Riot? What Riot? The Metro Riots!!

 

Drummer, Ollie and front man Damo are sharing an armchair, whilst Danny Fury (a name which suits the man down to a T) leans against a white piano placed directly opposite a huge mirror lined with a variety of coloured bulbs that make the room glow like a solarium. Sam (their forthright bassist) on the other hand, has the second plush armchair all to himself.

 

Ollie: ‘First of all I’m dressed like this ‘cause I’ve got the flu and I didn’t want my normal clothes to get soaked in sweat (surely this must be the sign of a hard working band!) so that when I leave here I get worse, so I’ve got sportswear on.’

Danny: ‘Second of all I’m like this ‘cause I didn’t want to get recognised walking up the street, so I’m wearing my 1995 women’s jumper.’

Damo: ‘But you still look dashing though.’

 

You might not have heard of The Metro Riots but you're about to as they're all set to embark on their tour, starting with an assault on the Camden Barfly as part of XFM’s exposure party.

Damo: ‘We’ve got a nice gig on the 29^th. Dogs are playing; we’re doing a couple of dates with them - one in Birmingham and one in Bristol. Really nice lads. I was talking to Johnny the singer and he’s fucking cool. Nice band. We like nice bands; it’s good to get on with other bands.’

Danny: 'Especially when you go to gigs and stuff, like with bands like Special Needs; it’s a good atmosphere.’

Damo: ‘You don’t have to go in the room and have everyone doing their hair at the same time, and they’re all trying to look better than the next lot. You come in and they go ‘Oooh!’ he jumps up out of his chair in a most ladylike manner ‘and they do this and they pout’ he says as he starts fixing his hair and pouting, ‘and you say hello and they’re like ‘Hi. Yeah’. Very gay, very gay.’

Ollie: ‘The other dates, who are we supporting then?’

Sam: ‘10,000Things.’

Ollie: They’re our biggest gigs up to date, other than the Coronet gig…’ Damo cuts in, pointing out that they played with Babyshambles and Cooper Temple Clause.  And ‘just for the record Cooper Temple Clause were urrrrgh!’ When the Metro Riots played the Coronet back in October ’04 it was part of the ‘Rock Against Racism’ series of events.

 

Danny has suddenly got up and starts patting his pockets before scanning the room looking for his lighter. Ollie turns to Gigwise and tells us that ‘The big problem with this band is that it’s hard ‘cause there’s three smokers and there’s no lighters’.

Danny: ‘I mean I’ve bought a lighter before I got here and some dirty fucker’s had away with it. If it’s one of you two then...’ He trails off as he shakes his head, and puts his hands on his hips. Damo gives him his own one.

 

Sam turns the conversation back to the question Gigwise has just asked. ‘We’re doing recording; we’ve done one recording with the American dude we were telling you about, and since we’ve been working with Dave and Roger (their Managers) they’ve got quite a few labels who are interested in releasing a single with us; and instead of recording and releasing on the first label, we’re gonna do a few recordings and see which one’s best. We’re going into the studio pretty soon.’

Damo: ‘We’ve got a few producers lined up.’

Danny: ‘Our old manager used to say ‘OK. Do you wanna record this one, this one and this one’ then put us in a studio with somebody who it was a gamble whether we liked them or not. We’d go in there and however good or shit it turned out we had to release it. On our first EP, when we got it done, was the most surreal thing, because I always had an image of when we got our first single out I’d be the face of ‘Pepsi’, he says this much to the room’s amusement, ‘but it turned out that we played some random club up Harrow Road, and some guy just walked up to us with about 500 CDs, and went ‘There you go’ and just gave them to us, and it was like what do we do with these then? and he was like ‘Sell ‘em!’. So we were like Del Boy and Rodney walking around East Surrey Market. Yeah, Dan Boy and Rodney’ Danny tries to think of a funny pun, but fails. ‘I can’t think of a clever one’ he finally says in defeat. As far as Damo’s concerned there’s no rush as ‘it’s not as if the nations eagerly awaiting the Metro Riots next release so they’re taking their time over it and are just making sure they get both the song and the label bang on.

 

‘The only person who’s got his fingers crossed is my dad.’ continues Danny ‘Cause he’s got a lot of enemies’. The whole band starts to laugh as he carries on - ‘He was telling me on the bus the other day [he drops into a very convincing northern accent] ‘When you get on’t cover of NME…’ and I was going ‘Woahh! Woahh Dad! That’s a bit of a tall order!’ and he went ‘Oh no. When it happens in February or something' and I was like 'Fucking hell man! I’ve just about heard of us!’

Damo: ‘He’ll say to him we’re doing these gigs with this band and he’ll say 'Fuck ‘em! There’s nobody better than you son!’

Danny: ‘And it's like ‘Dad, they’re really nice…’

Damo: ‘And he’ll go ‘Nooo they’re backstabbers! Don’t trust no-one! They’re on drugs’. Damo only just manages to speak amidst the manic laughs. ‘If something happens like the lead comes out of his amp, or the fucking O-Zone's melting he’ll say ‘That’s drink that is. Fucking someone’s pissed and they’re not watching the O-Zone!’

