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Fluffy is a punk band. Not only do they tackle issues you don't want to talk about except in a really original university discussion, but they hail from London, just like the Sex Pistols, the original British punk band.
They sneer. They drink in excess. They rock out. They have a singer who screams, and together they have more attitude (and are a heck of a lot smarter) than mono-browed Liam Gallagher. Oh, and they are all women.
They started out a little over two years ago in London. After a quick lineup change and some heavy-duty British press action, the band, guitarist/vocalist Amanda Rootes, bassist Helen Storer, guitarist Bridget Jones and drummer Angie Adams released a couple of singles and eventually became the first signees to The Enclave label.
Over the summer they nabbed a supporting slot for the Sex Pistols' highly praised reunion tour. They've gotten a lot of lucky breaks, but if you listen to their music without trying to write them off as just a girl band, you realize these gals can really kick ass.
The Flufsters will soon be touring with D-Generation, which includes a stop in our very own Santa Barbara. We were going to speak with frontwoman Amanda, but she was sick, so instead we spoke with the surprisingly pleasant Helen, who let us in on what it is like to be in a girl band these days.
Artsweek: So you're in England right now.
Helen Storer: Yeah, that's right, in London.
So how did you get into Fluffy?
Well, they used to have a different bass player.
Wasn't her name like Panda Grimbsy-Ore or something like that?
(Laughs) Yeah, Panda Grimbsy, ha, ha. No, Pandora Ormsby Gore. She was really, really posh. You know white, honorable, you know, descended from the queen or something like that. ... Yeah, she left to do acting. I think she really wanted to do that. I think she was in the band as a kind of a hobby and then it started taking off and she had to leave cos her heart wasn't really in it. I met Bridget briefly, before, through a friend of mine, and this guy who we both knew rang me up and said Fluffy [was] looking for a new bass player, so why don't you call them up. And I did an audition and that was it.
You didn't want to try out for Elastica [whose own bassist had quit around that time]?
(Laughing) No. Well, I wasn't good enough. When I first got in a band I'd never been in a band before. It was bad enough being in Fluffy. If I'd been thrown into Elastica ... my knees would have been trembling.
So you never played an instrument?
Well, I never played in a band. I've been playing the guitar since I was about 9, you know, doing all that awful, classical guitar, but I never played in a band. I never played rock n' roll before.
What was that like being thrown in there?
Well I was thrown in really at the deep end cos I joined the band and two weeks later we had a gig. It was an in store at a record store and it was just terrible. We had so much hype in the press at that time, cos we weren't signed, so all the A&R people from all these record companies were there and it was so much press and these cameras flashing at me and it was like wwwww.
Are you sick of all the girl tags that people have stuck on you?
Oh yeah. It's just soooo boring. It's like yeah, we're in a band but we're girls too. It's just really annoying. Any girl band gets it, I think. They get, are you feminists, or are you not feminists? Are you riot girls or not? There's such an obsession with the fact that you are female. It's like, God, it's the 90s.
And people shouting obscenities at you too.
Yeah, yeah absolutely. More in Britain than in the states. But we get it every where.
That really sucks.
Yeah. At first we would get really hot under the collar about it and get really angry and pinpoint people who were saying it and then after the show go out and try and kick their heads in. (She laughs) But you just can't beat up every single little pubescent boy who shouts, get your tits out. You have to kind of deal with it and ignore it.
Do you have a lot of guys at your shows? I was forced to see sleeper once and it was filled with guys; they were just there to see Louise Werner, the girl frontwoman of that horribly average band.
It's strange cos in some places we get a lot of men. I think when we first started out we did get lots of really spotty, pubescent boys who would laugh with their friends and shout obscenities at us, but since releasing our record people have got their angle on us. Wegot our point across that we're actually more than just four girls and our audience has been more and more female. There's a lot of young girls who come and jump up and down and they come up to us afterward and say, yeah, yeah, I'm forming a band cos you guys are really cool and you really inspired me, and I think that's brilliant ... If even one person says that to you, you feel like, yeah! cool!
Do you think you have anything in common with the Spice Girls?
(She laughs, nervously) No. I think the only thing we have common is we're also an all-female band and we're British, and that's where it ends really.
Don't you have a big buzz behind you ...
Yeah, I guess we've had quite a lot of hype, which is usually quite harmful. People just think that's all you're about. But we've been lucky. We had a lot of really good press and a lot of really well-publicized tours.
Do you think you have a reputation of being real wild children?
I don't know. We seem to cause trouble quite a lot without meaning to. I mean we're all quite, I mean we were quite young when we started. I don't know, I think maybe it's more shocking if we're doing it and we're girls. We don't do anything more than any other band, just drink and fall over.
