Thou Shalt Not Steal ...

WHILE BACKS are conveniently turned, I'm just about to filch a CD-single from the mound of Utah Saints kipple on the dressing room table, and sneak it into my bag. It's an enticingly tasty little pack of "I Want You" in both Edit and Extended forms, as well as "DJ Tim's Funky Bliss Mix" and the "Utah's Mormon Extended Mix".
I'm well-tempted. Tour Manager Jim is sunk deep in concentration over his lap-top computer with guest-list files and complex percentage columns scrolling, and I'm just about to make my move . . . when suddenly, over my shoulder, Jez says "Yes. We got that record direct from the Pressing Plant". I return the disc conscientiously to the pile.
On Jim's screen my name swims across the grid. Apparently this time the revolution will be computerised. Already the Utah Saints have got me on their files. "The CD's printed up like it's our single," continues Jez conversationally, "but when you play it, it's really New Order's 'Ruined in a Day'!".
The Utah's now share labels with the post-Factory post-Modernists, which probably explains the pressing mix-up. But the aesthetics of theft are these: I'd actually prefer the Utah's single - but is this tempting little CD worth more collectibility-wise because of its misprint value? To theft or not to theft? It's an intriguing conundrum. And one I continue to mull over as the interview develops.
"Who would you compare us to?," challenges Jez suddenly. "If someone said to you 'What are Utah Saints like?', what would you say?".
Delving into my own personal bias I suggest a weird Pop combination of earlier Electronic Dance Cross-over groups like Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, and way back into the realms of Kraftwerk.
He nods. "Yes. I'm happy with those. A guy yesterday said . . .".
". . . Colourbox" completes Tim. This game of brain-storming journalists for definitions must be a regular thing.
"We've had people say they think we're into the whole Belgian Techno thing, people who've associated us purely with the Club scene, and others who've compared us with heavier stuff like Ministry. But that's what it's all about.
"Us playing with U2 was an odd combination. Us having a band in which for half the set, what people perceive as the vocal sound is not coming out of anybody's mouth, but is coming out of a Sampler, that's a weird mix.
"For the last six months we've been on the same bill as Shamen, U2, EMF, Rage Against the Machine, 808 State, and House of Pain. And it's weird that in the last month we've also been on the front cover of D.J. Magazine, we had a 'Single-of-the-Week' in both N.M.E. and Melody Maker, and I've just done an interview for Kerrang! I'm not saying this to be big-headed about it. What I mean is, that for some reason we are treading a tricky balance.
"It's not even a conscious thing, it just so happens that's the way we're coming at it, and it's turned out being the way it is. Crossing over a few different things. But you're right it is a weird combination".
Utah Saints are basically a duo from Leeds. 27-year-old Jez Willis, he of the red-white-and-blue braided coiffure and space guitars; and Tim Garbutt, stickle-spine hair and DJ-decks from which he drops excerpts from his 12" dance-mixes into the set. And like the TV-ad almost says it, my ears want to copulate with their music. But here again the aesthetics of theft loom huge.
Utah Saints first single, "What Can You Do For Me" samples an Annie Lennox scat (from the Eurythmics "There Must Be An Angel"), looping it into divine absurdity, splicing it with a cut-up extract from Gwen Guthrie (remember "Ain't Nothing Goin' On But The Rent"?) and setting the resulting surgery to compulsive BPM's. It hit No.10 on the BBC chart 28th September 1991.
The follow-up wrests chunks from Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" worked into a delicious vocal riff that goes "ooh-oy, ooh-oy, I know that something good is going to happen" punctuated by bursts of "You want the best, you want the best, you want the best, you got the best, you-you-you-Utah Saints, U-U-U-Utah Saints". And it's easily the best record Kate Bush ever (almost) made - "Something Good" stormed to No.4 21st June 1992.
