Come Again \/ Armagh \/ Unfinished Business \/ Dear John \/ It’s Obvious<\/a><\/p>\nDunno why I fancied giving this vinyl a spin tonight, just did, so uploaded for your pleasure is the excellent\u00a0debut LP by Birmingham’s Au Pairs. The text below is a July 1981 interview with members of the band written out for Newcastle based Eccentric Sleevenotes fanzine just after the LP was originally released. The interview was\u00a0robbed from the eccentricsleevenotes.com\u00a0website.<\/p>\n
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The Au Pairs have been claiming a lot of critical praise recently due to the release of their brilliant LP ‘Playing with a Different Sex’.\u00a0 We interviewed the group the day after its release.<\/p>\n
ESN: How did the group form?<\/p>\n
PAUL: I knew Lesley and I went to school with Pete.\u00a0 We were mucking around and decided to form a band.\u00a0 We needed a bass player, Martin – the bloke who manages us, knew Jane had just got a bass and was learning to play.\u00a0 We took it from there… There were interesting points like Jane was in the bath when Lesley phoned.<\/p>\n
JANE: I conducted the conversation with Lesley in the nude!<\/p>\n
The band decided to release their first single themselves.\u00a0 ‘You’ was released on 021 Records with a little help from Rough Trade.\u00a0 021 Records has since branched out and discovered other excellent new bands.<\/p>\n
PAUL: At the moment, Iganda, Musical Youth and Tarzan 5 have released singles.\u00a0 When the money is available, The Pinkies and Fast Relief will be releasing singles.\u00a0 It’s just something Martin puts together occasionally.<\/p>\n
ESN: How did you get the contract with Human Records?<\/p>\n
JANE: A friend of the group had some connections with them.<\/p>\n
PAUL: It’s run by two guys.\u00a0 One knows the recording side as he’s had a lot of experience with RSO.\u00a0 The other bloke works on the business side – distribution, advertising etc.\u00a0 We’re quite pleased with them.\u00a0 It all came about from this friend who saw us.\u00a0 The deal was just what we were looking for.<\/p>\n
ESN: What’s the next single called?<\/p>\n
JANE: What’s it called? (The question is directed at Lesley.)<\/p>\n
LESLEY: It hasn’t got a title yet.<\/p>\n
ESN: Do you have difficulty finding live work?<\/p>\n
PAUL: We’re quite fortunate working with a big agency, TBA.\u00a0 We can always find gigs.\u00a0 We played a lot of Rock Against Sexism and Rock Against Racism gigs and made a few contacts there.<\/p>\n
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ESN: Does ‘Playing With A Different Sex’ have a definition?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: Yeah, three really.\u00a0 There’s playing, as in playing like in sport that sort of thing; there’s playing sexually with different sex being the opposite sex or ‘different sex’ being the opposite sex or ‘different sex’; not the sex you’re expected to play with – in terms of homosexuality.<\/p>\n
ESN: What does the cover of the LP represent?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: The Chinese woman on the cover isn’t wearing a uniform but this searing dress.\u00a0 It’s not like when people say women can fight as well as men because they usually dress up in a uniform this woman is going into battle as a woman, running into battle carrying her gun…<\/p>\n
ESN: You’ve used the term ‘Flexi Sex’ recently.\u00a0 What is that?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: Flexi sex, like in terms of sexuality and homosexuality.\u00a0 (Lesley says no more about that as she heads off in search of the sandwiches.)<\/p>\n
ESN: Previous interviews have said you want commercial success.\u00a0 Do you think that’s possible when you have such strong lyrical content (a recent example of the effect of this was BBC Television censoring ‘Come Again’)?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: We’re not saying that is our one aim and without it we won’t be happy.\u00a0 We think our songs are commercially viable.\u00a0 The music itself is also commercially viable. \u00a0Our lyrics are based on the same subject as a lot of other people’s songs only we present ours in a different way.\u00a0 This means we can’t be put in a bag.\u00a0 Because the music press can’t decide whether we are commercial or political, which to me is a ridiculous distinction: the Beat are very commercial but their songs are also very political.\u00a0 A lot of music journalists want to be able to reinforce these distinctions.<\/p>\n
ESN: What are some of the unrecorded songs about?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: Pretty Boys will be on the B aide of the next single.\u00a0 It’s a weird new version of it.\u00a0 It’s a send up of an Iggy Pop song, ‘Pretty Girls’, which has the line “I like pretty girls, some have beautiful shapes”.\u00a0 Our version changes the sexes to show how a girl can appreciate boys’ bodies as well.<\/p>\n
‘What Kind of Girl’ is a song we don’t do anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s about images girls that choose to adopt.\u00a0 Like a Tom Girl image or Olivia Newton John, “Oh, when I’m home I like to casual jeans and t-shirts” (Lesley puts on an excellent send up voice).<\/p>\n
ESN: Do you think stereotyping will ever end?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: It probably will but will be replaced by something else, maybe worse.<\/p>\n
ESN: When the Au Pairs played the Marquee last February, thereabouts, there was an incident when a group of girls complained to the DJ because he was playing sexist music. The DJ ended up punching one of them. I mention this to Lesley.<\/p>\n
LESLEY: Yeah, that got some publicity in Sounds.\u00a0 When we play three nights at the Marquee on this tour, we’ve made sure that DJ won’t be there as it’s written into the contract.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/KYPP1025.jpg\")
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ESN: What next?<\/p>\n
LESLEY: Who knows?<\/p>\n
SIMON McKAY<\/strong><\/p>\nThe debut 7″ single by Au Pairs is uploaded on this site if you care to look for it via the search function.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We’re So Cool \/ Love Song \/ Set Up \/ Repetition \/ Headache Come Again \/ Armagh \/ Unfinished Business \/ Dear John \/ It’s Obvious Dunno why I fancied giving this vinyl a spin tonight, just did, so uploaded for your pleasure is the excellent\u00a0debut LP by Birmingham’s Au Pairs. The text below is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4566"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4568,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566\/revisions\/4568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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