"OOH, I wanna go on the swings!"
A cerise, green and white blur streaks past, bound for the adventure playground over the next hillock. A weary admonition of "Mags! Get back here!" halts the figure in its little tracks. Mags sulkily returns to the photo session, kicking at pebbles with mismatched sneakers.
Who else but Fuzzbox? As you read this, the self-styled Queens Of Coolocity are pillaging a town near you as part of the Vindaloo Summer Special, a consortium of the indie label's artists who have recorded a frenetic EP and are promoting it with a package tour.
The four tracks on the record have been contributed by Fuzzbox, Ted Chippington, a curiously low-key comic whose label boss fashions him The King Of Comedy, and The Nightingales, the only "authentic" (i.e. they can play their guitars) group on Vindaloo.
EP ditties like "Rockin' With Rita", a wildly unmelodic clash between Fuzzbox and Ted, merely hint at the mayhem that will abound during the live dates, when the three completely disparate acts will be flipping a coin to determine who headlines each night. The label will be furthering the Summer Special concept by peddling sticks of Vindaloo rock at the gigs--the real thing, with "Vindaloo" printed through the centre and a pic of the record company offices on the label.
We went to Vindaloo HQ in Balsall Heath to watch the bands prepare for the tour, and to meet Rob Lloyd, majordomo of what may currently be Britain's most visible independent label.
"You can see that you don't need palm trees or air-conditioning to run a successful record company," said label manager Nick Small, ushering us into a terraced house.
We proceeded through the kitchen and out the back, past a row of warehouses that may well have provided the inspiration for many Factory Records LP sleeves. Ted Chippington and The Nightingales lounged in front of the Vindaloo local as we hove to. Fuzzbox, splashes of colour on a monochromatic landscape, straggled up moments later. My first, and lasting, impression of the quartet was that they looked even younger than their purported ages, and were unbelievably tiny. Mags wore a chopped-up Fuzzbox tee-shirt as a dress, its hemline ending a couple of metres above her knees. She was the most conventional of the four.
"They're everything Sigue Sigue Sputnik want to be," says Lloyd, proudly. "Young, pretty and female."
Fuzzbox were commendably unimpressed at the sight of yet another hack. The others seemed to be rather nonplussed. Do you mind, I asked Ted and The Nightingales, that most of the audiences will be coming to see the girls?
Rob Lloyd, who fronts The Nightingales as well as overseeing Vindaloo, said: "No, it's cool. There's nothing I can do about the fact that they're more popular. It's more a case of getting The Nightingales better known than it is of getting at Fuzzbox. All this sunshine and rock 'n' roll are making me optimistic."
Was Ted looking forward to spending two weeks in a minibus with four women who, according to Rob, delight in "being irritating"?
"S'pose so," Chippington deadpanned. He appeared to be fused to his pint mug, refusing to relinquish it for the photographs. "I just used to do comedy for summat to do, somewhere to drink each night. I didn't think I'd go down this well. It should be a laugh."
Jo, Tina, Mags and Vix Fuzzbox, meanwhile, were unperturbed at the thought of embarking on the nationwide tour. Once set loose in the playground adjoining the pub, they played energetically on the seesaw and slide. In that context, their appealingly childlike quality was even more pronounced than it had been in front of the pub, when Jo removed her omnipresent Donald Duck shades to reveal the countenance of a 12-year-old.
The girls were presently driven to a radio interview in the decrepit Mini that serves as the Fuzzmobile. Chippington, momentarily free of his beer glass told us that his favourite comedian is Bernard Manning, and, no, he didn't want to tell us a joke. He remembered a prior engagement and padded off down the hot street.
With half the troops departed, Rob Lloyd was clearly at a lass as to what to do with us. We'd been promised a "day in the life of Vindaloo", but it was becoming uncomfortably plain that their day was even less eventful than the time Paul Strange received a stripogram at his desk. Rob suggested going for a curry at the Vindaloo late-night hangout, the Nirala Tandoori. The Nightingales ordered o round of eyewateringly hot curries - considering the ambient humidity, on act which seemed unnecessarily masochistic.
They discussed the merits of the indie scene. A good thing, proclaimed guitarist Tank. An excuse for a lot of crap, countered violinist Maria. We're serious about our music, said another Nightingale. "Everyone's heard of us, but no one knows anything about us. Every time we play we get six NME writers at the gig, but no one does a review," groused Rob.
The label-stars returned from their interview which they pronounced "the usual thing". At this point, I still wasn't quite sure which Fuzzbox was which. Mags and younger sister Jo bear no familial resemblance; en masse, the four resemble mass-produced China dollies. The Nightingales said goodbye, probably relieved to be shed of us. We caught a lift to the station in the Fuzzmobile, and Mags, who was also taking the train to London, caused near-cardiac arrest in several male passengers when she bent over in her dress-ette.
See-the Summer Special when it hits your town and have a holiday
at home.
