One’s rightward vision is left temporarily enfeebled by misconstrued tomato (chilli), the situational table is laden with culinary utensils both clean and not, while boiled (9 minutes?) poultry-offerings linger within tarnished cardboard bespoke for their form and a sleeve bearing the late John Denver’s image gazes upwards at lighting courtesy of the accessible switch helping to illuminate where the sun cannot. Present for discussion are 66.66666666% (R?) of the above-titled
Right… I mean the Sick Ducks… that’s a humorous name, but… also a bit dumb?
(Agreeable ponderings)
Louis: That pretty much sums us up as people.
Cristy: Yeah, pretty dumb… just noticed the fact that its dick sucks.
Louis: Do you know why it’s called Sick Ducks?
Why?
Louis: I don’t know if you know that meme, like a duck skate boarding… “my pet bird is really sick”, “oh my god what’s wrong with it?”, “nothing is wrong with him he’s just sick LMAO” and it’s just a duck skateboarding, but because I was stoned I said “that is a dick suck” and I went “ha, that’s a good name for a band”…
Cristy: Are we in the interview right now?
We are…
Cristy: What’s the question?
How did you guys meet… have you done any interviews before?
Cristy: We were talking about this before actually…
You’ve spoken about this before?
Louis: Not in interviews, but we did speak about it earlier…
Actually never mind… you go into a building… What is your desired floor?
Cristy: Desired format, in terms of…?
What kind of floor would you like? Vinyl, wooden…
Louis: Which ever ones a hard one.
Cristy: Me personally, I like a vinyl… I’d like to slide across, and you don’t get that squeaky effect…
It’s not great for dogs.
Cristy: I mean wood all the way, honestly wood all the way… I literally don’t give a fuck…
Louis: (I like carpet)… it depends, if it’s the kind of building I can take my shoes off in… carpet… if not, I’m not arsed… I like a tiled floor.
Have you ever, as a band… had a physical altercation with outsiders or… just generic transgressors?
Louis: We do literally have a song about an argument me and Cristy had, the lyrics are “I want you to fight me, I want you to fight me, I want you dead”…
Cristy: The whole song is based on a massive argument we had, he thinks marmalade is a type of jam, and I think marmalade and jam are a type of conserve… What’s your opinion? (Directed at a third party arbitrator)
Arbitrator: It’s a preserve, not a conserve…
Louis: Yeah preserve.
Cristy: Ah, Whatever… WHATEVER!
Louis: It’s in the so… You wrote the fucking song!
Cristy: You wrote fucking song!
Louis: I wrote the words, you wrote the song.
Cristy: I didn’t write the song, you fucking wrote the song.
Louis: (Speedily) I wrote the lyrics, you wrote the song…
Cristy: I wrote the guitar part. (Glass hits table with moderate force)
A conjecture on jam.
Arbitrator: It is a jam, right?
Um, I mean it has the same utilities… and the same qualities?
Louis: It’s the same process, the same process.
Cristy: Yeah, but it’s different… it’s got (inaudible ingredient) in it, that’s what makes it Marmalade.
Louis: In terms of physical appearance…
Cristy: It wouldn’t be called fucking MARMALADE if it were a type of jam…
Louis: This argument has raged on for well over a year now…
Cristy: Ugh, I can’t even be arsed…
What was the whole purpose of the… band?
Louis: So, I’d written a load of songs. I lived in a shit commuter town with no culture…
What was it called?
Louis: Maidenhead… I wanted to start a band, so I needed to move to a city to find out other people who wanted to start band… so I moved here, and started a band.
How did you meet your drummer, since he’s not here?
Louis: Ha, facebook…
Facebook?
Sick Ducks: Yeah…
Louis: The first time I went round to his house… I went with my acoustic guitar, which I don’t have a case for, to play him a couple of songs… and he had a snare that he played with his hand… we just jammed in his living room… his old flat was in a building me and Cristy actually looked for a flat for called Barry Court. We ended up at a barbecue in Platt Fields.
I recall the first time seeing you play… it was just the 2 of you, without Cristy, at Fuel?
Louis: Yeah, like 11 months ago… I was so nervous, as I had never sung live in front of people before.
Oh really? The first time entirely or…?
Louis: I’d played bass loads, never sung with guitar before, but everyone seemed into it, so I thought it went really well… was well happy… The Railway was pretty good as well… in fact you asked about physical altercations, we had a scrap at the Railway.
And what was that like?
Louis: Basically, he punched me in the nuts, and then I punched him in the nuts…
Cristy: Oh that’s fucking bullshit, he punched me in the nuts first…
Louis: No you punched me first, and then I punched you about 3 or 4 times.
