Dirty Vegas become through its music

When you face west, all you can hear is the noise of the garage-rock (repackaged); on this side of the Atlantic a number of bands are clandestinely working toward liberation of ‘sweet leaf’ by re-exploring the psychedelia avenue. With all these occupying the media and nu-gen’s interest, a more regular sounding band has managed to do what other Britons in the USA have been failing over the last several years.

Dirty Vegas are on the verge of getting their platinum album Stateside; yes, one million souls have got a copy of ‘Dirty Vegas’, and ‘Days Go By’ rose to the respectable 14th place on the Billboard’s singles chart. This trio had certain help when the song was suddenly picked up for a car commercial in the States and the Mitsubishi coupé Eclipse ad brought it to the attention of MTV and radio stations. Even without this happenstance the band were planning a push over there.

“The original plan, because of the song and the video,” Ben Harris is the first to pick up the story, “we thought we had a good chance in America but when the commercial happened, it sped the whole thing up. It just seemed to connect with people and radio stations across the land picked it up; when MTV fell in love with the video, it was like way beyond our dreams. We really thought we’d sell a couple of thousand albums and that’s not because we were lacking ambition, we just thought that a TV commercial might help us but this just exploded.”

What mental adjustments did you have to make as you transformed from a London studio-band to performers on mega-popular chat shows in the USA?

“We haven’t made them yet,” Ben continues, “we play catch up all the time, it’s been going so fast over there that we really had no time to reflect… When we appeared on Jay Leno (West Coast-based chat show) for the first time we didn’t really know that it was the biggest show in America!? Only when we appeared on David Letterman’s show, because we knew of him having watched his shows, it really hit us that we were having a success in the States!”

“Apparently David Letterman and (his musical director) Paul Shaffer said that us and Norah Jones were the best artists they had there in a long, long while because they have had some rubbish artists on the programme.”

No carbon glow

This south-London trio of Steve Smith, Paul and Ben Harris (no relation) followed different routes to musical careers: Smith played percussion at school, competing with Alan White (later of Oasis) for the only drum kit and often ending up on the bongos instead. He only moved in front of a microphone when singer left the band he was part of, Higher Ground. After the band fell apart he met Paul at the airport, both heading for the same event in Switzerland. After Ben’s indie rock outfit Fluid fell apart he DJed and started working with Paul independently until Steve came in one day to do some percussion…

“When people come to see us they think it would be a pile of keyboards and computers,” Smith argues, “something like Kraftwerk, nobody expects us to be a band with guitars and traditional singer in front: Paul is in the back, master of all beats, fulfilling a modern-drummer’s role. It is very live and has so much energy.”

“The biggest learning curve has been playing live,” Paul adds, “and you see how certain things do work or not. You have to adjust songs to be more effective and more direct…”

“I still believe that people can have destiny in their own hands,” Ben concludes.

A catwalk junction

Dirty Vegas wanted to call themselves Dirty Harry but Time Warner made it clear that it wouldn’t make their day at all if these punks named themselves after their film franchise. The trio wanted Dirty in their name and one dawn, after a long night of libations, one of the three thought of Vegas and the other two were too drunk to argue… And now they find themselves fighting with many a ‘designer effigy’…

“Yeah, but then you have an artist like Avril Lavigne,” Ben considers, “who sprung from nowhere. We did a concert in America recently and she was there, getting phenomenal response from the crowd. Single’s sold well, the album as well, she appeals to younger than the college kids, the marketing was right… For me, it is a little bit more adult than Hanson (a pre-teen pop sensation of few years ago), she’s like Britney without the bubble-gum but with a guitar.”

“It is really strange that when information and communication,” Smith voices his concern, “is much easier than at any other time in history, all kids do is just get inspired by something really recent, rather than something from the rich past… It’s been forty-odd years of pop music…”

You obviously know your history; how difficult was it to get a clearance for a sample from Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’?

“When we presented our master-tape to the record company,” Ben explains, “we were told that we might have to change ‘Simple Thing Pt 2’, it had the Floyd sample in, it could be trouble, they said. But, apparently Roger (Waters, songwriter) loved it and let us use it.”

“We were very pleased to be given permission,” Smith enthuses, “because we’ve been huge fans of the band for about 20 years!”

“What’s funny is that people don’t even know,” Phil quips, “that is not our piece, they think it is our song!”

These boys might want to explain it to people of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, South America, Asia, Australia, Britain and US they are visiting over the next months. Dirty Vegas mean to count.