Bitches' brew

>> England's Ping Pong Bitches, live from the pub

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

They adore the Prodigy, but you wouldn't want to smack these Bitches up. They're three 30-somethings in leather, fishnets, fur and cowboy boots who sing about beating their boyfriends and fucking bikers over guitar riffs by ex-Pistol Steve Jones and Donna Summer samples.

Louise Prey, Emily Hell and Mandy Wong are the Ping Pong Bitches, one of the first acts signed to Poptones, the label brought to you by Creation Records founder Alan McGee. When they're not busy filming videos in L.A., plugging their debut EP at European festivals and rounding up an impressive gay following, these electro-disco-punk hellcats like to party, drink and (from the sound of their voices) smoke a couple packs a day.

Prey and Hell spilled the goods to the Mirror on the line from a loud London pub.



Mirror: How are you?

Louise Pray: All right, not bad, been better. We've got hangovers.

M: Oh yeah, what'd you do last night?

LP: We went to Soho House, then we went to the Groucho Club. They're really, really expensive drinkin' bars for rich people. We basically went in there and we were havin' a chat with lords (laughs). Yeah, just really, majorly drunk on whiskey sours and margaritas and cosmopolitans. Huh-huh, yeah. But we were drinking last night with Marco Pirroni [formerly of Adam and the Ants] 'cuz we're doing some writing with him.

M: You've got some pretty impressive collaborators there. How'd you hook up with Steve Jones and Phil Manzanera?

Emily Hell: We were in L.A. and we met Steve and we just asked him to play on our record and he did. And then one day in the studio we seen all these lovely Roxy Music posters and discovered Phil Manzanera was next door. We asked him and he came and done it. We're just gonna pull in as many guests as we possibly can. I'd like to get Ron Asheton to come and play on a track, and we're gonna get involved with DJ Swamp, he played at our gig in L.A. at Alan [McGee]'s club, Radio Four.

Making plans for Malcolm

M: What's the Alan McGee/Malcolm McLaren connection?

LP: Alan introduced us to Malcolm, and we were working with him for about nine or 10 months, but his ideas got slightly out of control. Malcolm took McGee to see our concert and Alan decided to sign us. Then he gave money to Malcolm to become the mayor of London, so when Malcolm went off to be mayor, McGee said that he'd manage us instead. So McGee effectively got rid of Malcolm for us.

M: What drew Malcolm to you in the first place?

LP: Well, we were writing in Chinese, and he used to have a Chinese group called Junk. I'd been to China and made up some lyrics and got the Chinese receptionist at the hotel to translate it for me. I was trying to do this new thing with the Chinese vocals, and we're also gonna get Mandy Wong's dad to play Chinese instruments on our album. He's really old and he lives in a tin hut in Hong Kong. He's a real weirdo, but a really talented musician. Anyway, that's why Malcolm was interested.

M: So what was he trying to do with the band?

LP: He wanted to make us into a sort of karaoke group, and we're not doin' it to be someone else's puppet. We thought, "No, we wanna make our own album the way we wanna make it." It was fine initially, but when he wanted to take over the music, we weren't havin' it, so we went to Brazil with our advance and didn't tell him. And we didn't pay him for all the rehearsals and stuff, and he had paid for jujitsu lessons! We're the only group that's actually managed to get any money off Malcolm and not pay it back, so that's good, that's an achievement! Yeah!

Stage fright

M: So you've been getting some pretty mixed reactions to your live act.

EH: I think people are probably quite shocked because our band isn't really like anything else. It's futuristic punk rock with a disco edge, with three different characters. I'm the sort of rock side to it, Louise is the disco element and Mandy brings an Oriental feel, she does a lot of kung fu. We're all singin', we have a DAT, we've got a super space drum and Louise is gonna have a super space bass. It's entertaining. We're lookin' forward to doing our two-and-a-half week tour of America 'cuz we're gonna be gettin' pretty good after that. We haven't actually played that many gigs. We've only done about 15, I reckon.

M: And you had some trouble at the English shows, outside London, that is.

EH: Yeah, we done a short tour here which

didn't really work out due to the agent. He was booking us at weird venues and putting up posters sayin', "See the outrageous live show Ping Pong Bitches!" So the crowds thought they were going to see strippers or something. In Bournemouth, it was all rugby-type people, you know, students with Ben Sherman shirts and stuff. We went on stage and the mics weren't workin' and the sound wasn't workin' and we started our song and everything broke down. Then they started shoutin' at us, "You're shit!" and we were shoutin' back, and Louise took a cigarette out of some guy's mouth and blew it back in his face. Then we started shoutin', "You cunts!" and the DJ said, "Right, they've called me a cunt and they've called all you a cunt, so they've gotta go!" So we got kicked off and couldn't play our show. That's the kind of experience we've had around Britain. We need an agent.

LP: Ooh, there was a good incident in Stockton-on-Keys. We were playing in this sort of 90-million-pound building and we were really like, "Yeah this is amazin', we've got spotlights on us, we've got radio mics, the sound's fabulous!" So we got up on stage and there were literally 20 people in the audience, but one of them still managed to crack his head open and get thrown out. At that point, the audience weren't doing that much so I lassoed Mandy with my mic lead, sort of simulating a lesbian routine to try and get them going. That was when the guy cracked his head open. It was quite fun!

With eX-Girl and Federation X at Café Campus on Sunday, Sept. 16, 9pm, $10