“All the backstage nonsense, the falseness especially in Hollywood where even the guy sweeping the street is really an actor and whoever you speak to on the phone says 'thank you very much for calling'. But if you break these people down you find they're not fake, they actually mean it... but it's still phoney.

“And all the record companies are very keen for us to become part of this elite club which is the dinosaur club. Even if they do mean what they say, it still comes across as being totally plastic and android.”

Ian from The Icicle Works reflecting on the Hollywood way of things. His group are in California to support the Pretenders on a few of that band’s West Coast dates. An arrangement stemming from Chrissie Hynde’s appreciation of The Icicle Works when they shared a billing on TV’s The Tube.

We’d been idly talking of ‘back home’, the sterility of the current music scene and generally agreeing on a preference for finding musical pleasure in smaller venues.

All a far yodel from the building that stands behind us: The Universal Amphitheater, a 6,000 seat venue and both a physical and symbolic monument to the size of ROCK events US style when the mega dollar-earning league is reached.

For us, there’s a dwarfing feeling to the place. When The Icicle Works are on stage there’s a marginal ripple from the massed ranks – a reaction as much to the Liverpool accents (long rock and roll memories here!) as to the material itself. This shifts to almost choreographed hysteria when the Pretenders open their set.

Chris (Icicle Works bassist): “The rock machine will always go on. Basically you're in a multi million pound business and that's the way it's run."

Ian: “You participate in it and you have a good time but you're looking at it as a joke. I mean, anyone who takes this business seriously... I said to Chrissie Hynde last night (during a back stage party for record company cogs) ‘do you have to do this every night? what a drag it must be...’ and she said ‘of course you have to do it every night, you have to communicate with the people who are working for you and you have to thank them'.”

“She was almost taken aback when I indicated that I thought it was a fiasco but obviously for some people that’s the way it is. You become part of it because if you're going to do that job there is nothing you can do about it. But I couldn't imagine Van Morrison going through all this bullshit.

"You have to use it for your own entertainment. I was incredibly entertained last night not because I think that that’s the right way for people to behave but because it was such a corporal collection of dickheads.”

Last night’s interlude had been the aprés gig in the Artists Lounge. A case of shoulder to shoulder celebs, Sue Ellen from Dallas, ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones among them. It must be said I quite enjoyed it. It’s easy to revel in the grossness but only from a strictly short term participant observation point of view. It’s especially hard to take seriously when Steve Jones tells me that he really liked the second song I did, refusing to believe I wasn’t in the band he claims to have just seen.

Still... dinosaur or no, the ROCK biz is BIG biz. And if you're going to do more than dabble then you have to compete. And that means using everything to your own ends. The Icicle Works are caught dodgily on the tightrope between inbred disgust and the need to embrace the hypocrisy for the good of their career.

Ian moans of their manager manipulating them into photo poses with the celebrity posse. "I gave him daggers" says Ian.

But there are signs they’re starting to break. After our interview, Ian hobbles over with a grim air: "That thing about Chrissie Hynde, it wasn't her it was somebody else. And I don't think it's worth printing at all really.”

What a weak one! Thanks Ian, I'll remember that. But perhaps not in the way he would've wanted. I wonder which business-attuned member of their entourage reminded him that they still have to return to the US after their British tour for more dates with the Pretenders. Undoubtedly the worry was that even such a minor slur could jeopardise this commercially important arrangement.

Such a nervousness as The Icicle Works stumble close to reaping BIG things is clearly the root of the fear now lurking in their music. A fear of going to far... of the brushing too close to any extreme that may hinder the swing of success which is starting, modestly as yet, to carry them.

I watched and found their set had little to grab and tingle. Throughout the allotted 35 minutes (barely enough it must be said) they opt for safety, never letting rip with the savagery and vigour which, once or twice, they vaguely flirt with the shadow of a rumour of a trace of.

They need enraging, something to energise their songs into shattering warp drive. Instead they work like an anaesthetic. Their caution damns them.

Admittedly, the Universal Amphiteater is hardly a place to expect bravery and daring. The Icicle Works certainly possess greater whack when they can actually see – and respond to – the audience.

But a Hollywood lifelessness also belittles their new album. Wayback 'Nirvana’ had a cheery, cheeky malice which only lazy brains could dully tag ‘psychedelic’. ‘Love is a Wonderful Colour’ seems overblown, though the re-issued 'Birds Fly' is painfully infectious. It throws its spots at you and they stick. The chorus is madly catchy. It's in my head and I want to shake it out use because it doesn't seem to mean anything.

Ian is talking about songwriting and how chuffed held be if someone, first choice Paul Young, would cover one of his:

"A lot of the songs we do have a meaning that is personal to the band. If someone covered ‘Birds Fly'... well, I don't think they could because the lyrics would be meaningless to them. It’s like someone trying to cover a Gary Glitter song, even though people have done that, it always comes across as a joke, very much involved with the personality of the artist who wrote it.

