Original photo by: Janna Bissett

One perfect album on Le Grand Magistery and one perfect single on Sunday Records was what Shoestrings left behind. Mario and Rose have been very quiet since the late nineties but they promise to return this year with their new project “Invisible Twin” (check it out! it’s great!). But before going onto the future we decided to do a small interview and review the past: Shoestrings!

++ Hi Mario! Thanks so much, I’m really thrilled. How are things in Michigan? How has 2010 been so far for you?

Hi Roque. So far, not bad. Hopefully there will be some good concerts and more recording for us.

++ Let’s talk music now, on your small bio on Last.fm it says you are a multi-instrumentalist… so, what instruments do you play? And how did you learn to play all of them?! Does your life revolve around music?

Mario: Multi-instrumentalist is a very generous term for me. I am ok on a few instruments, but I don’t consider myself excellent on any of them. I guess the main instruments that I’m ok with would be guitar, bass, drums and computer/sequencer/drum programming. I’m self-taught on everything. I know just enough to get by and make the sounds I want. I learned drums as a kid when I had a toy drum set and I would play along with 80s MTV videos. I learned guitar by getting chord diagrams for Depeche Mode’s “Violator” album in the early 90s. After that I got a couple more books with chord diagrams. I can’t really do solos unless I get lucky. Once I knew what the notes were on a guitar, I just kinda figured out bass guitar. I’ve always had a love of computers and math so sequencing/drum programming, etc. came pretty naturally.

++ Was Shoestrings your first band? How did you and Rose decide to start this project?

Mario: Shoestrings was not the first band. I don’t recall the name of the first band, but it was something shoegazery/depressing sounding like Drown, Down or Dive or something. It was just me and my friend, Mario. It was a little strange having 2 Marios in the same band, but that was the situation. He was the singer/bass player and I was the guitarist, but neither of us could really play our instruments. It was just a mess of guitar effects set to a drum machine with Mario’s vocals. We didn’t even know how to tune our guitars!

I was friends with Rose and we knew she played piano/keyboards so we asked if she wanted to join us. Then our friend, Brian, got a drum set and became our drummer and we had a full band. We changed our name to Clerestory Window and then later to the Hazle Room. After a while we figured out how to play our instruments a little and we weren’t all that bad. We even added a violin player at one point. We evolved into more of a Red House Painters vs shoegaze vs Bark Psychosis vs Blueboy sound? I think we even sent a demo tape to Sarah records and 4ad thinking we were actually going to be signed! It’s funny thinking about it now, but we were young (18-20 years old) and naive.

Mario was always the band leader during these projects. He had good ideas for the most part, but since I was really getting into Sarah, Factory and indiepop at the time I wanted to try to make different music that wasn’t really right for the Hazle Room. That’s when I started Shoestrings as a side project. I had Rose help me with vocals and some extra keyboards on a couple songs and we worked pretty well together.

++ Was Shoestrings always a duo? Why did you prefer it that way instead of having a full band? How did you both meet by the way?

Mario: Shoestrings started as a duo, but we expanded to a 4 piece for some of our live performances. We were even a 5 piece for 1 show. The reason why it stayed a 2 duo most of the time was that we wanted to keep it as friends playing music together. We were limited on the number of friends who had mutual musical interests and could play instruments. Our friend Brian played drums on 2 songs for our album and played live with us a few times. He got too busy with other things to stay on though. Our other friend, John, who played piano on “Oceans in the Seashells” played bass with us live a few times. Then we met Scott Bridges and he was a music fanatic. It also turned out that he was a really good drummer. Scott joined us as an official 3rd member and we worked with him towards the end of Shoestrings. We only ended up recording a couple songs with him: “Theme from ‘Kiss Me Goodnight’” and “Forever”.

Rose: Mario and I met and became friends in high school. He was a whole grade above me and I always felt like a kid sister back then. We lost touch for a few years but ended up going to the same University, so we happened to run into each other. We restarted our friendship and had a lot of shared interests, one being music. So I think it was just natural for us to start a band.

++ How did you come up with the name Shoestrings for the band?

Mario: I was just brainstorming band names with a friend at a data entry job that I had at the time and I think she suggested Shoestrings at some point. I liked the sound of it for some reason. Not much of a story there. Sorry.

++ I don’t know if it’s too much or too little to say, but among the great releases Le Grand Magistery released, yours is by far my favourite! But your first release was a 7″ on Sunday Records where the brilliant “Some Things Never Change” was included!! Care to tell me a bit about this single? about each song?

Mario: Thank you Roque! These 2 songs were included on the 5 song tape we had sent to Sunday and a bunch of other labels. They were the 2 songs that Albert from Sunday Records liked the most.

“Some Things Never Change” was heavily influenced by an acoustic Everything But The Girl show that Rose and I went to. It was one of my first shots at songwriting/singing and at the time I only knew to write about things happening in my life. It’s pretty much about the tumultuous beginning of the romantic relationship between Rose and I.

“Afterthought” was heavily influenced by the song “Understand” by Brian aka Ken Sweeney. It’s kinda funny because our friend Kat was in contact with Ken in the mid-late 90s and she had sent him our music because she thought he’d like it. Afterwards, Ken wrote to us and we exchanged some really nice emails.

++ How did you end up on Sunday Records? Did you send a demo or something? Why did you decide to move to Le Grand Magistery after?

Mario: We sent demos to a lot of labels including Sarah, Sunday, Elefant, WAAAAAAH!, maybe Slumberland? Richard from WAAAAAAH! sent a nice letter back written in crayon, but I don’t think he was all that interested. Sunday responded and Albert really wanted to work with us. Elefant wanted to release something, but they got to us too late and we already had stuff going on with Sunday.

We finished the album and Sunday was going to release it. The main condition we had was that we wanted to be able to do the artwork for the cd. Our friend, Keith D’Arcy had suggested a friend named Matt Jacobson who was a graphic designer and lived in Michigan. We met with Matt and saw some of his work. We were extremely impressed and we wanted to see what kind of artwork he could come up with for our album. We gave him a tape of the album so he could get a feel for what we sounded like and come up with an appropriate concept. He ended up listening to the album and really liking it. At the same time, he was starting up a record label and offered to release our record. We were torn at first because we had already agreed with Albert to have Sunday release it, but in the end, I think we ended up making the right decision by choosing to go with Le Grand Magistery.

++ “Wishing on Planes” is such an evocative name for an album. And then it’s a beautiful name. But I’m wondering why you name it like that? Are you afraid of planes perhaps?

Rose: Thanks, Roque. That is really kind of you to say! I can’t really recall the true back-story of how we arrived at that name, and I don’t want to romanticize it too much. The actual line comes from the song “Naked”. I think the idea was that this person in the song was so unhappy about not having her feelings reciprocated, that she just wanted to escape any way she could. Preferably by plane since that’s the fastest. Generally, I’m not afraid of planes but turbulence is another thing all together.

++ This record is so beautiful, all of the songs are lush! But I do want your opinion, your biased opinion. What do you think of it? It’s been 10 years now, how do you think it has aged? What are your favourite songs from it?

Mario: I’m still proud of about 1/2 of the album. Some of the songs sound really dated to me, especially the drum machine we used. The songs that I still like are: “Timeline”, “Whipped”, “Smiles & Light”, “Understand Me”, “Yesterday’s Advice”, “Naked”, “1st Grade Love Affair” and “Walking Away” from the Japanese version.

Rose: By nature, I’m my harshest critic, and I tend to cringe whenever I hear my own singing from years back. That being said, and considering what stage of our lives we were at during that time, I am proud the positive responses we received. I felt like our message got to just the right people. Our fans tended to be the kindest, gentlest, most sensitive kids ever. I’m so grateful that the album brought us to Japan where we got to meet a lot of them in person. It was the best time!

++ Are there any more unreleased recordings by Shoestrings? I found some “unreleased” tracks once: “Untitled Demo”, “Song Six”, “The First One” and “Nothing”… can’t remember where I got them from!

Mario: I think I know what song “Untitled demo” is and I thought we released that for a cassette-only release that Cowly Owl in France released. I didn’t even know we recorded “The First One”?!? Is this a live recording or something?

There was a song called “March of ‘79″ that was for another cassette release called McBain. Not sure if you have this.

As far as unreleased songs go, there are 3 songs from our original 5 song demo that were never relased: a demo of “Timeline”, “Nothing” (which you mentioned) and an instrumental called “Skyway Church Road”. There are a couple songs we did for the Le Grand Magistery El Records tribute about 12 years ago that may see the light of day this year. One of them is a cover of Marden Hill’s “Oh Constance”. There are a lot of bits of songs and really rough acoustic demos and stuff, but I don’t think we would ever release those.

++ How about gigs? Did you gig much? Any anecdotes to share?

Mario: We did not play too many gigs. In fact, I could probably name each and every one of them if I wanted to. I estimate we played maybe 20 gigs total.

The most memorable was playing at On Air Nest in Tokyo. The Japanese fans were so wonderful and actually made us feel like real pop stars for a couple days.

We had a few nerve-wracking gigs in New York at Fez including one where the capo fell off of my guitar right in the middle of an acoustic song and I had to start over. Very embarrassing!

++ You were an active supporter of the indiepop scene, I think I’ve even seen photos of you both at the NYC Popfest of 97. How cool is that! I plan going again to NYC Popfest this year, and of course I’m excited, it’s always great there. How do you remember those days? how was that Popfest in 1997?

