FLC: In Print

Modern guitar heroes are a little thin on the ground these days. Just take one look at a top 10 guitar players listing - the names you'll find are people who are dead or nearly there, with a peppering of posturing eighties widdle rockers who still haven't found an outlet for their sexual frustration, other than six-string self-abuse.
Huey Morgan is a new breed of guitar hero. Every song that the Fun Lovin' Criminals play is driven by hot guitar hooks, whether it be the classic sound of a Les Paul through a Marshall, funky clean rhythm or smooth lead melodies. You'll even hear the lap steel come out for some numbers. A consummate professional and great guitar player, we could all learn a lot from Huey.
Where did your love of music start?
Well, the first thing that got me into guitar playing was going to a school function in Junior High. The kids in the school band were playing and I was sitting right in front of this Peavey Heritage combo amp. This dude was rockin' this Jumpin' Jack Flash riff and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I thought 'I've gotta do that', so that's what got me into guitar.
Can you remember your first guitar?
I made my mum buy a guitar at some pawnshop for 20 bucks and the action was like three inches off the neck. My father taught me the blues scale so that's pretty much all I do now. I also got what I like to call the jazz finger. It happens every once in a while, when I least expect it, I get the jazz finger.
Which guitarists first inspired you?
When I first started listening to guitar it was older stuff, because that was what was around the house at the time. Albert King's 'At The Fillmore' is one of my favourite records of all time. I liked the guys that could do stuff with instruments that most people can only do with their voices. They could use the instrument to really convey a point.
Who would you say is your main guitar hero?
There are a lot of those dudes, man. I met BB King a couple of times and I wept. So I would have to say he's my all-time favourite guitar player, just because he has a thing about him and he calls himself a singer too.
What event turned FLC from a club band into a world-famous rock act?
We worked at this club. This one girl had a party and she asked us to play, so we did a gig and then it got known that if anyone got cancelled, like the opening or main acts, we'd play it because we were already on the clock. So we just used to back line. We did that about six times over a year and a half. At one point we gave a tape to a friend of ours who was a DJ there, so he could play it. But he gave it to a guy who was at EMI records, a guy named Mike Schnapp, and he came down to see us and said it was the strangest thing he'd seen since GG Allin. We were just goofin' around and we had the go-go dancers on stage cos they were our friends and stuff. So after those six gigs, Mike Schnapp's boss gives us a card that says 'EMI records, CEO chairman: do you guys want to make a record?' We put the ice buckets down very quickly. That's when you buy your lotto ticket. We thought they were joking too. We made our first record in five days as we thought they were going to pull out, that they were going to listen to it some more and go 'nah'. We took the money they gave us and bought a garbage company. We covered our ass man, we didn't think anybody would like this sort of shit - we knew what the popular music was at the time.
The music press describes FLC as lounge core. How would you describe your music?
I've got three Marshall stacks on stage, I don't think there's anything lounge core about that. We're a rock band in our minds, but for the stories that you want to tell, sometimes you have to take on different genres of music. Sometimes soul, sometimes punk rock, sometimes even country and western. I get on stage with a lap steel which is like a hobby of mine. I've always loved the blues and lap steel is a really cool way to do the blues. I have a friend who's a really good guitar player and actually the singer of the band (Kooly High) who're supporting us on this tour. Along with a couple of other guys, we've thrown together this blues band and we do blues versions of She Blinded Me With Science and stuff like that, and I'm the lap steel player.
We normally see you with a black Les Paul... what initially attracted you?
They're pretty, man. You can't go wrong with Gibson guitars for sound. I have to do a lot of different things throughout the set - there's funk 'chicky-chicky' stuff and there's real heavy chords, so the guitars that I have can do all that. And they can be real versatile. This one in particular, this three pickup joint, it takes seven songs to get out of tune - and I bang away too. There's only three of these non-Custom Shop customs in the world. I've got one and the guy from the Black Crowes has another.
