Neurotic for the people

One cold, wet and miserable evening in the autumn of 1998, colourfully monikered punk rocker Deko Dachau (probably not the name on his passport) returned to his Dublin flat having spent the previous six weeks touring Germany with his band Striknien DC. There was a life-changing note pinned to his front door.

“It was from my landlord and it said, ‘I gave you a month’s notice. The police will be here at 3 o’clock tomorrow. You’re out!’” the 48-year-old vocalist recalls. “He was fucking all the tenants out. He had given me notice. I’d been away so I hadn’t known.”
Deko hadn’t a penny in the pocket of his bondage pants at the time. “The tour actually went really well. Except the label we were with had fucked up. We had no product to sell. So I basically came back home with nothing.”
Within 24 hours, he was homeless. “It was that quick. Suddenly I was out on the fucking road.”
He had no family to turn to. Deko is from “the flats” and had spent most of his adolescence in state institutions. “My family was smashed to bits. There’s seven of us and none of us ever even went to the same fucking school. I couldn’t go to anybody in my family for help.”
The next 18 months of his life were an ongoing nightmare. “I was on floors, I was in the park. I slept up in Mountjoy Square for six months. I was ashamed. I didn’t want to tell anybody. I didn’t want to believe it myself. It’s a catch-22. Once you haven’t got a job or an address, you can’t sign on – so you don’t get money. You’ve got to stay in a hostel with the biggest scumbags of the earth. It’s a pity they are that way because they were probably human once, but they’re retards now. Junkies that will just go through you.
“I didn’t get one bit of help off the system,” he continues. “I didn’t even get as much as a fucking coat off them. They told me to live in this hostel, which I refused to do. I went up there one night and I almost killed this bloke who I found going through my pockets at 3.30 in the morning. There’s no real help – that’s just an official fucking myth. It really is a hard place to get up off.”
Although Paranoid Visions had split in 1992, a chance meeting with his old bandmate, Peter Jones (stage name ‘PA’), proved his salvation. “The first

