Rubella Ballet

SOUNDS October 27th 1984 (DC Collection)

ENGLAND

This year, Rubella Ballet have been together making magic music
for 8 years. We do everything ourselves. We design and make our
own clothes, organise our own gigs including our tour of the US,
and run our own record lobel, Ubiquitous Records. All in all, we're
a very busy band.
The band includes Zillah Minx - lead vocalist, Sid - drums. Rachel
Minx - bass and vocalist (sister to Zillah), and Sam - guitar.
Our address is: 139 Balfrom Tower / St Leonards Rd / Poplar, London E14 UK.
The following interview was done by Billy Jam at KALX radio, Berkeley (Monday May 10th 1987).

MRR: You played at Berkeley's Gilman Street Warehouse last night How was that?
Rachel: It was great. The people were really brilliant. They were all dancing and getting Into it. The good thing was that up until now, in the U.S. we had just played Los Angeles and the audiences there just stood around, posing.
MRR: What did you think of Gilman Street as a venue?
Rachel: It's great cuz it's putting on bands that need a break, It's cheap to get in and there's no age limit like in the clubs in LA. we played.
MRR: How does that compare with clubs in England?
Rachel: You're supposed to be eighteen to go into a club in England, but they never ask for I.D. We've been going to all the punk gigs. We've been punks for ten years now. We used to go see bands like the Lurkers and X-Ray Spex.
MRR: Have you seen Polystyrene lately?
Rachel: Well, last October she came out with a new E.P. with 4 tracks on it. She had session musicians playing a mix between Hare Krishna, heavy metal and X-Ray Spex. Anyway, recently, just after the record came out, which was about 4 years after she had done anything, me and Sid went to a club in London which is really posh� a place where Boy George hangs out.
MRR: Whal's it called?
Rachel: The Limelight. So we went there, but we had no money to get in and it was like �15 to get in and as we got there we wondered 'How are we going to get in?' and like all these bands were coming up to the front and then all these I cameramen would take their photos. So then we got up towards the front; the crowd parted and the corneramen started taking our pictures cuz they thought we looked brilliant, all dressed up, and then they let us in for free. When we got in there it was supposed to be a ten-year celebration of punk, but nobody was that punk. They were all just standing around saying "Oh, pass the champagne." And then we found out that Polystyrene was actually playing there that night and i was really excited cuz i hadn't seen her since Victoria Park, when she played with the Clash and that was absolutely brilliant. But at The Limelight, she had a couple of backup singers dressed like Hare Krishnas and a couple of bongos, and just as she started to perform, they turned on a record and she started to lip sync. And then half-way through the record, they adjusted the volume. I was a bit disappointed.
MRR: How did you first get together?
Rachel: Me and Sid and some other people first
got together eight years ago. What happened was,
we went to a club where people were doing their
own thing, and so we just got up on stage and
started playing and it was the first time I ever got
up on stage and I didn't know what to sing, so I just
made it up as I went along. The first time you hear
yourself through a microphone, you sound better
than you usually do. You think "Wow, this is great
I'm brilliant." everyone can be a Sex Pistol. And
we still make it up as we go along. It's part of being
a punk � where everything you do is great fun.
We're just trying to carry on what the seventies was
all about, really.
MRR: What's it like living in England now?
Rachel: It's really boring. Nobody's got any money
to go out. By being in a band you get to go out.
Like me and Sid, we're on the dole and if we wasn't
in a band, we wouldn't be going anywhere or
meeting people. It also gets you into clubs for free.
We're always on the dole cuz we don't make any
money in the band. In England, the only songs that
are in the charts now are cover versions. So, if you do original stuff like we do, then record companies don't want to know you. You know the people that run the record companies most of the time don't even know what music is, and when something good comes along, they don't know how to react to it at all, so they won't sign it up.
MRR: Now, before you go, you wanted to hear "Big A Little A" by Crass, right?
Rachel: Yeah, right, because it's sung by my ex-boyfriend Steve, and this is to tell him what a hypocritical person he is after doing a gig with Conflict and he ought to be ashamed of himself (applause).

(Maximumrocknroll #54 November 1987) Supplied by Zillah & Sid.