If you could have any guitar on the planet...?
I got it. It's actually a steel resonator. My friends bought it for my birthday this year. It has carvings of Hawaii all over it and on the back, and I sit on the beach in Malibu with that guitar. We recorded a lot of guitar parts out there and I was really inspired. Hawaiians would come up to me and go 'hey howdy, howdy, pretty good man'.
Who would you like to collaborate with?
Well, I've managed the BB King thing which was great (King supplies the solo on Mini Bar Blues - the final track on the '100% Columbian' LP). Luckily we didn't have to be in the same studio with him. I don't think we would have got anything done. We would have been crying on the mixing board and shorting out all the circuits. We sent tapes to Chicago cos he was there doing something, and he did three passes of Mini Bar Blues and all of them were amazing. We were like, 'well, which one are we going to pick then?'.
If you could work with anyone dead or alive, whom would you choose?
Jimi Hendrix. Wouldn't that be cool man, to play rhythm guitar with Jimi Hendrix? He played his own rhythm guitar though, so he wouldn't need me. I'd play lap steel. Just chords. Actually I'd play triangle for Jimi Hendrix.
What's your best live experience?
We did a show in Rome for World Food Day. It was about five years ago and it was in front of the Coliseum in Rome. They lit the Coliseum up and put the stage right in front of it and there were one million Romans out there. We did a cover of a Louis Armstrong song which was number one in Italy for a while and they said 'hey, can you guys come to Rome and play at this UNICEF World Food Day.' So we were like, 'yeah sure'. We didn't expect what happened; they just pushed us out there and there were a million people.
What is your policy for live shows?
It's a cabaret show. The way we're billed is, 'An evening with the Fun Lovin' Criminals'. So we bring bands from New York like Kooly High and Super Bad Brad and we come out and we play a cabaret show. I tell jokes. Me and Fast got this little thing where we scream and yell at each other, it's like a comedy duo. We do scenes from shows, scenes from old films. It gets pretty funny. I like the schtick. It usually comes with drinking beers and stuff and getting goofy and trying to calm down between songs. I gotta remember 40, 000 words for every show.
We know you love fun, but have you got a criminal background?
Yeah I get in trouble for doing a lot of dumb shit. I get caught for possession or assault. Dumb stuff that everyone else does. It's just that I'm 32 now, starting to relax a little bit. In the kind of work that I'm in and the kind of person that I am, everyone wants to see whether I'm hard enough. I don't really put myself in situations like that any more, but yeah, I used to get in trouble all the fucking time. I've been convicted for a lot of shit.
What's your guitar rig made up of?
I just got into these really good amps. I used to play Vox AC30s. I used to push them through a big old Fender Showman, like a 2x15 bass cabinet. It belonged to this guy David Cochran, who's a guitar player with the Commodores and a friend of our manager's, so it held a lot of meaning and it sounded great cos the speakers are big. There's only three of us, so the guitar's got to be bigger than normal guitar and I got into these new ones called Marshall JCM2000s. Vox and Marshall are the same company now so the guys at Vox were like 'hey have you ever tried a Marshall?' I was like, 'yeah they're a little thin; I need something big and fat', and they were like, 'check these out'. They brought them down to the studio and you push this little button that says 'deep', and it turns into this really great amp, so I said 'I want three'. He said 'three what?', I said 'you know, three stacks, I want three stacks'. I run my lap steel through a stack. I'm the only guy to do that. We want to get a lot of them, do a Van Halen thing, get 20 of them up there. He's a cool dude. I met him, and he came up on stage and was like, 'yo, nice rig'.
Why do you need three?
It's one louder isn't it? You can't have just one stack and you can't have two. Three is the number that you need. When we saw ZZ Top - Billy Gibbons is one of my favourite guitar players - in Japan they had three Marshall stacks on one side, a drum kit, three Marshall stacks on the other side. They came out and destroyed and I was like, 'wow'. Do you have all three on at the same time?
