Done Lying Down were a band that I loved back in the mid 90’s. With their punk rock stylings they really hit the right note with me. I still regard their debut album “John Austin Routledge” as a firm favourite. When I realised the band were playing live again (even if it’s a one off!), the chance to have a chat to them was too good to miss…
Hi chaps, cheers for chatting with us much appreciated. So you have a one off show coming up, will there be much chance to rehearse with the band beforehand at all? Or are you all just so professional it’ll be a seamless transition?
Glenn: We hope to get in a couple of rehearsals if we can, but it’s not a big issue. Jeremy doesn’t need to remember lyrics as he depends on the audience if he forgets the words.
Jeremy: In theory we’re each relearning our parts independently in our separate countries. (Ali Mac lives in Denmark now, and I’m based in New York.) Last time we tried this it worked out great, and everything just came back as if we’d just finished a tour the week before.
James: We also had a band practice on Skype. We made it through half a song but the time delay made it pretty hard to stay in time. It was interesting though. Kinda free form. I think it was art:
AliMac: We certainly aren’t particularly professional. I probably haven’t picked up a bass guitar in a couple of years. It’s amazing how muscle memory works with songs that are 20 years old though.
So what’s with the reunion show? How did it come about?
Glenn: we don’t like to think of the show as a reunion as we have never split up. James once pointed out that we’re just on a very slow tour!
Jeremy: I was surprised to learn that we haven’t played a show in about five years! Time flies when you’re doing other stuff! Usually, the rest of the band hassle me to book a trip to London, and we book a show around that trip. This time, with Ali Mac living in Denmark, it had as much to do with his schedule and availability. Based on when he could make the trip AND when I could make the trip, we hashed out some dates, then drummer extraordinaire James Sherry set about finding a venue, booking the date and promoting the gig. So James kind of makes it happen.
James: It’s true. I did.
AliMac: I like to think of this as our 2013 world tour. We should do some T-shirts with just the one date on the back.
And I presume it’s the original line up yeah?
Glenn: Absolutely original line up that everyone is familiar with!
Jeremy: Yup.
You put a couple of albums out in the mid 90’s and a load of EP’s. Will this show feature the older stuff only? Or is there going to be some new stuff mixed in?
Jeremy: This show will feature the original material. I’m always concerned that the older stuff will sound dated, but I think we avoided a lot of the 90s cliches, and kind of have our own thing going on. Over the years I’ve heard some or our musical ideas appearing in other bands’ material. That’s both encouraging and frustrating. On the one hand, you’re like “hey! That was our idea!” On the other hand you’re like, “That must have been a good idea if someone else is doing it too.” So, to answer your question, it’ll be material that was all written during the most active period of the band, 1994 – 1997, but will also include songs that didn’t appear on the albums and EPs. There were some songs we only ever played live.
What are you expecting the show to be like?
Glenn: I expect the audience will be full of people who we know from when we were regularly touring. It’s a bit like doing a show for all your friends which is what we’re basically doing to catch up with old friends… Can’t wait!
Jeremy: I think it’ll be a lot of fun. We haven’t played together in ages, and for us it’s what we love to do. It’s a real treat to be able to snap into this role of band member and suddenly you’re in a band you love, that you almost forgot you were in. Does that make sense?
James: It’s hard to imagine but when we were originally together the internet was in its infancy but these days with social networking etc, it’s far easier to stay in touch with the people that like our band. We’re Facebook friends with a lot of the main people that used to come and see us back then so it’s easy to contact them all in one go and let them know about the show. It’s a great excuse to see old friends and rock the fuck out! The first time we did it was in 2006 – prior to that our last gig had been in 1997 at The Garage. In 2006 we played at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town and it was so much fun to play again after a nearly ten year gap. All the fun, memories and music came rushing back and we had a ball. After that we played again in 2007 and then twice in 2008. Like I said, it’s just a very slow tour.
