FC DOG

A more or less accurate history of the band
Written by Matthew Fryer
CURRENT LINEUP:
Bass – Dave Vocals and Rhythm Guitar - Ciaran Drums - Andy Lead Guitar - Marcus
MEET THE BAND…
NAILBAG!
Dave was born during the war and raised on the Isle of Sheppey, a small island situated on the outskirts of Mordor.
He was actually christened Barbara and mistakenly raised as a girl until his mother realised her error on his 22nd birthday. He celebrated by changing his name to Dave, but this delight was short-lived when he was promptly sacked from his job in the local Spearmint Rhino. That night on his way home, he passed a chav that had been beaten up by a gang of bored pensioners. The terrified chav bit his left hand, and Dave was forced to immediately hack it off with nearby machete to prevent the infection reaching his brain and turning him into a Burberry-clad zombie. This explains why he has to play his bass guitar the wrong way round. He pinched a new hand from a mannequin in Bra Necessities lingerie store, but they called the police. Sergeant Snike and his dog, an Alsatian named Genghis, arrived on the scene. Genghis picked up the unmistakable scent of Dr. Gothspiker’s Industrial-Strength Hair Cement for the Alternative Gentlemen, and the bloodthirsty beast tracked the culprit to his home.
Dave was 'spending some time with himsel', naked apart from a pair of hob-nailed boots and a hockey mask, and tried to escape through the back garden. Unfortunately, due to his rather hirsute back, he accidentally Velcro-ed himself to the wall trying to climb his mother’s Virginia creeper. This was the sight that greeted the arrest party. Genghis was never able to work again and was retired to the local dog's home where he is scared of children and whimpers in his sleep. Sergeant Snike is still catatonic. Dave was eventually rescued and sent to St. Switchblade's prison, probably the most pleasant and sought after resort on the Isle of Sheppey. He escaped over the prison wall using his enormous haircut – a psychobilly flat-top the size of an aircraft carrier – as a ramp. He had heard rumours inside that the faraway city of Sheffield had running water and electricity, and so decided to make for this futuristic Eden. He stole an FSO car and made for the steel city disguised as a nun.
Dave is now a punk and survives on a diet of triple-strength cider and garlic mayonnaise, and is saving up for private surgery to have his tartan bondage trousers removed, which he has been wearing since the Vietnam war.
DIRTY BRISTOW!
Ciaran comes from Irish stock, which basically means he shares a great great great grandfather with the Dropkick Murphys. He was accidentally raised as a boy until his mother realised her mistake on his 22nd birthday. As Ciaran had already been married for five years, she decided it was best just not to tell him. He still hasn’t guessed the truth, despite being fond of shoes and cooking.
He moved to Sheffield during the great camp nurse shortage of the 80s and learned to play the electric guitar, hoping to unleash a masculine side to his nature. The first songs he learned to play were It’s Raining Men, I Will Survive and All Coppers Are Bastards. Once while busking on Fargate, he was chased by a skinhead who took exception to his acoustic cover version of the latter track. He foolishly ran into the Dove and Rainbow to escape, only to discover that the pursuing skinhead was holding a party there celebrating his recent release from prison. He hid in the girls’ toilet where he managed to easily blend into the environment, even chatting with one goth chick after she asked him what kind of lip gloss he used. While waiting for the party to dissipate, he listened to the jukebox playing through the wall and decided that punk rock was for him. When the coast was clear and all the riot vans had gone, he ran home and ceremonially burned his Erasure collection.
He has played in Sheffield bands such as 4-Korf, but never truly found his niche until he joined fc dog uk. Only then did he finally convert to the dark side. Now he only wears black, terrifies pigeons and likes music by bands from South London who have tattoos on the back of their heads and sing about football violence. He lives in Wankley with a collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, and spends his evenings wearing a blonde wig and chasing tramps with a knitting needle.
THE TOE!