Yeah. The third one is the lap steel (which I use as a spare) and I need two of them. We keep one spare just in case I blow something up.
What pedals do you use?
A SansAmp preamp by Tech 21, rackmounted: the silver-face one with the little digits. You just tweak it and save it. Me and Skills (Huey's guitar tech) are always together on this. I have problems with the four knobs normally on the guitar; I haven't worked out the back two yet. I know the switches select the pickups!
I was going to ask you how much you knew about guitars.
I know enough to know when the guitar sounds good. I know what bad guitar sounds like. If the dude in Limp Bizkit didn't play jazz chords he'd sound great. Suburban ghetto: I like the old shit. The studio that we do our shit at, they have all these old Vox Beatles amps there so that's what we've played through since the first record.
Who would you say has the best guitar sound?
Well we toured with U2, and the Edge...you know it's him immediately when he touches a guitar. Jeff Beck and Clapton are great, they have fantastic sounds, but that guy has a sound that's so unique from everything else that you just know he thought that shit up in his basement. Him and Brian May have the most unique sounds; one note and you know it's them.
Is that somewhere you hope to be one day?
No. My job in this band is to make sure that whatever style song that we're playing at the time, that I can play that style. I do rhythms: that's what I'm more concerned about. I'm concentrating on what the song's about - 'like, is it a soul song or a rock song?'
Is it something you have to work hard at?
Yeah sometimes, man. On the new record we did a lot of different things. I've always been a big Santana fan. He's a Latino, I'm a Latino, we both play guitar and though I never really try to copy the stuff he did, on the new record I wanted to get a little of that flavour. I had to listen to 'Abraxas' a lot. Listening to how people approach stuff can give you a better idea. I was really going for that Santana tone on Loco. We tried. He was the guy - he played a Les Paul through a Marshall. Actually on Loco I played a '59 Les Paul junior that I bought, which is a fat guitar but Skills won't let me take it out of the house. I put it through a Tech 21 going through a Fender Pro.
On the 'Mimosa' album, what dictated the choice of songs that you covered?
Often, I didn't know who did it originally, didn't know the whole song, but when you heard that riff you were like, 'oh shit this is a song that I knew when I was little and it was good'. So you listen to it and figure it out. We did Crazy Train because we love Ozzy and that song is a good song. People say, 'that's just a heavy riff' but it's not, he's actually saying some cool shit. And in particular, as a guitar player, we didn't want to fuck with the Randy Rhoads solo. I was going to try and do it in a surf style but I thought it would come across as me being cheap. Since he was such a good guitar player, and people knew him for that, you leave it alone. Some things are sacred. Like Zeppelin covers. You'll never hear us do Zeppelin covers. We do Custard Pie at sound check, but that's it.
Do you use the same gear in the studio?
I use a Les Paul Junior, I got a '57, and a ES225. We try to use those guitars in the studio along with my original Les Paul Custom and this three pickup Custom. That pretty much does it. At my house I have an old '51 Fender Pro amp. Matt Wells put a preamp in it, he doesn't remember doing it but he did. However, I think you can pretty much get what you want out of the guitar, rather than the effect. You want a Strat sound play a Strat. You want a Gibson blues sound, play an ES225. There's also a '75 Tele deluxe, the one that has the Strat head and the humbuckers, and that goes into the studio as well. There's a Gibson J200 which is beautiful, one of the better J200s. I also have a Deloro acoustic. I bought it just because of the guitar-playing cowboys etched on it!
What's the best thing that's happened to you as a result of being a rock star?
I know that my rent's paid, I know that my girl's taken care of, my dog's cool, my family's cool. That's the coolest thing about it. Meeting BB King really stood out as a life experience that I'll never forget and being able to play the stuff you want to without having to worry about if it's commercially viable. We're a bunch of pretty lucky guys, we can go out there and play all these different types of music and somehow, cos the people understand what we do, we can get on the radio, get on MTV. I can't ask for any more than that.
Ben Bartlett

