Thirsty Merc - A Case Of The Benz

Source: X-Press Online

Author: Mike Wafer

Date Published: Tuesday Aug 17th, 2004

After a successful radio campaign with the single Emancipate Myself, Thirsty Merc are this week releasing their debut self-titled album. MIKE WAFER sits down with singer-guitarist Rai Thistlewayte for a quick cuppa and chat about all things music. Perhaps due to a knee-jerk reaction of apprehension, or as a result of having done a slew of interviews in one sitting, Thistlewayte’s initial answers were complete and utter PR. Safe and boring, the topics strayed no further than the information already provided in his band’s biography, then as if he had been dying to do so all day Thistlewayte finally opened up. The turning point? A mutual interviewer / interviewee love of the world’s least favourite city… Los Angeles.

“I love the griminess and the sleaziness of it. It’s such a shallow place and the people there are always checking you out, eyeing you up and down to see if there is anything they can get out of you, anything they can use you for.” He says. “It’s the dirtiest and smoggiest place in the world, and it just has this really cut-throat, back-stabbing vibe about it that is so exciting. It’s that whole bright lights and strippers and thing… it’s so cheap and nasty, which is what makes it so good.”

Once the conversation turned to this shared love of LA’s irrepressible sleaze, the topic turned back to Thirsty Merc, and when it did, it did so on a much more real, gritty and ultimately personal level. While the band has been criticised for being a prefab commercial experiment, Thistlewayte embraces this tag, holding it against his chest as he would a North Hollywood stripper, with his other arm stretched out, holding aloft an extended middle finger… the likes of which any rock star worth their salt would be sporting.

“You know what, I don’t really give a fuck. I write the songs and I know where they come from. I could sit and list a whole bunch of influences that people run off to give them credibility, but why would I? I think there is less credibility in being someone you’re not, in order to try and fake credibility, than there is in just doing what you do and wearing it. We rehearse, we play shows, we tour, you know… it’s normal. I know we’ve had a lot of exposure early on, but which band wouldn’t want that? I just think there’s a lot of people out there who will knock you for whatever you do, so you may as well do what you want.”

Thistlewayte, who looks uncannily like the Russell Hammond character from Cameron Crowe’s near-rock star movie Almost Famous, is calm and reflective on matters such as criticism on an almost Zen-like level, an attribute of those who truly don’t give a shit. While alternative music circles are quick to dismiss Thirsty Merc as commercial radio fodder, commercial radio fodder is part of the Thirsty Merc aim. The songs, as explained by Thistlewayte, are an exercise in taking the same kind of approach to pop music as The Beatles, but including in the mix a variety of some of the music world’s most unique spins on the famed Lennon / McCartney formula.

“I don’t think style is an important thing to stick to,” he says, “if you stick to a certain style then chances are you don’t have a style of your own, because you’ve already blocked off the possibility of other ideas and influences. The thing I love about music, and the thing that gets me off about music, is the endlessness of it all. There are so many styles, and styles within those styles, and styles yet to be discovered, that it just seems kind of boring to lock yourself into one and not at least be open to the possibility that there are other things out there. With this whole rock revival thing, I don’t know, but it just seems like a lot of people don’t want to try anything new at all. I mean, I love the bands that these new bands are influenced by as well, but when you try and copy someone all the way it isn’t really a matter of influence anymore, it’s just being someone else.”

Call it what you will, Thirsty Merc’s music is very carefully crafted by Thistlewayte. Don’t be fooled into thinking that there is any less skill in crafting commercial pop music as there is alternative music, because even using an example as extreme as, say, Christina Aguilera, there is an amazing amount of musical knowledge and understanding needed to create something that upwards of 10 million people find themselves attracted to. As well as this, there are just as many, if not more, insincere cash-cow ‘alternative’ bands as there are commercial ones, with the only difference being that one tries to achieve commercial success by stating its intention to be commercially successful, and the other tries to achieve commercial success under the false premise of being artistically-driven. Which is the more lame? The answer to that should be obvious.