“The most important thing about Pep Le Pew is that we would be doing this even if nobody was noticing it,” says bassist/vocalist/MC Aron Jones, earnestly. “This is what we like doing anyway.”
Although essentially a hip hop band, something sets Pep Le Pew apart from other bands of the same genre. Sonically they’re funkier yet darker than other hip hop bands, and they’re influenced by a wide range of artists that may come as a surprise; listen to their records and you’ll pick out Marvin Gaye influences alongside Tystion and Super Furry Animals, and many more besides. Pep Le Pew’s personality is quirky, fun, loving, serious, affectionate, angry, sarcastic, passionate, creative and, most importantly, very sweet.
Dyl Mei—the band’s keyboardist, samplemeister and producer — has his own ideas about the band members’ individual personalities. “Aron is the deeper one – he thinks more about things than the rest of us,” he muses. “He’s the most hedonistic – him and Danny – they’ll get bollocksed on anything they can. Me and ed are the clowns – we’re like Morcambe and Wise but not as funny. Dave is the sensible one, except when he’s being a bit of a rock star. He’s the most un-famous rock and roll star in the world! But when it comes to the band’s business we’re all sensible and we all know what’s good for the band.”
The boys are pleased with the way 2001 has turned out. “It’s been the best year you could ask for, except for not getting a record deal or my cock sucked by Naomi Campbell,” Dyl grins. “We started off with our first gig in Clwb Ifor with Bob George and Estella but it wasn’t very good because it was full of Welsh rugby fans on the day Wales was trashed by England. Our second gig was in the sports club in Porthmadog; the PA blew up two minutes before we went on so we had to plug everything into the DJ mixer. Ed wasn’t allowed to do any scratching because there was no input for it, I couldn’t use the synths, no mics on the drums or congas, and Aron and Ed had to share a mic, but it went down well.
“In April we played in Cardiff with Llwybr Llaethog – I’d say that was the start of our year really, it was a fucking wicked gig. We played well and the crowd appreciated it and the sound was good. In July we played London which was brilliant.
“The Eisteddfod and Miri Madog were the highlights of this year – Miri Madog was perfect, it was pissing with rain until we went on. We played for an hour and ten minutes and had a fucking wicked crowd. We were just drunk enough to be obnoxious but not drunk enough to be shit, and there was a lot of dancing in the audience. People were just arriving and the first thing they were seeing was us so they were coming straight to the front. Then there was the Cymdeithas rally in Cardiff in September; we played that then a gig in Clwb afterwards - it was perhaps the second best gig we’ve done.”
I tell him that a friend of mine had been to one of the early Port gigs and told me it was slightly shambolic but still a good gig. This was partly due to the band’s total alcoholic intoxication, I suggest.
They all laugh. “I had to scream at Ed after two songs ‘cos he was asleep leaning against the wall onstage!” Dyl giggles. “I was just off the stage with all my sequencers, and I had people like my dad just coming up and going ‘What does this do?’ and pressing all the buttons in the middle of songs!”
Drummer Dave: “At the end of the set we were all shouting and everyone thought it was part of the act! We were all nearly beating each other up!”
Dyl: “Then we did Chic, a Sugarhill Gang cover, for about half an hour! We’d run out of songs!”
Aron: “But everyone was enjoying it so we carried on!”
Dyl: “We stopped and went off, but they sent us back on for another hour! Basically everyone in the audience was fucked so they wanted to dance. We went on and did a techno set. That was good.”
Playing amazing gigs is just part of the list of achievements Pep Le Pew have clocked up in the past year.
“We’ve done two videos this year, for the same song but different programmes,” Dyl says. “The first one was for Bandit, the next one was recorded on proper film and was a two day shoot in Cardiff Bay, with Dave driving about in a BMW, and me… walking a dog! Then we had the documentary made about us by Cwmni Hon. Lleucu (presenter/director) met us in Cardiff through you, that gig at Sam’s Bar. She filmed us soundchecking and we thought nothing of it, then when we were in Cardiff filming the video she came over and said she wanted to do a half hour documentary about us. And she’s done our photos and organised the rally gig. Cwmni Hon had our minibus spraypainted for the documentary, that was cool.”
