ManBREAK - The lowdown on the scousers of ManBREAK

ManBREAK are:
Swindelli: Vocals; former lead man of the band "25th of May".
Mr. Blonde: Rhythm Guitar/Vocals; formerly of the band "The Firecharmers".
Roy Van Der Kerkoff: Bass
Stu Boy Stu: Drums
Monty: Guitar

FORMER MEMBERS OF ManBREAK:
Snaykee: former guitarist
Jules: another former guitarist - he was a temp.

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The following is an excerpt from a press pack distributed by One Little Indian Ltd.

Formed in May 1994, the band too its name from a then-secret, now-scandalous military program in the Fifties and Sixties in which the British government exposed some of its own soldiers to low-level chemical weapons and then put them on an assault course to test how they would perform in the field. The program was aptly dubbed Manbreak, and some of the experiments' human guinea pigs died from the experience. Sneers Swindelli, "so much for 'King and Country'."

Hailing from Liverpool are singer-songwriter Swindelli, lead guitarist Snaykee(now Monty, ed), rhythm guitarist Mr. Blonde and drummer Stu Boy Stu with bassist Roy Van Der Kerkoff. Snaykee performed and recorded with Swindelli's previous group, The 25th of May, which toured Europe with the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, and released the smartly titled 1992 album "Lenin and McCarthy".

According to Swindelli, the result of years of apoliticism in the UK - and the US - is that "it's become unfashionable to challenge orthodoxies through music. A lot of artists won't stick their heads over the precipice. So everyone becomes nihilistic. 'There's nothing that we can do.' But you can't say 'fuck everything!' at the end of the day, that's not terribly constructive. Calling something 'PC' turns it into a caricature. Being politically correct is a challenge to racism and sexism. So be it."

Liverpool's changed enormously since the Fab Four. Once an industrial powerhouse, it hit hard times. Like many northern cities, who have a historical antagonism withthe more beourgeois south, austerity and class consciousness go hand-in-hand. Yet the nightlife thrives. Just as in the Sixties, is seems the only avenues to escape the hard life are football and music. Still, Swindelli is somewhat optimistic. "Things are bad, but we don't have Salvadorean death squads at our door either. But we still want better, don't we? Music can't change the world, but if it can add to the argument then at least we're adding something."

He insists there's a place for politics in pop. "No one criticises Picasso for "Guernica" because it comments on war. Why should pop music be treated any different?" Yet he understands the limitations of music as well as the potential. "If we really had the bollocks, we'd be fighting on the side of the rebels in East Timor (where the Indonesian government had been brutally putting down an independence movement). That's a genuine issue, not pop music. But what's a poor boy to do?


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