Only nine months after telling everyone they were breaking up, TISM are back with a new album and two DVDs. HUMPHREY B. FLAUBERT talks Sun Tzu, his band's perpetual uncool-ness and Pete Murray with ANTHONY HORAN.
When TISM framed last September's Hi-Fi Bar gig as a mock telethon to save the band from having to break up, nobody was too surprised to see the show end with the million-dollar monetary target falling short by a mere dollar and the band abandoning the stage, supposedly never to return. Equally unsurprising to those who are used to the TISM way of doing things, of course, is their return a mere nine months later with an ambitious DVD/CD package and, yes, more live shows. As John Lydon once succinctly put it, "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
"I would be surprised by anyone who actually believed anything we said," admits pseudonymous TISM figurehead and apparent drum programming guru Humphrey B. Flaubert. "But what can you do, really? We used to pull that shit quite a lot in the early days, but the trouble with doing that kind of thing is that you feel a bit guilty, In the early days nobody gave a fuck, but when you have these people turning up and paying money - and these are the sort of people who go through my garbage - you feel somehow or other that you could be indirectly responsible for some domestic violence."
With the break-up con (if anyone actually believed it) now exposed as the sham that is was, TISM plan to get as much mileage out of it as possible via the freshly-release White Albun set. Contained in the three-disc package, along with a brand new studio album on CD, are two DVDs; one containing last September's Save Our TISM live show with surround sound and a masochistic "RonCam" mode, the other compiling interviews, video clips and home video footage of gigs - a neat summary of a band that's been cheerfully pissing people off for nearly 20 years now. "We're always being told what we should do and shouldn't do in this exciting new technological world," Humphrey says with measured sarcasm. "We had all this shitty old video footage that we thought would be quite fun, so it was suggested that a DVD might be a fun thing to do. So we thought fuck it, let's write 16 new songs as well. We wanted to stop looking like we were releasing best-ofs; I know that some people think we are Jethro Tull... But I think this DVD is quite well done, as opposed to most of the things we've done in the past."
Unusually, this release is being done by Madman Entertainment, a video and DVD company; TISM's deal with Festival Mushroom seemingly a thing of the past. "Our record contracts are like your takeaway fish and chips - here today, gone tomorrow," opines Humphrey. "Really, in the scheme of things, we don't mean a lot of money to a lot of people, so Mushroom was neither excited nor depressed to see the end of us... it was pretty much the same emotion when we signed with them."
So this package was planned mainly as a DVD release? "I don't think people would truly realise how little planning goes into anything that TISM does. I always laugh at reviews that seem to think there's some kind of leitmotif going on. Really, the members of TISM are these incredibly boring, mediocre middle-class guys who have no idea what's going on in the rock scene. We get a phone call every now and then from our manager, who's the opposite to us, very cool and hip. He said to us that a TISM DVD would be a sensational look, and that's how it started. But we had lots of songs as well, and thought it would be nice to force people to listen to them."
Not that the TlSM audience needs much encouragement to do that; they've been loyal enough to keep the band going for two decades, after all. "Most bands live in each others' pockets, and eventually they either hate each others' guts or their career goes on this spectacular parabola. I Wink it's in Sun Tin's Aft Of War that it says 'the man who stands by the river will eventually see the bones of his enemies floating past.' That's us, really. We're plodding along, going up the mountain very slowly with a Zimmer frame, watching people sprint past us and then spectacularly fall..."
One irony that seems to pass unnoticed much of the time, though, is the fact that the band attracts a decidedly rock audience to gigs and records that are usually anything but. "I think we mean different things to different people," Humphrey suggests, "but the appeal with us and people is the fact that we clearly don't give a fuck. We just seem to make these ridiculous career moves and never get very successful, but that's what these kids like - they'expect us to continue doing it. I do rather like that we have always stuck to our guns - and very unfashionable guns they are. We like playing extremely simple, direct pop tunes with a sort of a plastic sound to them. That's why I like playing at festivals. At festivals you get this litany of emotional angst music, and then we come along and it's like the gay Mardi Gras. I'm quite proud of that. We started out uncool, and we've stayed uncool for years."
Naturally, this week's they-said-they'd-never-do-'em live shows will be as unpredictable as always, says Humphrey. "Without giving it away, we'll be dealing with the modem perception that anybody can be a star. That's all I can say -1 don't want to ruin it for the people that are foolish enough to waste thirty-five dollars on us. I mean, you can understand paying thirty-five dollars to see Pete Murray, because he's so boring you can have a good chat to your friend while he's playing. But thirty-five dollars to stand there in an uncomfortable, crowded din while these ponces in outfits jig their sagging beer bellies at you... that's a frightening concept."
TlSM play the Hi-Fi Bar this Friday (sold out) and Saturday. The White Albun is out now through Madman/AV Channel.