Mondo Magazine 02 (Huey Morgan)

Our regular wine columnist is Huey Morgan, Fun Lovin' Criminal, love god and soon-to-be London restauranteur. This issue, Huey uncorks four bottles from France

Ah, France. The French do some things good, but they got that fucking attitude. Mind you, I'm only talking about the old guard - the young kids, they're fantastic. But they're stuck next to Germany, so how are you gonna feel? You Brits get a nice bottle of wine over here because France is right around the corner. I guess when the soldiers were there, they got a taste for it. In America you get different kinds of regional wines. Chilean wines, they're very good. And Lebanese wine, you'd be surprised - hey you can always spit the shrapnel out! This is layman's wine tasting here, I'm a regular guy - but if you drink wine, you may aswell have good stuff, right?

Mas St Vincent 1998 Coteaux de Languedoc (around £3.49 a bottle)
You can tell a lot from the shape of the bottle. A wide neck usually means a Bordeaux-style wine; less dry than you might be used to. If you get a good table wine, it’s probably Italian. People like that stuff - it tastes good and it don't stick with you. When you burp, its not there. This smells all gooey, man, like someone didn't wash their hands at the factory. It’s a little sharp. I don't like it much.

Chateaux de Combelle 1997 Saint Chinian (£4.49)
Another wide-necked bottle. A darker bottle, too. A dark bottle shows the wine doesn't have a lot of preservatives in it and they don't want the light disturbing the flavour. People say the even-numbered years are better than the odd-numbered years in vintages. This is a 1997, that’s an odd number, but this is a good wine, so it proves the theory wrong. Sure, if you buy a 1932 it might be better than a 1933, but you're down £2,000 on the deal, man.

Mosaique Chardonnay Vin De Pays D'oc (£3.69)
The only fault I can find with this is that the aftertaste hangs around a little too long. You know, like that friend of yours from school who visited, said he was going to come for the weekend - three or four days later he's still there? But this is a nice wine. The label's weird. Is this a new wine with a funky label, or an old one they're screwing up a bit for the kids? It was probably put together by some French designer. Hey, maybe Jean-Paul Gaultier should do a wine bottle in the shape of a big cock: here’s my wine, drink it - drink it!!!!

Domaine Begude Chardonnay 1998 Limoux (£8.99)
Just from the way it smells, I'm telling you now: put a cork in this one, take it home, you're gonna like it. It’s here, it comes and it leaves. This is a nice one, and you can see why it’s £8.99. Yeah, I'm getting down with this shit.

Next month Huey tastes the wines of South Africa.

Fun Lovin' Criminals.
Their music has no limits, just like them.

This interview was conducted without censorship with Huey and his band. They love tequila and hate President Bush.
They play in ties, they love Italian fashion and style, especially Versace, Huey recently sat next to Donatella at a show.
(Huey says he's very sorry but in a moment of madness or drunkeness he pinched her really nice gold lighter that she lent him for his dressing room, he wants her to know that he has it and he will give it back as soon as she tell him when and where!)

Q Why the name?
FAST- It represents the dualism of New York, where its always harder to stay on the right side of the law.

Q With Loco, your last CD it demonstrates musical maturity, infusing rock, pop, rap, funk and jazz.
HUEY- We like writing music tot he words, if the word express sweetness then the music is nice an vice-versa. In the States they complimented us for the mixture on the TV, the radio criticised us for the same reason, we don't get it.

What are your inspirations when you write a song?
MACKIE - New York offers loads of things, from bad news, world news, friends that fall in love, politics, art, culture...
HUEY - Since Mackie joined the group the lyrics have become more romantic (nicer). It’s been a fantastic collaboration.

Huey, you served in the Gulf War in 1991 in the Marines, what do you remember?
HUEY - It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life because at the time I believed in it. When I was 13 I had loads of fights, I was violent but not like young people these days. I only used my fists, but now kids are shooting each other and killing each other in schools and its horrible in the same way its horrible that Bush has become President of the United States!

What do you mean? Explain.
HUEY - I’m not proud of being American; how is it possible that more than half of my fellow countrymen voted for that thing?! He's a man that's never poked his nose out of Texas and does everything that his father or his policemen say. It’s terrible.

Will you do a song with this critical point of view?
HUEY - I don't think so, even if he does deserves it, but he really pisses us off.

Back to the album, which song do you prefer?
HUEY - To be honest there are two that I love, Microphone Fiend and Dickholder. The first one is romantic and the other one is a song that talks of masturbation but it was born after a really big hangover. I love playing guitar when I’m drunk. [That explains a lot! – K]

What do you like drinking?
HUEY- What is it I like drinking? Wine. Champagne. Or if there isn't anything, tequila.

Apart from your own music who do you listen to most?
HUEY - Jimmy Cast and Johnny Cash. I love people who can produce something great from so few resources. I can't stand modern technology applied to music.

