SOMEWHERE back in the grey mists of time, Birmingham band Ocean Colour Scene were just a bunch of young hopefuls who didn't seem to have all that much to hope for. Riding the wave of early 1990s euphoria which had been unleashed by bands like The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, OCS had set sail in the calm seas of early acclaim, and they had every reason to believe that a New World of pop stardom awaited them. Never mind that their name was a bit unwieldy, or that their brand of tripped out r&b sounded a little too swirly for comfort - they had their record deal, they had their first album all polished up and ready to roll, and they had their whole future ahead of them. But before they could get out of the shallows, a freak tide swept their dreams away, and Ocean Colour Scene found themselves shipwrecked, stranded and staring at a very bleak horizon.
Five years later, however, things are looking sunny once again for the retro foursome with the three pronged moniker. Their second album, Moseley, Shoals, has just passed the million sales mark, having resided in the upper reaches of the charts since its release last April, and Ocean Colour Scene now stand at the forefront of what the music press facetiously like to label "Dadrock". They've kept their name, they've signed a new deal, they've bought their own record studio, and they've made new friends like Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher and Pete Townshend, co conspirators in an unspoken campaign to get back to basic rock n roll values.
Okay, so the music press hates em, and the new indie kids think they're old hat, but there's a whole section of the record buying public which firmly believes OCS are a cut above the rest. They've got that retro bug, and they've got it bad.
In a quiet Birmingham side street, bass player Damon Minchella lounges in the recreation room of Moseley Shoals, the studio where Ocean Colour Scene recorded their breakthrough album, and which they snapped up for a reasonable 80 grand as soon as they could afford it. It's a rough and tumble array of small stone buildings looking out onto a little courtyard with old wrought iron gates; there's no sign outside, no kids (or dads) with autograph books hanging around, and no tell tale clues which reveal the presence of rock n roll within these ramshackle walls - unless you count the two big Jaguars parked in the yard.
Ocean Colour Scene's fortunes began to take an upward slant when Minchella and guitarist Steve Cradock were hired by their hero, Paul Weller, to play in his backing band. At the time, OCS had been dropped by their first label, were heavily in debt, and were all but forgotten by a fickle music biz.
"I was on the dole for four years until I started playing with Paul - 32 quid a week - but I was still making music 24 hours a day," recalls Minchella. "And then suddenly you get money and it's like, that's nice, but it just enables you to not think about it, just get a cab to the studio instead of the bus.
Playing with Weller bought the band some time while singer Simon Fowler busied himself with writing new tunes, but why did the Godfather of Mod choose two young guns from Birmingham to be in his backing group?
"He just got fed up with stagnant session musicians. He's coming down here in a bit, so you can ask him yourself."
The Modfather is due here to record a charity single with the band, a tribute to ex Small Faces star Ronnie Lane, who suffers from MS.
"As we're gonna do it here, there's no costs," says Damon, "MCA are gonna release it and not take any money, and obviously it'll go nice and high in the charts and get a lot of press.
In fact, the single will probably get to No 1, because, unbeknown to the band, a third party by the name of Noel Gallagher is also on his way down to the studio, presumably to muck in and trade licks with Paul and Steve. Or maybe he's just escaping the media storm caused by his remarks about ecstasy in a radio interview the previous night, and he figures Moseley Shoals is the last place anyone will look for him. After all, nobody really believes all this "Dadrock" conspiracy stuff now, do they?
Ocean Colour Scenes next move in their own rock n roll campaign is a forthcoming album B Sides, Seas ides & Free Rides which comes out on March 3rd two weeks after the band play a sold out gig at the Royal Albert Hall. It's not the official follow up to Moseley Shoals, however, but a mixum gatherum of the band's surplus tracks to date, a sort of Hatful Of Hollow for Dadrockers. "A double album of our b sides - the press will hate that won't they?" says Damon with a hint of relish in his voice. "It'll probably go in at No 1."
The band are also due to attend the Brit Awards at London's Earl's Court later this month, where they've been nominated for Best British Group and Best British Album. Damon, however, doesn't seem to relish this particular musical gathering, and with The Spice Girls also up for the same awards, he's willing to concede the commercial victory to Girl Power. One area where Ocean Colour Scene have The Spice Girls licked (50 far) is on the live front, and the band will play an arena tour late in the year to promote the new album proper which will be out at the end of next summer.