thing I did was store his record collection,” the 46-year-old bassist recalls. “Deko has thousands of records so it was a few carloads. Then I helped him get a place and get back on his feet.”
Thirteen years on, having reformed Paranoid Visions in 2001, the two veteran punks are meeting Hot Press in Dublin’s Market Bar to discuss their latest album, Escape from the Austerity Complex. Needless to say, although long behind him, Deko’s grim period of homelessness helped inspire some of the more caustic lyrics.
“The Celtic Tiger was a bogus boom,” he snarls. “I thought the boom was the worst thing that ever happened to this country – to the people and the actual communities. People started getting way above their station. Everything was disposable and throwaway. It wasn’t like the Irish of the past. Tuppence ha’penny looking down on tuppence! It was fucking horrible.”
Originally the album’s cover artwork depicted a bloodied pair of slashed wrists, an image which so offended corporate sensibilities that it had to be withdrawn. “The brief that we gave the artist for the cover was that austerity is economic suicide,” Peter explains. “It’s killing the country, it’s killing the people, and some people see the only way out as topping themselves. So we left him alone with that and he came back with this incredible image of slashed wrists. But our label ran it by iTunes who said that you can’t have suicide imagery on iTunes.
“We compromised by using an image of a noose, which they accepted because there was no blood. And also there was more of an underlying ‘stranglehold on the economy’ thing. So the wrist image is now on the back of the sleeve.”
Two years in the making, Escape From The Austerity Complex has already spawned two Irish top 10 singles in ‘Politician’ and ‘Outsider Artist’. The latter song features legendary Adverts frontman TV Smith on lead vocals. Although Deko pens all the lyrics, he isn’t particularly fussed about who sings.
“I’m not precious about the vocals at all. The lyrics, yes, but not the vocals. Sure, I couldn’t sing to save my life! I’m a shouter and if someone can shout better than me, and get the point across better, then great. I’m a Nazi about the lyrics, though.”
The 16-track album, which clocks in at well over an hour, also features guest appearances from Crass singer Steve Ignorant, The Cravat’s vocalist The Shend, and Rubella Ballet’s Zillah Minx.
“It was one of those things where you start off with a minor idea and then it progresses because you get away with it,” Peter smiles. “TV Smith was coming over for a solo acoustic gig. We were playing on the bill as well, and so we suggested it would be a good idea for us to learn a few Adverts songs and he could get up and sing with us. He had to come to our rehearsal room obviously to rehearse the songs on the day of the gig. We chanced our arm and said, ‘look, we’ve got a studio here; do you fancy singing on one of our songs?’ He said he’d love to do it. Once we had him on, it kind of made it easier to get other people.”
Although mastered in the UK by Rubella Ballet’s Sid Truelove, the album was mostly recorded in the band’s own Dublin studio. “We did it all ourselves,” says Peter. “The majority of the album was done on our 16-track in our own rehearsal room. Obviously it was mixed elsewhere. By and large, though, it was produced and recorded by ourselves. It just shows what you can do with limited means and a decent mastering job.”
Deko adds, “A lot of bands don’t have any knowledge. They just go into a studio and listen to the engineer. We’ve got 30 years’ experience doing this, and we’ve had our own studio for seven years. It’s made out to be a mystery when you first go in, but we know what we’re at at this stage. Hence the album sounds good.”
Actually it sounds better than good (“As fiery and frenetic as anything they’ve released in their career to date,” according to Edwin McFee’s glowing review in the last issue). What it doesn’t sound like is yet another thrashy punk record.
Deko: “We’ve never been a run of the mill punk band. We’ve always had influences outside of that – from post-punk to reggae or whatever. Probably because we missed the first wave of punk.”
First formed in 1981, Paranoid Visions were initially a band four years behind the times.
“We didn’t get to the UK at the height of what people would term anarcho-punk. We were too young and it was so dear to get over there. When we did get over in 1984, it was all over. So now we’ve gone into it. We’re on both sides of it. We’re not stuck in the anarcho-punk ghetto. We’re not street punk. Which gives us a bit of an edge.”
While Deko and Peter have been there from the beginning, Paranoid Visions had many line-ups over the years. Deko laughs. “Actually, we suffered badly through emigration. Every time we went to England to play a gig, half the band fucking stayed there!”
With the country still reeling from the economic crash, they say that the punk ethos is more relevant, and the local scene more happening, than ever. “People have nowhere to express their anger,” says Peter. “No-one’s listening to them. No-one will listen to them. They can’t get on the TV or the radio, they can’t write for the media. All they can do if they want to really express themselves getting annoyed is form a punk band and start shouting.”
Deko: “We’re gigging quite a lot nowadays. Compared to other bands on the punk scene, we’re playing more than anybody. If we’re not playing, we’re running gigs. We’re actually gathering a scene here. There’s a really good underground in Dublin now. It’s a little bit more united than it used to be in the past with all the bands fighting each other. We’re happy to be part of it, but we’ve always ploughed our own furrow regardless.”
Although there’s been a serious resurgence of interest in Paranoid Visions in recent times, they felt ignored by the Irish media for much of their career.
“Hot Press have been very supportive over the last few years,” says Peter. “Prior to that, we were treated like a joke, almost. Thankfully, over the last four or five years, that seems to have changed. Like the fact that you’re here interviewing us just wouldn’t have happened years ago.
“Getting played on Irish radio is still hard,” he continues. “Over the years, Fanning was always at pains to play us and, whenever he did, he acted like it was a big fucking favour.”
Deko nods his agreement. “When Tom Dunne and all these people were doing compilations of Irish rock music, we were never on them. And we fucking should have been. Because our stuff blew a lot of the other shit away! But Paranoid Visions were the lepers of Dublin rock music at one stage.”
Not that he’s bitter about it. “I didn’t really mind being a leper,” he shrugs. “It fuelled my resolve more than anything.”
Just because you’re Paranoid Visions, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you...

Escape From The Austerity Complex is out now on Overground Records.