"Mic Christopher Interview"	Independentsounds.net
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Somebody recently asked me "Did Mic Christopher have the greatest childhood ever?" or was it just nostalgia in the way your e.p was written? A lot of it being happy, I don't know if I told you but I had this near death experience, I ended up breaking me neck and ankle on a motorbike, and that's why. Because before that, for ten years in the Mary Janes I wrote songs that were totally depressing. The happy end of the songs comes from that, it really was like a near death experience, I couldn't walk, couldn't do anything, for about three months I was in traction. I kind of decided one day, I can let this "wreck me head" or I can just be positive about it. So I just tried to take positive things out of everything, even the shittest part of it. Like, I couldn't move me neck, me neck was like this, [stiffens his neck] I got this idea in my head "at least when I come my posture will be really good" or anything just to make it positive! Stuff like Heyday comes from that kind of thing, I didn't have that much "positivity" in me before that! But then the other end of the e.p, the kids thing is different, I've always loved kids for some reason I don't know why that is, I've just always had a big thing for kids. This friend of mine has two little sons, I've been around them since I was born from day one and they just inspire the shit out of me really. Stuff like Kidsong and Looking for Jude? That's another one that came from the little guy, the line in it "it's all better now". It's a little thing he used to say. This doesn't seem like something you've always done, it does seem fresh to you, kind of innocent? Because I was in the band for ten years, as well I was in a relationship for about eight years, virtually married for eight years while I was in the band, so there was a lot of stuff I'd go to write, songs or lyrics in general and I'd think "oh I can't write that, my girlfriend at the time would take it the wrong way" So I'd always be putting barriers up against what I could write and as well with the band I'd write a certain type of song and think that's not going to work in the band or the band won't be into that. There were all these limitations I felt. Once the band was gone, we split from all the companies we were with, gave up music for a while, had the crash and started all over again. It was a completely new outlook on everything. Being able to do whatever I wanted to do all of a sudden was so? something like the Kidsong, I never would have written that in the band in a fit! The band was to an extent, a rock band. It just wouldn't have worked. There's a lot of songs now that I would have never written then either. Even the Kidsong, I wrote that and thought "urghh a bit kiddie in a way!" and then people started going to me "that's so good!" It's a song I wasn't even thinking about. I got into it a bit, now it's the one I'm most proud of, of all my songs. Whereas Heyday is the one everyone latches onto, and gets played on the radio. Really? I prefer Looking for Jude, that thing you do with your voice? Uh uh oh uh oh! [Sings it] It's nice, it's been like that with the e.p. A lot of different people come back with a different favourite song. Looking for Jude has been picked a lot, Listen girl not as much, With Heyday everyone's just like heydayheyday! And then there's the select few come back talking about the Kidsong. This girl came up to me last night at a gig? there's a line in the song which is like about racism "either red green or blue, I think they colour my room", and it was just something I wrote, and after I written it, I listened to it and thought "how the hell did I write that?!", I was so impressed, but I couldn't get a big head about it because I was just kind of going "I don't write stuff like that, how the hell did I write that!" I'm so fucking proud of that line, and this girl came up to me last night "god I really love that thing!" I was totally chuffed, the first person who said it. Out of all the people screaming heydayheyday at gigs I just wanted one person to agree with me on that line. Bosnia We went out to Bosnia for six weeks or so, to work with this charity Warchild, with Pavarotti and those kind of people. I spent six weeks working with kids, they do music therapy and art therapy. And then we put on this concert, there was this big official day on the 21st of December of that year, it was a big thing, this big building was being opened. All these people were coming like Pavarotti and Bono and Brian Eno were guests for it, they were all involved in it. So we put on a concert that day in the middle of this big square with us and Dodgy from England and then some local bands, bands that hadn't been to a concert basically because of the war, hadn't been to a concert like this since before the war. So we did it for that and to bring bands of "opposing" sides together, it was good. New releases I was going to do another e.p two or three months ago, but I kept going to gigs with this one and people just kept buying it, even last night I had thirty at a gig and sold twenty seven. So tonnes of people haven't got it. In that way I don't feel bad about still selling it. I never actually released it, I just made it and started selling it at gigs at one shop in Dublin and I sell in on the Internet, most people don't even know about it yet. Really it's enough to keep going until I have the album ready, where I was going to do a second e.p and then the album but now I'll just do this. Karl Odlum, bass player from the Mary Janes? Karl is like a musical genius when it comes to computers he has it all down. So basically between the two of us, David [Odlum] has also done some of it but generally he's too busy to do anything. On the e.p, four songs, I think they did two each. Karl did Heyday and Looking for Jude and David did Kidsong and Listen Girl. Gemma Hayes was on it too? yeah she's on Kidsong and Listen Girl and another one called I got your back, which I wrote as a duet for us, that'll be on the album. So between me and Karl we do it all on computer and any instruments that have to go on it live, between the two of us we do it. But Karl plays with loads of people plus he's being called into the studio loads now. I'm gigging nearly every day so we never get a chance to do anything. We do a song, then two or three weeks