AliMac: I expect too that it’ll mostly be a sea of familiar (positively middle-aged) faces. But it’s kinda interesting meeting the odd slightly younger fan who was really inspired by us back in the day, but wasn’t old enough to come and see us play live. Especially interesting because we didn’t take ourselves particularly seriously most of the time.
I don’t want to spoil it, but answer me one thing…. Can we expect to hear “!$%*X? (Or Something)”?
Glenn: Mmmmm how does that one go again? 😉
Jeremy: Haha! Good question, Franko! Let me just say this: “You never thought I’d be the one to let you down.”
Why did the band call it a day in 97?
Glenn: We all needed to get jobs and a life! But hey we never called it a day did we!!!
Jeremy: Heck no! We’re still very much active. Like an active volcano is active. Like a glacier is active. We’ve been working on a video for our latest track – it’s a fast motion video comprised of a series of photos of the band members taken once a day for the past 20 years. It’s coming out really well so far. It should take about another ten years to get the rest of the footage through the end of the fadeout. Once we finish that video, we’ll get back to our normal touring schedule. It was a really ambitious project. In retrospect maybe we should have just done a lip synch.
AliMac: I’d love it if we could all get together again for a few weeks to write and record another album. I’d imagine that the results would make very interesting listening for us all.
I have a rough idea what you’ve been up to since then, but have you played in any other bands along the way?
Glenn: We all have played in other bands in some form or another and regularly contribute to each other’s musical projects enthusiastically! For instance only last night I put a bit of guitar onto a song that Jeremy was working on and with the power of the internet it’s done within an hour between the US and UK. Back in the day when we were in separate countries it was bass, guitar and drums on a cassette and snail mail to be vocalised!
Jeremy: I don’t think any of us stopped making music. Every time someone visits me in New York we bust out the recording gear and create something. I guess it’s like if you get together with old fishing buddies, you go fishing. When you get together with old music buddies you make music. Most of the stuff we’ve recorded isn’t released publicly, but there have been a few projects that we’ve been involved with that have surfaced. Most notably, I’d like to mention James’ band “K-Line”. They were awesome! My current band, Control Group is OK. (controlgroupmusic.com)
Glenn: Apparently I’m a member of Ambush at Junction Rock which is indeed an honour!
James: I’ll play drums for anyone that asks me really. I’m a total drum slut.
AliMac: I’m totally loyal to DLD personally. Except when I’m not.
What have you all been doing in the meantime?
Glenn: These days I like to stick needles into old people and take their blood! (I’m in District Nursing as a Senior Phlebotomy Specialist and trainer) I’m also involved in Wound care in elderly who are housebound.
Jeremy: I learned how to program computers. I did music technology stuff at a company called Cakewalk. Then I got into video games making Rock Band® games at a company called Harmonix. When I moved from Boston to New York I joined a company called OMGPOP and made a game called “Draw Something”. I’ve been really lucky to be involved with really talented people, starting with the Done Lying Down crew! ( I should mention that Done Lying Down is available for download in Rock Band games: http://www.rockband.com/songs/artists/Done+Lying+Down)
James: I work in music still, running a promotions company with the legend that is Zac Leeks (his vocals feature on the song ‘Song For Freeloaders’ on the ‘Kontrapunkt’ album!) We look after press for bands such as Gallows, Converge, Enter Shikari, Pulled Apart By Horses and many more. I’ve been doing that now for ten years and we’re still going strong. Before that I used to be a music critic for Kerrang! and Metal Hammer and others but I’m ok now.
AliMac: Went into software development and management for printing and then professional broadcast equipment. Now I’m working as an engineer for DR (the Danish equivalent of the BBC) using a lot of the equipment that I developed back in the UK. I am also close to finishing a new software product with an ex-colleague for enhancing stereo signals. Could become very important within the recording industry. http://richardbrice.net/francinstien_intro.htm
Which bands would you say influenced your sound?