Mario: You’re lucky to go to the Popfest this year. It should be fun. I think we played at the one in 1997. We also went to the one in 1995. I think it was the first one that was set up by the indiepop list. We met a lot of wonderful people and kept lasting relationships with many of them. I think the 1997 one was where Holiday played their last gig? That was a great night and they put on a remarkable performance.

Rose: That was a great time! It really felt like something special was happening. We were wide-eyed kids back then and there was no shame in liking things that were twee or cute. We’re still in touch with many of the Popfest pioneers and it’s really fascinating to see how everyone has grown into adulthood.

++ So how did you end up doing and liking pop music?

Mario: I grew up on 80s new wave stuff: Flock of Seagulls, Tears For Fears, Thompson Twins, etc. That’s what was on MTV back then when MTV actually showed music videos and I was in love with it. By the time I was 15, I started getting into some industrial/dance music like Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Frontline Assembly, Severed Heads, etc. Then I discovered some of the 4AD bands like Clan of Xymox, Dead Can Dance, and Cocteau Twins. I was also listening to some Factory records stuff. The record that changed everything for me was The Wake’s “Here Comes Everybody” LP. That became my favorite record and at 1 point while record shopping, I saw a 7 inch by The Wake and it was “Crush The Flowers”. The guy at the record store assured me it was the same band that was on Factory and so that was my first Sarah records release. At another record store, one of the guys that worked there was playing Shadow Factory. I bought that and my appreciation for Sarah records exploded from there. Then I just started finding all of these 7 inch only labels through the various mailorders that were around at the time: Parasol when Brian Kirk worked there, then Mousetrap Mailorder, Mind the Gap in Germany, etc.

++ This one is for Mario… what was Zapato? Do you speak Spanish like me by any chance?

Mario: Yes I do speak Spanish. I was born in Michigan, but my parents came from Cuba in 1972. I recorded 1 song by myself for a compilation cd made by indiepop list members. The double cd was called The Family Twee. The song was called “Take me with you to Japan”. I needed a name for the band quick, and I didn’t want to use Shoestrings because I recorded it without Rose so I thought “I’m 1/2 of Shoestrings.” I ended up using the Spanish translation of shoe: Zapato.

++ Why did you call it a day as Shoestrings?

Mario: I don’t think it was really a conscious decision. Unfortunately, life just got in the way. Rose and I got married and moved into an apartment. We unpacked our recording equipment after about a year and recorded a song or 2, but then we bought a house and moved again so the same thing happened again. Before we knew it, 3-4 years had passed. We both had started our regular working careers during this time too. Once we finally got to work on music on a regular basis, so much time had passed. The way we write and record the songs has changed drastically and I think the style has changed. We felt we needed a fresh start.

++ You now have a new band called Invisible Twin. Care to tell me a bit more about it? When will there be a new release by you?

Mario: Originally, I was going to have my own project with Rose’s help and then Rose would have hers with my help. It might seem strange, but we had different ideas of what kind of sounds we wanted to explore. So far we’ve only worked on Rose’s project, Invisible Twin. She’s writing the songs and I act more as a producer/session musician.

I don’t know why, but I’ve had writer’s block for quite some time. I guess I haven’t really tried to sit down and write a song in a while. As a result, I may not do my project anymore. I’m pretty happy with what we’re doing now as Invisible Twin.

Rose: I always wanted to do my own music based on what I’m inherently drawn to as a listener. I’ve always loved smart, dance-y, electronic music. That’s the goal. So we’ve been sloooooooooooowwwly working on songs over the past couple of years. I wanted the songs to have a darker, driving feel with really strange/quirky stories about really unusual people, or just people that are in these really compromising situations. For example, one of our more recent songs called “the Art of Forgetting” is about two people who go around stealing from Trust Fund babies (BTW, Mario and I don’t know anyone like this in real life!). I’m the kind of person that doesn’t write draft papers. If it doesn’t feel right from the beginning I abandon it. I guess it’s kind of my downfall, but I have this notion that things just need to naturally come together on their own. Hopefully we’ll get to share Invisible Twin with others soon. Everyone cross their fingers!

++ What do Mario and Rose do when they are not making music

Mario: Nothing too exciting. I work as a software developer. When I’m not working, I listen to music, play Xbox 360, watch tv, etc. Also, Rose and I love to go out and eat at our favorite Indian and Ethiopian restaurants.

Rose: Yes, I’ve turned Mario into a little bit of a Foodie. We love travelling! I wish we could do that for a living. It’s funny because whenever we reminisce about going somewhere, we always have a predominant food memory attached to it. We loved Italy (particularly Rome) for just this reason. I like making funny cards and lists of things that I still want to do in life.

++ Thanks again so much for this interview, anything else you’d like to add?

Mario: Thank you for asking to do the interview. It made us think about some wonderful memories. Also, be on the lookout for new music by Invisible Twin in 2010.

Rose: Thanks, Roque for being so patient waiting for our responses. Hope everyone is as patient waiting for the Invisible Twin album!

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Listen
Shoestrings – Timeline

Thanks so much to Jörg Heiser for this interview. It’s been a pleasure to find about them as I’ve been recommended his band by so many friends, and at last I could get to know more about them! Please check Jörg’s new band, La Stampa here.

++ Hi Jörg! Thanks again for doing this interview. Hope I find you fine. I hear you were just on a small tour with your band La Stampa, how did that go?

It was great fun! 5 silly chaps in a car.

++ So let’s get back in the time machine. When did you form Shampoo Tears? What do you remember from those early days, the first rehearsals?

We formed Shampoo Tears in 1987 I believe. We were three guys from school – me on Keyboards and Guitar, Thorsten Schinke on bass, Christian Krämer on guitar, and Christian’s neighbor and early childhood friend Martin Ignatz on percussion, and later full drums. We rehearsed in Christian’s cellar (when there was still no full drum set). We had no clue how you make a song. The early stuff was more like tracks, we used a cheap Yamaha drum computer. “Pearl in Vinegar” was one of our first “proper” songs.

++ Was this your first musical project? What sparked you to start a guitar pop band? What music were you listening at the time?

Yes this was the first thing. We were inspired to form a band by stuff like New Order, The Cure, The Smiths, and the C86 bands (the NME-Sampler C86 and bands like Wedding Present and Stump). Wimp pop. The old punk idea that anyone could form a band, but with an effeminate wimp twist.

++ Why the name Shampoo Tears?

A track by Scottish pop band Win had that title. We liked the ironic romanticism of it.

++ Your only release was the “Pearls in Vinegar” 7″, care to tell me a bit about the songs on the record?

It’s kind of crazy and absurd, but I still can’t find the single. It must be in one of the boxes I haven’t opened yet after I last moved. So to be honest I only remember the title track, and especially the line “boredom is the death of love”. And Christian’s guitar solo afterwards, which I do think has a very good hook.

We recorded the tracks in a basement studio in Wiesbaden, and the same studio had been used by Thomas Anders, singer of Modern Talking.

++ Tell me about the artwork of the single, who is the guy in the photograph?

Klaus Hartmetz, a friend of the band. He was a fan of both Bruce Springsteen and Einstürzende Neubauten. Got me hooked on the latter.
Photograph by Bernd Bodtländer, who continues to be a great photographer, also of music bands.
Where is Klaus today? I should try to find out.

++ Why weren’t there more Shampoo Tears releases after it? Maybe there were some compilation appearances or demo tapes?

No… We renamed to Svevo when the music became more indie-rockish (we discovered distortion… in the wake of Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr…)

++ How was the process to get signed to the Die Schwarze 7 label?

We played some gigs in Wiesbaden, and I was also a bass player for a while with She Splinters Mortar, another C86-type band from Wiesbaden.
Stefan saw us live and like it, and there weren’t so many bands at all at the time who did that kind of music.

++ How was Mainz back then? What were the best venues to play gigs or hang out? What other good bands were in town?

Mainz – that was not least Brückenkopf, the early days of electronic music in Germany, with people like Ian Pooley etc. We were the only guitar pop band from Mainz really (correct me if I’m wrong), though there were some in Wiesbaden like aforemention She Splinters Mortar.
In Wiesbaden-Schierstein was a great club where I saw stuff like Spacemen 3.. Wartburg had concerts by F.S.K. and Sonic Youth that I remember dearly… And then of course Frankfurt with Batschkapp (a great Felt concert) and Negativ (Nirvana before they were big..)

++ Stefan from Die Schwarze 7 said: “they were a real band, which means that they rehearsed intensely and followed a clear plan: they wanted to play as often as possible”. How often did you play? Did you play all over Germany? What were your favourite gigs you played?

Well, we rehearsed maybe once a week. Not really that nerdy. As Shampoo Tears we did not SOO many gigs, we were essentially still a school band -stuff in the region, like, say, a festival in Oppenheim, or support gigs in KUZ (Mainz Kulturzentrum).

++ When you called it a day with Shampoo Tears, you started Svevo, which I hope we can do an interview about it some other time. What were the differences between these two bands?

As said, these were essentially the same band. The main difference was that we switched to German lyrics – impressed mainly by Kolossale Jugend from Hamburg. We did a tour with Blumfeld in 1994 when our first album was released. That was great, we played in front of audiences of around 800 people and were well received. Still our label was small (Peace 95 from Offenbach, they also released the first Stereo Total) and distribution was poor (Semaphore) so we only sold maybe 800 CDs or so.

++ And what happened after Svevo? What are you doing nowadays?

Well during Svevo I had already started to write mainly as a music journalist, for Spex and tageszeitung etc. Then I gradually became an art critic. Today I’m co-editor of frieze magazine. And I play in La Stampa.

