supremes. Or Mud.
I would like a jacket with "Number One" on the back like Les Gray out of Mud wore on TOTP for "Tiger Feet" - they were a terrible band but this was their highest Pop Moment. I care about rocknroll and I care about Pop, and Pop Moments of various kinds are important to me. It's not that I like "Tiger Feet" - it's more abstract than that. At that age you don't really know - it doesn't matter what's good and bad, you just take it in and maybe you remember it and process it later; I remember Motorhead doing "Louie Louie" and just thinking they were the most horrible thing I'd ever seen, and I remember Bob Geldof tearing up a Grease poster during the intro to "Rat Trap" when it deposed "You're The One That I Want" at numero uno - with hindsight it's obvious that The Grease soundtrack is high art and the Boomtown Rats are worse than grade z shite, but Motorhead? I bought the next single shortly after, and started loving them. I'm showing my age but it truly is the Pop Moment that counts, and despite being totally rocknroll the Killaz are also totally Pop; if Andy was still alive I'm sure he would love us and probably want to produce our first album.
I think Six Inch Killaz have already had a fair number of classic Pop Moments, but without the TV cameras or paparazzi to record them they'll never reach the world via the mass media - they'll have to live on as legend or be recreated at some point in the future as in the proposed film of "Please Kill Me". We should be legends already, but we know our time is ready to be seized. The revolution will be televised.
Luis and Jasmine performing with tha Killaz @ Club Alcohol; 28/9/96.
Photo: Pearl.
What are we doing being in a band anyway? We formed on a whim, then realised it was good and carried on from there. I get really excited sometimes when I listen back to some tape or other and say to myself, 'this is fucking great!' - I mean I don't do it all the time, but sometimes.
I met Luis one night at the WayOut and he asked if I played the guitar - at first I denied it but told the truth a week later. Luis had recently discovered punk rock via Holly's Sid Vicious T-shirt and (somewhat precociously but with admirable spontaneity) wanted to form a band to enter the club's "talent search" competition a few weeks later. I went to Luis's remote suburban home with a cheap drum machine and we tried "Born To Lose", "I Don't Wanna Be Learned" (a super-primitive Ramones song) and "Way Out Was A Horse" - Luis' variation on "Belsen Was A Gas". He bought a guitar, but ended up playing the bass I bought when I was 13, which he soon lost. The next Saturday he approached Holly and asked if she wanted to sing in the un-named band - she said she couldn't sing at all but would do it if her friend could join too. So, Holly and Jasmine got a taped backing track of me playing "WayOut" in Luis' bedroom to learn the song from for the following week. They didn't like the words and wrote their own - the song became "Teenage Whores". 'You must be Mona,' they said, introducing themselves a week later. We couldn't play the song anyway in the end, because the PA was so super-tiny that it cut out every time we started to play. But it was a beginning, and our next (first) proper performance was only a week away. I think we even had a practise.
Luis, Holly and Jasmine @ Club Vaseline; 20/4/96. Photo: Pearl.
After that I wrote some songs, we did a few more gigs and Miss K came aboard, making us sound ten times better overnight. I guess we're in that outsider gang tradition in rocknroll, out of time, self contained. We're not really much like a band-type band though, we don't really take our "musicianship" seriously, and it's not like we rehearse for six hours every day or share a house or anything, like the MC5 or the Monkees, but we do share a certain outlook, and we all like Blondie. We do "jam" a bit sometimes but it gets embarrassing if it goes on for more than a couple of minutes. Drag-wise we are quite individual - to the untrained eye we might be just five mad people but there are different styles and approaches and role models and everything else in the band. I can't see us in matching outfits, but maybe we could do a general look and adapt it to suit our different personalities, like the Supremes. Or Mud.
Luis
providing backing vocals at the launch of "Planet Patrol" online
social network @ Cafe Cyberia; 31/8/95. Photo: Pearl.
I would like a jacket with "Number One" on the back like Les Gray out of Mud wore on TOTP for "Tiger Feet" - they were a terrible band but this was their highest Pop Moment. I care about rocknroll and I care about Pop, and Pop Moments of various kinds are important to me. It's not that I like "Tiger Feet" - it's more abstract than that. At that age you don't really know - it doesn't matter what's good and bad, you just take it in and maybe you remember it and process it later; I remember Motorhead doing "Louie Louie" and just thinking they were the most horrible thing I'd ever seen, and I remember Bob Geldof tearing up a Grease poster during the intro to "Rat Trap" when it deposed "You're The One That I Want" at numero uno - with hindsight it's obvious that The Grease soundtrack is high art and the Boomtown Rats are worse than grade z shite, but Motorhead? I bought the next single shortly after, and started loving them. I'm showing my age but it truly is the Pop Moment that counts, and despite being totally rocknroll the Killaz are also totally Pop; if Andy was still alive I'm sure he would love us and probably want to produce our first album.
I think Six Inch Killaz have already had a fair number of classic Pop Moments, but without the TV cameras or paparazzi to record them they'll never reach the world via the mass media - they'll have to live on as legend or be recreated at some point in the future as in the proposed film of "Please Kill Me". We should be legends already, but we know our time is ready to be seized. The revolution will be televised.
Note: when it comes to tha Killaz and how great we were, you don't just have to take Mona's word for it! Take a look at this short documentary on the group, recorded in January 1995 and first broadcast on the TV show "Shift", in which you can hear us all talk about what a great group tha Killaz were!