Fight Like Apes Talk Mandela and Manginas
Psychedelic Irish band, ‘Fight Like Apes’ descended upon Glasgow’s King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in order to abuse their instruments, whip their hair and play a down right trippy gig. StudentPunch met up with lead singer Mary Jane and the boys to discuss what concoction of influences and experiences that combine to create their unique brand of music, with the conclusion being everything from Nelson Mandela to men who proudly parade their manginas......
‘Fight like Apes’ is a great name, how did you come up with it?
MJ: Well, Conor here used to be in a band a few years ago and they were going to call themselves ‘Fight Like Apes’, then they decided not to so we just stole it. Nah, it’s from ‘Planet of The Apes’, the best line in one of the worst movies you’ll ever see.
You’ve toured with some massive names such as ‘Kasabian’ and ‘The Prodigy’, how did you find that?
Well, they’re two interesting ones to pick, touring with other bands have been better. I don’t think their crowds really warmed to us, we’re different from the type of music that their fans like. Things were even thrown but that could have been an accident, could have been a slippy hand problem. We toured with the ‘Ting Tings’ and they had a really fun, young crowd. Kids don’t know whether things are good are bad, they just fucking love buying t-shirts.
After just finishing an Irish tour, and beginning on this UK tour, you must get a bit exhausted, what do you like to do in your down time?
We play X-box a lot, Playstation, yeah and we…build cars and drive dirt bikes.
You recently played at Dublin’s Trinity Ball alongside acts such as Jessie J who spoke out about the level of drunkenness in the crowd, what do you think of your fan base and the crowds that come to see your shows?
They’re great craic, they’re good fun. I think the Trinity Ball was a strange one like, because everyone was hammered but because they were all wearing ball gowns it all looked a bit more harsh. But yeah, if she didn’t like that she’s not going to enjoy Oxygen. Our fan base is mainly eighteen year old girls and forty year old men, it’s a dangerous combination. Yeah we have a great following and we’ll see tonight what Glasgow thinks of us.
How do you feel that your new album ‘The Body of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner’ follows up your debut album ‘Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion’?
Yeah, we love it, it sounds really different from the first album. It’s probably a lot more sinister yet vulnerable, full of tales of love and loss and everything else in between. Lots of chivalry.
The Irish Times named you the fourth best contemporary Irish musical act below Cathy Davey, Jape and David Holmes, why do you feel that the public have been so receptive of your music?
We don’t know. I guess there just aren’t many bands, or that we’re the best band. They’re just hearing that power emanating out of our music on a daily basis. Lee’s very good on the drums, that’s probably one of the main attractions.
Your music videos are always fun and psychedelic, perfectly aligning with your music, where do you come up with the concepts for them?
We have a game that we came up with in Lee’s gaff, one person says one word and another says the next. Sometimes we just pick words out of magazines and work with that. In the cheese rolling video it was supposed to actually be chess rolling but we didn’t have the budget. We film all the videos in lee’s back garden, it’s massive.
How would you sum up your music in three words?
(Massively breaking the three word question rule)Really fucking good. Very, very, good. Inspiring, intelligent, skeletons. Thoughtful, genial, cryptic. Cryptic yet open. Cryptic yet transparent.
What would you say are the main influences on your music and what musicians do you look up to?
I’m a big fan of Kanye West, Korn, The Deftones. The Kaiser Chiefs love us though, oh, and we’re very big in Japan, yeah, they’re tiny over there. Nelson Mandela, he’s generally very inspiring, and he’s not lazy. He’s just a total man, and I love that he hasn’t let any of his fame go to his head. He’s going around just like he was when he was a young lad.
You have kicked out at the industry in many ways such as with your long titles and creation of your own genre ‘karate rock’, what do you think of the current music scene and how do you feel that your sound fits into it?
Yeah, the music scene’s definitely getting a lot better in Ireland, it was pretty grim there for a while, Westlife were about the height of it. Over here there are a lot of men in suits in the industry, with pointy shoes and top buttons closed. It all looks very uncomfortable. They must all be working day jobs and coming straight from work to play gigs.
(Que the band’s subtle attempt to turn the interview on me with questions such as ‘Who would play you in a movie of your life?’, ‘Would you let your best friend date Snookie?’ and ‘Do you think your hair has held you back gymnastically?’)
You are known as an electric live band with NME even calling you ‘the rowdiest live band in the world’, what’s the weirdest thing that’s happened during a gig?
Tom scored a bird on stage, oh and at another gig someone requested MGMT ‘Kids’ so that was a bit weird, lord knows what he was on. In Wales one time a naked man started hugging me, then he made a mangina, it was all a bit odd.
Mary Jane, you have been compared to the likes of Debbie Harry, who are your style role models?
Siouxsie Sioux, a bit by accident. I don’t really have conscious icons. Pockets – we pick all of our own dresses.
You’re playing at Glastonbury, Oxygen and Latitude festivals this year, what bands are you looking forward to seeing and are you fans of festivals in general?
Festival season’s the best, Cliff Richard’s playing Latitude. Michael Jackson’s doing Glastonbury. We’re really looking forward to seeing Jeff Buckley and The Magnetic Zeros. One thing that we should do more of is to go and see bands on the small stages that we don’t know.
The band's second album 'The Body of Christ and the Legs of Tina Turner' is available now.
Caroline Gauley
