The 'Alternating Currents' Legacy Interview: Ned's Atomic Dustbin

Stourbridge's finest, fusing indie energy with a twin-bass attack, ready to detonate Cambridge, MA, July 1991.

Prologue

This stuff shouldn’t happen to bands. Unless you’re Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and in America for the first time. I couldn’t help thinking they forgot an item on their itinerary: an injury rider for the band and their close-knit road crew.

Singer Jonn Penney showed off the gash in his hand, the result of opening a beer bottle at a gig in New Jersey. Guitarist Rat had scraped up his arm, rubbing his metal bracelets against his guitar strings. Then as we’re sat at the India Pavilion restaurant, tour manager Tank burned his hand reaching for a hot bowl. Welcome to the U.S.A.

They’re an unusual band, almost misleading in their appearance and sound. Penney is all gangly and soft-spoken when we talked, but he is transformed — nearly possessed — when I watched him launch the group (including two bassists) into a sweat-drenched, overdrive gig at T.T. the Bears later in the night. “Doing the gig is the most important thing on the planet. We just put everything into it,” Penney told me. Welcome to Ned’s world.

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television/℗© Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Ltd./YouTube

---

This is a group that incites riots in their native England, possibly because they reside on the thrash/hardcore fringe. Quite a surprise considering their U.S. debut God Fodder is well, pretty lyrical and cohesive.

“I don’t write tunes,” Penney explained as we chatted away before soundcheck. “I write the lyrics. I don’t think my lyrics bear up to close analysis. I just come up with them. The best thing about them is people find their own meanings from them.”

He’s got quite diverse tastes: Julian Cope, Sisters of Mercy, Joni Mitchell and Simon and Garfunkel. Penney laughed over disagreements on personal musical tastes within the band, but it actually holds them together as a group. Where it all matters.

The band – Penney, Gareth ‘Rat’ Pring, bassists Matt Cheslin and Alex Griffin and drummer Dan Worton – hooked up together in 1987, gigging around their West Midlands home base and gathered plenty of fans, including The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself. It’s the live doings of these bands that established their credentials and Ned’s is no different.

“Our strength is our live show,” Penney emphasized. “That’s the only way we got anywhere. Our live reputation.”

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin - Happy - TOTP - 1991/ ℗© Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Ltd./YouTube

---

”The best gigs we do,” he continued, “I forget myself completely. I don’t think at all. I just sing and dance. The crowds just let go and jump up and down and get sweaty.”

You’ve also got to give them credit for that magic ingredient. They played the Reading Festival in England last year during the daylight hours. A three-day event, they were on in front of 30,000 rabid followers. This year, they’re second on the bill on the last day, right behind Sisters of Mercy.

“It’s a marker for where we’ve come in a year,” Penney said with a trace of astonishment. “It’s outrageous. I’m talking about it now and I’m getting scared!”

I found no inhibitions though at the T.T.’s gig. It was an energy driven-to-the-packed crowd, then wound tight and sent back to the band. The swirling hooks “Happy,” “Kill Your Television” and “Capital Letters” punched everyone senseless. It was hot and frenzied and jeez, pretty close to a riot. They were on target.

“We look like somebody shot our mothers. I mean, we look depressed.” That’s Penney’s description backstage, post-gig. Fairly accurate, but not to despair. He was just a little quieter than he was onstage, bandaged hand and all.

Epilogue

Jonn Penney and Gareth ‘Rat’ Pring, 2020.

---