Glenn: Definitely the Dumfukadoodumdums where a major influence on our style and sound. Major feedback artists they were, or still are?
Jeremy: Yeah we stole a lot of our sound from the Dumfukadoodumdums. It’s too bad they didn’t go further. I would have thought they would be the band people remember from the 90s. For my own part, when I listen to our stuff I can remember where each stolen idea came from. Artists like Sade, They Might Be Giants, the “My Fair Lady” soundtrack…etc. Seriously. Our sound and style came from bands like Fugazi, Shellac, Girls Against Boys, and other Sub Pop or Touch and Go artists, but if you steal ideas from that stuff, then it doesn’t sound original. Steal an idea from Sade and it’s going to sound totally unique. I’m not saying we stole all our ideas, of course. We came up with a bunch of crazy stuff on our own. But the ideas we stole came from FAAAR away.
AliMac: I think I decided I would to play guitar in a band after seeing T-Rex on TOTP. As a kid in the 70s I just loved Queen, but was also big into Bowie, Led Zep, and the power and simplicity of punk rock when it came along. In the 80s I got into U2, The Smiths, The Cure, REM and probably a quite lot of dodgy shit that’s best forgotten now. There was tonnes of other stuff obviously, but it’s a long time ago and the memory fades. I remember discovering Pixies at University after which began my love of American punk rock.
I have vague memories of seeing you guys play with maybe The Wonder Stuff or Ned’s Atomic Dustbin? Help me out here, did you play with those bands back in the day?
Glenn: We deny everything!
Jeremy: Hahaha! Guilty as charged. On both counts.
James: We were victims of the 90s.
AliMac: I remember we were rather split on whether to play with Neds. We did get to meet Baby Chaos who were well cool (gym-nasties anyone), and John Fatbeast ended up crashing at my flat and nearly crushing Ben Drakeford to death in his sleep. So it wasn’t all bad.
Who stood out as being the best and worst bands you played shows with?
Glenn: This is a difficult one as the worst bands far outstripped the best. We used to have a list of bands that we would invite to play an imaginary festival called the Suckfest! The list was written on our tour bus (the moonbus) wall and the list just got bigger and bigger, in fact we may have had to get a bigger bus! The best include Compulsion, Chumbawamba, Latimer, Killdozer, Sonar Nation… We actually got banned from playing with Sonar Nation (label mates) as we tended to over do it on the silliness and drunken antics front (like trashing dressing rooms, food fights, tour van surfing, and onstage beer drinking contests).
Jeremy: I don’t recall the Suckfest lineup, but I remember it took up most of the ceiling of the van.
Glenn: Dodgy were the headliners!
Jeremy: haha! Oh yeah! And I think a couple of our manager’s other bands made the bill too 🙂 I think you nailed the “best of” list there, Glenn. Other fun bands were Zimmerframes, Huge Baby… I think James really liked a band called Wormturf. James: Dude, Wormturf rocked!!
Glenn: Hey not forgetting The Boys Girls Against!!! Yes GVsBs rocked when we played with them, cool guys.
AliMac: And we also got to play with John Spencer, Killdozer, The Damned and The Misfits. Technically we also played with Shellac at a The Phoenix festival. Same stage, same day counts, right? Best tour was a month around Europe with Chumbawamba.
How about venues, what were your favourites to have played?
Glenn: I always particularly enjoyed playing at the sadly much missed Duchess of York in Leeds, The Garage in Highbury, I enjoyed most of the mainland Europe venues. The cool thing about a lot of the venues we played is that when we returned there it was always good to see faces that regularly came to see the band and catching up with them. We had this guy Andy who followed the band around on one particular tour and he just appeared at a gig every night, so we just had to ask him where you at the venue last night. We got to know him quite well and he ended up coming with us in the moonbus for the rest of the tour. Wonder what he’s up to now huh? Andy Dixon was his name, must FB him up. We used to pick up hitch hikers on the way to venues and they would usually be going to see DLD that night, if not they were invited to the gig, came, and became friends. Some of those people will be at the gig on the 9th.
