Words With: The Flamingo 50

Punk 3 piece The Flamingo 50 are a musical force to be reckoned with. Renowned for their incendiary performances and angst ridden, melodic, angular guitar punk rock, the band are set to reach the hungry ears of the French with a split CD due to be released over there. After already rockin' audiences both in Liverpool and more prominently supporting the Ladyfest movement, which hopes to promote female artists, up and down the country.

So are they a lesbian feminist crack force? Well inclusion of a token bloke on the drums, should put paid to that. "First and foremost I wanna be in a punk band," says their explosive lead singer Louise, who offstage is much more laid back. "We're not really a political band, it's just that some of the gigs we play are things that we wanna support. We're not feminist in an exclusionary way, we wanna be seen as equals. Although we do identify with other bands with girls in them."

"It's not male negative, It's not about getting our slogans out there." Says Morgan, their quieter male drummer, who admits to reading the odd feminist book. Their girl angst was described by Deckcheese magazine as pre-menstrual and the Guardian wrongly called them an all girl band, but Morgan seems to take all this in his stride.

One of their funnier onstage moments is the performing of their one-second song called 'Dick', reminiscent of Napalm Deaths 'E' and Snuff's 'Cake'. "You could play it in front of a real feminist audience and say 'This song's called Dick and it's short and ugly," says Morgan.

"We were on our way to a gig, when someone pulled out in front of us and nearly killed us," explains Karen, "we all shouted 'dick' at the same time then looked at each other and went 'that would make a good song.'"

"You can attach all sorts of feminist stuff to it as well, by reducing the male symbol of power to a short little 'blurgh,'" Louise scarily says, with a rye look in her eye. "I just want to get rid of the boys club mentality, but I don't want to replace it with a girls club."

What is important to Flamingo 50 is being accepted by their peers as proper punk, without being referred to as a girl band. "We play punk music and that's all it is, not 'They're girls and they play punk rock.'"

Flamingo 50, named after a boiler in Louise's mums house have been together since 1999, after a boozy night out watching one of Liverpool's "shit scally bands," they decided to form a proper punk band. Louise and Morgan who played each other's instruments in previous bands and Karen on bass began rehearsals in their university band society's free rehearsal space. Drink was cheap in the student bar, located nearby, so it wasn't long before they realised their brilliance in a drunken haze and soon planned to take Liverpool by storm by way of a gig in the Zanzibar, a local venue.

"We almost quit it went so badly." Says Karen, but fortunately the gig was reviewed favourably by now defunct magazine Ink. So the guys stayed together and haven't looked back since. Already having supported the likes of Le Tigre and with UK and French tours under their belts it seems there's no stopping the F50 runaway train.

"I wanna be able to express anger," says Louise, "We tend to play really good gigs when we've had a bit of hassle during the sound check or if we've not slept for a while. Or when people are being negative, we're like '**** you!'"

But they don't want to be taken too seriously, they just want to have fun, "If we took ourselves seriously, we'd have lost something." They're already Peel favourites and the gangly Steve Lamacq has spun a few of their tunes, raising their profile countrywide. Peel even put their record into his June record box.

Future plans for the band will be to put themselves in a position where they can all quit their jobs and go on tour. They want to play gigs where they can crowd surf and play their guitars at the same time, just like any decent rock 'n' roll band deserves to do. And it seems all these things are not so far away, check out their current EP, 'Go Betsy Go' released on No concession Records and you'll see what I mean. The Flamingo 50 are one of Gigwise's favourite bands. See them for yourself, if you haven't already. They're also in the throes of recording a new album and hope to get it released by someone early next year.

Photos by Dave Evans