The Cheeky Moonies

September 23, 2003 by Andy Day

The first time I saw The Moonies, so named after their love of drummer Keith Moon, was at Liverpool Uni, supporting Electric Soft Parade. Frontman Steve made the biggest faux pas a frontman can make while introducing their current single 'Cool' (The lyrics go, "We could be cool/So cool/We could get out of Liverpool), especially when you're in your home town:

Steve Moonie

"The next song is about getting away from you guys, 'cos I'm fed up of you" ...silence "er, no I'm only joking" ...tumbleweed "er, no I'm not, uhah". Oops, the crowd shuffle their feet and somebody shouts "We're fed up of you, get off."

But The Moonies cheeky charm saw them bounce back by the end of the gig and they've got bags of charm, the young rapscallions, bags of it. "Yeah, that went down well." Recalls Steve, their foot in mouth afflicted vocalist. "It was unintentional. That whole song y'see, 'Cool', it's about me at a time when I was really fed up of Liverpool, I'd been getting hassle off scallies and I just wanted to move away for a while." But the band aren't finished with their birthplace yet, I caught them at the launch of Liverpool's Tri-Tone record label, the umbrella organisation behind the Plastic Boot imprint to which they're signed.

The three piece look barely over fifteen, so it's hard to believe they've all hit 20 already, and they talk incessantly like a bunch of excited teenagers. Particularly Steve, "I'll tell you a story about Mike," their drummer looks nervously over, "One gig we did, I can't remember where we were. One of our fans, she had Ryan Moonie

these fishnet tights on. Mike said 'Those are really nice tights.' She said 'You can have them if you want!' And Mike was walking round in them all night." Mike puts his hand to his face and they all fall into fits of laughter. "And then it got rumoured," he continues, "so now girls come up to him after gigs and give him their knickers. His bass drum is full of thongs, stockings, knickers, you name it."

They look at each other grinning, "Do you wear them Mike?" I ask. "Maybe yeah." He says and Steve buts in, "He did a lap dance for our tour manager once in a see-through black thong." Mike picks up the story, unabashed, "Yeah we stayed in his house and the tour manager was a bit pissed and I was messing about, he started laughing, but you could tell he was enjoying it. His eyes were glowing."

Mike joined the band after both Ryan - who plays a Paul McCartney style violin bass - and Steve had already written 12 songs. They gave him a tape expecting him to learn a few songs, but a few days later he'd learnt them all and was snapped up by the duo. "He turned up on a pink bicycle though," says Steve, "he knew all of them so we got him in, but he reckons he auditioned us."

Mike Moonie

They've been compared to Supergrass such is their youthful vigour and sense of fun, but attached to that is their hard working attitude, catchy tunes and sixth form naivety about the workings of life. "Ryan always says we're the punk Beatles, but er…" They do have the harmonies of The Beatles but there's a lot more to their "punk pop rock with a bit of everything." Their stage shows are energetic and often feature Steve scissor-kicking his way through the set.

"We're not really trying to aim to be anything." The frontman explains, "The bands that we're into are very varied, Syd Barrett, Grandaddy, Weezer, 60s punk and the whole Beatles thing."

The band will be recording their album in the near future and visualise a release date some time in February, but before that they have plans for a Christmas single, "that'll sound dead cheesy" so watch out for that. Meanwhile more info can be found on the band at www.themoonies.co.uk. "Don't go to moonies.com, it's like some hardcore asian site." Er take your pick, they're both pretty interesting.

Photos by Dave Evans

You can keep up to date with all the latest news from Gigwise by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook.