LOLLIES LIVE THROUGH TOUR TURMOIL
By JANE MONDIN

"Welcome to the gig from Hell."

Lollies guitarist-vocalist Kate St. Clair greeted the crowd at the Brickyard, as the band took the stage Monday night, 45 minutes later than scheduled.

The London-based group drove from Portland with only three hours of sleep, only to find out that their booking agent had neglected to tell the club about their gig. Bassist-vocalist, and Langara Graduate, Jane Mountain had just gotten the situation straightened out when the band found out that one of their borrowed amplifiers did not work. Keyboardist Rachel Angel was exhausted and St. Clair was losing her voice.

It all seemed to fit into a tour where "a lot of mad, mad, completely strange things have happened," according to St. Clair.

"Rachel keeps saying 'we've gone insane' and I say 'no, we've gone on tour.'"

The Lollies have come a long way since their "accidental" forming during a New Year's Eve party at Mountain's London flat, fuelled by Absinthe, Malibu and "mad Australians." Someone brought out a guitar, St. Clair said, and she and Mountain began "running around singing like the Shangri-La's."

"Next thing I know," St. Clair said, "we woke up and Jane's like 'By the way, we're in a band."

Drummer Matthew Lazowski and Angel later completed the lineup.

"She joined before we knew she could play," Mountain said of the award-winning keyboardist, "just because she had cool boots."

Soon, songs like Green Card Marriage and Susan is a Lesbian Now, began attracting attention, thanks in part to St. Clair's experience in advertising and Web site design. Most of their promoting is done through the Internet, with all the band's reviews and MP3's of all their songs available on their Web site.

"We're shamelessly self-promoting all the time," St. Clair said. "We keep shouting at people 'Don't you love us?' and they believe it."

The Lollies brought their sound, which band members variously describe as "Girly-Whirly pop," "The Shangri-Las fronting the Ramones" and "The Ronettes kicking the s--t out of Slipnot" to North America, after Mountain discovered a Seattle music conference online and convinced the rest of the band to attend.

Although a Seattle gig was plagued by bad sound and "deteriorated steadily", the later Portland show "was absolutely amazing," said St. Clair. "It was the experience of turning up and actually feeling like a rock star."

If the Brickyard crowd's reaction to such songs as Jonestown Mascara and Dayjob Nightmare are any indication, The Lollies may well live up to the title of another of their songs: Quite Frankly I Think I Could Do a Better Job of Being Famous.