At this point the manager comes into the changing room and the show is about to start, the lights are off and the crowd are shouting, one last question:
What do you feel before going on stage?
HUEY - One of my best friends, the one that we used to hide in the school toilets and smoke and we used to beat ourselves up, he became a priest [Huey went to an all-boys Catholic school - K]. I see him often and recently he said 'Y’know Huey, every time I feel the presence of God next to me, I’m happy!'. Now every time I feel the presence of the crowd, I’m happy...
[What I think he means is, ‘ He used to hide in the toilets with this priest guy, smoking. So it didn’t look suss, they’d beat each other up. Ray, however, reckons they were torturing each other – fag burns etc. Form your own conclusions! – K]

13/12/00: From NME

DAMON GETS ON HUEY’S D

Pop stars in public altercation over who's the "coolest"

FUN LOVIN' CRIMINALS frontman HUEY MORGAN has branded Blur lead singer Damon Albarn a "cocksucker" after the pair almost came to blows last week, NME can reveal.
Huey and Damon's altercation happened when they bumped into each other at London's Kabaret Club in Soho. Speaking exclusively to NME the following night, Huey accused Damon of acting like a "rock star" rather than a real person and "hugging him like a homeboy" when they'd never been that close.

He explained: "He was out in a bar being an idiot. I liked the guy up until last night (but) he was acting like a cocky fuck, and I was like, 'Jesus Christ!' Some people like being rock stars and not taking it easy. He hugged me like I was his homeboy, and I don't hug this dude. I don't know him that well. Then I told him what I was up to and he told me it wasn't cool. I said, 'What do you mean it's not cool?'
And he goes, 'It's wack'. And I said, 'You mean wack like your new video, Damon?' And then he got all 'mer mer mer' and I said, 'Damon I'm fuckin' wit you.' (But then) he got really pissed off, and started acting like a jerk, and telling me, 'You don't know what's cool 'cos you don't live here.' And I was like, 'Fuck off!' Fuck him, he can go suck a bolognaise! I was so close to putting my foot in that kid's ass. So close. But I didn't. I was cool."
"It would have been a waste of a shoe," added Huey's FLC bandmate, Fast. [I cannot tell you how much I laughed at that.]
Albarn was unavailable for comment as NME went to press.

In other FLC news, Huey confirmed that the band's album would be called 'Loco' and would feature a "country and western vibe" on a couple of songs.
Huey said: "I like it. There's lot of different stuff. We got the lounge out of our system (with last album 'Mimosa') and now we're back to what we do best, which is like, modern soul kind of music."
Track titles include 'Bump', 'Where The Bums Go', 'There Was A Time', 'Dickholder', 'Run Daddy Run', plus the title track, which can currently be heard on the band's Miller beer advert.

Brand on the run

Having your music used in an ad has long been a recipe for a hit. So why not go a step further and appear in it? By MARK EDWARDS

