Nouvelle Vague
What's on your rider?Whiskey and Ibuprofen.
What would be on your fantasy rider?Whiskey and a magic hangover cure.
What's your pre-gig ritual?We're huge fans of dinner; we usually eat a lot, then Mareva and I vocalise backstage and sip cognac to "get the voice warmed up".
What's the best gig you've ever been to?Foxy Shazam: fearless showmanship, Freddie Mercury has returned and, man, are his pants tight! Also, Peaches was badass.
And the worst?Hmm, I can't recall. I tend to erase bad music memories from the hard drive.
Most embarrassing on-stage moment?I jumped off stage to sing Too Drunk to Fuck,and when I went to get back on stage I apparently underestimated the stage height (or overestimated my own) and couldn't get back on, although I kept jumping like popcorn to get up there. Eventually, the security guard had to give me a most graceful boost.
Groupies. Would you?Well, if they hang around long enough they get promoted to "friend" status, which has infinitely more possibilities.
Do you like to meet and greet fans after the gig?Yes, always. That's the best part of the tour for us. It also gives us a pleasant break from talking to each other or ourselves.
What's the worst thing ever thrown at you?My own underwear.
If you could be in any other band, which one?I used to dream I could be the first female member in Menudo. Childhood dreams never die. If Ricky's out, why can't I be in?!
What's your best tour story?So we're stranded at Paris-Orly airport for a good solid nine hours and we're really going quite mad with boredom. So we make an impromptu video of Mala Vida(a song from the new album) and a random guy who's a modern dancer decides to enter the video without a single word exchanged. Mareva and I shot it ourselves, completely improvised, in Terminal 18, and by the end of the video we had ourselves a nice audience of frustrated travellers. We posted the video and within 24 hours had 15,000 views. Now it's at almost 50,000 views. I will never be stranded without my video camera again. Check it out on YouTube.
In conversation with
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
. Nouvelle Vague play Tripod, Dublin tonight