later we get to do another one. It's just getting dragged out but it's now about three quarters done. The one reason I want to get it out more than the e.p is that, because I did it [e.p] on this little small scale and didn't think about releasing it, I had three or four gigs and thought "I'll make enough to sell at these gigs". That's all I was thinking about. Like you got it right? The little cardboard cover and the sleeve and the sticker on it, I do that all myself so I had to cut it all out glue them together! It's all pritstick. The reason I did that is, it's a nice little touch, a home-made vibe about it. I thought I'd make thirty and that's all I'd have to make. How many have you had to make? I've made about seven hundred or so and it wrecks me head! It adds a whole new dimension to "making" an album! (laughs) There are lists of people waiting for them cause I don't get a chance to make them now. I'm glad I did it like that, but when I do make the album I'll get it done properly! I'll just get boxes full of albums and there'll be less grief! But the personal touch is nice. Release it independently? Definitely, who knows what will happen when I actually have it done? Like in the band, we were a typical band in that we'd spend all our whole time, we had eight different managers over the years, and spent our whole time trying to get record deals, and then try to get other ones. It really wrecks your head after a while, and now I'm not trying at all and some people have gotten the e.p purely because somebody's given it to them. I heard that the guy that signed Coldplay is a big fan of it. They tell you they're into it, but unless you hound them all the time they don't do anything about it. So I'm not going to hound anyone, I just couldn't be arsed. But there's a lot to be said about when you hand them, hand a record company a finished album. If they like it for a start, then they look at it as "well it's recorded now, so our job is easier, all we have to do is release it." So who knows? When it's finished what'll happen? I'm not in anyway going? just release it the way I've done this. I love the way I've done this, seven hundred maybe six and a half, I never actually kept track of how many I was doing? I was just making batches of twenty, thirty, fifty? We got one like that from Steve Fanagan [and since this interview we received a fantastic hand crafted album from Martin Finke] Steve actually sat down and made five hundred of them in one go. I never kept track. I never expected I'd sell that many, so I just kept making them, it's not a huge number, but it's an amazing number to me because I haven't actually, noone's helped me do it. It's just me? and obviously Karl! Who did all the recording end of it! But it's just me getting gigs for myself, me turning up with c.d.'s and selling them. It's great, it feels brilliant. You were a busker, so this is basically the same vibe, very "with the people", Proletarian as Hot-Press would describe it! I remember they did this, because we were all buskers together, me and Glen and Dave and Karl and loads of people. These people made this documentary about us a couple of years ago for TnaG. We all got back together and went filming on the street. Yeah! A friend of mine saw you there, he saw Glen break three strings in one go. We pulled everyone out of the woodwork that day, when it started off it was me, Glen and this guy Mark Dignam, and then we met K?la. David and Karl were in K?la at the time, there were about fifteen of them, there was a lot of them! We joined ranks, people just started coming and coming, eventually there was so many people, some days it was just out of hand, you'd have a crowd of two, three hundred people blocking the whole street. There'd be fifteen, seventeen of us, with every instrument you could imagine, people playing saws, it was insane at the end. I remember doing the interview for that and they were asking me the difference between being in a band and being a busker. I was like "I so miss being a busker", everything about it made you feel brilliant. The camaraderie or something, I don't know. You were doing it for yourself, there was no deadlines, no shit, fun all the way. In effect you've found a way of doing both Hopefully, that's what it's kind of like now. It's great, no arguments, no nothing, just me and my guitar. Simple five-minute sound checks. I don't even play songs at sound checks now, I just go up and strum a bit. Lalalalala, that's it. That's just because I've done it a thousand times. Dreadlocks I had them for about eight years or something like that, at the end I could actually sit on them. Silly! I got hold of Bored of their Laughing, your voice is incredible on it. It's probably a bit shouty, it's very full on, this music. [Picking up the cover] This is really special anyway. Talkin' war, that's a great song. This picture? we went to this guy, Steve or something, who did mostly U2 album covers, so we just went to this guy "we need a cover". He just took out all these slides, like about three hundred slides with those little magnifiers and we all just sat there like this [squints his eye] for ages just staring. We'd break the three hundred into two piles of "maybes" and "definitely nots" and we'd go to the maybe pile and break that into two and break that into two. At the very end we'd have two slides. Right it's that one and that one, we picked this one. This guy designs them but the slides are done by all these different photographers, they just submit the slides and if it gets used for something, it gets used and whatever. The photograph was done by this guy called Harry Thullier Jnr. I didn't know the guy. I'd never met him, the album was out in the shops for ages. I got this phone call one-day, this guy called "is that Mic? This is Harry Thullier." I was like "man, I've been dying to meet you!" "Thanks for using me picture" "thanks for letting us!" It was this great little chat on the phone. And he goes "I'm off to?" I forget where, Israel or somewhere, "I'm going off tomorrow, I'll be back in six weeks and I'll call you the day I get back." He went away and died while he was away, I never got to meet him, I never found out who she is either! It's nice that it's there, that it got used and it means a lot. I'd loved to have met him, this day on the phone was brilliant, it was like we'd known each other for years 'cause we'd shared each others art?