The world is full of bands that are criminally ignored by the press and the record-buying public for one reason or the other. Shack used to belong to this broad category of renegade unsung heroes, until the recent release of their current acclaimed long player HMS Fable.
Shack were formed from the ashes of The Pale Fountains by brothers Mick and John Head. The Head brothers are in Dublin as last minute additions to a match made in indie-kid heaven also featuring Blur and dEUS.
There is no agenda with our band because we re just four different individuals, Head states adamantly. However, the way our music gets out in the world must be special. I don t want my ugly mug shown in papers all the time, but if someone comes up to me and says you know what, that fucking song that you wrote, that done that for me , I ll go: Deal! You got yourself a deal! That s what it s all about.
Everyone goes through shit, everybody goes through hardship, everybody gets into smack well, not everyone but you know what I mean. What s the big deal? We re a band, there is no agenda.
But while they may have a justifiable distaste for the press, hasn t the recent championing of Shack in the British inkies benefited them in that they are now reaching people beyond their previous audience?
The perception that other people have of us has got fuck all to do with it. When we got an album and single review in the NME I was a smackhead at the time. I ve only sussed this over the last couple of weeks. I ve been smelling a bit of a rat lately, but I m me and you deal with civilisation and the world accordingly.
But we are a band working for a corporate company. I know for a fact that if anyone wants to have a field day with me they could. I get it all out in the open because that s what I ultimately do in the songs.
Mike Head is on a roll and getting increasingly animated.
The NME don t seem to want to do that. But I don t waste time thinking about it too much. I think about my friends and immediate family.
Head s time as a heroin addict has been the subject of much, often simplistic, media attention. Is part of the problem that the media and society in general fails to understand or account properly for addiction?
Yes. People aren t honest about it because they don t understand it. There is only one way for the Government to deal with heroin addicts. They go on about programmes and put them on all these things. I was talkin to a girl the other day and her fella is locked up somewhere climbing up the walls. That s a load of shite! I personally think that the drug was put into society. Liverpool and Glasgow were flooded with smack for certain reasons I want to delve more into it as I get older but I know that for a fact.
I ve heard certain things about Denmark and Switzerland where they try to integrate heroin addicts back into society. It s a big load of bullshit.
I d say to addicts do you want to stop? . Yeah . I never, ever ask the question why, because I know why I got treatment because I had dough, or the record company had dough. If you are a heroin addict, you want to kick it but you don t want to wake up tomorrow.
What I want to say to the heroin addict is, you got a chance here to get your shit together, to get your feet on the ground and to make your way through that big, fat shitter out there. You are going to get a chance now but if you fuck that up you are on your own . That s the best thing the government could do.
We can t do it all the time or we ll have junkiedom, but if it were done that way, I think 90% of them would go. You d get the odd arsehole who won t but no one is going to do it on turkey or methadone programmes. That s pathetic.
I went to hospital for two days and came out a different person. I knew what the main factor was, I didn t come out a different person from the person I was before I went in, I was a different person. I told them to wash this shit out of my own body. I d made my own mind up and that s the crucial factor.
Did music play any part in your rehabilitation?
Not enough. Because it doesn t get understood enough.
Did it help in any way? Even as an expressive outlet?
Does it help? No. A song pacify someone s turkey? No way.
Putting such serious issues to the side, there is the small matter of a soundcheck in the Point to attend to. Shack strut their stuff at 7.30pm sharp, which is a missed opportunity for the Blurkids who aren t here yet. It s a gloriously shambolic set with the piece de resistance being Mike falling over mid-song.
At the backstage bar afterwards a dazed and confused Mike is asks me if he really fell over earlier. I assure him that it was fine and nothing to get worried about. It s hard to picture the same person onstage belting out anthemic lines like you and I been criticised/we gotta pull together .
Clearly, it s the overwhelming power of a good tune that pulls Mike together. Mike Head the dreamer, the schemer, the former addict one of the most unbelievably honest and unashamedly open men left in music today. n