Well, here I am enthusing again... But Urusei Yatsura I really love. They're happy, they're fun, they like sweets & spaceships & plastic toys & cheap guitars and they make music that sounds like all of the above. And they namecheck Steve Malkmus in 'Kozee Heart' and in a silly American voice too.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE SWEETS?
GRAHAM: Weird stuff's best but it's always better to look at than actually eat. I don't really like sweets at all.
FERGUS: We get sent lots of Japanese sweets but they're generally stale by the time we get them.
GRAHAM: There's a brilliant...these Japanese sweets that are in the shape of Mount Fuji and half of them are chocolate and the other half is kind of raspberry flavoured. That's the best sweets ever. I don't know what they're called but they're brilliant.
IAN: I've had quite a lot of bad experiences with Japanese sweets. I reckon, Japanese...they can do most things really well but sweets, they're a bit dodgy.
FERGUS: I really like watermelon flavour and seaweed flavour.
GRAHAM: Did I tell you about the milk corn crisps I got?
FERGUS: Milk? Eurrgh!
GRAHAM: It was like, kind of like Wotsits except they were kind of milk flavoured.
IAN: Did they look like Wotsits? They weren't white or anything?
GRAHAM: Yeah, they were white.
IAN: Eurrgh!
ELAINE: And were they horrible?
GRAHAM: Yeah. It's just, like, having crisps that taste like sweets didn't really work. But remember when we were in Canada and we were in that candy store...
FERGUS: Oh yeah! Candy Mountain it was called - it was great! They had a Pez boutique that had every kind of Pez dispenser ever, including electric...electronic ones where you could locate the Pez of your choice.
IAN: And also Tunnock's Teacakes.
FERGUS: Yeah, in Canada.
GRAHAM: I bought a load of old skool gum like Bazooka Joes and stuff like that...Double Double.
IAN: Stop drumming on the table!
GRAHAM: Sorry. And they all got stolen in New York by some wee guy - an actor apparently.

I first bought 'Plastic Ashtray' and I thought it was cool in a sort of Sonic Youth kinda way. I liked it enough to buy a copy of 'Siamese' when I found one (although it was also partly because of the coool silver & orange manga cover. I also got silver vinyl which is gorgeous and I'm way past being impressed by coloured vinyl). And 'Siamese' did it for me entirely - full of shouting, noisy guitars, and namechecking half of the bands in Glasgow, it's one of my favourite perfect records ever. I played it all the time throughout the summer, even through my eight months of record player/hi-fi incompatibility when I was reduced to making compilation tapes of my records on my sister's record player. But enough of my personal traumas...

FAVOURITE PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM?
GRAHAM: Mars was pretty cool until recently...
FERGUS: Venus.
GRAHAM: ...but then everyone started liking it so I don't like it any more.
IAN: I reckon Mercury.
ELAINE: I like Mercury 'cos I like the metal. And it's my starsign.
IAN: Mercury?
ELAINE: No! Well...Mercury the...guy is the thingmy of Gemini. The planet of Gemini.
GRAHAM: Yeah, I'd go for Mars.
IAN: No, no, Neptune.
GRAHAM: Neptune's quite a good one. No, I'll say Phobos. I know it's not a planet, it's a moon, but I like it better.
IAN: I'll go for Titan. I would call a kid Titan.

I missed Urusei Yatsura when they played in Aberdeen 'cos it was at the beginning of the month so by the time I got the Lemon Tree brochure it was over (I suppose the NMME has a couple of good points - gig guide and mail-order ads). I've been regretting it ever since and got increasingly desperate after the mega album 'We Are Urusei Yatsura'. Thus I was elated to discover U.Y. were playing in Manchester the same week I was going to be there. It meant staying an extra day and planning a subterfuge with my sister to get out of signing on at the DSS but, hey!, it's worth it.

WHAT ARE YOU FAVOURITE WEATHER CONDITIONS?
GRAHAM: I'm Only Happy When It Rains.
IAN: Totally pissing down outside, sitting inside next to the fire watching bad TV.
ELAINE: Or giant hailstones when you're outside and there's somebody outside without a jacket on, with short sleeves and bare legs...it's dead sore.
IAN: And for some reason, when it's hailstones it's always really windy.
GRAHAM: Yeah, that's true...
IAN: It's like someone came up with, "Yeah, let's have hailstones -really hard stuff, right, like stones - and high winds. Yeah, they'll go together perfectly. Make it so...".
GRAHAM: Actually, between 8pm and 10pm on hot summers days is really nice. That's the best.
IAN: What time? 9 and 10?
GRAHAM: Between 8 and 10.
ELAINE: Actually, the only time I really enjoy going to work...like about eight in the morning when it's one of those days when it's going to be really really boiling. You just get the best of it.
GRAHAM: What about when you're walking home, you've been out all night and it's seven in the morning and the sun's hust coming up? That's really nice as well. 'Cos you feel really hungover and everything's going crazy, but it's nice weather which is great.
FERGUS: I like magnetic fields or Aurora Borealis and St. Elmo's Fire - lightning causing everyone's hair to stand on end.
GRAHAM: Thank you the Silver Surfer.
ELAINE: Oh, lightning's good too. Thunder and lightning.
IAN: Ow! It's almost frightening.

Coincidentally, Manchester is also where my co-editor and penpal-cum-best-friend (or something) lives and works so I organised an interview with U.Y. and arranged to meet up with Alex - the first time we'd actually met in person. We compared questions and discovered we'd both just written questions about spaceships - we didn't think they'd mind though. It was bucketing down outside but the nice girl at the Roadhouse gave us some free coffee when we arrived, sodden. We were introduced to Fergus and Elaine who said hello, admired my Hello Kitty bag and re-immersed themselves in the computer games. They were playing Bust-A-Move - Elaine was brilliant at it, Fergus less so. Fergus had to swap money with us and even had to go to the cashpoint with Alex later, so obsessed was he. I understood the addiction myself much later when I discovered the Dad had purchased a copy. The little manga characters are so cute, especially the dinosaur - ahhhh.

DO YOU PLAY GAMES ON THE TOUR BUS?
GRAHAM: We play Jeopardy!
IAN: we play mental games with each other. Toy with each other.
FERGUS: Mind games. Sometimes you can cut the atmosphere with a knife.
ELAINE: I Spy!
GRAHAM: Elaine, all the time, is playing the Gameboy. I mean, all the time.
ELAINE: You're just jealous!
GRAHAM: Fergus - I don't know what you're doing, you're probably drinking whisky. Fergus is playing drinking games.
IAN: With himself.
GRAHAM: Yeah. And the last time we were in the States, you [Ian] and me were playing Jeopardy computer game.
IAN: With all these American questions like...
GRAHAM: "What is the State motto of the State Milwaukee is in?". What the fuck? Who knows that?

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