Lollys Lounge

Kid Pensioner feels the funk of Fattyboombasstic

“Oh no we’re just going to come over as really nice again,” bemoans singer and lyricist Laura James, idly twisting the head off a tiny kitten. Her band mates cackle as they take turns punching the huddled body of an old lady who had, moments earlier, “looked at them funny”.

Ok some of the above is not entirely true. Venue has invoked some dubious artistic licence to more clearly delineate the essentially sunny and good-natured demeanour of Fattyboombasstic, a band who are, by their own admission, “an antidote to all the navel-gazing angst-ridden middle-of-the road rock that is out there” Their Myspace site spells it out loud and clear: “Our songs are FUN and FUNKY AS F*CK!”

They kid not. Fattyboombasstic are true purveyours of the tightly grooving funk that should accompany the tumbling cardboard boxes of a Starsky and Hutch car chase, or the incessant rubberised thwack that endlessly circles Bootsy Collins’ brain. Wah-wah specialist Jonny “JD” Diver, a man so obssessed with frequency tweaking that he plays in his sleep (”I had a dream about surfing on a wah-wah”) also advocates caressing his beloved pedal with bare feet as it provides “more control”. Add to the mix bassist Pete Gibbs, drummer Martyn James and Laura’s sultry voice (”I add the pop element, coz I’m a Stock Aitken and Waterman girl from the 80s, Jonny adds the rock”) and its impossible not to get the party started. A spin of their sampler “Superfunkysexotronic” immediately reveals that the band are all players if high ability indeed three out of the four are music tutors - with huge collective experience at playing at weddings and corporate events and a vast interconnected network of cover bands. “We all play in quite a lots of bands, ” Martyn admits “so there’s all sorts of influences there, from function bands to soul, jazz and rock n roll”

Jonny: “Me and Laura started this band after we met in a disco function outfit, getting bored with that and having taken it to its limit. Personally I have always wanted to write my own stuff and do original things,”

Venue naturally wants to immediately hear about the dark side of the cabaret and covers circuit, and there’s no shortage of horror stories. “A cider festival last weekend, ” Jonny recounts wearliy. “There was a fight at the end and everyone just watched it as part of the enetertainment”

Martyn meanwhile has fond memeories of a Filipino festival at Ashoton Court: “The guy after us was a Filipino drag queen”

Everybody displays the hard-won skills of musicians who have toiled hard at the coal face of the public enteratianment industry. Pause for a moment, avant-rockers, and consider the daunting responsibility of being band paid and, by god, required to entertain a sundazed and largely pissed mid-afternoon wedding party. Laura makes a charming confession: “I kind of think, these peopel might hate us but I’m just going to pretend that George Clooney is out there and I’m just going to keep sining to him and not really care.”

Venue wants to hear more about the teaching side of things. Is there a big audience out there keen to learn? Martyn is in no doubt: “There’s a lot of enthusiasm and from all age groups as well: the youngest is 10 and my oldest is 50. A surprising number of teenage girls are picking up the drums now. Fifty per cent of my students are female.” And what if Venue turned up and said “I don’t want to learn the proper way to do it, I just want to get up on stage and make a row. ” Would that be frowned upon? Jonny: “Not at all, its encouraged. The way I teach is doing what you wanna do. If they want to learn to play in a aband, we can show them that; if they want to learn to read music or classical stuff, we can do that. It’s all good.”

Its the next album “Filthy something”, thats got the funkateers most excited right now, and they are casually hi tech in their writing methods too. “Yeah we’ve embraced the digital age, ” explains Jonny. “I’ll write a riff, puit it down with a rough drum track and email it to Laura. She’ll sing over it and send it back”

Martyn:”Then I’ll transfer it to the studio, work out the drum parts and send it back, so we can build up quite a track without actually sitting in the same room togther. Six tracks written, more to come.”

Venue issue No 828 27 June - 6 July 2008