AliMac: We virtually lived in The George Robey for a year, rehearsing and playing with bands like Huge Baby and Sonar Nation. I was particularly fond of the toilet in Camden (crap, what’s it called now) where I first met Jeremy and Glenn when they were playing as a three-piece with Glenn on bass – (a week later I was in the band). We played there quite a lot, and Jeremy used to pull stunts like chugging a bottle of whiskey and then flobbing up on the ceiling so that it would drop down on top of my hat. Great days!
You managed to record for John Peel, how was that?
Jeremy: That was awesome every time. #1 it was an honour to record for John Peel. Probably the highest honour we ever received. #2 you get to record in an amazing studio. It’s the friggin’ BBC!! They had a massive closet full of every kind of mic you can imagine! The rooms were incredible! The gear was unbelievable! #3 you get paid for it! When you’re playing original rock music you never get paid for anything. But they pay you BY THE HOUR for playing your own songs! How awesome is that?!? Oh, and #4 then it gets played on the radio. On NATIONAL RADIO! *YOUR* songs getting played on *NATIONAL RADIO*!! …and they pay you for THAT! So yeah, I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Thank you John Peel wherever you are now.
Glenn: I do not disagree!
James: I think of everything we did, the fact that Peel liked us is what I’m most proud of. He was amazing. Let’s face it, without him there would be NOTHING.
AliMac: Ditto to all the above. Top man, much missed.
Is there much in the unreleased back catalogue that could still see the light of day?
Jeremy: Good lord, yes. I think the last four track tape we recorded was the best collection of tunes we ever recorded. We rented a place in the middle of nowhere in Wales and went out there for a week to write and record. Those songs are some of the most original, catchiest, most emotive, most fun tracks we ever wrote. There are some duds in the collection, but there are definitely some gems. We may need to re-record them if we were going to do a proper release, or we could release the lo-fi demos. I’m not sure. Then again, if we had the time and the opportunity we could write new stuff. I think that would be more exciting.
AliMac: Llanbedrock! We played that whole tape from Wales to Garret Lee (what’s off of Compulsion) and he fucking loved it. Wonder what he ever did with his career since? 🙂
What’s your biggest regret about your time in Done Lying Down?
Glenn: Not having the IT technology that we have at our disposal now. Can you imagine we would be able to text each other in the back of the tour bus ;-). I would love to have had an iPad or something back in the day!!! Not having the scope for fun and IT related mischief is always regrettable. Writing songs on the road would have been much easier although it was great fun doing it the way we did then on 4-track cassette sometimes pulling into a layby on the road somewhere and setting up the drum kit and recording drums for a tune and guitaring it up on the rest of the way to a gig. As a matter of a fact we had our equipment set up in the back of the moonbus for that inspirational on the road song idea moment. I have a pic of that set up somewhere and will post it on FB if I can find it, it could already be up there on one of our band members timelines?
Jeremy: I regret the artwork on the John Austin Rutledge Album, and some of the mixes on that disc. Like you’re saying, Glenn, if we had the technology back then we could have spent more time getting the artwork right, and perfecting the mixes. At the time we were spending loads of money by the hour for a studio that we weren’t familiar with. I was choosing reverbs on a machine I had never heard before, and using compressors I didn’t really know, listening on monitors I wasn’t familiar with. Some of those mixes really didn’t do the songs justice. And the artwork was atrocious. I apologize for all of that.
James: Like anything that’s fun, when you look back on it you wish it had gone on longer. At the time, real life was starting to take over and it was obvious we were not going to be able to make a living from the band and had probably got as big as we were going to get. We’d managed to do the band full time – from 93 – 96 we put out a bunch of EPs, two albums, wrote and recorded tons of songs, toured all over the UK and Europe, went to America, did more than I ever expected us to do. Yes, it would have been great to make a 3rd album but on the whole, I’m really happy with everything we did. We’ve all remained good friends and I look back on those days with so much fondness – we had a blast. I couldn’t have asked to be in a more rocking, fun band and play with a better bunch of people. We always had fun, there were very few bad times. We took great pride in what we did but we also stopped ourselves from taking it too seriously. The emphasis was always on FUN. I love them DLD guys.