Little is known about the origins of FC Dog’s drummer, Andy. Hailing from Scotland, the thrice national gurning champion is so metal that his toilet paper is made of British steel and he cleans his teeth with an axe. Legend has it that he made his first drum kit himself at the tender age of 9 months - made from the skulls of mice that he lured into his cot - and played it by using his tiny little bald head as a drumstick. During the 70s and 80s, strange stories followed Andy wherever he went, tales of big hair lurking down empty lanes and unexplainable fires. There is even some evidence to suggest that he actually is the Loch Ness Monster. “It just ran at me from the darkness!” gushed one terrified Scottish villager, clutching his shot-gun as he stood over a drained corpse with a pentagram carved into its forehead. “I thought it was a werewolf, but then it screamed ‘METALLLLL!’ in a high-pitched voice, crushed a beer can between its teeth, and scampered off into the Flying-Vee Inferno night-club before I could stop it. When I went back inside my house, Iron Maiden was playing on the stereo and my goldfish tank was full of Newcastle Brown.”
n recent years, he has stayed on his medication long enough to play for bands such as Excuse the Noise and Satan’s Toilet. His joining FC Dog occurred almost purely by chance. They were having a post-rehearsal pint having just lost their original drummer in a bizarre accident involving suspenders, a tangerine full of poppers and a noose. Well, that’s what they put on his life insurance claim form anyway. A hungry Andy came bounding into the pub in pursuit of a terrified young chavette because the chip-shop on the corner was shut. Then Sick Of It All came on the jukebox, and the band watched as Andy immediately forgot about his prey and became a wild-eyed frenzy of air-drummery, radiating enough energy to power the Texas State Penitentiary for a week.
Andy currently lives beneath the graveyard of Sheffield cathedral.
Though slightly more domesticated nowadays, he still occasionally reverts back to his feral past. Once, while supporting skinhead band Maniac in Rotherham, he drank a bottle of Ciaran’s nail-varnish remover and ate their bass drum.
MUCOUS!
Marcus Judas Bishop is the other half of FC Dog’s metal contingent. He was born in Tiverton, Devon, to an alcoholic Metallica roadie and a bespectacled librarian. This clash of conflicting lifestyles was difficult to reconcile, and his 14th birthday present was an electric guitar complete with an amp that only went up to one and had SHHHHHHH! stencilled across the casing. Frustrated by this ambivalence, he ran away from home.
He found work as a fashion model, only to discover that his parent’s influences ran deep. He appeared in the Marks and Spencer smart-casual catalogue for men, was poster boy for the Boots Opticians sensible prices for sensible people line, and featured as the centre-spread in Whiplash! heavy metal magazine for their Rock Excess! special. He enjoyed his Whiplash! shoot so much that he bought another guitar that Ozzy Osbourne had once urinated on at the Donington Monsters of Rock festival. However, during one bout of foot-on-the-monitor and sex-face soloing, the friction and heat created by his masturbatory widdling caused the bri-nylon V-neck pullover he was wearing to burst into flames. He leapt into a storm drain to extinguish the blaze, but got lost in the sewers.
He wandered the winding labyrinth for months, surviving on wildlife that had begun nesting in his colossal mullet, until he ended up beneath the city of Sheffield. He feared for his life a couple of times when he kept seeing a glistening, sinewy creature lurking in the shadows. Thinking back, he now realises it was just Andy hunting for rats in his loin cloth. He finally found a ladder back up to the surface and emerged in Meadowhead, and there he still lives.
Just like his childhood heroes, he sold his eternal soul to the devil. In exchange, he specified a rock and roll existence of debauchery and fame and a life-time supply of Timotei. This hasn’t yet materialised however, and whenever Marcus attempts to get in touch with the great horned one, he pretends to be out.
While waiting for the infernally promised avalanche of cash, groupies and shampoo to flood into his house, he provides FC Dog with their element of 80s heavy metal histrionics and has patented an amp that contains a fusion reactor and goes up to twelve. However, he still wears beige corduroy, keeps his steam-ironed underpants on coat-hangers and gets cross when his wife talks during Countdown.
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