++ As you live in Berlin now, and I will visit your city again in September, I was wondering if you could recommend me a good place to get a beer? And which beer should I get, what’s your fave?

Any Schultheiss in any corner bar. That’s downhome Berlin style. Many people hate that beer, I think because of preservations against its main clientele (lumpenproletarians). A really nice bar is Altberlin on Münzstraße. You can have a nice Kölsch at Bar 3, but beware the moody waiters..

++ And a before a beer perhaps I should get some food, any good restaurant recommendations?

El Reda, the best lebanese food in town, in Huttenstraße (a bit off the way in Moabit, but you can
also look at Peter Behrens’ great AEG industrial building from 1908 nearby). It’s a ten minute taxi ride from Tegel airport though.

++ One last question, how do you see Berlin as a music town? Is there much going on? How would you compare it to Mainz from Shampoo Tears days?

Berlin is extreme when it comes to music: loads and loads of Bands playing in town. But to be honest
there are not so many Berlin-based bands that I’m excited about. I like Jens Friebe and Doctorella,
Christiane Rösinger is great, and there’s good electronic stuff by the likes of Jan Jelinek for example.
But my musical tastes are not based on where a band is from. Gunjasufi is great and he’s from Las Vegas, but that’s not important. It’s just great music. Mainz was a provincial nothing against this. That’s why we wanted to get out.

++ Thanks again Jörg, anything else you’d like to add?

No?
Thanks!

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Listen
Shampoo Tears – Frozen Weekend (thanks so much to Krischan for the mp3)

Thanks so much to Jenny and Leonard for such a lovely interview. So many nice details I’ve learned! Wish I was around DC and Philly during those late 90s! Please enjoy!

++ Hi! Thanks for being up for the interview! How are things going? Any plans for the summer?

Jenny: Things are good, thanks. Our plans for the summer consist of waiting for fall. D.C. summers are hot.

++ Let’s get into business, first came the Moonlings, but that is another story for another day. What I’m wondering is why the name change? What is the difference between both bands?

Jenny: The Moonlings were Mark Powell, Lara Cohen, Leonard, and me. Mark had a few songs that the Moonlings didn’t do, for reasons I no longer remember. Our friend Josh Feldman invited him up to Connecticut to play them at a show with Josh’s band, the Best Wishes, and our friend Ian Schlein’s band, Musical Chairs. Mark was trying to avoid being onstage alone, so he invited us to play with him, even though this meant he’d have to teach me how to play guitar note by note. And so Bella Vista was born.

Leonard: It wasn’t really a name change. Although the Moonlings and Bella Vista shared three members, they were different bands that existed at roughly the same time. The Moonlings began in the summer of 1996 for the purpose of playing Mark and Lara’s songs. Jenny and I didn’t write anything whatsoever in that band. Bella Vista began in the spring of 1997 for the purpose of playing that one show, at a sort of gallery/performance space/bookstore. But it continued because Lara was away at college, Mark had songs that didn’t fit into the Moonlings repertoire, Jenny began to write her own songs, and we were offered a few other opportunities to play out, as well as some to make records. I got to write a bass part or two, even though I didn’t even own a bass.

++ Why the name Bella Vista?

Leonard: Bella Vista is the name of a neighborhood Mark had lived in in Philadelphia, in a group house so punk rock it had a giant painting of Ian Svenonius hanging in the living room. By the time Bella Vista the band was a going concern, Mark had moved into a different group house in the suburb of Bryn Mawr, just a few blocks from where Jenny and I were living. Bella Vista used to practice and sometimes record in Mark’s room or in the attic, although we occasionally took a trip through Bella Vista the neighborhood on our way to Bitar’s Pita Hut, whose sandwiches and Mediterranean pizza were obsessions of ours.

Jenny: I think the name managed to trick people into thinking that we would be much more sophisticated sounding than we actually were. We were much more akin to Bubblegum Splash! than, say, La Buena Vida. Case in point: We spent just as much time tuning our cheap guitars than we did actually playing songs at our live shows.

++ How was Philadelphia during those late 90s, were there any like-minded people? Any pop lovers? Any pop bands? Where would you hang out usually?

Jenny: Leonard and I were just passing through the area for a few years, having moved up there in 1994 from North Carolina for graduate school. The two of us never got too deeply into the Philly scene because we pretty much stayed home in Bryn Mawr. Luckily for us, Mark worked at Repo Records in town, so it was loaded with lots of great indie pop. Just speaking for Leonard and myself, we saw several bands play at Repo, as well as at Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr Colleges. We hung out a lot at diners, drinking milkshakes and eating bagels.

Leonard: Philadelphia is a very large city, so there were certainly a few pop lovers and bands in the area, although we didn’t necessarily know many of them. Our friend Ben Kim had a sort of post-Galaxie 500 band called Clock Strikes Thirteen, and Neal Ramirez, whom we knew only through online discussions on the Indiepop List and brief encounters in the grocery store, would go on to be in the Skywriters and the Snow Fairies with Rose Bochansky, one of Mark’s roommates in the Bryn Mawr house. That was after our time, though. Josh Feldman, who was in school in Connecticut but came down to visit a lot, was probably the most like-minded person we hung out with very often. He loved Subway and Slumberland stuff as much as we did, and he was absolutely smitten with Television Personalities and Whaam! Records.

++ Two 7″s and one split 7″ is your whole discography. Was there ever plans to release an album? Are there any more Bella Vista songs lying around on tapes or that was all?

Jenny: I’m not sure there were really ever plans to release any 7″s. Those came about when we had almost ceased to be a band. There are a couple songs we did that never saw the light of day, including a great one of Mark’s about moving to Scotland and hanging out with the Pastels. We have only a live version of that. We also did a number of covers–of My Bloody Valentine, Snowbirds, the Carousel, and, one time, the Orchids. According to the insert that Matinée mastermind James Tassos wrote for the Bella Vista single that he put out, we recorded 13 songs, which is kind of surprising, and we probably had one or two other songs that we didn’t record.

Leonard: We weren’t especially ambitious, so we never planned to make an album. We basically did recordings for our own edification or to give to people who’d expressed some interest in putting out our music. We did contribute to a couple of compilations, a cassette called Suspension Set that came out on Low Voltage and a CD called Just for a Day that was originally supposed to be a cassette, too. Jenny wrote a song about an amusement park that we have only in a skeletal live version. But that’s everything, unless Mark has some dusty old tapes of things I’ve forgotten about.

++ On the 7″ sleeves there is barely any information about the band, was this on purpose? Where were the recordings done? Who did the nice artwork for the singles?

Jenny: Jimmy’s insert has our whole life story as a band on it, including the facts that we had bangs and wore shiny black shoes, in addition to our own insert which has a bunch of info on where things were recorded. What do you want from us, Roque?! Or maybe you’re missing those all important inserts? The Bella Vista 7″s were recorded by Ben Kim in his bedroom. The songs on the split with Best Wishes were recorded by Mark in his bedroom. I picked the cover and insert images and came up with the layouts for the Bella Vista 7″s, but Jimmy and Ara and Leonard made them happen. The image on the sleeve of the Matinée 7″ is an old ad for floor polish from a ’50s home magazine. The original is in beautiful Technicolor-y tones, but Jimmy told us that full-color printing would have broken the budget. The image on the Orange 7″ was discovered in a book on the history of photography. It was black and white from the start, so there were no budget issues.

++ Haha, I got the 7″ on ebay and there were no inserts! Maybe the previous owner kept the inserts for himself! Gah! Oh well, now I’m just listening to “My Boy and his Motorbike”, did any of you had a motorbike? I’ve only been once on it, and I felt like I was going to fall any minute! What are your motorbike experiences?

Jenny: That’s a Carousel song that we did basically because I figured out I could play an approximation of it using the three chords that I knew. Neither Leonard nor I have ever been, or ever desire to be, on a motorbike.

Leonard: The original version of that song, like pretty much everything by the Carousel, has a very folky vibe. I suggested recording it in more of a shoegazer style. Of course, we did this on a four-track in Mark’s bedroom, so it ended up sounding like the dinkiest noise-pop song ever–like Black Tambourine in a tin can. A friend once played it at a DJ night in D.C., which completely cleared the dance floor but also momentarily fooled a former member of that band into thinking he was hearing his own music. So it was both a great failure and a great success.

++ How did you get in touch with Matinee and the Orange Label for them to release you? How did it work during those years? Was it still sending your demos on tape to the labels or was it like now, sending your songs through email?

Jenny: Jimmy attended our second show ever, at the Black Cat in D.C. As I understand it, he was impressed by the fact that we covered the Snowbirds, which I believe was at the time available in the United States only from his mail-order, Roundabout Records, and possibly another place or two. This was before Matinée even existed. Some time later, he got in touch with us and asked whether he could put out a 7″. Ara Hacopian, who did Orange, had seen us play once or twice at Pam Berry’s house, also in D.C., and asked if he could put some songs out.

Leonard: Ara DJ’d at the University of Maryland-College Park’s WMUC and asked us to record a session for the station’s Third Rail Radio program. It was one of our more inspired performances, and I think that some of the recordings we made then are better than the ones on the 7″s. He had little packets of the previous Orange releases that he’d put together for each of us to try to convince us to be on his label, but I don’t think we needed even that enticement.

++ Even though the two singles were released in a span of a year, they sound a bit different. Like the Was the Last 7″ is very much upbeat, with clearer guitars. The Midway 7″ gets much more fuzzed up and the songs are slower. Was there any particular reason for this? Or I’m just imagining things?!

