I arrive early to the interview with two of the four members of They Came From The Stars (I Saw Them) and sit down in the drearily urine smelling back room of the Rochester in Stoke Newington. Horton Jupiter, the founding member of TCFTSIST, appears shortly after me in characteristic bounce and verve and sits down to tell me that the girl he’s come with is not Naomi Auerfeld, the other member of TCFTSIST I’m expecting, but a film maker.
BCR: Is this the Vice Magazine Day In The Life day?
Horton Jupiter: Nope, no, the Vice thing is happening on the 20th, the day of our Big City Redneck gig. Their plan at the moment is quite amusing because they’ve chosen to put us in the fashion issue. Which is weird because we’re the most uninterested and unfashionable band imaginable.
BCR: Those do tend to be the ones that cause fashions although I don’t see too many people wondering around in white smocks anytime soon. Would you like to see that happen?
Horton Jupiter: No, because it happened before. We used to wear more quasi-religious white gear. We’re quite glamorous now. It used to be more robe-y and like bad charity-shop Sun Ra. We were doing that for a few years and then The Polyphonic Spree happened and everyone was like, “oh, you just want to be like the polyphonic Spree, blah blah Polyphonic Spree”. They look good and they’re great live but I don’t really want to be compared to them. When people say that you’re tagging onto someone else’s coat tails when you’re always striving to be just yourself.
BCR: Especially when you’ve been around for quite a bit longer.
Horton Jupiter: Well, when a large part of your artistic endeavour is to attempt to be like nothing else and to forge ahead and to connect with yourself rather than this horrible modern malaise of picking a bit of this and a bit of that and saying “oh yeah, we’re a trip hop Coldplay meets the Stooges”. People are creatures of habit and familiarity.
BCR: You haven’t had too much of that over the years have you?
Horton Jupiter: Ergh… the one band that gets mentioned time and time again, usually by old hippies, is Gong. That’s really quite a thrill for us because we all really hate Gong. It’s horrible English prog with a nasty light funk thing, and loads of giggly voices going “we’re all fairies”. There’s some of it that I really like because their live shows were quite anarchic and so are ours. But it’s quite exciting to be compared to a band that nobody likes. To me, it’s a much bigger ego thrill to be compared to someone you hate because you it means you haven’t attempted to be like anyone. I always mention the Stooges at this point because I absolutely worship the Stooges but I haven’t any inclination to be anything like them. Except that they were very original and very joyful and very… wild. But I don’t want to turn all the clichés up to eleven and go “whoa! I’ve got an American accent even though I’m from Chesterfield! Yeah! Rah!” It’s not very good is it?
BCR: No, not really what you’re looking for… I watched Boomtown , your music video with Kevin Rowland [of Dexys Midnight Runners], today and I really liked the attack on this NME type repetition…
Horton Jupiter: If you go to myspace.com/therealityuk we made some….
BCR: Did you make a whole new persona for the band in the video?
Horton Jupiter: Yeah, their album’s called Use Your Imagination feat the hit single Use Your Imagination. We had an absolutely classic shot of the four of us leaning against this toilet wall and sneering. All looking pissed off.
BCR: Do you see yourself as an antithesis or ointment to that sort of thing?
Horton Jupiter: Oh yes. We’re very punk. Many of the reasons I originally formed the band was because there was as much anti going on as there was pro. We’re very pro-joy, pro-life – not in that way! – pro-imagination. But also very anti… you name it. Why do they bother? You don’t even have to name any names do you? It’s fast money music. To quote Suicide .
BCR: It’s getting harder and harder to cut the wheat from the chaff, to find anything with any real substance or difference. It all seems so derivative.
Horton Jupiter: Yeah, a lot of the time you miss good things. I’ve definitely missed good things because… I think there are people who arrive at very true representations of themselves, who really want to make things of great value but it just so happens that their methods are very traditional so you look at them and go, ergh, go away.
BCR: Like who?
Horton Jupiter: Ok, I don’t want to say anyone ‘cos you’ll print it. Ok, Arctic Monkeys right? Case in point. The rest of the band think it’s crap. When I first heard them I just thought, “NME band” and couldn’t give a toss. Bound to be shit. But the singer Alex is great. He’s a brilliant lyricist. He’s very direct. It’s not like flouncey poetry. But they’re hardly breaking any new possibilities or creating new worlds. And they’re not trying to. But as a vehicle for somebody who’s a really good lyricist... But then there are others like… Lawrence, who used to do Felt and then Denim and now he does Go Kart Mozart, musically it’s very deliberately derivative of the worst excesses of the blandest bits of the 1970s.
BCR: Ironically? Mockingly?
