FLOCK PRESS

(This interview ran in The Telegram or Worcester Magazine, sometime in the late 2000s after we won yet another Best Music Poll award. It's hard to keep track, as we've won so many times.)

Flock of A**holes (Best Cover Band) (as answered by guitarist Andy Hummers)

Band Members and who plays what: 

• Simon Leboner: Lead vocals, kazoo, and spectacular hair 
• Andy Hummers: guitar, guitar synthesizer, tambourine and witty Anglo banter Stink: Bass and socks 
• Philled Condom: Both drums and percussion (UPDATE: Replaced by Alex Van Handjaüb) 
• Kaiser Googoo: Keyboards, synthesizers and heart-felt 5th grade poetry 
• Totally Awesome (a.k.a. Waldo): Anything horn related, backing vocals and choreography (UPDATE: Whereabouts unknown. We don’t know where’s Waldo) 
• Phil Sphincter: The dude who manages us and takes our pictures (UPDATE: retired from the spotlight)  

Year the band was born?

•  1980 (that’s when we played our first gig, too). What other bands have you guys played in over the years? Well, Stink spent many years in a band which featured ex-members of Kajagoogoo and A-Ha. They were called Kaja-a-ha. Andy was the replacement guitarist in the Velvet Whores when their original guitarist, Rob Rockley, was in rehab for model glue abuse.  

How’d you all meet?

• Funny you should ask that because one of the many remarkable things about this band is that none of us have actually met yet. 

If you could make up a name for the genre of music you play? 

• We feel that our music bridges the gaps between so many genres that it should be criminal to try to label it one thing. No matter how much you, the press, try to box us into a neat and tidy category all sewn up with sutures of stale newspaper ink, we shan’t be defined. Not now. Not ever.  
• 
  
• That said, it’s safe to say that we play “John Hughes-core.”  

Who’s the biggest ladies’ man amongst all you fine specimens? 

• Well, that would definitely be Phil Sphincter, our manager. He has a way with the ladies that just turns them into puddles on the floor. This was been a problem in the past, when the ladies have jumped up on stage and become puddles which then caused several band members to slip and fall. We have asked that he tones it down a bit and we have a stipulation in our rider that the stage needs to be 1” taller than the tallest woman in the audience.  

Biggest softie? 

• That’s definitely Kaiser Googoo. He’s the quintessential sensitive type. He’s is often late for our gigs because he’s been helping old ladies cross the street.  

Most fashionable? 

• As a band, we are all incredibly fashionable. To us, it’s more important than the music. We have our pants made out of genuine parachutes that were used by soldiers when they landed in the great Falkland Islands war in 1982. We also take great care to make sure that our haircuts and shirt buttons are sufficiently asymmetrical and that we have the proper amount of LA Looks gel in the dressing room. We use LA Looks hair products exclusively.  

Do you watch any of the music award shows on TV? 

• No. We watch them on the microwave. Duh, where else are we going to watch them?  

Better to burn out or fade away? 

• We prefer to either peter out or dissolve.  Most embarrassing on stage moment? Uh, have you attended one of our shows? It’s hard to find one moment that ISN’T embarrassing.  

Still have a collection of 80s cassettes in the basement or in the car?

• Simon’s Chevy Citation has about 2000 cassettes and cassingles littering the back hatch. Most of them melted together about 18 years ago, but he still keeps his Chris DeBurgh “Lady in Red” tape in the glove box for those romantic nights at Inspiration Point.  

Guilty musical pleasure? 

• That’s a toughie, but I would have to say that we all have an affinity for bands with numbers in their names like Heaven 17, Haircut 100, UB40, Vanity 6 and Boyz II Men.