Interview with Four Star Mary Conducted by : Ken Naylor & Klif Fuller - with pictures by Malcolm Houghton On Wednesday, 27th June 2001, Four Star Mary, the American band who provide the music for the fictitious 'Dingoes Ate My Baby' in 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer,' took time out after an excellent gig at 'Chinnerys' to talk to The Chronicles back at their hotel on a range of subjects from bangers 'n' mash to Elvis Presley. And it was a hot time in Southend that night. After initial introductions I apologised for the quality of the questions that we had knocked together in the pub shortly before the gig and asked ''if we ask a crap question just give us an interesting answer…''

- If you had to sum up Four Star Mary in just a few words what would they be?

Tad Looney (vocals): (In exaggerated English accent) Well, that questions a bit crap isn't it? Someone else asked me to sum it up in three words and I said ‘steak and eggs.’ I guess this time it'll be ‘bangers 'n' mash…’ which means absolutely nothing… - That's a bit surreal.
Steve Carter (bowler hat wearing bass player): It's a bunch of people who just cannot stand each other, (Laughter), but make music together…
Tad: …really I would say it's just a lot of fun. Steve: …frankly, it's a hell of a lot better than anything else we could think to do so… Well, if I could play I'd be doing it but I can't. You're lucky.
Steve: Well, we can't play anyway. (Rousing chorus of ''Oh yes you can. You were great tonight, etc.'') We're just living the Rock'n'Roll lifestyle.

- So which one of you would be first to throw your T.V. out of the hotel widow?
Zu (Guitarist in a Loud Shirt): Which one of us would be the first to trash a hotel room? Actually, last year, we stayed at a house in Birmingham and we were going to base the whole tour out of that place and drive back there every night. We moved in and it was a 'party' place.
Tad: Three parties past cleaning.
Zu: Exactly. And the first thing we did was we cleaned the whole place up. Totally un-rock star. It was like, Dude, I can't shower in that.
[Klif Fuller (LVG) then commented on the amount of English phrases and slang the band seem to have picked up]
Tad: The thing is we want to move over here, and that's our deal, so we're trying to learn the lingo. Our favourite saying at the moment is 'preposterous f*ckwit..'
Steve: We're trying to get past the Dick Van Dyke kind of accent.
Zu (as Dick Van Dyke): Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

- James Marsters was talking at N3K about how he and the other cast members of BtVS get most of their English from Tony Head, but seeing as how James mispronounces 'poof' so badly it seems Tony sometimes points him in the wrong direction. Deliberately?
Steve: Tony Head has been accused of having an accent that would be too posh for Bath, and the thing is with James is he's totally American and he's got that full-on fake English accent.

- O.K. Moving on a bit. Were you aware that Nerf Herder (the band that wrote the 'Buffy' theme) are also touring the U.K. at the moment. Do you know them?
Steve: We've met a few times. We've never done a show with them. We played a show in High Wickham the other day and there was a band called Punchbowl who open and close their set with the best version of the Nerf Herder Buffy theme we have ever heard, so if people want to hear that song I suggest they go check out Punchbowl, 'cause those boys kick ass.

[There followed a discussion about the number of people who had the Buffy theme on their mobile phones, other tunes that would be cool to have on your mobile phone which then led to a mention for 'The League Of Gentlemen' and the LVG had to explain Royston Vasey to Four Star Mary who have not seen the show. Steps have been taken to rectify this deficiency in their English education].
Steve: Every time we turn on T.V. over here all we seem to get is 'Bewitched', 'I Dream of Jeannie', 'Charlie's Angels' and lots of ER.
KF: Mmm, 'I Dream of Jeannie'. Don't get me started on Barbara Eden. She made puberty very 'hard' for me…

- That's enough of that. Another question. How were you first approached to do the music for the show?
Steve: I was at a party basically serving food and I put our tape into a 'boom-box' and this guy comes up and says ''what's this playing?'' and I said, like, ''who wants to know?'' I thought I might be in trouble but he said he really liked it so it was cool like ''Yeah, this is my band'' and he said he did the music for the show. Actually he was the assistant musical director at that time. He told us they had this club on the show but they didn't have a lot of money. This was during Season 1. He said if the band came down they'd get some airtime on T.V. and so on and like that.

- Except no one would see what you look like.
Steve: His idea originally was to have just had one band, us, but they've had a lot of bands on there. About every 2nd episode there was a band playing in 'The Bronze' (the name of the club on the show) it was almost like synergy, like they were deliberately trying to establish a cult following for the show. All independent bands. Superfine, Dogstar… no, sorry, not Dogstar, I meant Black Lab. Lots of bands. So, anyway, I told the guys about it but he phoned me up about a week later all upset. Joss (Whedon) had stolen the CD and was playing it at his desk and told him this is the sound for 'Dingoes Ate My Baby'. And he's like ''who the f*ck are 'Dingoes Ate My Baby' because he had no idea that Joss was planning to have this band in the show. Joss decided to use our music as source music for the show and we were like, great, but he said the bad news is you're not going to be on the show. Actors are going to stand on the stage. We're like, do we still get paid? and we did so it was o.k.

