A rainy afternoon at the local pub, Sally catches up with Simon Day from Ratcat for a spot of a chat.....
Doing a few gigs lately after being at your biggest in 1991, what inspired you to start it up again?
I guess we never really finished it. It’s just more being given the opportunity and being offered the Big Day Out gig and doing a few other gigs…We didn’t actually rehearse before the BDO, we just played a couple of gigs without rehearsing…it worked quite well.
Again on the topic of ratcat being ‘big in 91’. How do you feel about the fact that a majority of your fans back then who were mainly 12 year old girls (such as myself) are probably the biggest percentage of your fans these days?
I don’t know…it’s a kind of strange concept…it’s kinda nice…
(I mistakenly confess that I used to buy TV hits magazine)
I guess it’s really good because when we play now, the people that were that age then are old enough to come and see us in a pub. So we do actually find a lot of young people coming along.
Your fan base when you were originally large were obviously 18 and over, did they get turned off at all when ratcat became more mainstream?
Yeah, I think some of them did. We originally had audiences that were kind of like the rebels from high school and art students and university students, all sort of into independent underground music. We played since 1986/87, which was about five years before we made it ‘big in 91’…I’ve forgotten what I was trying to say….what was the question again…
Were your original fans turned off?
Yeah, well we were underground and when it went mainstream a lot of the underground people were turned off because that’s what they were rebelling against, which was what we were kind of rebelling against when we first started. And it’s a strange concept that all of a sudden you are the person that you hated in the first place… not that you hated it, but that you were trying to rebel against it.
You went to the U.K.?
Yeah, we lived there for about 4 months in late 1991. We played the Reading festival; we played all over London, all over England for that matter.
What would you say would have been the most memorable occasion there?
Reading festival was pretty special, Nirvana played that year. That was probably the highlight – the most people, the most craziness and the most bands. We supported Dinosaur Jr at the Town and Country; I think the Primitives played that night as well. We played headlining gigs all over the place.
What bands or what sort of music originally inspired you to form a band?
Punk rock. I think it was more a do-it-yourself kind of thing, rebelling against the mainstream.
What’s the weirdest thing a fan has ever said or done?
Send a photo of to my parents, of all her family and her pets saying that she was going to be my future bride.
If you could have been in any band ever, which band would you have wanted to be in?
I don’t know…. Rolling Stones maybe…. I dunno…..maybe the Spiders from Mars
Is that a real band?
That’s the idea.
What’s your favourite video game?
Favourite video game….maybe Galaga…I do like to play the racing ones… I like those old games…but I prefer pinballs…yeah pinball machines.
(brief look out the window trying to work out what the mob of police were trying to achieve at Newtown station)
Porn star name? (first pet’s name – first street lived in)
Gerrade was my street and I guess the first pet I can remember was Cindy. So I guess it would be Cindy Gerrade.
You are into art as well?
I do a lot of art…I work as an art director for a TV station and that’s looking after the flashy graphics before and after shows….I do a lot of print graphic design and I edit as well.
Are you focusing on the art more so than the music?
I still write a lot. I probably spend half the week doing artwork that pays my bills and the other half writing, which doesn’t pay anything. Mostly just recording and writing.
How do you kill the cod?
You chop off its head don’t you?