Cristy: Yeah, I wouldn’t have been arsed, but he literally punched me in the balls so hard I almost threw up in the toilets.
Arbitrator: Did you deserve it?
Cristy: I don’t give a shit about your opinion.
Louis: He hit me first, and then I was like “This is war”, and every time I got jabbed (motions a punch).
Do you have an opinion on mundane news topics… the War in Azerbaijan or…?
Louis: We have a rule in our flat that anyone who talks about present day politics for more than 30 seconds gets kicked out.
Cristy: Exiled for half an hour.
Saint Helena with Napoleon?
Cristy: Nah, that’s history. As long as it’s not present day.
Louis: Yeah, current UK politics… US politics I’ll generally just like write you off as a person…
I meant when you kick them out, do they get exiled like Napoleon?
Cristy: Nah, just sit outside for half an hour.
Louis: The way it usually works.
Do you work out most of your music through jams… or?
Louis: I usually write the songs. We’ve had a few that have come from jams or ideas that Cristy has had…
Like the jam thing?
Cristy: Exactly, yeah. Also wrote that song on the basis of two separate songs, and merged them together.
Louis: He played them together in a jam, and we just kinda…
Cristy: It’s a nice stark comparison between a sluggish, depressive bass line and also a really uplifting guitar riff…
Louis: It was like… I was rolling a joint and he was just jamming it, and he stopped when I had finished, and I went “No, no, keeping playing it”.
Is there a genre of music you just wished didn’t fucking exist…?
Sick Ducks: Umm…
Cristy: Probably…
Louis: Whatever Radiohead is…
Why the disdain?
Louis: I just fucking hate them, their fans are arseholes… they’re arseholes… aside from Creep, all their songs are terrible…
Is there a record you can all glide around and say HEY (high pitched tone)?
Cristy: I don’t think so… I don’t think there is one single record…
Louis: I think there’s only ones that only 2 of us would love… there’s a lot of bands that we both like, and a lot of bands that me and Callum both like… but I don’t think there’s anything we all… I suppose Nirvana?
Cristy: I just don’t listen to that much music anyway, and if I do it’s a band that released an album this year or last year… and it’s usually shit.
Louis: There’s songs that’ll come on that we all like, but I dunno… it’s kind of weird, we don’t really talk about music…
Hmm, why is that? Is there a fear of sectarianism…?
Louis: Not really…
Where are your fault lines with music… where do you really differ?
Louis: I don’t like punk or country, other than that it’s just whether or not it’s a good song.
Ok, what about you Cristy?
Cristy: My music taste is sporadic as shit…
(Holding an egg) When you see this poultry product, what do you see?
Louis: I see an egg that needs to be in the bin.
Cristy: A poorly boiled egg that I’m not ever gonna eat…
(sigh) Courtesy of me.
Cristy: In fact, I’m gonna crush it against your skull… (crushes it against my skull)
Let’s say rehearsal spaces, where are you based now?
Louis: This has been quite the hot topic today; we rent a room with Furrowed Brow and Surfing Pointers, Callum’s other band.
Didn’t one of the former owners punch someone, people had to leave?
Louis: I’ve not heard of this?
Cristy: Oh, that had nothing to do with our band, it was (Name redacted)… we used to share a room in Aatma, which he co-managed… he punched some guy in the streets for being racist towards him… in this scenario I think he was in the right, but he got sacked because of it, which I don’t think is cool. But he wasn’t the coolest of guys… he will act like a nice guy towards you, but he literally had cameras in the practice rooms, watching us.
Should I include this in the transcript?
Cristy: If you want, I don’t give a shit.
Is there a band you’d like to challenge to a duel, based on your hatred of them??
Louis: I dunno…
Cristy: Who’d you like to vs. us, any band you could… versus… us? (directed at Louis)
Louis: All the bands that I hate… are objectively much better than us.
Cristy: Nah, it’s not about who you hate…
Louis: Are we talking about a battle of the bands thing or just a fight?
Who would you want to challenge to a duel?
Louis: Duel? Radiohead, Muse…
Cristy: (Laughs)
Louis: The Smiths… I fucking hate Morrissey, I hate the Smiths so much, his voice…
Cristy: Can’t stand his voice…
Louis: Kasabian, I hate Kasabian…
Cristy: If there is anything to get from this interview, it’s that Idles are SHIT (heavy emphasis).
Louis: Oh yeah, they’re shit…
Punk vanille as they say…
Cristy: It’s not even that, if I wanted to be shouted at by a Londoner, I would literally…
Louis: (Interjecting) Try telling me marmalade isn’t a type of jam.