“In something like ‘Birds Fly' the lyrics aren't really communicative and I don’t think someone could sing them without thinking ‘what does all this mean?’ But for me it it’s the most natural thing in the world to sing 'we are the children finding our way around indecision'. Someone might say 'what a stupid line' but for me it's just natural.

"Of course, if someone did cover it I'd be made up because that would make it like a real song."

Like the man says, the lyrics aren’t really communicative and the music never really whips them into becoming so. Ditto a whole bundle of their songs.

Ian: “But if you find them meaningless doesn't that encourage you to delve deeper or does it just encourage you to turn off?”

The latter, I dread.

Ian: “l must say I don’t see how you can’t find meaning in something like 'Reaping The Rich Harvest', it’s obvious, in 'Lover's Day' it’s obvious. in 'Out Of Season’ it's obvious, in ‘Cauldron Of Love' it's obvious... I can't really see... what kind of music do you consider meaningful...?”

It’s not that I go round searching for meaning but somehow some things just instantly reach out, strike a chord, have some raw emotional impact. It’s a tenuous effect to describe but whatever it is, The Icicle Works don’t give me it, at least not at this moment now.

Ian: 'I what do you consider to be meaningful from the word go? Would you consider Captain Beefheart to be meaningful?”

Although failing to see the connection, I murmur something about a Burroughsy humour... short changing convention... defining it’s own space... 'meaning' evasive and multiple...

Ian: “That might be what our stuff is too then. It doesn’t worry me. I like to think that people enjoy the lyrics and get some meaning out of them. I suppose it all depends on your point of view.

“The lyrics are set up and you can either draw on them or turn off. Just like a dictionary with all the words strung together. You can make any line mean something if you want to. In my favourite music, that has always been the case.

"If you think the lyrics are superficial then there's absolutely nothing I can say that will make you listen again and think maybe that's right and there is a meaning to it. if your initial impression is one of meaninglessness then I’m not going to say 'hey, look all this, this means something' because it’s pointless."

But the point was not that The Icicle Works’s songs were meaningless, just that the meaning sometimes gets lost somewhere, at least for me.

But the debate degenerates into nagging over semantics, the meaning of meaning. We’re all bored, irritated, and Chris the drummer who has said nothing anyway disappears back to the Artists Lounge (we’re talking on the second of two nights at the UA). He’s probably the wisest among us. Inside the Lounge, strawberries are waiting to be eaten.

Perhaps the real point (or meaning) is that The Icicle Works don’t translate power from their heads, hearts, hands or wherever into the mind and soul of the listener to a sufficient degree to be completely captivating.

Not many do, but that’s not to say that they shouldn’t strive and that’s not to say that they don’t strive...

Ian: “But 'Love Is A Wonderful Colour’ obviously means something to a lot of people otherwise they’ve have bought it. Unless they just bought it for the disco beat or something, I dunno.!'

For the tune... the achingly airplayable tune...

Ian: "But they obviously listen to the words as well. They don't just buy it for the tune, people still like lyrics generally don't they?”

In that case, initially just the hooky title line, I think.

Ian: “But that doesn’t deter from the fact that the lyrics are really good, although they might not be good in your opinion. They are good in my opinion and in the opinion of everybody else who is around us. And that's not to say I’m totally oblivious to any kind of comment people make because it's important to hear the comments people make.”

So I mention the lack of galvanisation in their music.

Chris: “That’s probably why the last single got to number 15."

Ah, sarcasm. At last. I wondered who'd be first to drop some in. I'm surprised it took this long, I gave them enough chance! It’s a messy logic though when they're ostensibly unimpressed by the machinations of the music industry but use chart placings as their argument’s bottom line (and I resist the easy jibe that number 15 isn't actually that high...).

Ian: “What’s the point of me trying to explain my way out of it if you don't think it's any good. I think it’s wonderful so we're just on different planets. I also think that if this gets printed and it's going to be an article which is just negative than I don't think there’s any point in it really. If you're going to write about something then I think you should have the initial enthusiasm to do it and not just do it as a chore.”

Do I look bored? It's hardly a chore. An Icicle Works piece was something I'd been wanting to do since last summer when I saw them at London’s Marquee. Not to praise or to bury but to simply investigate, explore a few of the facets. One assumes all groups contain alleyways that require a little looking into.

The Icicle Works give the music press short credence. Probably because the music press gives The Icicle Works short credence. In low-level hack terms there is really nothing irresistibly writeable that flashes out of them. Even The Smiths, who both Ian and I more or less consider “average" have a Morrisey to wind up and have the quotes fall out of. The Icicle Works instead have a strange kind of blank-faced antipathy.

Chris: “We don't understand what most music journalists say."

Neither do I. But the most vivid impression after two days with The Icicle Works in Hollywood is the number of things that they don't understand and how seemingly unprepared/unready they are for the music biz blanket which is starting to be placed over them. The ROCK biz, dinosaurs and all, needn't be the ogre its made out to be. If you understand it. If you use it.

But the creative side of The Icicle Works seems uncomfortably out of synch with the stage they've reached commercially.

For a group who claim not to worry, I think they have a lot to worry about.