Danny: ‘And I’m like, with a bottle of Grants whiskey, ‘Yeah.’ as he mimes hiding the bottle behind him.

Damo: [Continues in a northern accent] ‘Someone’s drunk and dangerous. See how they put those words together. Drunk AND Dangerous!’

Danny: ‘I was coming up from ‘Cheers’ the other day with a bottle of whisky and I thought, ‘right I’d better have reason with the old man’, and I went ‘I’m just gonna have a few of these and mellow out with Sophie’ and he goes ‘She’ll do more than mellow you out. She don’t half like a drink that girl!’ This time Danny has to shout over the rest of the band. ‘I went ‘No she hates it!’ So we got to keep up appearances.’

Damo: ‘And the circles we’re moving in; there’s a lot of crack out there. We think we should be given an award for being the only band in London not on crack’. Danny bursts in at this point- ‘Don’t say that man! There’ll be a lot of bands who are gonna be like ‘that fucking cunt called me a crack head!’

Ollie: ‘Our drug of choice is coffee and Red Bull’.

Danny: ‘My drug of choice is like having a deep puff on a cigarette and holding it in for as long as I can and getting a head rush when I blow it back out again. It’s wicked.’

 

Gigwise: When you’re in the studio do you prefer to lay down individual sounds then overlay them, or just hit the studio and play till you’ve got it how you want it?

Danny: ‘If you’re working with somebody whose ideas aren’t really good then there tends to be conflict and in the end they say just fucking record. They don’t deliberately give you a rubbish album because you’re not into it. It really depends on who you’re working with.’

Sam: ‘When he [their last producer] came in he’d seen us play already and said ‘I wanna capture that’. And said ‘Just play it’.

Ollie: We were all on separate channels, so when we played it at the end, say if Danny had a guitar sound that wasn’t right, he could just go back to the beginning and re-record it. The bulk of the song was done live and in only a few takes.’

Danny: ‘Compared to the old manager we had to just go in and do it, it’s more relaxed now. I mean Dave and Roger said don’t worry about it, just relax and have a good time, so we did.’

Damo: ‘I could even watch my ‘Eastenders’ ‘cause they had a TV in there so while everyone was doing their parts I was upstairs on my futon kicking back.’

 

Here the conversation takes a sharp turn from recording to the South London roots of the band.

Damo: "We’re used to getting heckled and shit but we had this - Me n’ Sam were walking to the tube station going to a gig or whatever, and these little kids were on their bikes, they pulled up next to us and went, ‘You Fuckin’ West Ham scum!’ At this point everyone erupts with laughter. ‘And I was baffled ‘cause I didn’t have any West Ham clothing on me!’ From the next room Roger (a West Ham fan) calls out - ‘It’s ‘cause you look cool!’ After the laughter’s died down he goes on - ‘Or when I was walking down the road and this car stopped at these traffic lights, the driver was with his kid who must have been about five years old and she had her window down an’ she’s peering out like this" Damo proceeds to mine the rest of the story from here onwards, "and the dad does a double take and goes ‘Worthless!’ He shouts and points violently at the air. ‘Worthless!’, and he’s nudging his little kid going ‘Ha Ha! Worthless!’ and the little kid’s going [mimics kiddies voice] ‘Worthless’ like that! That fucking hurt!"

Danny: "I’ve got 2 good ones. I was walking past a pub in Bermondsey and I had my guitar with me, and this drunk geezer was sat outside in the beer garden, which just consists of a bench, and he went ‘You play guitar?’ and I went ‘Yeah’, then as I walked past  – ‘Well you’d better give it up, you ain’t going nowhere are ya?’. I was genuinely hurt by that. But the best one was last week when I was walking up ‘round Abbey Woods and as I’m crossing the road and this geezer’s in a white van going like that’ he puts on a sleazy sneer ‘and going ‘Nice jeans!’ and as he’s doing that he’s slyly gone into the back of this bus, I went ‘ahahahahahah!’ and his face was like" this time the expression is one of painful realisation "and he’d knew he’d crashed but he didn’t wanna look and was like ‘Oh shit’. Well I say ‘crashed’, if it was a ‘crash’ I would have been concerned but the fact that it was a little pussy slap it was funny, and I thought ‘you’ve been shown up you prick’. He sighs ‘Yeah… South London."

Damo: ‘We don’t want to be known as South London purists.’

Danny: ‘We’re not ashamed of it, but we’re not proud of it either, ya know.’

 

Gigwise: What was the best gig for you guys, as musicians?

Damo: ‘Probably the Coronet ‘cause we had something to prove; because even the sound men who didn’t know us were like ‘You’ve got 10 minutes, hurry up’ and they didn’t even give us a sound check. We were so pissed off.’