Jenny: I think that was just a first-come, first-served situation. Jimmy asked first, so we pulled together what we thought were our four best songs for that 7″. Then when Ara asked, we basically had a few other songs that we still liked a lot but weren’t maybe quite as energetic as the Matinée songs. Poor Ara. Jimmy had to repress his 7″, but Ara eventually handed over to us a sizable stack of our Orange 7″s that no one wanted. Oy, the guilt.

Leonard: Bella Vista existed for only a few months, so it didn’t really evolve musically beyond Jenny’s getting marginally better at guitar and Mark’s getting better at the drum machine and the four-track. All of those songs were recorded at the same time. Jenny, especially, was a big fan of fuzzed-up pop, so even some of the earliest Bella Vista songs had that “My Boy and His Motorbike” sound.

++ I admit never seeing or listening to the split single with the Best Wishes. Which song was included? And tell me a bit about this label who released you Turn Up the Treble! Records, I’ve never heard about them!

Jenny: Our two songs included one Mark song (”Un Ours Mal Léché”) and one of mine (”I’ve Only Ever Dreamt of You”). Turn Up the Treble! was run by Josh from the Best Wishes (and lately of Cause Co-motion!). He put out the Moonlings 7″ and the split. In exchange, our label, Secret, put out the Best Wishes 7″. Which was fitting, since we seemed to be the only people who wanted to hear each other’s bands.

Leonard: The Bella Vista songs on the split are the first one Jenny wrote for the band and the last one Mark wrote. The Best Wishes cover, “Beautiful Morning,” was also recorded by Bella Vista for a Snowbirds tribute that never got beyond the planning stage. I believe that both bands were supposed to be on it, and that we accidentally picked the same song to play. The Best Wishes also did an original for the split, “I Never Wanted Any of This.” There were only 300 copies made, so it’s not surprising that you’ve never seen one. I believe there were only 300 copies of the Moonlings single made, too.

++ Did you play many gigs? Do you remember any in particular?

Jenny: We didn’t play very often–maybe a half dozen times. We were more of a practice band. (We sounded great in practice!) Again, the first show was supposed to be a one-off. But then Pam and Jeff Gramm asked us to play with their two bands, the Castaway Stones and Aden, at the Black Cat, just because they’re supernice people. After that it’s just a blur of house parties and a couple other shows. The Black Cat was the most memorable for me. Pam had just cut my hair (!), it felt like a real show, and people seemed to like us. I also remember my brother showing up mid-set and waving at me as he walked across the room.

Leonard: I remember the last show the three of us played together, at Ed Mazzucco’s apartment in New York with Coloring Book and, I believe, the Poconos. I’m not sure that many people there liked us, but the sound was really good and it was the only time we ever played “Un Ours Mal Léché” live, as well as the only time we ever got paid for a show–although we managed to spend our entire earnings on tolls before we even made it onto the highway.

++ Why and when did you call it a day?

Jenny: Mark moved to England in the fall of 1997. We did a rush of recording before he left, but we really existed only for about six months.

++ I know after the band split, Mark went to form Pipas, and you two formed Honeymoon Dairy. But what about today, right now, do you ever pick up your instruments to make any music?

Jenny: I haven’t really touched a guitar in 5 years or so. It’s on my to-do list, though.

Leonard: I’m a terrible musician, and I can’t write songs, so I’m almost entirely dependent on Jenny for music-making experiences. It’s probably been even longer since I picked up a bass.

++ Leonard, many don’t know you did two releases on your own label Secret Records. Care to tell a bit about it? Do you recommend to start one?

Leonard: Secret was actually run by all three members of Bella Vista, including Mark after he’d moved to England–he was our European distributor. We started the label to put out a career-spanning CD by the Rosehips, who were a great favorite of ours. I had heard, possibly through the Indiepop List, that the band was interested in doing a reissue of some kind, so we got in touch, signed a licensing agreement, and proceeded to encounter a series of production disasters. The Best Wishes 7″ came together much more easily. In fact, I can’t remember doing much work on it all besides selling every single copy to distributors within a couple of weeks of release. Apparently there was significant demand for the record in Japan, but we never bothered with a repress. None of us is a businessperson at heart, and running even our tiny indie-pop label meant dealing with bookkeeping and invoices and so on. Secret is the third and last label that I’d had some involvement with, going all the way back to a cassette label I ran in high school. My favorite part of doing them by far was getting to hear new music. The rest was much less exciting. As a music fan, I love having someone impassioned and trustworthy to guide me through the vast world of sound. It’s something that I miss since indie label bosses have become eclipsed by bloggers as taste makers. My life wouldn’t be the same without the people at Cherry Red, Creation, él, Esurient, Postcard, Rough Trade, Sarah, Slumberland, Subway, and so forth. But it takes the right temperament to make a label work in the long term.

Jenny: In a strange bit of foreshadowing, the Secret logo is from a little vintage knitting-instruction book I had picked up somewhere for the fab illustrations. More than a decade later, I’m now a mediocre but dedicated knitter. Coincidence?

++ This might be a terribly silly question, but I’ve heard that Peruvian rotisserie chicken restaurants are very very popular in DC. Is this true?

Jenny: Yes. Those places are everywhere. But because we’re vegetarian we’ve never experienced them firsthand. It is fun to say “pollo” aloud as we drive by, though.

++ Okay, so what is your favourite restaurant in DC? If I go there, what should I order? Ah! And what about Jenny’s chocolate poundcake? Is it really true that it is out of this world?

Jenny: Did I mention we’re vegetarian? D.C. doesn’t really like our kind. The one nice vegetarian place just closed (and it wasn’t really all that). How on earth did you hear about the chocolate poundcake?! #Poundsign# was playing on the East Coast, in Philly and at Pam’s in D.C., and I made a chocolate pound(sign) cake in the band’s honor. I’m not sure they noticed, though it was pretty good–there was a ton of butter in that thing.

Leonard: The chocolate pound cake was out of this world, although there used to be some serious cake competition at those house shows. I got a headless-bass cake one birthday, in honor of the endlessly embarrassing instrument that I borrowed from Mark for Bella Vista, and long-time indie-pop/sugar fan Stephen Wood used to whip up some pretty spectacular cakes, too. These days we eat out most frequently at Udupi Palace, a vegetarian Indian place in Langley Park, Maryland. The only way to go is the lunch buffet on a totally empty stomach, preferably when there’s some form of paneer on offer.

++ Time to wrap up our interview if not we’ll all get hungry, any anecdote about the DC indiepop scene you can share with us? you know, any Black Tambourine, Velocity Girl, Saturday People, etc, etc?

Jenny: Unfortunately, we never got to see Black Tambourine play (sigh), although we did see Velocity Girl a couple times in the days before we knew any of the members (once in Hoboken, New Jersey, and once in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) and the Saturday People probably too many times to count. As for D.C. indiepop, Pam was the hub and the scene here pretty much collapsed once she moved to England in 1998. Her house parties are legend–too many great bands to name, tons of great food. I think the Bella Vista show was burrito-themed. I miss those days.

Leonard: Although we’ve both been Slumberland fans almost since the beginning, we’ve experienced most of the D.C. bands on the label from a distance, when we were living in North Carolina or Pennsylvania. I did see a great Ropers/Henry’s Dress/Rocketship show on a boat in New York ages back, and we’ve witnessed two absolutely incredible Lorelei performances over the years, one at the Indie Rock Flea Market in Arlington, Virginia, and one at the recent Slumberland 20th-anniversary show at the Black Cat. I’m convinced that that band’s best work is still ahead of it. At one D.C. indie-pop party, Jenny and I were sitting on the couch when Stephin Merritt, who’d played earlier that night at the Black Cat, suddenly plopped down next to me and said, “I love that sweater. It just screams, ‘Autumn, autumn, autumn!’ Wherever did you get it?” After too long a pause, I went with the most inadequate response possible: “T.J.Maxx.” Naturally, Stephin lost interest immediately, got up, and wandered off.

Jenny: Our life appears to be woefully anecdote-free.

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Listen
Bella Vista – Was the Last

Last time I was in Berlin I was surprised by a fabulous gang of popsters that run these fantastic dance parties and organized gigs. They were the Let’s Kiss and Make Up gang. Laura, Jule, Kat, Silke, Luise and Andi are bringing pop to their city with love and passion. I thought it was a good idea to learn from them and perhaps someone who reads this gets inspired and starts their own indiepop nights in their city! Oh! And so looking forward to the festival in September!

++ Thanks so much for being up for it! How is Berlin today? Is spring already in town?

Laura: It’s coming back to the city, it’s getting warmer and people go outside. They put their sunglasses on and sit outside in cafés, parks.. That’s what people love to do here as soon as the sun hits the sky.

++ So why start an indiepop club in Berlin? I bet it’s not because you are going to get rich out of it…

Laura: No way! To become rich in this city you need to be lucky. Most people have a low budget to spend, I guess the tourists leave the most money in this city.
So we started this club as we missed seeing bands we love. You have plenty of choices every day, and even good ones. But still there is a slot to fill for the indiepop underground. You have lots of club nights who play “indiepop”, but it’s a huge and wide open name for anything, we know all about it.

++ LKAMU starts when Pop Assistants and p!o!p Kombinat merged. Care to tell me a bit about your past projects and why did you decide to join forces?

