Alan wanted the sleeve notes. You get a deluxe service on this site my friends The first mention of the Dubious Brothers was as an “in joke” on the sleeve notes of the first record on which Dave Bird and I ever played. “Empty Rooms and Echoes” by Promises Promises was an eighties alternative dance synthpop disaster released on my bedroom label Fend For Yourself in 1984. It failed to set the charts alight. In fact it would have struggled to set firelighters alight. The band broke up soon after and I, in my arty youthful “let’s change the face of music” whimsy, decided that bands made up of human beings were not for me any more and formed the Third Spiritual Foundation. The live act consisted of just me on guitar and vocals together with two rescued shop dummies on bass and drums respectively. The songs still had an eighties synth flavour but the shoots of what would become the Dubious Brothers stage spectacular had begun to poke through. Virtually every band I was seeing on the live circuit at the time consisted of moody young men looking miserable, standing still then announcing the next song with barely any acknowledgment of the audience. After while I just found it funny and could never understand why A and R men were not saying “hang on, this band are just like the last lot that were on”, instead of falling over themselves to sign them This was C60 time and if you played more than two chords in a song, then the indie police would come round and beat those major sevenths out of you with a tin of black hair dye). They were all getting signed and I wasn’t. Probably because I would convince myself I was doing something different, whilst half-heartedly trying to copy them to get a deal. But my heart was never in it. Very few bands inspired me live. Only the Tubes, who were the greatest theatrical rock band of all, and The Cardiacs were in the same field of vision. I began the Third Spiritual Foundation show sitting behind a desk while making 1920s Gaumont News style announcements, before strumming along to pre-recorded backing tapes. I would have conversations with tape recorders and recite strange little suburban tales in between songs as the character Mr. Rush Hour. Soon, I began to realize that with the whole band on backing tape this was almost karaoke, so I roped Dave back in and coerced him into playing keyboards but I neither had any success in persuading him to eat various passages of the bible after I had read them to the audience: nor would he eat a rose. So much for art. That was the Third Spiritual Foundation. We were actually quite good, but management and record company interest came and went and I wanted to expand the stage show. Dominic Matthews joined in late 1985. After batting round a few names, we decided on the Dubious Brothers because we could not think of anything else. It originated from an urban myth I had heard that Stevø, Marc Almond’s manager (I never got round to asking him if it was true) often attended record company meetings with a little electronic box. Instead of speaking I heard he would answer using the box, which displayed screen options such as “Yes” “No” and “A Bit Dubious”. So there were the Dubious Brothers. We were never a Doobie Brothers tribute band. I never even made the connection. Our first gig was at the Riverside Club in Fetcham, the spiritual home to all the local Surrey bands, on February 16 1986. I played guitar, Dave Bird, keyboards and Dominic played the bass. The Drums were provided by the trusty TR707 drum machine. Our two shop dummies provided silent but eye-catching accompaniment. Gigs followed sporadically, including a support slot to the Cardiacs at the Marquee. The theatrics were increasing but we were still, in essence, a synthpop band. I would tell little stories in between songs, believing I was being deep however; I could not get the balance right. I thoughts about surreal and disturbing subjects but people watching thought it was a bad attempt at stand-up comedy. I was not brave enough to let the material stand on its own without putting a gag in. Gradually, after making a couple of forgettable demos that were swiftly set back by record companies (most of which were un-rewound so we knew exactly how far into the demo they had listened-sometimes as much as thirty seconds) I began to get more and more fed up with pop music: even more so with songs about love. We decided to release a single ourselves. It was called “Don’t Laugh At Me” and some people liked it. It was a half Prokofiev half pop tune about anxiety, and although it did not get there entirely it marked the beginning of a rejection of modern pop in favour of the ancient. Geoff Davies of Probe Plus in Liverpool (the home of Half Man Half Biscuit) liked it enough to agree to distribute it via the Cartel and I saw it in its own compartment at Virgin records in Oxford Street. I cried. Unfortunately it had a marker on it saying don’t order any more. I was crestfallen but I scrubbed that out and put “order twenty more”. I don’t think they fell for it. The Don’t Laugh At Me Tour consisted of 21 gigs all around the country. As well as our own shows at Universities we supported acts like The Sweet , The Shamen and Robyn Hitchcock. We went on before the Guana Batz at Bath University and were so scared of the audience after four songs we ran off stage into the van and drove off without asking for our money, which was, as usual, less than it had cost us in petrol to get there. After deciding that I was never going to write another love song again, we released “South America Welcomes The Nazis” on 12 inch in 1987.This was a swinging attack on South America’s predilection for protecting escaping Nazis with a sly dig at Kurt