Get the picture? "Believe In Me" - No.8 (9th May 1993) effortlessly twists and contorts Human League's "Love Action" into the Utah's masterplan of witty cheek and blatant requisition. Phil Oakey's thefted phrases spiralling in around his own repetitions to a mind-stretching crescendo. For Utah Saints records, ideas are artfully scavenged, preserved in alcohol, and kept in the fridge for instant creative microwaving. Jez and Tim customise and radicalise, producing Dead Ringers for Pop Singers.
Yet to some, Sampling is still little more than sophisticated thievery. And unlike the unacknowledged lifting of masked and treated break-beats or occasional James Brown grunts which are the common larceny of Modern Dance, Utah Saints deal in instantly recognisable voices and phrases. They use it with all the imaginative flair of the most audacious Surrealist collage or Pop Art Junk Sculpture. But whatever its ethics, ever since M.A.R.R.S. "Pump Up The Volume" busted Sampling technology to No.1 on the Pop agenda - then got their assets frozen for their pains, and after lengthy litigation wound up paying out most of the loot in legal damages - Sample-Theft has kept Lawyers in lucrative Court actions.
"Sure, but if you want hits, if you're going to have something that's all over the radio, and on tv too if you're lucky . . ."
" . . . then someone'll spot you", completes Tim. "Remember that dance record by Usura ('Open Your Mind'), it was just a complete sampling of massive chunks of Simple Minds 'New Gold Dream'. We ''were going to put 'New Gold Dream' out - maybe as a single before that. But we went out to America to do that tour with Shamen, and when we came back the Usura record came out and did really well. It went to No.8 or something.
"We couldn't believe it. We bought the CD, and there's no writing credits to Jim Kerr on it at all. They hadn't cleared their use of the sample, and now they're getting fucked for it. They won't make anything on that record at all".
"We clear all our samples first," points out Jez. "Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Phil Oakey had never cleared a sample before, and they had complete right of veto on it. The fact that we got them cleared is an indication that we're doing something right. We have to give away, erm, something like two-thirds of the monies from each record we make for the use of all the samples. So it's quite a costly thing as well. But we don't mind that.
"Some people just hate the fact that we sample at all. But it's just a different way of looking at sound. People all too often separate voice and music, whereas you can look at the voice as an instrument. You can take a small part of it and play in on a keyboard. The technology exists to do that. We try not to steal the essence of someone's song. We'd never take someone's chorus and turn it into our chorus, or even take a complete line from their verse and turn it into our chorus."
"It's hard playing samples live as well," admits Tim. "People think all you've got to do is push a key, but it is a lot harder than that. If you're playing, like, a 4-bar loop, and you hit the key a fraction out of time, then it's out of sync with the drummer, so you're just getting drums everywhere."
"Technically, the Kate Bush sample was a hard one to work with," says Jez warming to the subject. "We just sampled it direct off the CD, and you know when you sample something it's like taking a small piece of tape, you can't just take the voice off, you've got to take whatever is happening around the voice as well.
"So, for example, with that Kate Bush sample, there were already strings and drums and stuff there. And we had to get the sample to fit in with our drums, and be in the right key so that the strings didn't clash with our music. So there was a lot of experimentation with that. And also, no matter how trite or simple the choruses of our records have been, to us they've always had a reflexive quality to them that actually means something.
"However simple, it wasn't 'Take Me Higher' or 'I'm In Ecstacy'. I'm sure we could've found a lot of samples that said that. There were technically easier Kate Bush samples to take too - probably from 'Wuthering Heights' or something. But we didn't want a record that had a chorus saying 'Oooo he's here again' or something like that. 'Cos it doesn't make any sense. So we've always tried to be careful about that - not only the sound quality, but what it actually conveys too."
It can be argued that such big hits as the Utah Saints have been enjoying ain't good for the breathless mystification of cred, but by storming the realms of Pop's vacuous commotion they have done what all those dourly intense Art-Experimentalists secretly longed for but never quite achieved. Their records are fun. You have no choice but to dance to them.
And unlike the majority of dance records they bring a smile to your domestic hi-fi too. It's taken them from merely playing with power, into high-gloss power-plays lubricated with wit and sex. And at the moment they are chasing maximum penetration.