AliMac: No regrets. Those guys are still my best mates despite living in a different country and only getting together once a year or so for some proper banter. There was a time after we stopped, sorry… slowed down, when there was a large tinge of sadness that we had let such a great part of our lives go. But that is totally inevitable when you manage to pack such a lot of fun into such a short time period.
Are there any plans after the show for the band?
Jeremy: The short answer is “no”. We’re taking it a day at a time. Personally, I’d love to record a new album, but I know the other guys have a lot of stuff going on. I’m not sure when we would get to do it. Me and Glenn just finished a collection of tunes where he recorded all the music at home and sent me the instrument tracks to overdub vocals on. That was really fun.
Glenn: A nice cup of tea anyone?
Jeremy: I have to go pick up my food from the “Community Supported Agriculture” place. Thanks anyway. Are you having a cup of tea?
Glenn: How Rude!
Jeremy: Why is that rude? (You cunt!)
AliMac: I just bought a house with a basement. So we finally have a permanent space for DLD to write and record. Just 20 years late, but better late than never!
These days bands rely on the internet a whole lot, is there anywhere for people to still check out your material online?
Jeremy: Glenn, you want to post a couple of URLs or summit? We should make a Facebook page for the band or something. I think we have a MySpace page, right? https://myspace.com/donelyingdown/music/songs Do we have a YouTube channel?
Glenn: There is www.donelyingdown.com although that probably needs to be updated although I think it still looks cool? There is lots of stuff up YouTube, lot’s of crap too 😉 We should definitely put some new tunes up on site some time?
Jeremy: Do we have a Friendster account? Hahaha!
Which bands do you recommend people check out currently?
Jeremy: Personally, I really like Speedy Ortiz. They sound like Tanya Donelly singing for Helium. Also Tame Impala – new retro psych from Australia. And I’m in love with a Connecticut band called Ovlov, but mostly because their band name is the name of Done Lying Down side-project VOLVO spelled backwards.
Glenn: Check out Ambush at Junction Rock, a band that hails from the Boston/Northampton area, (where J Mascis hails from) they rock!
James: Check out Baby Godzilla. They’re totally nuts.
AliMac: One of the last gigs I went to see was Dead Kennedys. Stupidly went to work the next day after hanging out with Irish Mark. Wasn’t pretty. I’d thoroughly recommend them circa 1980.
And finally, if you could have one band reform for a show, who would it be and why?
Jeremy: I’d love to see a band called Slurp reform and play a show because 1: I love their album 2: I have a feeling they would put on a show in my living room because nobody else knows who they are and they wouldn’t be able to book a venue. So then I could do interpretive dance while they played, and writhe around on my couch without having to make an ass of myself in public. Maybe they’d even let me join in and sing backup or something.
Glenn: I’d like to see the Dumfukadoodumdums reform, or perhaps they are still together?
James: Oh my, Slurp were amazing! I’d love to see Brainiac again. They were incredible. The death of their singer Tim in ‘97 was a total tragedy. They were destined for such great things.
AliMac: Spor X7 did a great version of ‘(This is Not a) Love Song’, but I’d probably prefer to see a full set by either 18th Dye or Oingo Boingo. Right, I’m off to bed to listen to ‘Classic Rock’ by Slurp. Didn’t their singer keep phoning you up at weird times during the night James?
Thanks for chatting to us chaps, we’ll see you at the show, good luck!!!
Jeremy: Thanks for letting us talk about ourselves!! 🙂
Glenn: Yeah thanks and make sure you come and say hi at the show.
James: Avit!
AliMac: Large. Laters!
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