Press and Interviews

Gavin Martin feasts his peepers on Marc Riley and The Creepers.

Flicking the dial unto uncle John Peel's late night aural sludge session is usually a proposition I find as exciting as submerging my head in a bucketful of vinegar.

But one night I found myself listening in, immediately drawn to the voluminous charms of a place called 'Location Bangladesh', courtesy of tour operators Marc Riley and the Creepers.

This was something else - bilious and fractured Fallish riffs, a ratch pepped bass and an assertive percussive clatter over a cantankerous parody of the pomp pop brats' biggest love - a video location! 'Yeah we went to Sri Lanka last year/ But we didn't like the beer/ And we didn't chase the women there/ I want to make that very clear'.

There was a sharp sarky edge too on 'Blow' - a snipe at pale white boys' brass fetish. 'Buy yourself a brass section/ Old men with worn out lips/ Or learn to play yourself - you know it makes money sense'.

The beauty of it was the music they were playing actually bore out their arrogance. It was The Fall's golden single period fired up with new vigour and vibrancy. There was a rockabilly rumble, spunk punk and a lurid Velvet's haze battling it out in a gloriously controlled claustrophobia.

If the wily and idiosyncratic commentaries of the lyrics bore more than a passing resemblance to mark E Smith's prose, it was no surprise. Before he joined The Fall at 15, (seven years in the Fall!) Riley had been a fanatic of the group. Even now he admits that when his former mentor is writing well 'there's no-one who can beat him'. Though he pertinently adds, 'at the moment I don't think he is'.

I took a train to Sheffield to find out more about The Creepers. They were playing one of their infrequent gifs at The Leadmill.

A cold night in the midweek and the club was a quarter full. It was one of a number of worthy 'commie run' venues in those parts so quite a few were on the guest list and those that weren't, 'were bartering with a bag of brown rice at the door' jokes Riley.

I thought that perhaps he'd miss the security of The Fall, faced with a slog around the old circuit again.

'No way. It was always a cliff hanger with The Fall, I think Mark wanted to kick me out around the time of 'Grotesque'. The money was hopeless - I'm better off on social security. In that sense it wasn't something I'd built up. I should have left earlier, it was a pretty gutless thing to stay there so long'.

Following a period of growing disaffection around the time of The Fall's mini LP 'Room To Live', and a punch up on tour in an Australian night club, Riley left The Fall in December '82, and recorded a debut solo single with various members of his old band the following April ('Favourite Sister'). He put together The Creepers - Eddie Fenn (drums), Pete Keough (bass), Paul Fletcher (guitar) and Jim Khambatta (occasional organist, dancer and manager) - in July.

'The main reason for starting The Creepers was that it was getting to the point where I was just doing as I was told. I didn't have any great thing that I wanted to get off me chest - my songs are just observations, not political statements or anything - but I'd been writing stuff by myself and I knew mark wouldn't tolerate that, he won't have people doing things themselves.

So far they've release a single 'Jumper Clown' and an EP of their Peel session called 'Creepin' At Maida Vale', all on Riley's own independent In Tape label. Their music isn't all as great as the aforementioned first half of the Peel session and, indeed, at times their live performance was a mire of depression putting me in mind of a bucket of vinegar from which they'd once provided a refuge. That was partly set to rights by a blast of their electric debut LP where you'll find such raw delights as 'Make Joe' ('Why does a head like a boiled egg/ Make Joe shit himself/ why do priests teach sex?') or 'Railroad', a scabrous and credible stab at currently fashionable country billy, and the epic 'Gross', a gruesome overhaul of meatman sex psychology.

'The songs are usually about groups of people, fanatics of one kind or another. A lot of people say the songs are about sex but it's not Iggy sex - cor baby I dig your groovy ass - it's more just having a laugh'.

Is there a value in being cynical, parodying things all the time?

'Well, it's more a smirk. It depends what you mean by value. You're into soul music, well is there a value in saying ' Ooh baby come to me' or 'Reach out and I'll be there''.

Take a song like 'Gross'; is that just being over the top for the hell of it?

'I think they are the best words I've written. They are strong but that's to get across the sort of person I was writing about. Those people exist, they drop their pants in the pub and I find them funny. Parodying them has a value because people might see a bit of themselves in there'.

To me the best creeping music occurs when they nail one of Riley's strong angular spleen guitar lines and then let their elemental scuzz throb work around it. But too often an admitted Velvets infatuation takes a hold and they go for meaningless cacophony.

'Well, I've developed more in the past three year than I did with three years in The Fall because I've been able to play the guitar on my own. When you say rock'n'roll, people think you're a bit of a wally but I think that is a good term for what we do.

'I think we should be doing stuff that is a bit ropey at the minute, it gives us a perspective. At the moment I'm just following my instincts and doing what I think is right, I'm playing the sort of music I'd want to buy - that's the only criterion worth using'.

Marc Riley lives outside Manchester with his wife, a salamander and a tarantula. He never sees Smith but he often goes for a drink with friend, neighbour and former Fall member Craig Scanlon. Although he's in control of The Creepers he describes it as a much more democratic set up than The Fall with all the members involved in individual projects which will eventually be integrated into the group's own songs. He's contented with the low key and small scale manner on which the group are developing.

Then they are at their best The Creepers are a valuable group - getting up noses, tickling the funny bone and moulding an oddball electric candy with musical dexterity. They are rough diamonds in a sea of pop gloop and banner waving guitar bores. Watch out for them

(Gavin Martin, NME: 31st March 1984, pp6-7)