Pink Grease - Interview

United Kingdom | by John Bownas | 10 August 2003

Pink Grease - Staurday @ Summer Sundae

Pink Grease were lounging in he sunlight laid on by the nice hospitality people backstage at Summer Sundae, when VF accosted them and insisted on an exclusive interview with the band who had just minutes ago shown De Montfort Hall what being exciting really means.

With a dictaphone being passed quickly from hand to hand, as each of the band members wanted to have their say, it became almost impossible to extract who said what about who. What follows is therefore the collective stream of confidence that flowed from the minds and mouths of Sheffields sharpest export since the knife industry flagged and failed.

We got together in Sheffield back in about 2000. Our first band name was The Buttf*ckers, but for some reason we seemed a bit short on female fans... We changed names a few times after that, but we settled on Pink Grease after an old compilation album of Doo Wop, Garage and 50's Rock'n'Roll. Our new t-shirts are a bit of a worry. They're really bright pink...do you think that will work?

We're all British (although Steve's half Peruvian) - so we guess that the rumours about us being Yanks must come a bit from our music, and maybe something from the fact that we recorded our mini-album out in New York. Our sound really got influenced by that experience, but underneath everything we've got stuff going on that has its roots in everything from old skool Rock'n'Roll, through Led Zepplin to Ravi Shankar. We like to tell people that we're trying to be the new justin Timberlake, but they just tell us that it's not f*cking working... There's been a fair few fans who've likened us to The Cramps, but to be honest none of us had actually heard any of their stuff until someone made the connection. We've checked them out since, and it's weird how people are right about that one.

Playing here has been great. It's one of the biggest stages we've been on, and we're usually banging into each other and really getting into a mess. Those little sweaty venues are a great way to experience us though - we're a really concentrated ball of energy messily spurting everywhere. Of course that said about this gig, we still got on top of each other, and when Stu thought it would be funny to kick Rory in the arse he really did nearly fall of the stage on his face. Stu's usually the one to hurt himself though - he's been known to try tightrope walking the barrier in high heels and he recently nearly broke his back when he landed on a monitor after a bad stage dive. Luckily we've broken more hearts than bones recently...

We're really chuffed to have our record deal signed up with Mute. We just hope that the other seven labels who've gven us advances won't catch on, or we'll be the biggest undercover band in Mexico soon. The new album hasn't got a title yet, but it definitely won't be called Dude. It should be out next year, and we're really excited about some of the new songs that should be on it.

We've grown to love the internet, and our website - www.pinkgrease.co.uk - is a big part of our marketing these days...although Stu seems to just want to use the chatroom to meet potentially like-minded lovers. The 'net is great, 'cos if nothing else it means that nobody has any excuse to be lonely anymore.

What's our favourite colour? Jelly!

You can check out a free Pink Grease MP3 at:-

http://www.pinkgrease.co.uk/music/working_all_day.mp3