The Others
Others in arms: Not to be confused with the creepy movie starring Nicole Kidman, but in serious danger of being mistaken for The Libertines, this North London lot are grabbing attention with a mix of punk attitude, guerilla tactics and an affinity with England's outsiders, freaks and f***-ups. If The Others belong anywhere, it's to the same dissolute scene as Pete Doherty's ex-band, where sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll - and passion and polemic - share equal billing. Doherty has become a "big brother" of sorts to The Others; The Libertines have given support slots to their fellow scenesters, and Doherty is bezzie mates with the band's flamboyant singer, Dominic Masters. Like Doherty, Masters displays a libertine attitude towards recreational drugs. Will he burn out in a blaze of tabloid infamy just like his troubled mentor? Keep reading your super soaraway Ticket to find out.
Other story: The Others began as a white lie. Dominic, fresh from a break-up with his wife, and stuck in a boring 9-to-5 job, was hanging out at such places as Last Rockers and Club For Losers. Ashamed of his office job, Dominic told fellow party animals that he was in a band. Eventually, one of his mates, who actually played in a band, called his bluff by offering "The Others" a support slot. Dominic had two weeks to recruit other musicians and cobble together a few songs. Amazingly, the gig went down a storm, and The Others passed from fiction into real life.
Clash mob: Not for The Others the conventional record/tour/promote rigmarole. Often, if you wanted to find out where they were playing, you'd have to check your text messages for word of one of the band's notorious "guerilla gigs", on buses, tube trains, and even in the foyer of BBC Radio 1. Soon, the broadsheet dailies, sniffing a possible movement, were printing think-pieces about "disenfranchised youth" and other Clash-referencing tommyrot. The band signed with Alan McGee's Poptones label, and released their début single, This Is For The Poor. Their second single, Stan Bowles, was named after the former Queen's Park Rangers midfielder. Their new single, Lackey, is out now.
Message minder: Although there's a smell of bullshit off Masters and his cod-socialist, stick-it-to-the-man rhetoric, he does put his mobile phone number where his mouth is, giving it out to all and sundry at gigs. At one stage, he was getting 100 calls a day, but still insists that he will never be an aloof, unreachable rock star. Some of The Others' most dedicated fans have formed a club called the 853 Kamikaze Stage Divers; they're always in the moshpit at every gig. The début album is out at the end of this month - who knows, they may even do a guerilla gig on the LUAS.
Kevin Courtney