Waldheim. It was pure 1930s (albeit with sampled brass and a drum machine). It caused a bit of a fuss and did quite well in France, but the great moment came when we arrived at a gig in Liverpool to be told that John Peel had been playing it all week on his Radio 1 show. That’s when I knew what I wanted to do. Reject pop and rock and love songs and write old-fashioned pre-rock and roll songs with modern biting words. I was now buying LPs of Victorian music boxes and “greatest hits of the 1920s” type compilations. I would only listen to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Oliver, Bed knobs and Broomsticks and other musicals that had no bearing in rock and/or roll. I was obsessively watching carry on films distilling every drop of British seaside humour and began to write the lyrics to an album all about the peculiarities of being English. Dominic and Dave were both somewhat cautious although they came up with some brilliant ideas and we began recording what would be the debut Dubious Brothers album in, of all places, my bedroom. That is why on some tracks the recording quality is not the greatest. I had a cheap12 channel mixer that picked up a local cab firm, so had to record on their quiet days. I remember a beautiful and confused session violin player, Susan Early playing haunting and astonishing parts that made the album. In the end I bottled the pre-war concept and with the limited technology available and no drummer, some modernism crept in but I was thrilled with the diy album that emerged. Even the sleeve notes were written in tippex. The cover shots were of us playing in a TV studio and grabs from footage from the Christmas Island nuclear tests in the fifties (the subject of “Brittania’s Grand Machine”) a theme that fitted in with the sense of English decay I was trying to convey. Excitedly, I planned our tour later that year to promote the album (which Geoff of Probe agreed to distribute once again). This time I wanted to go further. Onstage I wanted backing singers and Heath Robinson style machinery and experiments going in the background, like Caractacus Potts’ laboratory or Rod Taylor’s Time Machine. There was one small hitch. Dom decided that this was not really for him and told me he was leaving. It was perfectly amicable but we could not agree on my hypothesis that all modern music had no relevance. Sometime afterwards Dave said he was off too. We played our last gig together in July 1987 and shortly after they formed a band together called Canoe. This left me in somewhat of a fix. I was about to book tour dates and had no band. I thought about going out alone again, but the thought of driving up and down the M1 next to a couple of shop dummies was not edifying. There seemed to be only one option. I had seen a great jazzy swingy pop band called Line Design at the Riverside Club years earlier. They used to sell out every gig and were often supported by an unknown band four piece from Hull called The Housemartins. Line Design had since split up and they were all in sensible jobs. Their guitarist Dave O’Brien was possibly the best guitarist I had ever seen and I decided that he had to be in the band or it was me and the mannequins in a transit. I didn’t have his number but Epsom is a small place. I was given the number of Steve Williams, Line Design’s drummer. When I rang to get Steve’s number, he asked whether I needed a percussionist. Yadda Yadda Yadda, several months later we had booked a rehearsal studio in Waterloo for the dress rehearsal for our first gig in Hull in October 1987. The album had come out that week to rave reviews. Seriously. Sounds gave it five stars. Paul Mathur’s payoff in the Melody Maker was “Luvverly”. We had a full-page interview in Sounds and another in Melody Maker and were on our way. At one of the first band meetings I set out what I wanted to do. “Dave, you are going to be dressed as an undertaker and won’t move during the set.” “Er..Ok”. Steve? “I’ve got my Dad’s RAF uniform”. What I really wanted was a contraption of some kind. So, later on in the tour, Steve built one. A bicycle with vertical wheels that span in opposite directions and an umbrella that went up and down. Perfect. “So who are going to be the surgeons”? ”Pardon” “You know, the surgeons, I want the roadies to be dressed as surgeons and be part of the show. I’ve been to Lawrence Corner and bought the outfits”. “Er..Ok”. So were born “The Surgeons”, a series of mates (having roadies was an unfilled fantasy) Alan, two Simons, Graham, Lanky and many more (including, later, Dave Bird) who as grotesque parodies of the medical profession terrified the audience by jumping into the moshpit and Greek dancing with them. They often emerged sans gowns. The musical line up as me on vocals, Dave on guitar and Steve on percussion. In those days were relied on backing tapes to boost the sound because we couldn’t afford three keyboard players. We toured to mixed crowds and a very mixed response. In some places Warwick University and Colchester, it was like being genuine pop stars, but others it was a continual struggle. We played to two people in Nottingham. We had to do the show because we had nowhere to stay. We never did. It was an extraordinary mixture of lack of planning, poverty and mindless optimism. Someone always took us. We also had a manager. Nigel Morton, who also managed New Model Army. Earlier in his career, he had turned down a chance to manage a band called the Invaders who later became Madness and thought we might be the next nutty boys. The office , Nigel, Jackie, Frog, Phili and Tommy Tee (the nicest bloke I have ever met, by a long long way) were unswervingly fantastic and supportive. I saw them all just recently