daggy dan, dozy, dairy, dick & ditch

Rip It Up, Issue 61, 1 August 1982, Page 10

daggy dan, dozy, dairy, dick & ditch

Ann Louise Martin

Daggy and the Dickheads were all born and bred in Taihape. There are two sets of borthers in the band. Frontman Mark's brother Paul Kennedy plays drums, lead guitarist Dan McCartin's brother Tim plays rhythm guitar, while 'adopted' older brother Neil is on bass. Naturally enough the title track of the their forthcoming EP is Brothers. 'Standing on a Corner' is likely to be the single. Other tracks are Talk Turkey', 'Boogie Down Brown' and country song "Winter' which Dan and Mark are especially pleased with. Their 1981 single 'Something Nothing'/'Empty' is now a rare commodity. Initially only a hundred were pressed for the Dickheads to 'take home', but several hundred more went through after the band signed a distribution deal with WEA. The money for their latest recording was lent to them by Ken, a hard working, respected farmer who broke in a couple of thousand acres up toward the Ruahine ranges. He borrowed the money from a stock firm. The Students' Arts Council presented an opportunity for the Dickheads to tour without the hassle of organising accommodation and promotion. It'd be hard for the band to go professional with the current line-up, but they do help each other with shearing etc to enable the band to get away for little tours to Wanganui or Palmerston. Last year, before recording their single, the Dickheads came to Auckland with the idea of setting up, and finding a bass player (Neil

hadn't joined the band). They stayed at a hotel, eventually ran out of money and went home. Living in Taihape means you can do a couple of days hard labour and collect enough money to keep you for the week, if not longer. It is one of the things about the band which makes them a bit diferent. After Daggy and the Dickheads starred on Country Calendar, they were offered a tractor ad by • Massey Ferguson and another singlets and gumboots TV advert. Both were declined. Says Mark: "That's the hardest thing, convincing people we're not a complete joke, a Fred Dagg takeoff." "Mark's brother Paul made up the name," Dan continues. We we got stuck with it after the first couple of gigs. But we think it suits us really. You can't call yourself the "LA Dreams' or 'New York Jets' if .you come from Taihape." "We'd phone a pub," says Mark, "and ask a manager if he was interested in having us play. He'd say 'oh yeah, what do you call yourselves?', you'd tell him, and he'd laugh and say 'you can't play here with a name like that!'." "The name 'Dickheads' you can take as you like, but the Wanganui radio station wouldn't play the single, because no way would they say it on air. Before the Country Calendar show, TV had 12 words not supposed to be heard on air and 'dickheads' was one of them," says Dan. As frontman, Mark Kennedy has been compared to others. "Yes," says Dan, "Mark's got one of those faces. Sometimes he looks

like John Travolta, sometimes he looks like Mick Jagger. Basically ugly, but it is one of those face-you've-seen-before faces." Mark admits cloning a bit of Jagger's style. "I used to do a parody." The band started off with Rolling Stones covers and now do about seventy percent original material. They had only two weeks rehearsal before their first appearance, at the local on Christmas Eve. There was a big crowd, relations and farmers looking trim in their tweed. Dan relates: "I'd been in bands before but I wondered how the others would go. I thought Mark would see the crowd and freak out, but he jumped around, knocked over mike stands, fell into the drumkit, pulled out leads. We broke into 'Satisfaction' and he started singing 'Honky Tonk Women' and we tried to change halfway through to 'Honky Tonk Women' and he started singing 'Respectable' and all these things went wrong. It was a mass of noise." The Dickheadquarters are where the band practises and there are no other houses around except for the old lady who lives across the road and answers the phone for them when they're not there. (She doesn't cross the road, it's a party line.) "She was sick in hospital," says Mark, "and when the song came on the radio (2XS) someone took it over to her and said 'have you heard this?' and she said 'I hear it every night!'."