Laura: Pop Assistants started their first night at Bang Bang Club with a total unknown band from Glasgow, absolute shoegaze sound – Galchen. After that we had Secret Shine and The Domino State and it continued. Our idea was to bring all these amazing new and even older shoegaze and dreampop bands to Berlin and elsewhere in Germany, so we contacted other promoters and venues in Hamburg, Munich, Regensburg. The night was first called Drive Blind. When we continued we gave it the name Pop Assistants. That was Andi, Markus and Laura.
Around the same time Jule, Silke and Kevin started p!o!p kombinat berlin. They had the same thoughts about missing music in this city, as they were missing their beloved bands from the indie pop scene. Their first band was Fosca and Friday Bridge at Café Royal followed by Labrador and Action Biker at NBI.
When we got asked by a friend from Hamburg, Andreas Hering, to promote the gig of Liechtenstein, Crayon Fields and The Motifs in Berlin together, we met each other and since then we continued promoting gigs like The Bats and The Lucksmiths.
And as everyone got confused about these two names and we thought there is to much pop in them we finally went for “Let’s kiss and make up”. That was just before some of us went to Indietracks together where we got even more excited about our club night and all these bands we wanted to bring over here.

++ Tell me about the LKAMU team. Who are you all? And if there’s like a particular thing each of you have to do? Also… do you call each other nicknames?

Laura: Nicknames, good idea! I guess we could do that, but no, not yet.
We started with four of us and we grew up to 6 since then. Andi, Kat and Silke are doing the booking. Jule, Laura and Luise are responsible for promo/press stuff. The rest, like chosing bands, flyer designs, handing out flyers, posters, organising the nights – from catering to DJing – we do it all together. Sometimes it feels well organised, sometimes there are problems. But that’s alright, in the end we’re always satisfied when the bands come and play a great gig and when they feel happy to be here. Also when people who come to our nights like to come again, as they know we always bring good bands and play records they wouldn’t hear elsewhere.

++ How did you end up listening to indiepop? What was that band or person, or I don’t know, indiepop blog, that introduced you to the community? How do you feel about our community?

Laura: I was first introduced to indiepop back in my childhood. It was my sister who made tapes that where played in the car on our journey to Italy. As I remember it was The Smiths, The Cure, The Clash – all that 80s Pop and then came the mid-90s with radio bringing me back into indie pop and onto the dancefloors in Berlin.

Luise: I have to admit it was Belle & Sebastian who got me into indiepop. At least I remember it like this. There was the typical Smiths obsession when I was 14/15 followed by getting into aforementioned band. Somewhere inbetween a friend introduced me to The Field Mice which led me all the way into indiepop fandom.

Kat: Indiepop blog? Do you mean fanzine or did we keep really well? Puttin’ on the Fritz, a local radio program run by Trevor and Des and Nightflights on Fritz made me passionate about music. I used to tape them and listen to them the next day as they were on from 1 to 4 in the morning. Jarvis was my first love.

Jule: In my last years of school – I loved to watch Viva 2 – a brilliant TV channel for underground and independent music (of course the channel is dead by now). At this time I also got a tape from a friend with a live-recording of “Anorak City” – a show broadcasted on a community radio in Kassel. I used to listen to this tape everyday on my way to school on my beloved walkman. Because of the name and the starting track I got introduced to The Field Mice and so the lovestory began.

Silke: I think my love for indiepop inflamed during the uprising madchester indie bands in the late 80s. I immediately fell in love with the music of The Charlatans and blur. After some of these bands became really big during the 90s I got more and more into that music and became a big fan of the English culture.

++ Do you feel the scene in Berlin is progressing? How do you see it compared to Hamburg?

Laura: It was quite a scene in the 90s when Britpop was popular, but most kids from then are not interested anymore, some are busy with their everyday lives. In the last year it seemed to come back, new club nights and some older ones are still around or reviving. But it’s still a small scene, it’s still for people who care for music, care for going to gigs and who buy records in record stores…..

Luise: I moved to Berlin only one and half a year ago so I can’t say anything about the past. Nowadays I wouldn’t call it a scene. There’s a bunch of people you always meet at certain clubs and gigs and we at LKAMU have our secret tea party meetings once every week. But it’s more like a crowd of dedicated music aficionados than an indiepop scene.

++ So you take the name from a Field Mice song that was covered by St. Etienne. Which version do you like the best? And, do you think the name Let’s Kiss and Make Up keeps a close relationship with what you are trying to do in Berlin?

Laura: I prefer the song by The Field Mice as that band always meant much more to me than St. Etienne. They made some really great songs, but not as many as The Field Mice. It’s quiet a great name for a song and it’s the band that may represent all our music tastes and what we like about this kind of music the best. But this name, well everyone can make up their own thoughts of it.

Silke: As a big St.Etienne fan I also love the cover version and we actually have chosen the title because it was played in a café during a meeting of Pop Assistants and p!o!p kombinat!

Kat: It’s a great name to tinker with. Our next party might be called “Let’s kiss and make out” and the next one after that “Let’s dance and shut up”. We have to discuss this.

++ So apart from you are there any other indiepop clubs in Berlin? If so, care to tell me a bit about them?

Laura: There is a wide range of “indiepop” nights in Berlin. Most of them play electro pop, all that music with “nu”, “new” in their name…. But there are some DJs we do like who play different tunes. These are for example Sonic Pop Allnighter, Ship Shape Club, Natalie Stardust, Posh Pop… all of them have been running their nights since the 90s in Berlin and some of us used to go there.

++ You usually host your nights at the King Kong Klub. What are the pros and cons of this venue? What other venues do you like in your town?

Laura: We started to DJ there last year in october when Camera Obscura played in Berlin, that was with you! Since then we started to DJ there once a month. It’s a nice venue, it’s rather a bar/pub than a proper club. But there is a small dance floor and lots of comfy sofas to hang out. The crowd is always a big mix of tourists, friends, people who always hang out there. It’s a place where people stop by for a drink or two after or before going somewhere else or some just stay there all night ‘till stumbling home in the morning after 6am.
Most of the gigs we put on at Bang Bang Club, a venue just in the centre of Berlin. It’s known for it’s good selection of live indie bands. But there are plenty of small clubs, bars, cafes in Kreuzberg and Neukölln these days that are nice to hang out and where you always can find nice music to be played or see a performance of a good band. Oh, and not to forget about Schokoladen . One of the oldest venues for live performances in Mitte where hardly any old independent clubs still exists. But they keep on going always hosting good bands. The audience as much as the musicians seem to love it.

++ Okay, so what are your top 5 songs to make people go crazy in the dancefloor?

Laura: Good Question! Ha, we still need to find out and it’s hard to tell as we always have a different crowd to please. For the indie kids it’s always Belle and Sebastian, The Smiths, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and The Field Mice.

Luise: Everytime I’m djing you’re likely to hear something by Pulp, Blondie, probably Belle and Sebastian, Shop Assistants and my newest favourite band. If I had to make a top 5 of songs that make me go crazy on the dancefloor (I know this doesn’t answer your question, sorry!) it would look like this: Stornoway – Watching Birds, Blondie – Contact In Red Square, Chin Chin – Dark Days, Blind Terry – Long Ride In The Metro, Go-Betweens – Spring Rain

Kat: Crazy dancefloor action has been witnessed during Cats on fire’s Draw in the Reins a couple of times. The Field Mice – Sensitive and Another Sunny Day – You should all be murdered always do the trick when you want us to dance.

Jule: Yeah Cats on Fire and The Field Mice are steady kings in every Indie Pop Club. And besides the good feeling music of Dent May and T-Shirt Weather on the dancefloor – I also love to play some tunes of rather unknown Indiepop Bands like Bears, Kisses and The Tartans.
Silke: It’s like Laura already said, there are always different indie kids coming to our nights and we sometimes have special events like our 80s night at King Kong Klub in March. There I played a lot of Factory and Creation Bands. That was awesome! But my favourite song at the moment is definitely Johan Hedberg’s “Svedmyra“!

++ This is a question I have to ask, because you have such great beer. What are your favourite beers in Germany?

Luise: I have to disappoint you: I prefer Cider and Polish beer!

Kat: Jever and Duckstein (or Ducki as I lovingly call it). Mmm.

Silke: I do love “Radler” -a mix of Sprite and beer, especially in summer the best thing.

++ Let’s keep on the favourite subject… what about your favourite German bands ever?

Laura: Lali Puna, Ulrich Schnauss, Malory… mhmmmm and the old heroes from the youth Tocotronic, Blumfeld … Kraftwerk, a band you don’t need to mention, cos everyone knows them.

Luise: If I had to make a top 5 again: Superpunk, Tocotronic, Honeyheads, Tripping The Light Fantastic and The Marble Man

Kat: Aeronauten. Swiss does count, doesn’t it? Ok…Germans…hm, Marsh-Marigold probably had the best releases of German bands. But I only like certain songs. My newest mini obsession is My Laundry Life. He is great, as you well know having released a split single with him and Kevin McGrother.

Jule: Oh that’s easy to answer, for me it’s BUSCH, Miniskirt (there are also Japanese band members, but the singer has a sweet German accent), Brideshead, Elegant and of course the beloved Lassie Singers.

Silke: I think Stereo Total are fun and still do a great job! When I moved to Berlin I loved the sound of Mina because they sounded so much like Stereolab. Since we had Der Elegante Rest on our night in February (with the Burning Hearts) they are my favourite German band.

++ In the early nineties there were so many great German indiepop bands, now there is maybe just five or less. What do you think had happen?

Laura: I don’t know if we really had that many indiepop bands at all. There were some, but to be honest I think there are hardly any, cos we don’t have a tradition of indiepop as in the UK and Sweden.