Dyl continues: “ We were nominated for best Welsh language band at the writs [which, we’re informed, they would have won had the event not been cancelled at the last minute] and about three nominations at the Buzz Welsh Music Awards. That’s cool because one of them was ‘best single’ and we were up against Super Furry Animals.”
PLP didn’t make it through to the final nominations, but as a Furries fan, how would Dyl have felt if they’d won that best single award? Would he have felt a bit bad?
“Not bad, just… weird,” says Dyl. “Because obviously their single is much better than ours. But it would be smart to win against them because they’ve won loads of other awards. Especially if they’d been there on the night. Tell them to fuck off and poke them with my semi-erect mushroom-sized penis.”
I’m intrigued. Is it really mushroom sized?
“Yeah,” Dyl grins, “but it’s a magic mushroom – one lick and you’re in heaven! No it’s not mushroom-sized really. It’s medium Chihuahua sized!”
Another achievement of 2001 that took most of the year to materialise is their debut album, Y Da, Y Drwg Ac Yr Hyll, which they finally released on their own label—MPLP—just before Christmas.
“It’s a limited company and we’re all directors,” Dyl says of the label. “Dave’s the head of the company and we’re all directors. The money comes from gigs and from Dave. The only way we can make money really out of doing the album is by releasing it ourselves, because even the best record companies in Wales wouldn’t pay us enough in royalties from sales. Zabrinski did their own album and made money out of it so we thought we’d try it. Which means we can either spend any money we make on better gear or make a better album next time.”
Pep Le Pew are a band that often have something to say about other musicians and the music scene in Wales generally, and today is no exception.
“Nobody goes to gigs in Wales any more,” says Dyl. “You go to gigs and the bands are usually just shite.”
“And it’s cheaper to get a DJ,” Aron adds.
“I think that’s all over the country, in a way,” says Dave. “I think you have to be something different to try and get the club crowd back into gigs.”
“Some bands are just so shit, though!” Dyl growls. “There’s bands I can think of in Wales, and I could take them to court and prove they’re shit! But fair play to Radio Cymru” – Dyl has the good grace to admit when someone’s done them a favour – “they’ve given us shitloads of support, they’ve been great with us and we can’t knock them.”
The band started around October 1998. Aron and Dyl have been friends since school and had been experimenting for about five years in the studio where Dyl now lives and works. Dave, in the meantime, had given up drums for five years and was living in London, and when he came back he joined a band that used the studio and there he met Aron. Dave and Aron carried on as a two piece, just bass and drums, jamming, then in April of last year Aron introduced Dave to Dyl, who was a bit of a joker.
“I was always in the back room making tunes,” Dyl explains, “and then I quit college and started to live in the studio, I wouldn’t go home! Except to say hello to the family…”
Dave picks up the story. “Myself and Aron were wracking our brains. ‘Where can we get new members or other musicians?’ We were looking for someone specific to do the same style of music we were doing, and we thought… Dyl! He was so close to us, we didn’t even think of him. So when we asked him he said ‘yes’ and that was the real beginning of the band.”
Did the band have a name at that point?
Dave grins cheekily: “It was Pepe Le Pew, and we did have an ‘e’ in it!” – I quietly acknowledge this reference to my previous misspellings of the band name on WBW’s website.
Dyl: “I told them I wouldn’t join the band unless they dropped the ‘e’, because of copyright.”
Dave: “You know, Warner Brothers and all that. So the ‘e’ disappeared. So we changed it back and it’s stuck ever since. And Pep Le Pew is a bit of a skunk reference as well!”
Dyl: “A hidden drug reference, basically.”
Not very well hidden, I tell him, ‘cos I spotted it the first time I heard the name… What are your best memories of the past year?