It's a hot day, and the car is stuck in an endless traffic snarl-up. In the back of the car sit the Fun Lovin' Criminals. Huey gets out of the car. Is it the new FLC video? Are we about to see a pastiche of REM's Everybody Hurts video as the band wander through the traffic in existential angst? Nah! Huey wants to party! And, fortunately, he's got some beers. "It's Miller time!" he decides, and with a couple of quick cuts, the band are playing us a song from a makeshift stage that has somehow appeared on the back of a truck. This is an ad.
But it's more than just another ad with a pop song as a sound track. This is perhaps the closest melding of brand and band we've yet seen. Not only do the band actually star in the commercial themselves, but they wrote the song especially for the ad. It's not on any album.
The Miller ad debuts at the end of a year that has seen the advertising industry and the music business get closer together than ever before, a year in which Sting -the erstwhile defender of the rainforests - has been seen advertising gas-guzzling Jaguars, a year in which the biggest-selling album (Moby's Play) has also been the album most licensed for use in commercials, a year in which getting their song onto an ad was the most effective way for a band to promote their music. This cosying up of ads and pop is the culmination of a process that began more than a decade ago but has accelerated markedly in the past year.
It was in the mid-1980s that advertising discovered the power of music to shift product. Led by the agency Bartle BogIe Hegarty , who pulled out vintage 1950s and 1960s singles to sell Levi's, the industry quickly realised that if you wanted to quickly establish an emotional connection between your brand and a certain demographic, playing them a fondly remembered song was a great way of going about it.
But ever since the Beatles and Dylan had allied rock music with the counterculture, artists had shied away from any taint of commercialisation. The idea of writing a song for an ad was taboo. Those who did - Babylon Zoo come to mind- found that it was no way to launch a lasting career. Often, however, the artists don't control their own songs, which is why a steady trickle of pop music’s most sacred texts have been co-opted by advertisers, most notably the Beatles' Revolution (Nike) and Come Together (Nortel and Microsoft).
In the mid-1990s, the music industry began to be proactive. Instead of waiting around for ad agencies to think of a song for their latest ad, music publishers began to pitch ideas to the agencies. They began to appoint executives whose sole function was to obtain "synchronisation licenses" -that is, to get songs onto ads. The most clued-up publishers now send out regular samplers of their acts' new songs to ad agencies, as well as pitching specific tracks for individual campaigns. Ad agencies can log on to the publishers sites and search for songs that might have suitable lyrics.
Chrysalis was one of the first to target ad agencies in this way, and its efforts led to it being involved in the most popular ad of all time. Last year, when Guinness's agency created that ad with the horses in the surf, it turned to Chrysalis for help. Got any surfing horses music, it asked. Sure, said Chrysalis: how would you like Phat Planet, a track from the new Leftfield album? But there isn't a new Leftfield album, said the agency. Not yet, said Chrysalis, but you can have the track before it's released.
Not only did the ad go on to be voted the most popular ever made, it also proved to be a cornerstone of the marketing of Leftfield's album, Rhythm and Stealth. And, while some music fans may bemoan the fact that bands are getting sucked into the world of advertising, there is a clear upside here. As tighter formatting makes it ever harder for bands to reach the public via the radio, ads offer a new way of attracting attention to lesser-known or just plain unformattable bands.
Gap, for example, has used music by the cult groups Red House Painters and the Dandy Warhols, while Mandalay have had a track of theirs used on an Estee Lauder ad. And, if you track Moby's sales chart, you'll see that the album failed to make much of an impression before advertisers started using it. So the millions of you who now own a copy of Play should probably be grateful to the Soho creatives who picked up on it.
But maybe music fans no longer care about seeing their favourite bands getting into bed with multinational corporations. Earlier this year, when Radiohead toured the country, they made a point of doing so without the support of a corporate sponsor. So how did the fans of this most idealistic of bands react? Did they support the band's worthy decision? No, they wrote to the music press moaning at the consequently higher price of tickets and asking why they should have to shell out more to soothe the band's conscience.

23/10/00: Mondo magazine. Huey is a wine taster for the aforementioned. Here's what he had to say this issue:

'Wine - Huey Morgan
Our regular wine columnist Huey Morgan, Fun Lovin' Criminal, love god and soon-to-be London restaurateur. This month, he samples three bottles from the vineyards of Greece and offers some general wine-buying tips.

The reason I like wine is because I like getting drunk. If I can't drink tequila, I'm gonna drink some wine, you know? When it comes to vino, my advice is live your life, these things are there to help you enjoy yourself. If you like something, stick with it; if it's not for you, keep going until you find something else. You want some tips about selecting bottles? Well. without sounding like I'm passing the buck, ask the guy who works in the store. Tell him what you want, why you want it, what you're looking to get out of it, and he'll probably be able to hook you up. He's in business there, and if you like what he gives you, you'll go back to his store. So, really, trust the people in the store, they probably know more than everybody else. And don't go to a store where they're going to be snobby to you - fuck 'em.
Just remember, what you like is what's good. And if you like some of the stuff I didn't like, God bless, so be it. Now let's smoke up and kick things off with three Greek Wines.

