Alan Moore Knows The Score

Can U Dig It? asks the new single from Pop Will Eat Itself. But before you get a chance to answer, the lads steam in with a catalogue of the things they hold dear. It's an HM disco fantasy shopping list!

Well, if Julie Andrews can reel off a few of her favourite things, then why not Pop Will Eat Itself?

I'm talking to mainman Clint in a sedate lounge of the PopCeleb Hotel in West London, and he's defending his every line. The song's a "cross between S'Express and Zodiac Mindwarp," he says. "I saw The Warriors again, and it's got this guy in it saying `Can you dig it?` and then I saw American Grafitti as well, and there's a piece of Wolfman Jack going `Can you dig it?` and I thought, this is really good - I can fit them together".

A message from God, no less! OK, that's the title and the lead samples dealt with, let's tick off the groceries...

"Everything's so hi-tech now, fast moving, commercially viable or whatever - living a pastoral lifestyle doesn't seem to be the in thing at the moment. But the Freak brothers are hilarious - three hippies who don't do any work, smoking dope all the time!"

"I sound like a nostalgia freak! The original series is a bit ham, but it had its own style. Me and Miles out of the Wonder Stuff used to live in a flat just outside Stourbridge on the 19th floor, about three years ago when Twilight Zone was on TV in the Central region. Me and him used to hate the f-ing lift, a real clapped out lift it was - it'd take about a minute and a half to get up to the 19th floor. Sheer terror!"

"He got stuck in it once, with eight people; two weeks later I got stuck in it on my own! Horrifying experience. Every time we'd get in the lift he used to say `Rod Sterling's gonna appear now and start saying things like, these young men have been down to the pub and they think they're going home to bed, but we know that they're going to... The Twilight Zone. We used to shit ourselves."

"It fits in better; it rhymes! I could've gone `Marvel and DC/Public En-em-ee!` `Raising Hell's` a great album, but Public Enemy released two albums - the first one was different to anything that's gone before, and `Nation of Millions` was far out, basically - and Run DMC hadn't even noticed. Hip hop is such a fast-mutating thing - if you stand still for a minute you're just going to be left behind."

Batman's mild-mannered alter-ego, in case you're stupid.

"DC said `You can't use the name Bruce Wayne`, but it isn't! It's "Bruce (comma) Wayne" - it's two people!"

"There's this great shot of me in the video - it wasn't me that was making it look good - I've got this gun and they've superimposed this shot of Batman behind me. It looks really smart, but they said you can't use the Batman image; Batman is now owned by Warner Brothers or someone, because of this film they're doing."

"That's one of the few series that's been good from British TV in the past few years. It appeals to my type of humour." (Barry is Clint's favourite character - I'll go for Ally Fraser.)

"They guy's a total fascist, but it works, because he gets the bad guy in the end - although sometimes the end doesn't justify the means if you put it in the real world. His one-liners are just great. My girlfriend doesn't think you should give guns to kids, and I know what she's saying, but to a certain degree it's part of the learning process - somehow, you've got to control it. Because we've got this gun in the video, RCA want to do an edit with the gun out of it because they don't think children's TV are going to go for it, which is a bit of a drag. It look good for all the wrong reasons - it's like, naughty!"

Top selling futureshock guns`n`robo movie.

"It's got a lot of human emotions in it, even though it's just an exciting film about this robot guy. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the worst actor in the world but when he's playing a robot he's brilliant at it! He gets $10 million a film!

"I'm not a big Fall fan. I've got `Bingo Masters Breakout`, `Rouche Rumble`, `Elastic Man` - they're real good singles. Mark Smith was in here the other night giving adam a hard time. He's such a dry and intense bloke. He says to Adam, `where d'you live?` and Adam goes `I live in Stourbridge with

me mum and dad` and Mark E E Smith's got all these people with him and he's going to them `Listen to this- this guy lives with his mum and dad` and all these guys are laughing. Then Mark goes `What's wrong with that? There's nothing the matter with that!` Really strange bloke. Respect is due, as they say."

The first great line of '89, in my mind; Alan Moore is the man who virtually kickstarted the Great Brit Comix Renaissance with Swamp Thing and Watchmen and the recently revived V For Vendetta (specifically name-checked in verse two.)

"He makes quite a few appearances on the LP. He looks like an absolute rampaging hippie! Massive beard! I wonder if Ben Elton's against him?"

Elton's book is an ecological disaster story - since Moore's Swamp Thing is about us lot screwing up our world, I wonder if Clint is eco-minded?

"It's not something I spend a great deal of time thinking about. But what Alan Moore's done, he's made CARING hip again. He shouldn't have to try, but people don't care."

Earlier, Clint described Can U Dig It? as "throwaway Pop, a dumb song with dumb lyrics. It's gonna be replaced by something, even if it's only our next single. Singles are a product of today."

And yet these two songs are exceptions to this rule - they're still remembered and revived. Why them?

"They're classics that stick out from Jimmy Saville's Old Record Club; they seem more sussed, if you like".

"I originally wanted `Coca Cola Not Pepsi` because I don't like Pepsi Cola. Coca Cola is brilliant. But we had trouble with `Big Mac, fries to go` on `Def Con One` because Radio One said it was advertising - so I was stuck with a line to rhyme with The Bad and The Ugly!"

"But Bruce Lee's okay. He was a megahero at the time, now he's relegated to the bottom of the video shop."

I'm glad he said that. The Furs, in their heyday, recorded a song called `We Love You` in which they namecheck a few of their digs (Frank Sinatra, Bridget Bardot, the Twist, The Supremes, th nuclear bomb etc.) It seems I have an ally - Clint has this very fact written in his notepad.

"Brilliant record, that is. The first abum's great - so noisy, and their last single was a return to form."

Clint enthuses on and it seems we've uncovered a reference not crossed on the Poppies' list. So I ask him for any other names he's missed off, in order for me to compile the exclusive, unofficial NME third verse to Can U Dig It? And here it is!

"We dig Bomb Jack/ which is a video game/ We dig The Loveless, The Furs and The Man With No Name/ We dig Robocop/ We dig `We Love You`/ We dig Dead Of Night, an old British film/ and Spiderman, too."
(Copyright A. Collins, based on omissions by C. Poppie)

Can U Dig It? is the first song to namecheck Alan Moore, Mark Smith, AC/DC and Barry. Maybe, just maybe, Pop will treat itself - and it'll be the first Top 40 hit to do so. Dig for victory!