Fame came rather suddenly to the YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS -- they hardly expected to leave Wales, much less tour Europe, the United States and Japan (?)....and much less be able to live off record sales and even buy motorcycles, all within a few months of the album's release....What does it all mean? Definitely an uncertain future....

The odd power of their haunting, minimalist "folk music" has overcome a lot of preconceived notions about "relevance." The LP, COLOSSAL YOUTH, has sold over 27,000 with virtually no promotion (but a few rave reviews). YMG seem to regard touring and the music business with a wry detachment bordering on disdain -- Wales, as Philip pointed out, does have the oldest mountains in the world....

YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS: brothers Philip & Stuart Moxham on bass/rhythm tracks and guitar/organ...Alison Statton on clear floating vocals...

Q: Is there Welsh nationalism?

YMG: It's really just a small minority of people -- they do these petty things like divert water lines or set fire to holiday homes. A lot of English own cottages but they never live there...and the rural communities are moving out anyway so it's becoming a tourist area, you know, so the nationalists set fire to these holiday homes. And they spray paint English words out of road signs which are bilingual -- spray them out with green paint which is symbolic of Wales....The Celtic nations: Scotland, Ireland and Wales, all band together -- like, If you meet a Scotsman in a bar it's OK because you're Welsh. If you're in Ireland & you have the Welsh dragon on your car there's no chance you'll be attacked by the IRA....

Wales is ripped off -- Northern England gets its water free from Welsh reservoirs but we have to pay for it. The steel works -- the heart of the industry in South Wales -- they've closed them -- huge factories, like Bethlehem. One of the most depressed areas is called Splott -- the people who've put out the Cardiff Compilation live a stones' throw from what used to be the steel works. Now it's completely flat -- they just pulled it all down/there's no chance of reopening it, and for miles around you got all these tiny little rows of terraced houses which accommodated the workers. Everyone used to work there. I used to work there -- it was my first job....

R/A: Philip, you're moving to the hinterlands of Wales?

YMG: It's not even the hinterlands -- there's nothing there, not even a road, just a track about a half mile long with really big potholes. And the house is a Tudor, about 500 years old. I'll live there with a girl with 3 kids, she's been there for about 2 years. Before then it was a hippie community for about 7 years. It's a real hippie area with acres of marijuana all hidden by individuals. She's on social-security....

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A lot of the marijuana that comes into Britain comes by way of Wales, which I think is significant somehow (laughter). Some boats have come in with a million pounds of marijuana from Pakistan and they bury it in the sand dunes.. .and some old lady comes past and sees a corner sticking out and she reports it to the police. They've surrounded and busted the whole area --they'll actually stop you now as you walk down the road. All the dope you buy In England you buy back from the police -- they don't burn it all when they take it....

R/S: Do people work there?

YMG: They live on the dole, or marijuana. There's no industry really -- they're trying to get foreign industry, some Japanese company like Sony...

Q: Why would a company like Sony come in?

YMG: : Because it's 70% unemployed & they can get cheap labor. Maybe they're getting paid by the English government to invest...

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Wales used to be joined to Cornwall -- in fact the Bristol channel which separates Wales from the southwest point of England is where the sea has invaded the estuary. There's a separate Cornish culture which has a much-less-well-known kind of primitive language that is actually very close to Welsh. They actually have a petrified forest on the land which is now drowned. Very very rarely, the tide goes out so far for miles that you can actually see the stumps of the fossilized trees...then the tide comes in very quickly and the waters channel up this huge estuary, and where it gets narrower -- because of the physics of what happens when you put water through that kind of constriction -- you get a thing called a bore -- which is like a tidal wave, called the 7-bore. I think it's at winter at the change of solstices, probably to do with the earth in relation to the moon and sun at that time. Tourists come to watch it go ripping -- this huge bank of water -- and you get people surfing! -- 'cause it's a perfect surf, goes on for miles without a break -- maybe 50 miles! It's only about 7 feet high...but it's still a wave...

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In Wales they still have an ancient traditional festival called the EISTDFFODD....a cultural meeting that takes place on the 1st of March every year, which is St. David's day (the patron saint of Wales). It dates back to the Druids who wore white cloaks a bit like the Ku Klux Klan. The male voice choirs from the mining communities are incredibly good, they're famous. All men....

In school all of us took part, you have the day off -- there are singing and poetry competitions -- the whole school is divided into "houses" named after famous people, saints. At the end they crown the person who writes the best poetry bard of the year....My mom's got poems that I wrote at about 5 or 6... but I didn't win the prize....

The Welsh costume has a witches' hat, but it's chopped off. It's like a Quaker's -- has a black strap and like a doily under the hat. They have tartans but they're usually very small checks and only 2 colors, not like Scottish tartans which are bold with large squares. Usually just 2 colors, black and red; very small checks...The men have checked trousers, checked suits, and stovepipe hats as well. The colors vary in different districts....

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You get gypsies all over the countryside, coming to the door selling clothespins and reading palms, and if you don't give them any money they put a curse on you... But the government Is trying to settle them down, building little plots and sticking toilets and showers in them, and they park there. 8ut they generally stay for about a year and then move on...There are gypsies in Cardiff and they don't speak English -- they speak Gaelic, almost like Pidgin English.

Q: Have you ever had your palm read?

Alison:: At a fair once, just for a joke. They had a woman GYPSY ROSE LEE---it's always Gypsy Rose Lee y'know. She rushed me about $4 for one palm -- you're in there about two minutes...she told me I had a nice voice, and she said I was going to travel, and that's before we went to Europe...

Stuart: A lot of it's flattery as well -- they say things that you want to hear, like, "You're a charming, aesthetic person...but you're a bit of a rogue, really..."

Alison: They tell the girls they're going to yet married to a tall dark handsome person and have 3 children or whatever....

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"Once Napoleon was going to invade Wales, at a place with very high cliffs. When the French armada pulled up to the coastline, the local community walked up end down in a circle -- it looked like there were thousands of people waiting, but there only a few hundred people actually walking around -- so the armada chickened off. Which was real Hollywood...keep the extras' overhead real low...

"There are a lot of flooded valleys in Wales on the coast...There was a Welsh village that was drowned near a lake, and apparently if you go there around the time of year the event happened, you can hear the bell from the church ringing under the water. There's supposed to be a whole village under there. They say it always happens in the nighttime..."

As of April 2004, copies of RE/Search #1 are still available.  Visit http://www.researchpubs.com to find out how to order the first three issues as a special set.