“My best memory is our last song in Clwb Ifor Bach at the rally gig,” says Dyl. “We didn’t do an encore but we chilled it down a bit and had Aron, Danny and Ed screaming at the crowd and they reacted well and we never wanted to stop playing, we wanted to carry on for a thousand years. The other is hearing our first radio play of Y Mwyafrif on Gang Bangor on Radio Cymru. Funniest memory is on Maes B, being pissed and having a laugh, taking the piss out of people, and on stage in Miri Madog, attacking everything that breathed. We did a gig somewhere and went back to these girls’ house for a party and everyone crashed out except for me and Danny, so we took it upon ourselves to make a hell of a mess before we left and we hid all their keys. Aron wanted to leave the gas on but we wouldn’t let him. There was the fight in the back of your car with Iwan Evans from Topper, that was a bit mad, standing out in the street with my mum shouting at me to stop… very rock ‘n’ roll! Having a jam with Anweledig in their bus at the steddfod. It was raining outside but we were sat in the bus playing summery music. That’s a good memory.”
I’m still not quite sure how to describe Pep Le Pew’s sound, I tell them. Did they always know when they started the band what sort of sound they were going to have, or did it develop gradually?
The boys seem undecided as to how best to answer this question. Dyl and Dave say ‘no’ in unison, while simultaneously Aron says “yeah, we did!”
“We were all learning,” says Dyl, and then he admits: “I was just blagging it in the studio. I didn’t have a fucking clue! But I pretended that I did!”
Aron: “We were telling people, y’know, ‘We’ve got loads of songs, we’re in the studio, recording,’ but we didn’t have any songs!”
“Well, we had two songs,” says Dyl. “One was called Diflannu, it was the one we did a video for. That was our first song.”
“Yeah, but we told everyone we had an album!” laughs Aron.
“We only had that and a song called Feel Good,” chuckles Dyl.
“We had a Bandit TV appearance two and a half years ago, in the Globe in Bangor,” Dave laughs. “We only had that one song, do you remember? Just you and me, Aron.”
Aron remembers. “We said we were a drum and bass band – that was the only instruments we had!”
Now the band are becoming a bit more established, have they worked out their agenda? Do they have major ambitions and a means of achieving these?
The band all shrug and look undecided. Aron says, slowly: “Well, we’re still a young band, yeah? As in, we’ve only really been together since Christmas. But we’re gonna carry on for at least another ten years.”
“And obviously the music’s there and the media are there to be used. No offence…” Dave looks slightly embarrassed. I agree with him. WBW certainly exists to help promote bands such as Pep Le Pew, but certainly not in order to make money.
Dave relaxes. “If there’s no bands the music press can’t exist, so, you know… it’s there to be used.”
If the media are there to be used, what would the boys like people to learn about them from this interview?
Dyl: “If people come to our gigs with a haircut they can get in for free! They’ll have to bring a picture of how it looked before, signed by a doctor, and then they can get in for free!”
Aron: “We want people to know that there’s music being made that’s slightly different to other bands from North Wales.”
Dyl: “We’re not a typical North Wales shite folk band!”
But you’re not exactly typical hip hop, either…
Aron: “We’re mongrels! There’s a Welshness there, apart from the lyrics. There is a Welsh sort of sound there.”
Dyl: “It’s a bit more depressed than hip hop.”
Dave: “It’s like indie hip hop, in a way.”
Dyl: “That’s where Wales is going wrong musically – everyone’s happy! Fuck off, happy! You live in Wales in the middle of the mountains, not fucking California! The crowd think ‘Why are you so fucking happy?!’ Fucking hell! That’s why we’re a bit different!”
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve sampled?
Dyl ponders. “The scariest thing I’ve ever sampled… nobody ever believes me but I’ve got a witness to this. I was in the studio one day and I was bored so I thought I would sample the wind; you know when it comes through the door and goes “whooo”? So I sampled it and when I played it back there was a little noise, and I thought “what the fuck was that?” I edited the sample so I could hear the noise clearer and it sounded like a voice but really freaky so I reversed it and it said “enw fi ydi Henri” – “my name is Henri” – so I shat it and put the sampler away and went to bed. In the morning I played it to Morris [the studio’s owner] and he was certain that I’d done it myself. But Morris’ grandad was called Henri and he’d previously owned the studio…
“The weirdest samples – I recorded Dave doing a percussion track by patting coins in his pocket, and I used this little tiny guitar for the intro to Y Da, Y Drwg Ac Yr Hyll. I want to sample somebody getting fucked over the drumkit! Or stick a mic up a girl and flick her pubic bone and record the sound! I need to find volunteers for that! Internal audio!”