++ At the same time most German indiepop labels have called it a day. I feel GEMA has a lot to do with it, but maybe I’m wrong. But I would love to know how do you feel about GEMA and it’s absurd way of taxing culture?

Laura: One big absurd thing about GEMA is that they act as if they were a state institution. They are not and they were just about to raise the prices up to 200%. Venues and club nights couldn’t afford to put on bands and DJs legally anymore. For GEMA you have to name the bands and songs they play in a set. Depending on how many songs they play, how big the venue is and how much people have to pay on the door you as an organiser have to pay GEMA lots of money. They act like the mafia. All the bands who don’t appear in the top 100 won’t get any of the money, but the intention of GEMA is to “protect” the musicians. It’s a farce!

++ In this long run, what have you learned doing the indiepop thing in Germany? What are the dos and don’ts?

Laura: Do what you like, do what you think is right, even when people tell you it won’t work. We only feel good when we continue putting on bands we love. What’s the point of putting so much effort and passion in it when you are not interested in the band?

Luise: I learned that you can’t do everything you want to do. It’s important to have priorities. You should always be honest and fair to everyone if you want others to treat you the same. Think big, don’t lose your ambitions and have fun with whatever you’re doing!

++ So far what has been the biggest highlight of the club? Which have been your favourite nights?

Laura: All nights had something special for sure. For me the highlights for Pop Assistants have been Secret Shine, Ulrich Schnauss and Television Personalities. The highlight bands we’ve done together with p!o!p kombinat berlin are The Lucksmiths and Eux Autres.

Silke: When we organised our first concert with Fosca it was a highlight in several respects. On the one hand it was our first concert ever, on the other hand it was the last concert of the band Fosca. Besides it was the first time Fosca played in Berlin! And it all took place in a very small but cosy cafe where we could not really turn up the volume and it all ended up very quiet. Of course our biggest thing has been The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. But to be honest I regard all of our concerts as highlights as they had a unique character. Especially the Allo, Darlin’ night at NBI I loved very much. So it is hard to make a decision…
Let’s kiss and make up’s highlight so far could have been Epic45.

Kat: I personally thought the evening of the Christmas party with Je Suis Animal playing my favourite set of the year was pretty good. Even if the tree was a bit lopsided.
Jule: I have to agree, our X-mas Special with Je Suis Animal in a cosy atmosphere with hot punch, cakes, cookies and lots of decoration was one of the highlights for me as well.

++ And tell me what is in store for the future? Are there any projects the Berlin people should look forward to?

Laura: All the bands we have playing soon are something to look forward to, yes! After last weeks Blind Terry from Sweden – we are presenting A Sunny Day In Glasgow from Philadelphia 10th of May – And after the opening game for the World Cup we’ll have the German indiepop band Brideshead on the 11th of June.
And we have our first festival planned for the 3-5thof September in a backyard of a beautiful water tower in Kreuzberg. We already have a list with lovely bands and maybe it will be a three days festival.

++ Thanks again so much! Anything else you’d like to add?

Thanks for your patience waiting so long for the interview to be answered!

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Listen
The Field Mice – Let’s Kiss and Make Up

People change. And they do it too often. People change like the weather. People change because of the weather. This is called Seasonal Affective Disorder. I’m assuming many people I know are swept by it every winter. When it’s bleak and dreary, when rain and gray skies wake you up with a gloomy face. But then, what do I know living in a sunny and bright, all year long, place.

Seasonal affective disorder, SAD first referenced in print back in 1985 just when indiepop was starting to brew, and is known to bring depressive symptoms as the days grow shorter in the fall and winter, with symptom improvement as spring returns. At higher latitudes more people are diagnosed with as they are exposed to less sunlight and colder and harsher winters. Women are more often diagnosed with this form of depression than men. Earlier research has shown a strong link between SAD and other lingering forms of depression.

Turn to Flowers penned this wonderful jangly song called “People Change Like the Weather” in 1987 and released it on Imaginary Records (home of The Mock Turtles and Cud). It was a 12″ that included on the B side the songs “Listen to the Dead Man” and “On Her Own”. I’ve never heard these other songs. I wonder if there is some cryptic message, saying the girl is on her own against SAD? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Another calm Sunday passes by and while remembering lost friends, friends that became silent out of the blue, that suddenly vanished from the face of Earth and the world wide web. Music reminds me of them. This song flashes back memories of laughs and conversations driven by complicity. Whatever happened to them who were looking for the perfect song, for finding the elusive record. Did the weather, did depression, devour them? Where are they now?

Perhaps, if they heard this song, if they turn to flowers, they’ll be alright? Have you ever heard of the Bach flower therapy? Bach flower remedies are dilutions of flower material developed by Edward Bach, an English physician and homeopath, in the 1930s.The remedies are intended primarily for emotional and spiritual conditions, including but not limited to depression, anxiety, insomnia and stress. Perhaps that’s what this is all about? Is this the solution? To put it bluntly, Edward Bach thought that dew collected from the flowers was more potent on those grown under the sun.

Coincidences or not, imaginary or not, people do change like the weather. If the horoscope tells us that people are affected by planets, why can’t they be affected by the sun or the light it emanates? Clearly sunlight help us to produce melatonin and vitamin D. Why can’t it affect the brain? Don’t know if Turn to Flowers, this great long lost guitar pop band had any chemists or researchers in their ranks to unlock the secrets of this mystery. All we know is the first names of them. Matt on vocals and guitar, Steve on bass and vocals, Dave on keyboard and vocals and Paul on drums.

But, if in any case, this can’t be ever be solved, and long lost friends from higher latitudes are to be forgotten, can the mystery behind Turn to Flowers be unleashed? Who were they? Did they record more songs? Whatever happened to them? And if anyone out there has a spare copy of this 12″ for me?

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Listen
Turn to Flowers – People Change Like the Weather

Thanks so much to Grant Madden for the interview. Read about his later band, The Halftime Oranges here.

++ Hi again Grant! Thanks again for being up for another interview. We talked before about The Halftime Oranges but, now it’s time for your first band, Passing Clouds! First thing one notices is that the sound is very different, how would you explain the sound of Passing Clouds for those who hasn’t listened to it?

It’s loud and noisy but there is some pop in there too. Maybe not easy listening but better for it.

++ So how did the band start? How did you all meet each other?

Adam and Anne, from the band, had an advert up looking for people to form a band with which I answered I can’t remember exactly all the bands on the advert
they used as influences to narrow down who replied but I remember they were bands I liked and I seem to remember in particular The Blue Aeroplanes were in there who I did like a lot. at the time.
So we met up had a rehearsal with us and a drum machine and it went well enough to prompt another rehearsal and so on.

++ And what about the name of the band? Who came up with it?

I did. I’d had it floating round in my head as a good name for a band for a while (even though I wasn’t in a band but that’s the kind of thing you do when you are young and into music).
Passing Clouds were a brand of cigarettes that were oval shaped, they failed to catch on, they looked like you’d sat on them and crushed them whilst they were in the back pocket of your trousers.

++ Maybe this is a silly question, but do you have some sort of favourite kind of cloud?

I don’t think I did then but now definitely the Mackerel formation. This is where there are many small clouds in the sky that look like fish scales or gentle ripples on the surface of water. I think (I have just tried to look this up) they are cirrocumulus clouds, I could be wrong though.

++ Who were Bite Back! Records? How did you end up signing with them?

We sent out demos and they were interested. I can’t remember if there was a reason why we chose them, whether they had seen us and expressed an interest or whether there was a band on the label that sounded like us or one of us liked. We recorded the first single before they had agreed to release it but they said they’d give it a listen and do so if they liked it. And they must have done so, at least a little bit.
It was quite well received and so I guess that led to the second single.

++ I see the catalogue sheet inside your releases and no name rings a bell. Would you recommend me any of your labelmates?

We played with The Psylons once and they were good. I have records by some of the other bands that I was given at the time I can remember the names but not really what they sounded like. Noisebox records in Norwich were started by Pete Morgan who had been in one of the other bands which had babies in the name but I forget the full name, maybe Crash Babies.

++ Your first release was the “Protect Your Baby Ears” EP, I guess you were trying to say that you were coming up with some beautiful noise! Was that the idea? What do you remember from recording this great EP? Any anecdotes you can share?

Something very much along that idea. I know it came to me whilst at a gig by a noisy American band Anastasia Screamed, (I think they were supporting The Throwing Muses) and there was a young couple in front of me and I imagined it as something one of them may have said to the other.

++ For some reason when I read the title of your second EP “Creation’s Happy Reel” i think of Creation Records. Is there any relation with them on the title? In any case, I think your records would have fitted fine in that label, and I wonder what is your impression of what Creation Records did for independent music?

No it came from a poem about passing clouds by Stevie Smith that my sister passed me a copy of.
I like some creation bands and not others which I guess most people would say and off the top of my head I’d be fairly predictable in saying Velocity Girl by Primal Scream
was my favourite song on Creation. I liked House of Love a lot also.
I’m sure Creation were positive influence for indie music.

++ So were these the only 8 songs you recorded? Or are there more of them lying down in some tapes somewhere? Maybe there were some demo tapes released?

There should be lots of demos.
I’m not sure there is much well recorded stuff around.
I think some of the demos came out on tapes given away with fanzines at the time.
And certainly some came out on the wonderful fluff records on tapes they did.
I tended to like everything fluff did.
After I left the band carried on and released 1 track on a la-di-da records compilation.
The 1 track on la-di-da was 1 of 3 recorded for the 3rd ep. So the other 2 must exist somewhere.
My bits were removed for the la-di-da release !
After this the band changed their name to Fiel Garvie who went on to release lots of stuff.

