The Mannequins - they're no dummies
GARY FLOCKHART
YOU may have to read the small print to find them on the billing, but local lads Mannequins are not complaining after being offered a spot at one of Europe's biggest music festivals.
Edinburgh indie-rock outfit were selected to play the Sziget music festival in Budapest later this month, having been chosen from over 1000 unsigned European bands to play the Talentum stage - the festival's equivalent of the T-Break stage at T in the Park.
With 400,000 festival-goers set to attend, Sziget - which features stellar acts The Killers, Razorlight, Chemical Brothers and Mika - is twice the size of the Glastonbury Festival.
"We're all super-excited, although we didn't know whether to believe it at first," beams guitarist and keyboard player Ian Armstrong, who says the first the band heard of the invitation was via a Myspace message received when they were in the recording studio.
"It said to call our Hungarian friend who had sent our demo in, but we had to wait until we got home to make the international call, which turned out to be on a dreadful line.
"All Aaron [the band's lead singer] could make out was: 'You're in Sziget. August 10, 7pm. Be there. And then the line went dead!
"We didn't know if we were definitely in or not. But now we know we're definitely going, we just can't wait. It's going to be a amazing."
The Mannequins have played to audiences ranging in size from 20 to 300 this year at Capital venues such as the Bongo Club, The Caves, Henry's Cellar Bar and Bannerman's, so they would be forgiven for feeling nervy.
That's not the case though, according to Armstrong. "We're pretty confident in our music and we know that we play exciting shows, so I think we'll go down really well," he states. "Our music is quite suited to a large stage because there's plenty of energy and good melodies.
"Good melodies always come through, no matter what the venue is like. So the actual gig should be fine - it's the other stuff that we're not sure of. We've never been back stage at a big festival. Hopefully we'll get free beer."
Rather than any fear of bombing on stage, Armstrong says actually getting themselves to Budapest was a bigger concern to the lads.
"The travel arrangements are pretty funny actually," smiles the 30-year-old. "We only need to take our guitars across, but even that was going to be pretty expensive on the plane.
"To save on extra baggage we're going to take the necks of the guitars, bubble wrap them all, put them in our suitcases and reassemble them over there. That's pretty punk rock!"
A band Hungary for success, you can hear a selection Mannequins songs by logging on to www.myspace.com/themannequinsuk or by checking them out live when they play Caledonian Backpackers on September 22.