Sporty Spencer

>> A chat with Brassy's mid-Atlantic maverick Muffin Spencer

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"People think I'm obnoxious because I'm American. It's like I've come over and taken somebody's job." So says the one in the tube socks, who also fronts Manchester's Brassy and whose brother happens to be Jon "Blues Explosion!" Spencer. Along with a trio of fellow old-school hip hop and garage punk fans--namely Jonny/DJ Swett (drums, decks), Karen (bass) and Stefan (guitar)--Muffin Spencer struggled for years to make a great record, and the aptly titled Got It Made was finally released last spring. "Nuh-thing/can compete/with the B-R-A-double-S-Y beat!" is how it begins, and the hip hop swagger and punk spunk doesn't quit till the end. Is it obnoxious? Definitely. Have they earned the right? Definitely. So the M-to-the-I-to-the-double-R-to-the-O-to-the, um, third-R spoke to Muffin about all things Brassy.

Mirror: What inspired you to move to Manchester?

Muffin Spencer: I've always been into British music and the British music press and I originally planned to go to London but it just kinda seemed too big, you know? I'm not from a big city. For the size of the city, there was a large concentration of bands that came out of Manchester, like New Order, the Smiths, the Fall and the Buzzcocks. It made sense to go there--I thought maybe there would be more people into the same sort of thing I was.

M: When did you discover hip hop?

MS: Because I grew up in New Hampshire, I didn't have much exposure to it 'cuz MTV obviously wasn't playing it. I'd heard the Beastie Boys and Run DMC but it wasn't 'til I moved over to Manchester in '86 and Public Enemy were huge and Eric B. and Rakim--I think, with the nature of popular music in England, things are more widely accessible and get much more popular. I mean, white schoolkids were bodypoppin' and breakdancing and stuff and that just wasn't happening in the States.

M: How long did it take for you to form the band?

MS: I didn't think about forming Brassy until '95. I kinda worked with guitar players but I always wanted to write the words and I thought, 'I'm sick of waiting for people to write songs that I like, that I can sing over, I'm gonna have to just do it myself.' So I picked up a guitar and figured out how to do it.

Sibling rivalry

M: How did your brother's success affect you?

MS: I think, subconsciously, one of the reasons I moved to England was so I wasn't competing with him on his turf. But I didn't chose to do this because of that, I chose to do this because it's what I wanna do, so it didn't affect me in any way other than that it's hard to see other people do well when you're not.

M: I read that your initial singles were financed by music journalists--

MS: We sent off a few demos when we first started and these two journalists got back to us and pooled a little bit of money. They'd put out a couple singles by a band called Gene and they very quickly got signed on to a major label, but it didn't happen with us. We made two singles and they ran out of money and nobody wanted to sign us. We spent about two years gigging constantly in London just trying to get attention off somebody so we could put more records out.

M: You probably get attention with your stage wear too--I heard you insist on dressing yourself?

MS: Oh yeah, it just sounds so stupid, but if I didn't know how I wanted to look I'd be doing something else for a living. We think about what we wear 'cuz it says something about us. There are a lot of bands out there who don't care about their cover art, who don't care about doing their own production and who don't care how they look, but we believe very much in doing everything ourselves and having control over it.

With Idlewild at Cabaret on Wednesday, March 28, 9pm, $12.50