++ And then, in general, what are your favourite songs by Passing Clouds and why?

‘Not Said’ it was the lead song on the first ep.
I like my lyrics they are not brilliant but I think I surprised myself with them.

++ I want to ask you about the story behind “Into Hole”, it’s such a nice song! Oh! And if Beverley from “Beverley Goes” is a real character?

I struggle to remember what I was thinking when I wrote the lyrics to these songs but I think ‘into hole’ is about being desperately tired all the time and struggling
to cope with life when you feel like that.
Yes Beverley was somebody real and I didn’t bother to change her name to protect the innocent.
I doubt she ever heard it.

++ On the Last.fm bio it says “Passing Clouds achieved limited success at the cusp of the indie/dance crossover, remaining very much on the indie side of the fence.” I agree with it, your sound is much closer to say, The Pastels than to the Stone Roses. But were you influenced by Madchester at all? Or you were just labelled as indie/dance by some journalists? How was that?

I never saw us as an indie dance band – I think that was just what somebody wrote.
The Madchester stuff was happening when we were going and I am sure it was an influence because I was a huge fan of music when I was younger and had more time so I listened to lots more stuff and went to lots more gigs but I wouldn’t say it was a big influence.
Comparisons are always interesting because people see things you don’t see yourself and they might like you because of this.

++ Something I like a lot about Passing Clouds is the boy/girl vocals. I think they mix really well! So I’m guessing most of the songs were written by you and Anne? Or how did the creative process work?

Me in the main and Anne did her bits – we didn’t discuss it too much. Nerves or embarrassment I think.
Sometimes I would say a song is about something and probably wouldn’t be very helpful and only give her 1 word to go on.
If she misunderstood what I was aiming for it didn’t matter because the confusion added something to the battle of the voices.

++ I asked you about Norwich bands last time, but I wonder now, what about the venues in town? What were your favourites to play at?

In those days there was the Jacquard club popular because of its late license, its been shut a long time now, it may be shops I don’t know. The Wilde Club at Norwich Arts Centre was the best place for local bands to get a gig, Barry who ran it would put local bands on to play as supports to bands who were on tour so you got to play in front of a reasonably sized audience. The Waterfront opened around that time and put on a lot more bands than it does now (it lost lots of money doing this as well). We also played the Bystanders club which had a small theatre upstairs and rarely put on bands but I remember it was packed when we played which was fantastic. I think in the main it was a drinking club for postal workers.

++ And yeah, what about Passing Clouds gigs? Did you play many? Which are the ones you particularly remember the most?

We played a lot of gigs.
I suppose I have mentioned the Bystanders gig above being a good one.
Supporting The Fall in Portsmouth was good because I love The Fall.
We supported a female hardcore band called Die Cheerleader who did ‘Harper Valley PTA’ in the sound check but not the gig, I love that song and their version was excellent, faithful if a bit rougher than the original.

++ One last stop in Norwich… and it’s kind of lunch time for me and I’m starving, what’s the traditional meal or dish in your town?

In the culinary area it is famous for mustard (Colmans) and Britain’s most famous tv chef (Delia Smith) is one of the owners of the local football team (Norwich City).

++ And well, yes we have to ask, why and when did Passing Clouds call it a day?

I left for the Oranges the band carried on and became fiel garvie, I am not sure if they have totally given up but they are dormant now.

++ Anything else you’d like to add?

Well as before if you want to hear anything by the passing clouds send me an email to oranges500@yahoo.co.uk with your name and address and I’ll send you something.

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Listen
Passing Clouds – Into Hole

The first time I had cloudberry jam was not so long ago. It was a quiet afternoon in the borough of Hammarby, Stockholm. A late breakfast actually, must have been around 4 p.m.

No hangover. Though we were up till the waking hours. Last night we went to see play The Andersen Tapes at Debaser. It was their debut gig. I don’t remember if we talked or not after arriving home. We had free tickets to get Carlsberg pints at the club. It was three nights since I had proper sleep. The big white couch has never been so irresistible.

Clearly it wasn’t my idea. I’m devoted to diet coke for breakfast and waiting for lunch. But as a good guest I couldn’t refuse even though my kitchen skills were going to be proven. I was handed a blueish bowl and some unknown steel object that might have been taken out from a surgeon’s kit. I think it’s called a whipper, but I’m not sure. The plan is to make Swedish pancakes. Pannkaka. Pour evaporated milk on the bowl. Whip it!

After embarrassing myself trying to make the evaporated milk denser and leaving all cooking responsibilities, the pancakes were eventually made. Huge pancakes. I did serve the table though.

I was explained how this works. You get the pancake and you put some of the cream I just tried whipping on. On top of that I had to spread some jam. Choices were this time raspberry and cloudberry. Then you roll it. After having some sort of burrito, you use fork and knife to cut it. It’s so easy to get full with them. I could have only 2, she had 5. And she is still skinny. I guess it’s a Swedish thing. Or maybe there’s something in the milk.

You wouldn’t guess that I preferred the taste of raspberry, right? Well, I did. I’m not at all a sweets person. I barely eat candies and I avoid any sort of pastries. What I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t too fond of the raspberry’s cloying taste, but my taste buds could handle them better than the cloudberry jam’s strong taste. I guess it’s an acquired taste.

I’ve been staring today to a cloudberry jam pot I have on a shelf next to many 7″ sleeves. It was a gift I was given long time ago, just as I was starting the label. I wonder if it’s time to open it and start practicing to acquire the taste. Moving to Sweden is always an option.

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Listen
Acid House Kings – Swedish Hearts

“I used to have some friends called Geoff and Dawn who were in a band in Leicester called The Moving Fingers (Geoff was also previously in the almost famous legendary Leicester prog metal band Black Widow) and relocated to Norwich and opened a recording studio in about 1983 – The Deep Freeze Mice recorded one of our albums there. The Kamikaze Sex Pilots also recorded there and I met the main guy, who’s name I’ve forgotten, when were up there once. If “Sharon’s Been Deflowered…” is the one I’m thinking of Geoff made a guest appearance on it as Sharon’s boyfriend in a Jilted John sort of way. I think they changed their name to The Kamikaze Pilots later” – Alan Jenkins (Deep Freeze Mice, Cordelia Records)

An indiepop mystery to solve? Let’s start from the beginning…

The Kamikaze were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible.

The Japanese word Kamikaze is usually translated as “divine wind” (kami is the word for “god”, “spirit”, or “divinity”, and kaze for “wind”). The word kamikaze originated as the name of major typhoons in 1274 and 1281, which dispersed Mongolian invasion fleets.

In Japanese, the formal term used for units carrying out suicide attacks during 1944-45 is tokubetsu kōgeki tai (特別攻撃隊), which literally means “special attack unit”. This is usually abbreviated to tokkōtai (特攻隊). More specifically, air suicide attack units from the Imperial Japanese Navy were officially called shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai (神風特別攻撃隊, “divine wind special attack units”). Shinpū is the on-reading (on’yomi or Chinese-derived pronunciation) of the same characters that form the word kamikaze in Japanese. During World War II, the pronunciation kamikaze was used in Japan only informally in relation to suicide attacks, but after the war this usage gained acceptance worldwide and was re-imported into Japan. As a result, the special attack units are sometimes known in Japan as kamikaze tokubetsu kōgeki tai.

Let’s fast forward 38 years. 1983. This is when The Kamikaze Sex Pilots release their first 7″ on Lowther International (same label as Vital Disorders). A great two track round bit of plastic that included on the A-side the song “Dark Night of the Soul” and on the flipside we had “Red Indian Song”. Both of them really brilliant songs. Sadly I still haven’t found a copy of this record for myself. Shame! The catalog number of this record was HCN 002 and was released on an edition of 1000. Though, all the records seem to say on the matrix number on the vninyl: “This Is No. 666 In A Limited Edition of 1000″. And here comes the first hint: it was recorded at Spaceward Studios. Is this the studio Alan Jenkins was talking about?

But it wouldn’t be until 1985 that Cordelia Records would work with the band. On the compilation LP “Obscure Independent Classics: Volume 1 “Magnificent March Of The Dead Monkeys”” the fab song “Sharon’s Been Deflowered and Defoliated” was included. What a song! Should have been a one-hit wonder. Everytime I listen this track I feel like it was The Parallelograms grandparents who wrote it! Bouncy, funny, catchy, as poppy and punky as it can be! Should DJ it more often!

Surprisingly the internet throws in some answers. At a “Norwich bands” facebook group someone tells a bit about the main guy whose name Alan had forgotten:

“Kamikaze Sex Pilots”, Jon Ward was a very underrated guitarist if a little bonkers and sadly he was another one who didn’t go the distance (r.i.p) Remember when he stood for the local elections in the early 80s? He got me and Mick Smith parlimentary passes to oversee the counting of the votes in St Andrews Hall but he got so bladdered in the Festival House he never even showed up pmsl!!

So Jon Ward it was. We can track him back to a previous band called “Carl Gustav and the 84s”. The Messthetics site has a bit more about them as they put the song “Through Birds, Through Fire, But Not Through Glass” (name taken from an Yves Tanguy painting of course) on a compilation.

Carl Gustav and the 84’s certainly had fun with their lyrics. After quoting Cicero, Baudelaire and Clausewitz (long before the Reaganauts and Bushies revived his legend) on their hand-folded sleeve, you’d think they’d be trying to tell us something rather important in “Through Birds, Through Fire, But Not Through Glass,” but we’re not so sure. Still, the images are arresting: “I disemboweled myself to please her / She keeps the pieces in the freezer.”

