INTERVIEW: Does It Offend You, Yeah?

England’s stomping dance-punks Does It Offend You, Yeah? are set to play Splendour In The Grass this August, plus a bunch of raucous sideshows with the Purple Sneakers DJs around the country. Richard Scott spoke to Dan Coop about their anticipations for the tour, retro porn stars and natural disasters.

Your own bio describes you as “rave-rock-shit-flingers”. Is this the best description of your sound, or do you actually fling your own poo on stage?

It might have been something I did when I was much younger, like an infant, but I can’t say I make a practice of it now. I have seen things along those lines in videos, late night on a tour bus perhaps, but as for a description of our sound that’s probably a fair assessment of us live. With this last album [Second album, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You] our style is very, very different, we’ve got a couple of ballads on there, but when we want to play live that’s when we go all out.

Your bio also mentions a combination of “balls out angry” and “laser blasts”...

Does it? Can’t say any of us own a laser gun to be fair. I’m not in the laser-gun-club. Don’t have a licence.

How have you found people’s responses to your new CD, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn you?

We’ve been really happy with it, so far. We fought so hard to make it sound that way. Obviously I hate reading reviews and try my best to avoid them, but I did check out our wiki page the other day and found links to some quite positive fan responses.

Did you notice anything about fans wanking along?

Yes, actually! We’ve got some disturbed fans.

I saw on YouTube, that Windowmaker19 wrote the following about your song We Are The Dead:

At 0:00, I said what?

Then I came again.

Discuss...

Well, I’m really hoping that’s a girl because if it’s not, that is one hell of a recharge rate. The boy needs to be commended

Is this how you envisaged people listening to your music?

What, making music for people to wank to? No. Although, I think secretly that’s a job we all dream for. We could maybe do that for the next record.

Concept album, perhaps? You could use the Australian tour for inspiration...

Actually, didn’t Liam Howlett [Prodigy] and 3D [Massive Attack] soundtrack a porn movie once? I think they did. It was set in space, the kind of trip you can take where they simulate floating.

Well that’s my next Google search taken care of.

I tell you what; do you know who I did meet?

[Dramatic pause]

Ron Jeremy [legendary hairy porn star]. I got my photo taken with the man. It was at some NME awards night in the states. Perry Farrell’s band was playing, Jane’s Addiction, and Ron Jeremy shows up with his little entourage. We’d just played before so we were just walking around, and to bump into someone like that was crazy. I even shook his hand. There was some really famous people there, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails and a load of A-listers, but that little fat man was easily the most recognised man in the room. Just goes to show that porn is more popular than pop.

Perhaps you could score Ron’s next movie?

I might have to if this whole band thing goes to shit.

With DIOYY? coming down under for the fourth time in August are you at all worried about your so-called “Aussie Curse”? Previous tours have seen broken legs, glandular fever, pig flu and cancelled gigs due to torrential rain.

Yeah, there appears to be something about Australia that seems to have a strange effect on us. The rain was annoying, especially since Australia is one of the countries where we’re most popular as a band. It’s a bit of a shame really, but we’ll go every time we get the chance. We even flew out just to play one gig, Stonefest at Canberra uni [2010]. We flew the 19 hours or so down there, did the gig, had a nice little barbeque and flew straight home. We probably spent more time in the air than in the country.

So what disaster do you predict on this tour?

Asteroids. We’ll get on stage, tune up and get hit with an asteroid. It’ll be like in 2012. Either that or the whole crowd will turn into zombies. I’m not ruling it out. Would make for a great music video.

So how excited are you about coming down under?

We’re really looking forward to it. Australian crowds go off. I can actually jump into the crowd there and have people ready to catch me. It should be fun. We’ve got great buddies in Australia; we’ve got pockets of mates in every town to party with.

Plus you’ll be supported by our very own Purple Sneakers DJs...

Yeah, I like them boys. They’re wicked. I do like their mix CDs. They do indie tunes with dancey tunes, right? Shout out to them.

Any other final shout outs?

Shout to Prodigy, and to anyone who’s coming along to any of our gigs, basically.

Will they be given presents?

They can have a free copy of my new porno CD. Actually, we could name it after our next single.

What’s that?

Pull Out My Insides! Yes! Don’t you think that would make a great title for my porno?

You can find all of the DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH? Australian Tour details HERE