Jeremy Galgut (songs, vocals, acoustic guitar)
Paul Heery (vocals, acoustic guitar)
Ian Beestin (drums)
Marl Walker (bass, vocals)
Steve Benford (electric and acoustic guitars)
The name Moose Malloy comes from a character in the Raymond Chandler novel ‘Farewell My Lovely’ and this band’s career has been like an appropriately hard-boiled slice of pulp fiction.
The veteran five-piece gang comprises neighbourhood toughs Ian Beestin and Mark Walker on drums and bass, string-torturer Steve Benford on electric guitar and hatchet-faced frontmen Jeremy Galgut and Paul Heery on vocals and guitars.
While younger, more willowy bands have come and gone, the grizzled and weather-beaten beast that is Moose Malloy has held firm amidst the storms of changing fashion. Gigging regularly in and around Nottingham, the five Moosemen have built up a fearsome live reputation and a fine repertoire of original songs.
With the combined ages of the band members totalling over 200 years, the career of Moose Malloy provides ample proof of the adage: ‘Youth and enthusiasm are no match for age and treachery’.
The new Moose Malloy CD is called ‘Dirty Stories’, recorded at Bandwagon Studios in Mansfield.
It’s full of stories.
And it’s well dirty.
Now meet the band ...
Jeremy is a gaunt and emaciated figure who spends his life in a freezing garret, writing songs in which the world will never have any interest. His impotent rage at this perceived injustice has borne a mighty apocalyptic beast called Moose Malloy which he insanely supposes will one day avenge him. Jeremy is a reluctant and dull conversationalist who only finds interest in sterile debates about the relative virtues of early 70's Jim Croce and Kris Kristofferson albums. Consequently he has been refused permission to live with the rest of the band and remains in sulky exile in the borderlands of West Bridgeford.
Paul has a congenital aversion to running in corridors and chewing gum- this has propelled him inexorably to the highest levels of the British educational system. But when he gets home, the mortar board and cane are exchanged for a Slipknot hooded sweatshirt and a Fender Strat- and Beeston rocks. Paul's early years of struggle as a musician are recounted in three weak anecdotes concerning- in the set order that Paul will tell them to you- The Stone Roses, The Wonder Stuff and The Real Thing. Nowadays the harsh monochrome focus of those uncompromising times has softened into the soothing colours of suburbia. And the soundtrack of the mean streets has been replaced by Sunday afternoons listening to The Lighthouse Family.
Ian is a billionaire 6 times over. Looking into the mirror each morning he is relieved to find the face of a capitalist shark staring back at him. When he's not ruining the world with devious fiscal stratagies, he's deafening it with his sledgehammer drumming. Ian is currently applying for planning permission to buy Nottingham and build a big garage on it to keep his drums in. In his sprawling Victorian mansion, Ian rises in the late afternoon and brushes his teeth in champagne. He calls down to his drum butler to set up his kit and then spends two hours practising pieces in the mathematically improbable time signatures he will never have the chance to use in Moose Malloy. The rest of the day and night is spent tracking down the <5% of he world population to whom he has yet to sell a dodgy ISA. He sleeps the sleep of the rich, dreaming peacefully of endless human misery from which he can make more money.
Steve is a complex Walter Mitty character who dreams that he is Walter Mitty dreaming that he is pretending to be "Dr" Steve Benford, Emeritus Professor of Difficult Science at Lenton Polytechnic. Steve narrowly missed out on a Bafta award for his superb portrayal of Walter Mitty (showing daily at the Theatre Of Life, Beeston: Free Admission), attending a sumptuous star-studded gathering which took place recently in his head.
Failing to possess a library card or any shirts with collars, it is almost certain the Steve holds no official academic position at the University, but he has certainly ****** a **** **** of ********* **** the ******** which has ******* Moose Malloy to be a ********** **** band. His seemingly endless succession of credibility gaffes are well-illustrated by his willing participation in folk music events, a penchant for 'amusing' t-shirts and a shameless nomination for 'Seconds Out' by Genesis as his favourite album of all time. Probably the most superficial man in the East Midlands, he has found that the increase in his existential contentment occurs in exact proportion to the increase in his collection of guitars and guitar effects units.
Mark first came to musical prominence in the early 1970's, taking the part of bass player Lord Longford in a Peers Of The Realm tribute band. When lead guitarist Lord 'Lucky' Lucan left suddenly, announcing that he was looking for a gig "anywhere without an extradition treaty", the band folded and Mark fell asleep for thirty years. He awoke in Beeston last year and was comforted by the fact that he was surrounded by men in seventies-style clothing. The men, who seemed to be stifling laughter, told him they were from a famous band called Moose Malloy and that he could be the bass player if he had no other plans. So Mark has been busily revising bass styles of the missing decades and has just got to the eighties. He can already do the swooping fretless 'bawooom' sound featured on Paul Young records really well and is now having a steel prosthetic thumb custom-made to help him nail the Level 42 'all slap, no notes' method.
