Sneaker Pimps

Then the whole aura of mystery goes straight to hell as soon as keyboard Pimp Liam Howe opens his mouth. “I’ve spent the day at the fake beach drinking margaritas out of a fishbowl and I’ve turned into Lobster Man,” he said from his room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. “Your sun has absolutely scorched my pasty flesh. I’m not sure how Lobster Man is going to go over with the ladies. Probably no worse than the Victorian ailing child look, which is my usual state.”

The Great Britain-based Sneaker Pimps are on their fourth tour of America since the 1996 release of their Virgin Records debut, Becoming X, and Howe seems bent on poking fun at every aspect of the culture. Food, fashion, sun worshippers, country music, overweight tourists in satin jog suits — they’re all appalling. Thank god for fine California wine or Howe would have slit his own throat by now.

Needless to say, Las Vegas offered him plenty of material for his hapless foreigner routine. But it wasn’t the gambling or obscene bastardizations of sacred historic landmarks that really upset him.

“I had a horrible experience yesterday,” Howe said. “I bought something to eat from a street vendor. It was a hot dog and it was fried. And it had a bun with it, and the whole thing was fried together. But it wasn’t a regular bun; it was a sweet, cake-like substance. And the entire abomination was on a stick, all fried together. It took a bottle of excellent California wine to put me right again.”

The corndog was just the latest on Howe’s list of U.S. tour crises that also included injuring both legs while almost falling out a window, an unpleasant encounter with customs officers at the Canadian border and dealing with the sexual magnetism of his bandmates, singer Kelli Dayton and guitarist Chris Corner.

“Chris’ sexual aura dwarves everything around him,” Howe said. “It shadows him, it goes in front of him, it’s frightening. If you’re a girl, the best thing you can do is only look at his reflection because if you get caught in his gaze…. well, you’re doomed.”

Much ink has already been spilled over Dayton’s cat-eyes countenance and Howe said the Kelli – Chris double whammy works out quite nicely. “We get an equal number of men and women flinging their clothes at us, or at them, anyway.”

Behind Howe’s self deprecation and wit lurks a cunning songwriter with true vision. The band’s agent, Marc Geiger at ARTISTdirect, said Howe has the talent to build on Sneaker Pimps’ already sizable assets. “They’ve got terrific songs and they’re willing to work hard,” said Geiger. “But, on top of that, Liam has what it takes to build the band into something even more substantial.”

Sneaker Pimps have proved their staying power where others have become the flavor of the month. “They haven’t played radio festivals but they have been willing to play with a variety of acts and build that stronger fan base,” said Geiger. “This band has the potential to deliver a killer second album and that’s when all of this [work] is really going to pay off.”

Manager Scott Rodger agreed. “Our whole approach with this album and the tours of America was to present this band as a developing act,” he said. “Because things are slow to build in the States, we’ve just kept at it, getting the band out there and working the record.”

Sneaker Pimps are on the road with the Aphex Twin through October, then they duck into the studio for a bit before returning to the States for some holiday shows. Their sophomore effort should be out just before summer.

Considering how the band secured its contract with Virgin, they’ll undoubtedly retain their formidable creativity in the studio. According to Geiger, Howe managed to sweeten the record deal by beating a Virgin executive at his own game. Howe has quite the reputation as a fine wine aficionado and Virgin finance officer Derek Chan decided to put his palate to the test. If Howe could identify three obscure wines while blindfolded, the terms of the deal would become more favorable. It turns out that Howe is indeed a wine expert. He nailed each of Chan’s picks, got a better record deal and now has his favorite California vintage on the band’s rider.

“If Sneaker Pimps allow me to retire to Napa Valley and become the next Robert Mondavi, then I will have nothing left to complain about,” said Howe. “Unless I encounter another fried hotdog abomination.”