Interview with Jonjo Barrow

Shampoo are a band, in a way, born of ‘zine culture as one of their first joint ventures was writing the now-infamous manics fanzine ‘last exit’ and so it is more than fitting to present this interview with Jonjo, the author of a fantastic new fanzine called ‘the plumstead girls’.
this site is itself is named after an embryonic Shampoo fanzine that a friend and i abandoned in the late 90’s so it is great to see the good work of home-printed obsession living on.
‘the plumstead girls’ has an old-skool aesthetic that really captures the spirit both of Shampoo and of the copy & paste fanzine culture itself, now rendered largely obsolete by the internet.
it made me feel 15 again!

• what is your first recollection of seeing/hearing shampoo and what did you think of them at that time?
  

  Well i was only a very young kid really just in school *blushes* and Shampoo were just coming out their first single i got was Trouble! (the 1st version)
  but ill admit bearing in mind i was only young i did watch the power rangers before i went to school every morning and they did feature trouble in that!

• when and why would you say you became a ‘fan’ of the band?
  

  well i was only just getting into the music scene really and basicly it was fairly crap boy band after boy band struttin their stuff showing off cos they loved themselves
  really the scene needed shampoo and so did I! although i didn’t follow shampoo after trouble much i did when girl power came out (oops i mean shampoo or nothing).
  I found out more about them and they were so much like me i was shy and would hide away but tell someone to f**** off and think nothing of it! -lol plus they had a really
  cool sound like bubble gum punk their music and them were full of attitude to a young kid like me and anyone else they were cool and “well ‘ard”.

• have you ever seen shampoo perform live?
  

  Yeah if you count on top of the pops lol i had trouble live on tape years ago but actually live sadly no but thanks to the wonderful wash n go go ive heard them live!

• have you ever met them?
  if so, what did you say to them and if not what would you say to them if you did meet them?

  Again sadly no. Really i don’t know if i saw them in a street i wouldn’t go up to them i know them to well they would probley lie to me and say they werent them
  (you can never be to sure you know) or something like that but i don’t know if i would want to if you meet your pop idols it would just be weird and nerve racking!

• if you had to describe shampoo to aliens from outer-space how would you do it?
  

  If i saw Aleins those sweets i had must of been way past their sell by date- haha
  Two girls from Plumstead a place in London called Jacqui and Carrie who make music their sound hard to describe a mix of pop punk and bubblegum
  music that makes you feel happy and want to do naughty things like splatter the front of your house or your face with wild paint and turn their cds up full blast,
  wear sunglassess and play with toys. They had an infamous song called Trouble* sings the infamous line to them* were huge in Japan and were once on the richest people in britian list!

  I have to say that to most of the people i meet when saying what music i like thats because they are an alien nation of boy-band lovers and pop music lovers(yuk!)

• what is your favourite shampoo album, song and video and why?
  

  Shampoo or noting was the 1st album i got and that was my fave for ages mainly because their records became like gold dust and that album was so fierce and loud and great to piss off the neighbours.
  I like their albums in diffrent ways really my fave songs are: Bouffant headbutt, Glimmer Globe, war paint, newsflash ,kinky ken and sod the neighbours.

• what is your favourite shampoo lyric and why?
  

  “shiny black taxi cab when your throwing up your kebab in a shiny black taxi cab” probley or lines like”hippy chicks are sad , supermodels suck diet girls riot girls who gives a ***.
  they knew what to do what with words!

• do you have a favourite between jacqui and carrie?
  

  no they are both practically the same person anyway!

• what other music do you like?
  

  like shampoo i like all sorts really people who have style to them aswell as their music anything that stands out mention a few -the cure , no doubt, adam and the ants, cyndi lauper, even marilyn manson but i specialise in alternative music.
  although im not into boy bands cos they are rubbish most of the time im happy that take that have come back and made a good start for themselves though and they are good at what they do and hope they will carry to do so.
  like shampoo i think music isn’t what it used to be at all nothing is new and all those new bands practically sound the same! i think the world needs shampoo back badder and better than ever!!

• tell us a little bit about your fanzine - why you decided to write it, what’s in the first issue and what us shampoo fans can expect from it in the future…
  

  I had always wanted to do a fanzine since my skool days i made a few just for fun really but never got them going of course shampoo was a good start and reading their last exit inspired me to write a fanzine and after writing for
  the official rocky horror fanzine evryone who read it said it was good i thought why not start my own and after the recent re-issue of Shampoos debut why not?
  The fanzine is like a retrospective over shampoos career basicly it just tells the story of them like a biography with some added extras eg the 1st issue has added
  the hilton hotel fiasco in a punk style newspaper spread and another on shampoos house!. It is so hard to find things of shampoo anyways and i thought it would be cool
  rarther than just put it all online to do it how they would of done it! plus they are a cool keepsake for any fan to have!
  If the zine is fairly popular then it will continue with shampoos career from 1995-1996 and i may even do some little suprises with it for keepsakes eg make some cool japanese shampoo trading cards hows about that?

if you would like to order a copy of ‘the plumstead girls’ please send an email to Jonjo at jonjo.barrow@btinternet.com