at Tommy’s funeral. It’s a funny old life. There was one thing missing. A new dance routine. Dubious mark one always had a routine in the middle of Sugar Daddy, but it just was not spectacular enough. So our show now started with me limping on as a wounded corporal to the overture to “Fiddler On the Roof” with the rest of the band following in gas masks waving their heads and hands from side to side Broadway style. We went down in formation to the climactic moments before launching into “Britannia’s Grand Machine”. It brought the house down, or in other cases there was a different response. At the Adelphi in Liverpool, supporting our mates, Up and Running, as the final chords of the overture struck, there was complete silence save for one lone voice in the audience “Get down sowth you fookin’ yuppie shite”. Thinking we were going to be killed we planned our escape, until the same bloke came up to us and told us how brilliant we’d been. “But you said we were shite”. “That just the way were are, la”. As we continued gigging the tapes slowly disappeared. My stories, which I finally had to admit were bad attempts at standup, also went and we became something akin to a Victorian music hall punk band, utter chaos onstage and carnage in the audience. Record companies still would not touch us with a bargepole so we released our second album “The Foresight Saga” through Probe a much more polished work due the fact we were in a studio and had some time to finish it. My relaxed musical snobbery meant were at least getting up to the sixties in musical style but the lyrics were still as biting as I could make them. The album garnered some stage favourites such as “What A Lovely Day For a Hunt Sabotage” (sadly not included on this compilation for legal reasons) and “Werner Von Braun” (featuring a sweet umbrella tea dance). Phil Andrews joined us on keyboards together with the irrepressible Milli Coombs, who became our mixing engineer and chief upside down bicycle rider and we headed off for our first tour of Germany. I was extraordinarily confident that we would go down well, until five minutes before our first gig in Wuppertal. I suddenly became very nervous for a reason I couldn’t fathom, before I looked at Steve in his RAF uniform, then glanced at the surgeons limbering up in their gas masks and remembered that our set started with “South America Welcomes the Nazis”. I prayed that postmodern irony had reached the Ruhr. We need not have worried. Some of our best times were in Germany despite the fact that if we had had a tiny audience I’d act like a petulant child for a couple of days. Other highlights included the only other resident of deserted hotel in Stuttgart banging on a band hotel room door at 2 am as one member of the band (who shall remain anonymous) was having the Olympic rings embedded on a fleshy area of his “lower back” with a plunger that someone had found. In June 1989 we played our biggest ever gig: Glastonbury. Were were on at midnight on the Saturday night in one of the tents, at the same time Elvis Costello was on the main stage. “It will be empty” I mused in my glass half empty way. As the curtain rolled back, I limped on as the corporal to a packed tent of actual real life Dubious Brothers fans. During “Could Have Been”, I put my foot on the monitor held the mike out to the audience as they sang the words, closed my eyes and thought to myself “take me now Lord, because it is not going to get better than this.” Later that year we had another bash at being pop stars. This time at the height of the country’s hatred for the Conservative government we released a cha cha cha 12-inch single called “The Dog Ate My Poll Tax Form”, featuring a new member, Dewi Richards on bass. This caused somewhat of a stir, mostly with people who bought the tee shirt. I was once cornered after a gig by a proud student telling me of how he wore the shirt in court when he had been summonsed for non-payment. “So when are you going to court?” he asked. “Er.. I paid mine…. by direct debit.” I replied, “It’s more affordable that way” I added helpfully. There had never been anything like us. Dave and Steve were fantastic musicians and we were getting better and better, but at what? The music industry thought we were a cabaret act and the comedy circuit didn’t think we were funny enough. The only people who loved us were the audiences once they found out about us or stumbled into a gig by chance. We were starting to get disillusioned. Our audience remained loyal but they were not getting any bigger. In October 1990, after spending the summer playing Oxford Balls and Corporate dos we played our last gig at Warwick University. It was sold out and we ended on a high. We finished with “South America Welcomes The Nazis” We threw all our stage gear into the audience and that was that Bt now, Dave and Steve were playing gigs for actual money in their new band and they were formulating the band that would become the Love Train: today, still one of the most successful covers bands in the Country. I had done a demo of songs earlier that year and later signed a record deal with a Japanese label. Over the years, I released three solo albums, wrote and produced a ton of very eclectic songs and TV themes, roping in the boys to play on them. I am working on my fourth album. So 19 years later, this is “Antiques –The Best Of The Dubious Brothers”. The greatest band you’ve never heard of. I am truly sorry about the recording quality in some places. The original master tapes are now mush so in some cases we have had to master off the vinyl, which, incidentally, fetches up to £100 on eBay nowadays. Ta Ta Monty
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 18:55:30 +0000