STROFILIA RED 1995/6 ATTICA (around £6.49 a bottle)
You know, normally I wouldn't eat or drink anything that came out of Greece, because food preparation hygiene takes second place out there, right? This is nice and light, though. There's a lot involved in here, but I'm not going to get too deep into that. Nice, dry, stays with you a little longer than it should - yeah, this is pretty good. It's something I would buy if I couldn't find a decent Chilean. It's a bit in the Bordeaux style and it's probably the grapes. Let me take a look at the label. Yeah, they're on France's dick - French grapes. It would be cool if you were going out with a girl, and she was Greek, and you were going to the fucking family's house - bring this and you're in there. A good wine.

TSELEPOS CABERNET SAUVIGNON 1996/7 PELOPONNESE (£6.99)
The thing about wine: make it easy to remember, easy to say, then no one can fuck it up; if it's good they'll like it. This is a little heavy on the nose. Oh God, I just jumped into some kinda vanilla factory. There's a lot of stuff in here that shouldn't be. And for seven pounds, that's crazy man. The bouquet is very overwhelming. Pretty label, though.

DOMAINE GEROVASSILIOU WHITE 1998 MACEDONIA (£4.99)
This should be served a litle colder than it is, so I'll try to bear that in mind. Right off the bat, it doesn't smell right. It smells funky dory, it's got a wood-floral thing. Right now I'm looking for bacteria - you might get a tapeworm, bro'. Now don't get me wrong about this Greek thing. We have fun in Athens. We went to one place and it was firebombed the next day. You know the Mediterranean temperament. I can understand that, I'm Latino. And if I'm going Greek, I'd prefer the first of these three bottles. As for this one... I'd rather drink Sprite.

Next month Huey tastes wines from France.'

'Huey from the Fun Lovin' Criminals talks to Sean Rowley about his favourite records. All very well, but what the man in the street really wants is personal grooming advice...'

21/08/00:
FLC-Related In Print: Today, the Guardian newspaper’s G2 section ran a feature on the Rose of Tralee festival, which FLC were going to play (although it was never confirmed by the band – just by the festival’s website). The festival is an Irish beauty pageant that has been in existence since 1959.

18/08/00:
Today, the Guardian newspaper’s weekly news digest, the Editor featured a ‘digested’ version of Huey’s interview in Melody Maker (9-15th August):
‘If aliens were to offer Huey Morgan of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, the chance to spend five years on their planet, he would go immediately - as long as he could take some ganja, a digital camera and his laptop. he would use the computer to store the photos of all the young female aliens hanging out on the beach.’ Hmmm.
Not FLC exactly, but the aforementioned publication also featured some ‘badical language’ – i.e. US college slang. Some NY-originating phrases include: ‘Mad Cheddar – a lot of money’ and ‘Jump on the grenade – choosing the less attractive person so your friend can bag the good-looking one.’ For more, visit this website. Anyone heard anyone say either of these? Mail me!

08/08/00:
In this week’s Heat magazine (UK, Issue 78 12-18th Aug.), Sean Rowley has this to say about his visit to Chez Huey for the new series of the Channel 4 TV show ‘All Back to Mine’, which begins again on Wednesday 16th August at 11.30pm:

“He’s a raconteur [story-teller] of the highest order. There’s definitely part of him working on that cool persona but he’s exactly the same off-camera. He walks it like he talks it…I don’t think many people realise he fought in the Gulf War, which clearly had a major impact on him. At the end of the show he has this massive rant about the music scene, about Britney and Christina, and what they have to cope with. He also makes this prophecy that Billie will be the one who goes off the deep end first.”

06/08/00:
'The Sunday Times' 'Culture' (Section 9) 06/08/00, featured The Bulldog Bash as pop event pick of the week:
'One of the weirder events in Britain's cultural calendar. It's essentially a festival for bikers, though the arts will be represented with two days of music. Friday is as heavy as you'd expect with Therapy? headlining; Saturday is less intense, with Fun Lovin' Criminals and the Alabama 3.'

29/07/00:
'Heat' magazine this week (29/07-04/08), picked 'Everything Under the Stars' as the best track on the 'Titan A.E. OST' album - "Best Track: Fun Lovin' Criminals' brilliantly seedy Everything Under The Stars, with guitars seemingly borrowed from Metallica". The album as a whole receives four stars - "Soundtrack album in "replayable" shock".