Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip in session for Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music tonight – recorded on January 22nd at the BBC’s legendary Maida Vale studios.
According to Mik’s Bandcamp site:
Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip are made up of Mik Artistik, poet, artistik ,punk provocateur ;Jonny Flockton on various guitars and a succession of random bass players. Their performance is chaotic ,joyful , hilarious and soul stirring.
Iggy Pop loves them and played two of their tunes on his 6Music show. They are probably the best band in the world.
In and around his home town of Leeds, Mik Artistik has been a familiar figure for decades. Born Michael Gallagher in Northern Ireland in 1955, the eldest of seven, his family relocated to Yorkshire just before he started school. His gift for drawing won him a place at art college, but once he’d graduated it didn’t immediately earn him a living. Between being on the dole and working on building sites, he developed a sideline as Mik Artistik, roaming Leeds city centre offering to draw pen portraits of punters on paper bags. One night, while watching a band play in a local pub, he started heckling and was invited to get up on stage. To his surprise he loved the experience and the punters loved him back. Before long, Mik was taking a strange, singular stand-up act around the country. In fact, that’s him in series one of Phoenix Nights, doing a turn as part of Brian Potter’s ill-fated alternative comedy night The Funny Farm (alongside Toby Hadoke, small world fans).
When stand-up started to run aground, he went on to form a band, Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip, in order to channel his love of performing and give a home to his thoughts and observations. The band built up a devoted following, became festival favorites, and began releasing albums. Sound, from late last year, is their ninth and latest.
Those are the facts, then. But that’s the easy bit. Actually describing what it is that Mik does is much harder. It’s often very funny, but it doesn’t deserve the deadly term ‘comedy songs’, any more than what the work of John Cooper Clarke – an avowed Mik fan – can be called ‘comedy poems’. His songs are often surreal and beautifully observed. He qualifies as ‘cult’ in a heartbeat, sitting somewhere in the distinctive and golden lineage that brought us Vic & Bob, Ivor Cutler and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. In an ideal world, Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip would be Peel session regulars, but there you go.
If you aren’t familiar – Press Play and find out.