Cristy: I hate IDLES so much, so bad…
Louis: Kasabian again, are Oasis for guys in their mid-30s who; 1: can’t accept Oasis are better, 2. think Oasis’ best albums are their last three, and 3: wear Ben Sherman T-shirts… that’s what Kasabian are, they are terrible, I fucking hate them… hate the Smiths, hate Muse and I hate Radiohead… having said that if they want us to open for them, we’re down.
(Laughter)
Cristy: Give us a weird question
What colour underpants are you wearing?
Cristy: I’m wearing red right now…
Oh really, any patterns?
Louis: I was wearing tartan earlier.
You all socialise as a band, is there something, even if it was just a spontaneous night, all roaming around a park with your drummer…?
Louis: I dunno, we tend to just get pissed in and around practice… we did at one, and we were just gonna have a couple of beers, and Callum called us and said “I wanna join”, but he was fucked, he had like one pint… he didn’t even have one pint…
Cristy: We had to walk him home, took us 40 minutes…
Louis: It was a proper, like… each of us on either side; the phrase “wounded soldier” pretty much sums it up. We got to his house, and his girlfriend had loads of uni mates around, and she was like “thanks for bringing him back”. And we were like “He’s your problem now”…. (Laughs)
Cristy: Yeah, no proper… memorable nights… the good thing about the Sick Ducks is that we will listen to the songs each of us have made, in this kind of situation where we are drunk and just enjoy it.
Publicly, what do you eat in each other’s presence?
Louis: Meal deals… we’ve had takeaways like kebabs… to be fair, when it was just me and Callum, we’d get home from practice… there was this, can’t remember what it was called… it’s called like Continental, a kebab shop on Burton Road… all their burgers mate.
Cristy: If I’m making a meal; tuna pasta or…
Louis: We don’t eat that together…
Cristy: Oh ok, when I head into the practice room, before… I’d get falafel.
You just reminded me of a jar of pesto that’s been open in my fridge for 2 weeks…
Cristy: Maybe you should make some pesto pasta? I need to make a curry actually…
Louis: If you don’t make it soon that sauce is going (Indicates towards a towering bottle of sauce, behind Cristy).
Cristy: Yeah I mean, I wouldn’t call myself a chef, but I like to make my own food.
As long as you can sustain yourself as a human bei… as a homo sapien…
Cristy: Yeah!
Do you think you can sustain yourself as a homo sapien?
Cristy: Yeah definitely, I can stand with my own two feet.
Have you ever challenged the notion of what it is to be a homo sapien?
Cristy: I have actually; sometimes I’m quite disgusted to be in the human body…
Why is that?
Cristy: Because, ya know, we have to like shit and piss, and expel fluids from our mouths…
Excretion?
Cristy: Yeah, those horrible aspects of the human body really… envelope me in the sense that the human body is just… horrible
Repetitive… piss and shit every day.
Cristy: It is… the perfect evolution in my mind would be a person that doesn’t have to expel any fluids, or intake any solids or fluids… don’t have to eat, don’t have to expel, don’t have to… expend energy or take energy in, to expend. That’s probably the perfect evolution of a human… but that’s just not what we are. But generally, I feel like the human body is pretty disgusting, I’m disgusted by myself…
It’s sacred, but it’s also disgusting…
Cristy: We’re so imperfect as a race.
Do you have any weird scars on your persons?
Louis: Ermmmm, don’t think so.
Cristy: I have a scar; my brother cut my finger off when I was 1…
Explain?
Cristy: He just cut my finger off.
Louis: That’s obviously the part he wanted more explaining of!
Cristy: I was barely 2 years old, barely 1 year old…
Charlie bit my finger.
Louis: Charlie cut my finger.
Cristy: Completely off as well.
Louis: My friend had a really jagged rock wall… you know, that you climb when you are 4 or 5… I fell on it and I had a scar, but it’s gone now.
Cristy: I have this scar as well (points at another finger), I jumped off a structure in a playground and must have landed on a piece of glass, but I didn’t realise until we had to line up in our years at primary… I then realised my finger was bleeding, quite profusely… so then I realised I must have jumped off a platform and got stabbed by a shard of glass, when I did that. I had to go to hospital, and got given anaesthetic… I couldn’t feel shit in my entire body… interesting experience.
If luck is favourable, you may be able to see this band perform at Deco’s 13th of March All Dayer, at the Peer Hat… the suspense lingers on. P.S, does one remember the earlier dispute regarding the breakfast jam-preserve… ubiquitous in all households? Seems it is to be released as a single on the 30th of this month; I trust you can recall the name?
Recent career decisions have compelled me into the journalistic... thing; I could list my literary influences or even debate which 3rd rate beverage has the best economic value per litre (But I won’t). Oh, in addition, I write reviews for the Independents Network.
