By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 12, 1992
Back when Ned’s Atomic Dustbin started, the five-man British group was lumped in with Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself in a genre called grebo rock.
In English schoolyard lingo, “grebo” is the equivalent of “dork.” In pop jargon, it refers to a long-haired, smelly person. Either way, Ned’s considers the term appropriate.
“I am a dork, but at least I don’t smell,” guitarist Rat said by phone from his parents’ home in Birmingham, England. “Maybe in the beginning, it was meant to be derogatory, but I don’t think `grebo’ has bad connotations anymore.”
For a band that has beaten out both Jesus Jones and EMF on the British music charts and regularly appears on magazine covers, Ned’s has some pretty tame fantasies about what rock stars do. They all go by first names only, except for drummer Dan Dan, who asks that the tag “The Fast Drummin’ Man” follow his name. Averaging just 20 years old, the musicians admit they’ve thought about trashing a hotel TV set, but opted instead for throwing tea bags out the window. And when they’re performing, they like to throw themselves into the audience with the occasional stage dive. Sometimes their enthusiasm backfires on them. During a Glasgow, Scotland, gig, Rat stage dived into the audience and landed in the arms of a waiting bouncer who mistook him for a fan.
“I guess he didn’t see that I had been playing a guitar just a couple minutes before, because he wanted me out of the club,” said Rat, whose band will return to Cabaret Metro to headline a show Tuesday.
“Of course, like an idiot, I didn’t know quite what to do, so I kept saying, `It’s me,’ as if that would help. It all turned out OK, and it makes for a good story now, doesn’t it?”
Taking their name from a skit on Peter Sellers’ classic comedy show, “The Goons,” the musicians formed Ned’s Atomic Dustbin in 1988. Being musically proficient was secondary to being friends who could learn quickly. Bassist Mat honed his skills during the group’s heavy playing schedule. When Alex chose the bass as well, they shifted the stereotypical rock band lineup to include two basses and one guitar, with vocalist Jonn filling out the lineup.
“We wanted to do a lot of things musically, one of which was to create something that was the antithesis to dance music,” Rat said. “I think that by having two basses, our music sounds a lot heavier than other bands that only have one, and we’re totally into that. Whether that was our intent when we formed the group, I can’t honestly say. But it’s working to our advantage now.”
Until recently, Ned’s was living on borrowed equipment. Even when the band played England’s prestigious Reading Festival, it used amps lent to the group by friends.
“For the longest time, we used incredibly cheap equipment that little kids in bands probably would laugh at,” Rat said. “I think when Sony signed us, (the label was) a little surprised at how little we had.”
Ned’s debut album, “God Fodder,” has sold 150,000 copies, an impressive number for an alternative baby band. The LP has spawned college radio hits with “What Gives My Son?” and “Happy,” and the video for the wispily psychedelic “Grey Cell Green” is played on MTV. But fans who judge Ned’s by its recorded sound are in for a surprise at the band’s shows. Its aggressive live approach borders on hysteria, pushing pop songs along with a pulsating rhythm section.
The group got its big break in 1989, when fellow West Midlanders the Wonder Stuff hired Ned’s as the opening act on a British tour.
The tour put Ned’s name on the British music map, but got the band kicked out of school. Eschewing academia for rock, Ned’s followed the Wonder Stuff shows with a tour with Pop Will Eat Itself, before coming to the United States twice last year. Ned’s played a summer gig at the Metro on a bill that included fellow up-and-comers the New Fast Automatic Daffodils and Chicago’s Urge Overkill. The group also landed the opening slot for Jesus Jones’ fall tour, which brought it to the Aragon.
“Whenever you open for a strong band like the Wonder Stuff or Jesus Jones, you have to really concentrate on not getting lost in their abilities,” Rat said. “It’s really easy to be influenced by other great bands, and it’s normal to think that what they’re doing is better or more innovative than what you’re doing, even if it’s not, because you’re young and insecure.”
After their two-week U.S. tour, the musicians will head over to Australia and Japan before returning home to England.
“We toured Japan before, and it was brilliant because the kids went mad,” Rat said. “We had been told they’d be more reserved and polite than the English or Americans. The only way we could communicate with them was through our music, but they understood everything we were saying, which is how music should be. It should be so powerful that you don’t need a translator, you know?
“People ask me all the time if I consider myself successful now, or need a No. 1 album before I feel I’ve validated myself. As long as I’m happy, I don’t care. As soon as you start worrying too much about the numbers, you’re bound to get miserable.”