- So how was it that you got to appear to do the 'exposition' song on 4th Season finale episode 'Restless'?
Steve: Chris (Christopher Beck, musical score for Buffy seasons one to four) wanted to do it. He really wanted to do it. It was his last season, he was leaving, he really wanted some face time on the show. So Joss was like, o.k. , well if we're gonna do you then we gotta do Four Star Mary because we had more songs in the show than anyone except Chris Beck. Joss wrote the lyrics for the song and Chris actually wrote the music for it. Then Chris (Sobchack, the drummer), Zu and I went into the studio with Tony Head and Chris Beck and recorded it and as you probably noticed the actual on air stuff had this guy (indicates Tad) playing bass 'cause I was back in Boston and missed it.
Tad: Playing quite convincingly I might add (laughter from the rest of the band) and enjoying every minute of it.
Steve: And you look so much shorter on T.V. too...

- Tony Head has been recording some stuff for an album, and James Marsters has been playing guitar on a cover version of Sam Cooke's 'Working on a Chain Gang' but, says he's never heard the original and doesn't know if he's any good?
Steve: Well it's not about what the original sounds like it's about if there's a vibe so it's probably better that he's never heard it.

- How do you feel about bands covering your songs? I know of a punk band in Malta who cover 'Pain'. Steve: We get so many e-mails from people saying ''is it alright if we cover your songs'' and we're like, o.k., we don't mind but send us a tape. We want to put sound bites on our website. Tad: Hey, so we're huge in Malta. Steve: Yeah, but gold is like ten records sold in Malta.

- Now, we know you put in an appearance at Nocturnal this year but you didn't play. If there's another one next year how would you feel about doing a set at the convention?
Steve: We were approached with that idea for this year and it was articulated to us that they'd tried to do that sort of thing before. I mean, you know us right, we're not a real pain in the ass type band but the other bands were notorious pains in the ass and the technical people just don't want to deal with it. I showed up at that convention and all these girls are like ''you're gonna play, you're gonna play tonight?'' and we're like, no, we're just here to sign some things and then we had to leave to do another show. I know James played a couple of acoustic numbers but we had to split. But we'd definitely be up for it. Our booking contact is on our website, so any time you guys hear what's happening just e-mail us.''

- We're not sure what's going on about next year, there are some 'things' going on that we're not part of, but we'll make sure that the guys who are organising it are aware that you're up for it if it goes ahead. It would be a real shame if it doesn't.
Tad (In 'hippy' stylee): Oh dear. C'mon let's all just love each other.
Steve: We didn't realise people would want us to do other stuff until we got over here by which time it's too late.

- I hear you did XFM today?
Steve: We did a session for XFM. We're not sure when that's going out. They're playing 'Dilate' (the new single) but it's at 3 a.m. We're on the 'C' list at XFM right now, so if people want to listen…

- We'll have to see if we can get some people to ring them up and hassle them.
Zu (Checks his watch): You've only got like an hour and a half guys. We can do it. (Shouts of 'yeah' and 'let's do it'' and ''preposterous f*ckwit'' filled the air)
Steve: We also did some stuff that's going out on a Sky channel tonight. [We checked the T.V. in the hotel but the particular channel had closed down for the night. They'd told the band they were 24 hours but obviously weren't.] It was the first time that I'd been to a T.V. studio that had it's own diner. Sorry, café. That's weird.
Zu (Sarcastically): And they were the friendliest staff in the whole world. They served sandwiches with mayonnaise and I just love that.
Steve: What is it with the English and salad cream? Y'all just love that stuff.
Tad: Loathsome.
Steve: Our word of the day, apart from 'preposterous f*ckwit'.

[Klif Fuller then recounted the story of the LVG trip to New Orleans were the food was great but every breakfast came with grits. There followed universal groans of disgust except from Tad who's originally from 'the South,' and then a discussion ensued about tripe, haggis and deep fried Mars bars. Much more groaning and screams of 'vile'].
Steve: Grits are evil. Let's just say it like it is. Grits are evil.
Zu: Oh no. I didn't say 'hot time in Florida' tonight.
[Looks of confusion from the LVG Massive for this non-sequiter until Zu explained it was his favourite saying and told us the Elvis story.]
Elvis in '68 right. He's just done that big come back thing and he's in Hawaii. He's just done this big concert with all the hula girls and he's surrounded by all these beautiful Polynesian women. He's in the limo' and he's driving away and someone says ''great show tonight'' and he's like, ''yup, hot night in Florida''. He didn't even know where the hell he was, man. So that's like something I say wherever we go now. Hot night in Florida.
Steve: You see the funny thing is in America we had an Elvis postage stamp. We got to vote whether we wanted young Elvis, or fat, bloated Elvis and, my Mother's a Post Master, and she told me it was like two million to one for the later Elvis, but the American Post Office couldn't bring themselves to go with that so we got the young, leather clad Elvis. In this country stamps are released in sets of three or four. We'd have had early Elvis, late Elvis and a fried banana sandwich stamp.
Everybody: Excellent!

~ At this point we were having too much fun to ask any more dumb questions so we just enjoyed the company of these friendly, hospitable Americans until it was time for them to grab some sleep. They were playing Peterborough that night and had a day in a Transit van to look forward to. Diamond geezers... and “a Hot Night in Southend.” Four Star Mary's L.P. 'Thrown to the Wolves' has just been re-released with 2 additional tracks for the U.K. Their previous 'Black' L.P was an independent release that is VERY hard to find, and they have 'Dilate' out as a single. The band have finished recording their next L.P. for release in the new year. ed note- For further information about Four Star Mary, check out the following web-sites : www.fourstarmary.com www.msgrecords.com