The Camembert Quartet - all five of them - hope that a new album and regular TV gig will deliver them from wedding-band purgatory. Front-man Clint Velour talks satire with Kevin Courtney
It's Clint Velour's birthday, and what better way to celebrate than with a pint of Guinness in the atrium bar of Dublin's Westin Hotel? He's earned it; after another busy year playing weddings, parties, bar-mitzvahs and Sugar Club gigs, his band, The Camembert Quartet, has just landed a prestigious new gig - as resident band on Tubridy Tonight every Saturday. For some years, the group has been carrying the torch for cheesy comedy cabaret; their repertoire includes a salsa version of Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven, The Sex Pistols' Anarchy In The UK à la Sinatra, and a charming little ditty called Boybands Are C***s.
They don't play that last song on TV. "We're not allowed to play that one," he says. "If a DJ plays that, his career is going in a toilet-cleaning direction. Or the drawer clearing-out section." Luckily, a toned-down version, entitled Boybands Are Runts, can be found on the band's new album, The Camembert Quartet Sell Out, a collection of skits, sketches and satirical tunes.
"I know we're up against William Shatner's new album," says Velour with just a hint of sarcasm, "and it could get lost in a flood of Christmas songs and boyband releases." Velour is hoping, nay praying, that people buy the new album and rescue The Camembert Quartet from wedding band purgatory, and he admits that he'd sell his soul for a bankroll - heck, he'd even consider writing a hit song for Brian McFadden. "It'd be about the usual stuff, you know, my wife's gone off to Australia for three months to live in a jungle, so I'm off to Angels instead," he deadpans.
Clint Velour, you will be shocked to hear, is only a stage name. His real name is Paddy Cullivan, born in Galway, brought up in Dublin's North Great George's Street. His dad is classical musician Tom Cullivan, but young Paddy preferred Buddy Greco to Bach, and Stan Friedberg to Strauss. He learned piano from an early age, then picked up the guitar as a young teenager. But instead of playing folksy tunes about his girlfriend leaving him, Paddy played with a swing in his step, and a satirical smile in his heart. He became a connoisseur of cabaret, "not that eastern European Jack L/Camille O'Sullivan let's-all-wear-suspender-belts cabaret; it's more New York, it's more Las Vegas, where I think is the real cabaret tradition."
Dublin's clubbers got their first taste of Cullivan at Lillie's Bordello, where Paddy's band, The Phallus Palace, had a residency. This was followed by a move to the legendary Ultra-Lounge nights run by Strictly Fish, where Paddy led the Mondo Exotica Big Band through such "ironic" tunes as What's The Buzz?, from the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar. After that, it was a short hop to the Sugar Club, where The Camembert Quartet has been keeping the dancefloor jumping to wild 'n' crazy versions of Andy Williams's Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You, The Prodigy's Firestarter and Van Halen's Jump.
The new album takes the Camemberts' satire one step further. How about a piss-take of bed-wetting indie bands, entitled Serious (The Polluted River Of Youth)? Or a song dissing self-centred rappers called It's All About Me? Or a dig at Blackrock boys-turned-surf dudes The Thrills, entitled California Dublin 4? They're all here, along with dissertations on students, kids who hang around Temple Bar, and a certain singer songwriter named Damo Nice.
"We haven't had a band in this country yet that does what the Camembert Quartet does," claims Velour. "In England it was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and even the Beatles at their most satirical. In America, you had Frank Zappa. In New York, there were bands doing parodies all the time. In Ireland we have a po-faced attitude to music. We're renowned for our sense of humour, but Irish singers seem to have had a triple-humour-bypass. Thin Lizzy had a sense of humour, and The Fatima Mansions had a sense of humour, but a very scary one. Aslan have no sense of humour, but they're tough, so we've steered clear of them on this album. The Thrills we can knock over with a feather, so they're fair game."
The Camembert Quartet play Dublin's Vicar St on Friday, November 5th. The album, The Camembert Quartet Sell Out, is out now on Cosmic Music