Attic Lights and David Gest
10th Jul 2008
Surreal happenings are afoot with Fallout boys Attic Lights - playing tonight in a Fallout double banker with The Fratellis - and their new single 'Bring You Down'.
'Bring You Down' will be out on 21st July and is the usual glorious harmonising that we've come to expect from our joint favourite Weedgies (The Frats being the others). However, that sort of stuff you would expect, what you WOULDN'T expect is the somehow improbable teaming up with David Gest, he of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here fame, he of the classic Hunter-spider-perced-on-the-crown moment, which he cooly dismissed with one deft flick of the wrist. Legend.
Anyway, in a weird story involving chance mid-air meetings and spontaneous partying leading to artistic collaboration, here is an extract taken from the Attics very own blog.....
David Gest
Life really takes some odd twists and turns. I went to my bed on Saturday night at about midnight. Thinking, 'Okay, we are gigging at the Edinburgh TBA festival tomorrow afternoon so i'll get a good nights sleep beforehand.' Cue, 2.30am, I awake to find my phone ringing and before I can stop myself i've answered it. 'Hello…' I weakly croak. It's John, the co-producer of our album. 'Kev, get round to my house right now! Hurry up!' So, I 'm thinking, 'He must have just written an amazing song and wants some input' or 'He must have just remixed one of the album tracks and wants my input.' At any rate, he sounded pretty excited so I pulled myself together and took a wander round to his house. When I got there Colin had also just arrived. The place was buzzing and there was a real party atmosphere. Suddenly, walking through the door with John is David Gest. Thee David Gest. Friend of Michael Jackson's, ex-husband of Liza Minnelli etc… I'm kind of stunned by this. He's the last person you expect to meet at 3.00am on a boozy Saturday night in Glasgow. Turns out that John and David had met on the flight from London to Glasgow and got on like a house on fire. It also turns out that David is best friends with one of my all time heroes. Alex Chilton, The Big Star front man who has written some of the greatest songs of all time. 'I'm In Love With A Girl.' 'The Ballad of El Goodo,' 'Thirteen.' 'September Gurls'… the list goes on… These are songs that Attic Lights play in rehearsals regularly as we try to work out the genius behind them and write songs as good as that. Colin and I are immediatly asking David for stories about Alex. John is making sure all his guests have a drink in their hands and one hour later, David Gest has Alex Chilton on the phone and Colin and I are drunkenly singing Big Star songs down the phone to him. Given that we had just woken him up, Mr Chilton was incredibly gracious in listening to our drunken hero worship. So, Alex, if you are reading this. Sorry for waking you and thanks for taking the time to talk to us. You are a genius! So then John plays David a copy of our forthcoming single 'Bring You Down' and he flips for it. He really digs it. In fact, he digs it so much, he writes a monologue to perform over the instrumental break and suddenly we are in John's mates flat with a microphone and David Gest is performing a monologue over 'Bring you Down.' Now, admittedly, at first I was like.. 'Is this gonna work? Does this sound any good?' And in the cold light of day, I'm telling you right now. It sounds great. Think Vincent Price's booming vocals on Thriller, or Kim Fowley at his manic best, or echoes of those classic 50's tracks like Leader Of The Pack by The Shangri-Las. I'm not sure when you'll be able to hear David's version but I hope it's soon. If you tune in to the radio or MTV over the next coupla weeks you should be able to catch our song and video for the original Bring You Down (here is a wee link to the vid.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnktgmVzJpw ) but keep an ear out for the David Gest version coz it's fucking great and I hope it's gonna be with you soon.
The Attics are pretty prolific bloggers so keep tabs here.
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