On the 20th of June, Cape Town indie group The Dirty Skirts held a launch party in Johannesburg for their third release, Daddy Don’t Disco. It was held at the Alexander theatre in Braamfontien, an old but increasingly trendy venue for Saturday-night Jozi jols. Or jolle, depending upon your linguistic persuasion. You may remember The Dirty Skirts from the somewhat punky single Feeling the Pressure, off their eponymous debut EP, which got enough radio play to launch the band into the popular consciousness. The group consists of frontman “Jess” (Jeremy De Tolly), guitarist “Sumo” (David Moffatt), bassist “Agent Q” (Quinton Van Rooyen) and drummer “Markie” (Mark De Menezes).
I attended the Jo’burg launch party with a view to interviewing Jess, or the gorgeous Markie, or anyone really. Having received no confirmation that my interview had actually been scheduled, I would’ve been happy to interview the guy that handles their luggage. And if I harboured any doubt this album was gonna be big, it was dispelled the instant people started arriving; the place was positively groaning with media of every description. Just as I was about to abandon hope — having insinuated my way through a side door, without a pass and about two hours early — the band’s publicist came to my rescue. Despite the slew of interviews, photo ops and soundchecks The Dirty Skirts had scheduled that evening, she promptly arranged for me to have a chat with frontman Jeremy De Tolly before the gig. A little while later, I was led up some stairs behind the makeshift sound desk, down a long, narrow passage with mysterious doors leading off it, black-and-white chequered floors adding to the growing sensation of having become a character from an acid-fuelled Lewis Carroll yarn.
Eventually, I’m directed to a mens’ loo — not a proposition I would normally consider, you understand — which had been converted to a green room. Lying on the cold floor, among mike stands, instruments and luggage, with his head propped on a backpack with a towel draped over it, I find Jeremy taking what I’m sure is a well-deserved pre-launch nap. He says hi and bids me welcome from his spot on the floor in that totally relaxed, take-a-load-off manner perfected by generations of Capetonians, and I find myself wondering how such a chilled attitude has produced not only a hugely successful album like On A Stellar Bender, but also organised a launch tour for Daddy Don’t Disco including four majour cities, a tour to the UK and an enormous fanbase.
So, how did this quintessentially Capetonian band come into being? Well, like all sudden strokes of inspiration, this one started with booze. Says Jeremy, “Dave and I met at a party. He was seriously pissed and I liked him, so we started a band. When we first started playing, it was basically programming, you know, just us two. We were very electronic, and we morphed over time, and we keep morphing. We’re morphers,” he laughs, “You can write that in your interview, ‘They’re morphers, The Dirty Skirts’.” Apparently, the sozzled encounter between the morphers happened in 2004 and soon after, the band played a gig soberly christened “As an Act of Love the Bunnies Drew Blood that Night”.
Makes one wonder about naming conven- tions,
“The Dirty Skirts” being a somewhat calmer (though more suggestive) tag for a group of indie-kid hipsters. When asked about how they came up with the name, Jeremy smirks, “Like all bands, when we started, we came up with a long list of names, many of them sucked — in fact, most of them sucked — there were some pretty dire names on that list. Part of it is we like to have fun and ‘the dirty skirts’ was just silly. We had terrible other ones like, ‘The Facials’ and ‘The Chanels’; you know, stupid stuff. We had crazy names and that was just the best one and made us laugh. Looking for a deeper meaning in it would be an amusing thing to try and do.”
Though, what seems odder to me than their penchant for strange handles is that every bio I’ve ever read on The Dirty Skirts and, indeed, every review, describes the band as “indie” — meaning, of course, that the band is independent, or unsigned. Their Facecrook profile www.facebook.com/pages/The-Dirty-Skirts/6602185813 states that “they remain independent of the South African music industry… unsigned, unmanaged, maybe unmanageable, they remain mavericks, despite their rising status, and the imminent release of their colossal new album Daddy Don’t Disco.” And Jess himself has been quoted as saying, “Most of us have given up on being ‘rescued’ by a big label that performs the sugar daddy function.” Now that the group has finally signed with Sony BMG, how does one categorise the band? Have they betrayed what’s become a hip neo-boho genre? Jeremy says, “We’ve never been ‘fight the power’. We’ve just always been very independent. And we remain fiercely independent — but with Sony BMG. You know how it goes, it’s exciting; it’s amazing having your own corner café, but sometime you’ll wanna take it further and have, like, one of those drive-in Woolies — but you can still have gran behind the counter, you know ...” Can’t exactly blame the guys for wanting to honour the age-old tradition of, well, money.