If 2001 has been a year of massive achievements, what’s left to be achieved in 2002?
“I wouldn’t mind getting some fans, which would be nice,” says Dyl. “I wouldn’t mind getting a record deal, even if it’s off a small indie record label. It’d be nice to get the other side of the mini bus painted. I’d like to get our next album out, an English one, much higher quality than this. And after that a fully Welsh album. If we had the time I’d love to be able to release an English and Welsh album at the same time, it’s better to have one-language albums than do a mixture on one album.”
There’s a lot of people who won’t be impressed if you do an English album – what would you say to them?
“Fuck off!” Dyl glares, in his usual blunt manner. “I just don’t want to get pushed by people like that to not do what I want to do. I don’t think I should be scared of doing something in English in case some fuck comes and burns down the holiday home next to my grandmother’s house. If we do an English album we’ll balance it with a 100% Welsh album. We won’t just dump the Welsh language, it’s our first language and my preferred language, it just happens to be that we write some songs in English. Super Furries have done more for the language by doing Mwng now rather than their first album. I’m not keen on Welsh speaking bands who just dump the language though, I don’t like that. Catatonia did it – I don’t like that attitude. If you started singing in Welsh you should always stick with Welsh because otherwise you’re using it just to get into the media and when they make it big they drop the language completely.
“More people have heard the Welsh language through SFA b-sides and Mwng than they would have heard on any of the Welsh radio stations,” Dyl continues. “There’s no money for singing exclusively in Welsh though, unless you’re Bryn Fôn. The worst thing that could ever happen to Wales is if we lost the language. You’ve got S4C having a go at bands for singing in English, yet they’re not willing to make sure they can support the Welsh music scene. It’s disgusting that a country cannot support its own music scene. S4C, they’ve got millions, they’ve got the money, they show that by paying Pobl Y Cwm actors more money in a year than most people earn in ten years, then they come along and dump the Welsh music scene. A band spends, say, a month doing an album, they go out doing gigs for £100 or £200 and they’ll get paid £500 for doing a video… We got paid £500 between us from Boomerang to do a video, and that’s fair because they pay for the video and at the end of the day we get a free video out of it. But with some other TV companies, who I won’t name, you get paid pennies compared to what the producers are getting, and without the bands there’d be no TV show. Without the show there’d be no commission, without the commission there’d be no money, without the money there’d be no jobs… so the Welsh bands have to sit in silence and suffer whilst we’re giving people in Wales jobs in the media.”
Finally, a couple of questions just for Dyl, seeing as his answers are so… imaginative. What do you want for Christmas?
“A little Afghan kid. No. I wouldn’t mind getting a trumpet, a violin, grand piano, a flute, an oboe and a whole orchestra in the toilet. On a serious note I wouldn’t mind an end to the America/Afghan situation, because I don’t want to get drafted. And I want to meet Santa Claus so I can beat him up and steal all his toys.”
Have you a special message to readers of this interview?
“There is no Santa Claus. No. Buy the album and have a merry fucking Christmas. And turn up to our gigs. Stop listening to shit bands. And they should all give up smoking and don’t take any drugs at all, not even headache pills, just deal with it. Not even caffeine. Just clean living. No, actually. Take drugs. Everyone should take drugs, smoke dope and do the odd bit of smack. Vote for Pep Le Pew in the next elections. Buy our album. Send your kids to school, that’s always a nice tip. Buy all the Super Furries’ stuff so they can have their well-deserved number one. Don’t go to see Maharishi or Gogz in concert. Ever.”
Pep Le Pew would like to thank Morris of Stiwdio Blaen Y Cae, Garndolbenmaen, for his help and support over the past year. |
