No, Martin McCarrick is what they call a “really fucking cool musician”.

(He’s also an artist and a music teacher. As an aside, can you imagine saying: “Yeah, my instructor was in Siouxsie & The Banshees“? Well, okay, the YOOF OF TODAY probably don’t give a toss, but it would blow my tiny Existential-angst mind if I were learning to play.)

But anyway. How’s this for a goth/rock CV?  London-based McCarrick was in Siouxsie & The Banshees for eight years (around Rapture, Peepshow and Superstition), Irish noisenik band Therapy? doing time on guitar and electric cello for seven, played cello on Robert Smith and Steve Severin’s The Glove album, and has played, toured with or collaborated with Kristin Hersh, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, Skunk Anansie, Sinead O’Connor, Gary Numan, Marianne Faithful and more.

Today, Martin comprises 50% of a wonderful thing: The McCarricks. Along with his exceedingly sexy and classically trained violinist wife, Kimberlee, the McCarricks’ musical soundscapes blend violin, cello, piano, keys and otherworldly sounds and perform in front of short films created by international filmmakers and friends.

Hanging out with the McCarricks (the BSR’s best friends in London) will often include some sort of debauchery, some cool blue-haired friends, and you may end up getting drunk next to Jon Klein from The Banshees or puke all night after a visit to the underground crypt bar Garlic & Shots (see left). In other words, they are not only musicians extraordinaire, they are a bloody good laugh too.

As for their latest project, it is also one for the BIG BLACK BOOK OF GOTH.

The McCarricks were recently commissioned to rescore  F.W. Murnau’s Der Letzte Mann. Murnau, if you’re not up on your German expressionist filmmakers, made the original 1922 silent vampire film Nosferatu. This is exceptionally exciting news: it means that Martin & Kim will hopefully tour and bring the film overseas to those of us not currently living in Londonium. Have a look/hear:

For more insanely beautiful and eerie music, go to MySpace or check out their latest videos on YouTube, including “Drifter”. Visit www.houseofmccarrick.com to buy a reissue of their first disc ‘3′ and for other news.

PS, Happy birthday, brother.

They ate very well when they were on tour in the mid-90s, at least when they came through Toronto.

They booked in at a ’70s apartment-style hotel I recommended called the Town Inn (where I later spent New Year’s Eve, 1994 watching Beverly Hills 90210 with Trevor from Econoline Crush and various wasted mates). It had a kitchen and plates.

One Sunday night in 1994, me, the band, their roadies and a couple of mates used bed sheets for table cloths, brought chairs in from all rooms, cooked a roast chicken dinner, with all the trimmings, and got enormously plastered.  They’d just come off a tour with Christian heavy-metallers King’s X and took the piss out of saying Grace. But they did.

Two years later, they were back, this time with a new member (and my best friend) Martin McCarrick. Martin had serious goth skills. He’d recorded with Robert Smith, This Mortal Coil, Bryan Ferry, Throwing Muses, Dead Can Dance and been in Siouxsie and the Banshees.  And now it was 2am and he and the band were hungry. What to eat?

“Why not beans on toast?” asked bassist Michael McKeegan.

“What’s beans on toast?” I asked.

“Uh, it’s beans….on toast. Everyone eats it in the UK.”

“Are you f*cking insane? That’s just gross. How do you make it?” I asked.

Here’s how:

Martin: “It’s very important you have the correct utensils. And the beans only work if the utensils are also able to dance and/or communicate with each other.”

Michael: “And of course you have to have the beans. These are special beans. I got them from a Giant. They’re magic. See, I had to get THREE wristbands to enable me to get up the stalk. Step one: open the can.”

Michael: “Cheese plays a large part in the real success of beans on toast. So cut up some cheese, like this. What the hell is this? Cheddar? Your cheddar is ORANGE? Cheddar isn’t supposed to be that colour!”

Martin: “It tastes lovely, it really does. Particularly if you just slop it on the bread. And oooh, it’s delightful with a cuppa. Mine’s filled with vodka. And hey, Andy Carins, do you want some?”

Andy: “Nah, yer awright. I’m trying to figure out what the hell this thing does. They say it’s a “DISCMAN”. I think you put records in it or something. Thanks anyway!” \m/