LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR. Gerant Kenneth gets real with Pinky Beecroft |
Last year Machine Gun Fellatio released their third album On Ice and then backed it up with a relentless tour. As they prepare to start staggering across the country again it appears that the travelling circus that is Machine Gun Fellatio is forever on the move, “Ahhh, we never stop touring,” Pinky interjects.
What fuels such an incessant work ethic? “We all got into debt you know, and we’re just paying it off on the wages of sin and rock n’ roll. It’s a fairly relentless operation and we seem to like it that way. I don’t know why. We just like playing live. I think that’s why you start a band, to play live and get out there in front of crowds. If you can do it you just do it, I don’t understand people who don’t do it frankly.” It’s been two months since the unfortunate departure of vocalist and Venusian supermodel The Widow Jones and already the time has come to move on and find the new seventh member of Machine Gun Fellatio, the question is: Who is it going to be? “The spot is filled by Connie Mitchell. She was the lead singer of Primary, and she has an unbelievable voice. She is a f*cking star, she has changed the way we do things enormously, it’s great. She is ready to hit the road with us; I’ve just come from an afternoon with her this afternoon. She’s having the requisite blood transfusions and she will be getting out of hospital soon and onto the road with us this weekend. Once they’ve changed her blood type, given her enough vitamins and cut half her brain out, she’ll be ready to tour with us. Absolutely.” Pinky believes that MGF are a triumph of style over substance abuse and I can’t help but agree with him. There’s a fine line somewhere between drug use and drug abuse and I’m ever so curious as to discover whether or not Pinky can help me define this line. “I don’t know. When do you stop and when do you start? It’s difficult to go to work if you get home after your alarm has gone off. You know? It’s difficult.” Do you think that Machine Gun Fellatio has any influence over the Australian youth of today? “Ahhh look, no. I don’t think that anything can influence the youth of Australia today. They are a group of people who think for themselves in every respect. I think that they are the current crop of a remarkably wilful bunch who f*cking will do what ever they are told not to do.” You guys party pretty hard on stage, how often do you forget that you’re actually playing music up there? “I think that it was when we were last in Woolongong. In the middle of the song LoveShark says to me, ‘What f*cking song is this!? What song are we doing!?’ And I did point out to him that it was a song that we had done probably three-thousand times live and he did know it very well and he was in fact playing it and he went, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we played this before. We played this last time!’ I said ‘No, no. You actually, come on, Earth to LoveShark. I watched him land, I watched him fly down from great heights and just land gently and just keep playing the song, so that was a nice moment. I’ve passed out a couple of times on stage and woken up and realized that we were in the middle of a show and not been exactly sure how long I have been unconscious for and that’s always interesting.” Is that a problem Pinky? “Oh, when you’re really hurting some times you want some one to pick you up. Not just kick you in the head when you’re down.” You are a gentle lamb aren’t you? “I am! I am very vulnerable. I just want everyone to f*ck one another, as they themselves would like unto be f*cked. It’s great to be able to say a sentence with ‘unto’ in it because I hardly ever get to do that..” Machine Gun Fellatio will be playing with Dave McCormack and the Polaroids at Newcastle University on Thursday the 3rd of March, Pinky hopes to be playing at the Bar on the Hill because he loves how it is very honest in its nomenclature. What exactly is nomenclature? “Nomenclature. N O M E N C L A T U R E means its naming. It is a bar and it is on a hill, and I find that beautifully honest that they have called it the Bar on the Hill.” I just pleaded ignorance then and you taught me something, now I’m a better person for it. “Sweetheart, stick with me and you will grow. I’d like that to be the tag line. Stick with me Sweetheart and you will grow.” |
Pinky Beecroft / Machine Gun Fellatio