And what better way to make it than to “make it” as rockstars? Rockstars with a rather unique set of admirers: “We’ve had very large mens’ Y-fronts thrown at us that were a kind of off-white colour. Well, they were yellow, actually; not nice. I think they landed on my mike stand,” Jeremy grimaces. Not to be outdone by his audience’s peculiarities, Jess has some idiosyncratic hobbies of his own: “I’m good at reflexology. I’m good with feet. I dig feet as well — but I’m not, like, a foot pervert ... And I am the co-holder of the world championship in Tsunami Bat.” Apparently, it’s a sport. Don’t ask.
Of course, having signed with a major label and having an established fanbase doesn’t cut the rockstar mustard if you’re not making the associated moolah. So, do The Dirty Skirts have to hold down day jobs too? “The short answer is yes and no,” says Jeremy. “We’ve done a lot better than most as a great little indie mom-and-pop shop, which is essentially what we’ve been to date. All of us have to work to maintain our champagne tastes and keep ourselves in the things that we like and so on. Is that the long or the short answer? Not sure, but we’ve done well ... The industry is small. You can get pretty far — what seemingly looks like you’re right up there — and you’re still nowhere; you can’t even buy yourself a pizza, you know? It’s not a good or a bad thing, it just is. It’s just real — and it’s real small.” Good thing, then, that his favourite South African band is The Dirty Skirts, “because I’m in them and because I love doing it,” he says.
“So, would you say you make the music you wanna listen to?” I ask. “I think there are very few artists in this world who can say exactly what you just said,” he says. “It’s more that I believe in pitching up and keeping on pitching up. When you make things, they’re never perfect. So I’m never satisfied, but you gotta love what you’re doing and I love this band, I love our new album and you know, we’ve got a lot of learning to do — learning about judgment and what’s good and what’s useful and what’s not, using critique and judgment — and we like to be in a more generous place, where we enjoy other bands.”
Jess says that, given the choice between listening to The Skirts’ studio work and performing live, he prefers being onstage: “I don’t really listen to our albums ... I’m more about now. We worked for months on the album, so eventually, we were all crying to be on stage; like little flowers waiting for the sun.” That said, he enthuses that former Springbok Nude Girls guitarist Theo Crous, who produced Daddy Don’t Disco, has had a welcome influence on The Skirts’ rhythm section. Indeed, there’s an unmistakable Nudie flavour to track five on the album, Take A Rocket Home.
On the whole, I think The Skirts’ third offering is friendlier and a lot less raw than On A Stellar Bender, which was, of course, a stellar album ... fuller, somehow. But to survive, a band’s sound must evolve and so must we, as fans, remain continually open to refinements in taste. And oddities in rockstar ... When asked, “Cake or Death?” Jeremy declared, “Death, every time.” And if the main Skirt could broadcast a single message to the world before he expired? “Chill out, motherfuckers.” There you have it.
CHECK OUT: http://www.thedirtyskirts.com/
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DADDY DON’T DISCO TOUR CALENDAR:
20th June: Alexander Theatre (JHB)
21st June: Tings and Times (PTA)
27th June: Grahamstown national arts Festival 28th of June: Grahamstown national arts Festival
11th July: The Assembly- (CT)
18th July: The Red Door
19th July: Zulu Jazz Lounge- (DBN)
24th July: Klein Libertas- (Stellenbosh)
11 September - 21 September: UK Tour (UK)
3 October: Rocking the Daisies Festival (CPT)
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