"In the past we've done things, Pop things, with Take That even, and we did a Fast Forward Roadshow at Alton Towers" - Jez relates it all in tones of breathless amazement. "There's a part of me that thinks 'oh no, we don't want to do that'. But on the other hand, I'm originally from a small town near Carlisle. I've got a soft spot for Carlisle actually 'cos they have the only football team to go from the 4th Division to the 1st - and then back to the 4th again in consecutive seasons. But the only influences I had as a kid were Top of the Pops, Radio One, the Top 20 countdown, John Peel - and Radio Luxembourg.
"I'd leave my headphones on all night. I'd fall asleep with them on, and wake up in the morning to the SHSHSHSH sound of static because Radio Luxembourg used to go off the air at 4 o'clock in the morning. But there's a certain amount of weird snobbery about chart success, and it annoys me. Like when we supported U2, we played to a quarter of a million people in five days.
"And the good thing about U2 audiences is that they've had to be open-minded, with Achtung Baby coming out, and now the new album - it's even got the Edge singing on it, a dead low-voice Dance-y thing which I think is brilliant. If you're lucky enough to attain that kind of position, you should try and use it, as they have.
"U2 could probably get so many bands to support them, but they paid us so well that we could afford to fly out to Portugal and do the show. We didn't make any money out of it, but we covered costs."
"Plus they were very down-to-earth. Very nice. Very friendly, and as accommodating to us as they could be. And they didn't have to be."
"Every night I stayed out and watched the U2 show as well and . . ." begins Tim.
"We learned a lot from them."
" . . . and we learned from it", he completes. "I learned just why they're so successful. Just the way they do their whole show, and the whole concept of it."
"Yes. It's just really good. At first it either makes you want to give up, or it makes you want to work twice as hard to get to that level." Jez sinks back comfortably into the ravaged upholstery. "I can understand just why watching U2 would make a lot of people want to give in. But I'm happy 'cos I sorta know now what we've got to do. It's made us want to work twice as hard!"
Reviews for the Utah Saints album - which includes the
four hits, plus their non-sample cover of 'New Gold Dream' - and the ambient chill-out grooves of 'Trance Atlantic Glide' and 'States Of Mind', were markedly mixed. New Musical Express going as far as criticising what they called a "self-imposed low quality ceiling" of an over-dependence on samples. Perhaps it's something to do with that august journal's marketing niche and penchant for fringes and guitar bands?
" . . . the Baggy Scene?" Jez grins. "The album got an embarrassingly good review in Melody Maker. But not in Q or N.M.E. . . And what annoyed me about the N.M.E. one was that the guy hadn't done his homework very well, and an ill-informed review from the N.M.E. is really a shame. He thought we'd sampled Simple Minds, and that track - 'New Gold Dream' - is just a straight cover version of the Simple Minds song. One 'phone call could've worked that out. But he was just trying to be too clever for his own good. And the Q review was written by a guy who I know for a fact has given Dire Straits albums five stars, so . . .".
An eloquent shrug sums up the situation.
But the stunning fourth single - 'I Want You' - apart from a sly metal-guitar steal from Slayer, is relatively sample-free. Is this a concession from Utah Saints that they see limitations to sample-based records?
"No,, from Jez emphatically. "There's no limit to samples."
So do you see Utah Saints as a long-term project?
"Yes," from Tim, equally firmly. "I don't know how long. But I don't see it packing in next year. I see us doing at least three, four, or five albums. But I don't think we're Status Quo."
"We're realistic enough to say if it fucks up, it fucks up. We'll go and do something else. But we don't want it to fuck up, and as a result of that - all the time we're awake we spend working on this. It's a cliché, but at the moment we're more concerned with putting money back into the band and building it up as far as we can. When it goes into decline we'll cut our losses, split what's left, and do a runner."
I suppose I'm going to have to buy the CD-single now, ensuring that it is Utah Saints, and not New Order.
Paying for your music, like crediting your samples, is the other side of the aesthetics of theft.