"You know, we don't have to do it, but we thought, God, just the once, and it'll be for the album we're making now, so let's do it once. Let's do three nights at Wembley Arena and Docklands and all that crap. But we are gonna intersperse it with Glasgow Barrowlands and Brixton Academy - as if those are small venues!"
OCS have already played the big venues, touring the US with The Who, and playing in front of 125,000 people at Oasis's big gig in Knebworth, grabbing the mood of the afternoon with their trip happy performance of The Day We Caught The Train. "That was my first gig as a married man" recalls Damon. "It felt a bit funny, playing with a ring on my finger - it kept slipping!"
Guitarist Steve Cradock arrives, sits down and begins to roll the first of the afternoon's many spliffs. He tells me that the new album is called Proper, and that tonight's super session will be an easy night's work. "I don't want to sound all retro, but back in the 1960s bands used to knock off an album in one day. It was normal for artists to record songs like What's Going On in just a few hours."
Soon we're joined by singer Simon Fowler - "Foxy" to his bandmates - and he recalls how nervous he was playing Knebworth: "I spent most of the gig with my eyes shut, but I think that was just the sweat pouring down me.
"Nah, he was just crapping himself," retorts Steve.
"We might be going back to America, there's talk of doing support with Oasis over there," says Simon. "But nothing's decided - we could end up doing oily one or two gigs and then Oasis might suddenly cancel the tour. It's strange doing America, the last time we played there, the audience was just baseball fans in their 40s.
"We supported The Who, and they were dead sound - they dedicated Substitute to us.
I ask Simon mischievous if Ocean Colour Scene are a substitute for some long gone group rock's past, but as an exjournalist himself, Simon probably knows all the trick questions, so he doesn't dignify that one with an answer. He's also a mean impressionist, and over the next half hour, the singer delivers spot on impersonations of Noel Gallagher, John Cleese, and, er, Father Jack Hackett. The three also gleefully vent their collective spleen on the likes of Kula Shaker, The Cranberries, 3 Colours Red, and their unanimous arch enemies, the New Musical Express.
"I'M not worried about getting slagged off in the music press," opines Simon, "they slag us off so they can use our pictures and sell more copies of their paper. The NME did a piece on us and put us on the cover, but inside they went on about Noelrock and Dadrock and why Ocean Colour Scene don't deserve a front cover. But we don't need them to sell records, they need us to sell papers. We sold a million albums, so those papers should be reporting on us. Instead, they piss on our heritage.
I heard the same complaint from Phil Collins recently.
"Okay, I take that back!" laughs Simon, then regroups his forces. "If they don't like our music, that's OK, I've no problem with that. I don't like Future Sound Of London, but some people do. They think it's wicked, so you have to write about it for them. That's what life's like, we can't all like the same thing, cos otherwise we'd all drive the same car."
The argument is doomed to remain unresolved, however, because at that moment, someone announces that Noel Gallagher has just arrived. Cue mad rush to the window, through which the Oasis guitarist can be seen waving up from the courtyard.
"He's come to tell us what to do, cos he's in charge of Noelrock," jokes Simon. "He's got all these little Noel rock puppets everywhere, and he has to keep checking on them and give them the Noel nod!"
Noel saunters into the room wearing his trademark cagoule, and the interview is forgotten as Steve Simon, Damon and Oscar greet their old mucker from Manchester. "I met Pete Townshend this afternoon," explains Noel, "He says to me, I'm going to go down to Birmingham and get in the way, so Paul's going, well, I wanna go down,' so I say `right, if Paul Weller's going down, and Pete Townshend's going, then I'm f---ing going down and all! I'll come in and play the flugelhorn or summat'." He casts his gaze around the room. "So this is Moseley Shoals," he nods approvingly.
Soon after, Paul Weller arrives, looking like a Parisian mod in his striped T shirt and neckerchief, and the Dadrock circle is complete. I didn't have time to wait and see if Pete Townshend would fulfil his earlier promise to Noel and make it a retro rectangle, because the super session was about to begin, and the creative juices (i.e. cider) had already started to flow. Time to make my excuses and leave, or risk becoming swept up in Ocean Colour Scene's world - not quite the retro limbo you might imagine.