Ollie: ‘We’d got there around 1 in the afternoon and they’d sound checked everyone else and we were waiting till 6 o’clock and they went ‘sorry you can’t have a sound check’ and I was a bit upset by that; so we had a little word and they said ‘Fine. You got 2mins to do half a song’. So we did the song and it was shambolic and I wasn’t happy with the on stage sound – I don’t think anyone was. And we didn’t realise how many people are out there ‘cause you can’t actually see- just these sort of silhouettes of loads of heads and when the gig finished all the lights on the stage went off and the ones at the front came on and there’s just loads of people!’

Damo: "And the sound men were going ‘That was fucking amazing! If you ever need a sound man…’ and we’re like [heavily sarcastic tone] ‘Yeah!’"

Danny: ‘As far as self fulfilment goes that was one of the most fulfilling gigs we did, but I think some of the recent gigs we’ve done have been really…like that one we did at the Elbow Rooms, that was fucking fantastic. We did one at the Telegraph the other day; every gig gets better.’

Ollie: ‘At every gig there’s just something extra that’s added to the last performance.’

Danny: ‘It’s been months since we walked away from a gig and been disappointed.’

Sam: ‘They did have a mirror with light bulbs around it at the Coronet’

Damo: ‘Yeah. You always need one of those- a Marilyn Monroe mirror, I asked for that, you know that?!’

Sam: ‘Weren’t you gonna get sandwiches?’

 

Gigwise: And for crowd reaction?

Ollie: ‘The Infinity.’

Sam: ‘The Barfly always gets a good response.’

Danny: As far as I’m concerned I don’t go there to win anybody’s approval. I just get on stage and enjoy myself. After the first gig we did we had a little bit of a break and went away, wrote some songs then when we came back the first gig we did the crowd just really went for it and every gig we’ve done since we just look to do a good one.’

Damo: ‘I see it more because I’m not concentrating on playing an instrument; I would say that the best crowd we do get, and will get is at Carl’s night [Carl Barât’s ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ night at the Infinity]. They come forwards, flop on the stage, jump around and just go fucking mad.’

Ollie: ‘And another thing. It’s not so recently, but about six months ago the band were no different, we had the same songs ‘n everything; but after playing in front of all these people I’ve always got the impression that they were shocked to se how we performed and because they weren’t there to see us they were a bit apprehensive to show that they liked it. After a song you’d hear 6 people clapping and all the way through the songs people’d be staring at you and it’d take 2 secs for them to clap.’

Danny: "Saying that, it’s most evident in the gig that we did in Brixton; there was about twenty people there, this wasn’t even that long ago, (it was before Roger was our manager), there were some guys there from a record label and because the crowd were there to see the band that went on after us there was no response, and the A&R man was turning round at the crowd and at the end he went off and said ‘It was really good. I’ll call you’ and Damo said ‘Oh do you want my number?’ and he said ‘Oh go on then.’ But then Roger got on board."

Sam: ‘My favourite gig, personally it ain't nothin’ to do with the crowd, if I play a good gig myself then I’m proud of it.’

Damo: ‘I think we’ve answered that question!’

 

Gigwise: Other than your own, what would be your ideal set list of classic songs?

Damo: ‘Oooh, that’s a good one! ‘In My Time Of Dying’, there’d have to be some Led Zeppelin ones in there, a few White Stripes.’

Ollie: ‘In My Time Of Dying.’

Danny: ‘My favourite songs change every week’

Damo: ‘You liked Jet the other week didn’t you!?’

Danny: ‘I liked your mum as well!’

Damo: ‘You had no come back so it got personal!’

Danny: ‘Hurt though didn’t it! At the moment I’m listening to ‘Helter Skelter’ by The Beatles.’

Ollie: ‘I’d quite like a few David Bowie songs in there as well.’

Danny: ‘Muddy Waters as well man, some good old stinking blues music!’

Damo: ‘Me personally I’d like to do a cover Special Needs song ‘cause they’re so lovely to sing, like ‘Sylvia’ he says as he breaks into song.

Danny: ‘Easy Rider’-if we could incorporate it…’

They all start talking animatedly and excitedly amongst themselves, whilst Sam is still trying to work out what he’d like.

Sam: ‘One song?’

Danny: ‘You Gotta Move’ by The Rolling Stones.’

Damo: ‘‘Sylvia’ by Special Needs.’

Ollie: ‘Muddy Waters- ‘She’s alright.’’

Sam: (Silence)

They all start shouting at him- ‘God your slow! You’re last as well!’ He’s still debating it! ‘Just pick one! C’mon man!’

 

When asked if there’s anything else they’d like to add, well, you can see for yourself what happened…

Damo: ‘I really love your boots! Your boots rock! Ollie can name any bone and muscle in your body - just point to it and he’ll name it. What’s this bone here?’ He turns to Ollie, who caught on the spot, admits he can’t remember. (It was the radius by the way).

Danny: ‘I can turn my tongue upside down without using my hands.’ Gigwise can vouch that Mr.Fury can actually do this.

Damo: ‘And he can put his legs behind his head! Do it!’

Danny: ‘Not in these Man! Do you know how tight these jeans are?!’

 

Live photo by Linda Chasteau