And I can even track him even further back, to a band called The Painkillers.

And there and back again. 1983. The Peaceful Green Fair. The Kamikaze Sex Pilots played a show there. There is a live recording of it here. But it sounds very different to the songs on the 7″ or the one on the compilation. I wonder why. On this same festival Nick Nation played. What’s the connection? Well, at one pointit seems Sian from the Kamikaze Sex Pilots played with him according to Nick Nation’s myspace.

It also seems that there was a promo video for “Sharon’s Been Deflowered and Defoliated” made by Digby Rumsey. Sadly the streaming of it seems not to work. If only someone could upload it to Youtube. How I wish I could see this video!

Mystery solved?

Quite close I’d say. I have many more questions, starting with why they change the names from The Kamikaze Sex Pilots to just The Kamikaze Pilots, and more importantly, are there any more songs on tapes lying around somewhere. I really enjoy what I’ve heard so far and would love to hear more from them. If someone has a spare copy of the 7″, if anyone has more stories to tell, or more questions to ask, or just more mysteries to solve. The indiepop detective is ready for another job.

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Listen
The Kamikaze Sex Pilots – Sharon’s Been Deflowered and Defoliated

Many thanks to Pete Brickley for the interview! Please be sure to get the Singles CD from The Wallflowers site here: http://www.thewallflowers.co.uk/ or be a friend at their myspace. Oh! And look forward for 8 more upcoming CDs by this fantastic band!

++ Hi! Thanks for being up for the interview! The “Singles” CD should be out anytime soon! I wonder about that letter to Warner Chapell that is on your website… do they own the recordings? What’s the story behind? I’m glad you are doing it anyway. These songs have to be heard by a wider audience!

Hello, well I did contact Warner Chapell about the release but they did nothing to help.So I just ignored them and went ahead!-Nobody owns my music except me

++ What sparked your intention to release all the singles as a collection on CD? I notice there will be more CDs released by The Wallflowers…

Nine albums are ready for release in chronological order. It seemed logical to start with the Singles compilation.

++ Let’s get into the time machine now. When did The Wallflowers start? And who were the members?

I left The Telephone Boxes, shortly after our support slot on the first Smiths tour,to start a solo career but was persuaded by warner chapell to take a band name(from page 1 issue 1 of Spiderman).The line up changed around a bit until the third single 83.7 at which point we settled for a while with Patrick Hunt-drums John Strachan-bass Vic Doyle-guitar and PB-me

++ How did you meet each other? You were based in London, right?

Vic and me were at the same school.Patrick was the Telephone Boxes drummer,who met us just after he left Aztec camera,and through him I met John & we were based in west London

++ How did the Telephone Boxes sounded like? Were there any recordings?

Telephone Boxes were utterly amazing (the Smiths invited us on their first tour and paid our expenses and a modest wage)we sounded like a cross between The Fall & an ice cream van. We recorded four demo”s for various record companies,every Smiths gig,and lots of home tapes. maybe we can release some of it one day

++ Were any you involved in any other bands previously?

Vic was in proto-punksters Death Pop and Patrick had been in Haircut 100 as well as Aztec.

++ There was later, during the 90s, a very popular band in the US with the same name, with Bob Dylan’s son. Not good at all! What do you think about them?

Sorry, I’ve heard of them obviously but I don’t know what they’re like.

++ I have such a soft spot, and I bet lots of many people as well, for the song “Blushing Girl, Nervous Smile”, perhaps one of the best songs ever written. There’s too much beauty on it! Was it written for some particular girl? Where did the inspiration come for it?

The song was written about my girlfriend when I was 16.But was also inspired by the birth of my god daughter.

++ What is the story behind that Johnny Marr was supposed to produce your records? Is this rumour true?

Johnny was (still is) a great friend of the Telephone Boxes,a great personal friend of mine, but no I never asked him to produce us.

++ I also always wondered what do the degrees of your last single “83.7 degrees” stand for? Care to tell me?

Sorry. It just means really hot!!

++ Your records were released by some not very well known labels: Idea and Mantre. Who were they? And how did they got in touch with you?

Mantre was my own label financed by Warner Chapell then stolen from me and renamed Idea.

++ What about gigging? Did you gig a lot around? What are the gigs you remember the most and why?

Not so much gigging lately but good memories of The Smiths, Stone Roses, Orange Juice, Bundhu Boys
Tom Verlaine, 10,000 Maniacs & more.

++ From those days which were your favourite bands? What were you listening to?

REM, The Dbs, Lets Active,J Cope.

++ When and why did you call it a day? Did you get involved with other bands later?

Sorry, we never did call it a day.

++ What are you doing nowadays? Are you all still in touch?

Natch.

++ Thanks again so much! Anything else you’d like to add?

Keep in touch. Only eight albums to collect after this one. The band is at present Kent Davies-drums since 1988, Stu Timmonds-bass since 1991, Vic Doyle-guitar back again.

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Listen
The Wallflowers – Blushing Girl, Nervous Smile

Thanks so much to Michael Bonini for the interview. The fantastic Hardy Boys are back with a great retrospective CD called “Play Songs from the Lenin and McCarthy Songbook” that no one should miss. On this interview Michael also tells us about another upcoming CD by the band and some gigs! The most important comeback of 2010. For me it is!

Hi Mike! Thanks for doing this interview! First thing that strikes me is that you are in Canada! What happened with Greenock on the Clyde?

I left Greenock (Gourock actually…next door to Greenock) in 2000 because I got married to a Canadian so I came over and have been here ever since. Davie and John now live in/near Glasgow and Derek and Ian still live in Greenock. The new Hardy Boys drummer Paul also lives in Glasgow.

See more photos here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

++ So let’s talk business, how come there is now a new and brilliant retrospective CD, many years after you split? When did you decide it was time to do it? And was there any particular reason that sparked you to do it?

The Hardy Boys recorded a lot of songs in studios between 86 and 90. When we played people were always interested in getting more than the Wonderful Lie single so we packaged up the best of our recordings and put it together as a cassette and sold the cassette at gigs. We never released it properly at the time because we split but Elefant Records in Spain put it out as a cassette release around 1991 and we called it “5 years of boring Pop Songs”. Once the internet took off we sold it directly to fans as a CD. John had continued to play in bands and people were always asking him about the hardy boys. We started to sell a lot CDs in Japan and then noticed the Wonderful Lie single selling for lots of money on ebay. People were writing about us in blogs etc so we decided to release the CD properly. So we remastered it, designed a cover and here it is. Gigs to come soon.

++ I’m not familiar with Zzzing Recording Company? Who are they?

Niall Harkiss set up Zzzing to release the Hardy Boys CD and also Spy Movie’s new single.

++ Where does the name of the album “Play Songs from the Lenin and McCarthy Songbook” come from?

The Beatles were mostly songs by Lennon and McCartney so it’s a little political twist on that. Lenin and McCarthy being the communist and the anti communist.

++ I noticed that this album had leaked before on some of these blogs that give away free records. What is your position about them?

It cost us a lot of money, time, sweat and tears to write and record and promote those songs. When someone decides to take our music and give it away or use it for other purposes without consulting us first and asking for permission then its theft. No different from me walking into your house and taking your personal photographs. Its easy to do and its hard to stop but its not right.

++ So let’s go back in time now? I was wondering how did you all meet in 1985? And how was those early days as a band?

We all sort of knew each other. Greenock’s not a huge place. Some of us were in the same school or we went to the same clubs. I knew Alan Bannister so I got to know the rest of the band through him. There were quite a few line up changes in the first year and the line up didn’t settle until about December 1985. Early gigs however were actually pretty polished considering the line up changes but few songs written in that year survived beyond it. Seascape is the first Hardy Boys song ever written and we played it right up to 1990. I saw quite a few of the early shows before I joined. They were pretty noisy and the songs were all very different from each other. There wasn’t really a focused sound at the beginning. It was all their own stuff and the Hardy Boys rarely played cover versions

I have time … I’ll give you the edited highlights of where we all came from..

John White, Eddie Follan and Jim Ward played in a rockabilly band in 1984 called Creek Crosby and the Crewcuts. That lasted about a year then they formed the Hardy Boys. Billy Creighton joined on drums and Raymond Jack on saxophone. That was the line up for the first gig in 1985. Raymond quit and Alan Bannister who played guitar with a band called Rhythm of Cruelty (along with Billy Creighton) joined. Jim and Billy were both dropped late in 1985 and Gordon Finlay joined on drums. I joined in 1986 (I was in a band called Life Without Drums) after they borrowed my keyboard for their first demo. At the end of 1987 we replaced Eddie and Gordon with Davie McArthur and Ian McLachlan. Davie and Ian were in a band called Safe Houses at the time and they asked John to play guitar for them in return for them playing bass and drums for us (Are you following all this? )
Alan quit in late 1989 soon after Wonderful Lie was released and Davie switched to guitar and the safe house’s (by this point they had split) bass player Derek Mullen joined on bass. In early 1990 we added Kate Baker on violin but she became ill and could not play with us all the time. We split at the end of 1990

++ Was it an easy choice to call the band The Hardy Boys? Why did you name it that way?

Named after the writer Thomas Hardy. A favourite of John’s at the time.

++ Why did it took 4 years to release your first single?  I mean, you had waaaaaay better songs than many bands that were so prolific during those years?

Its not that easy when you live in Greenock. The musical centre of Britain is London and we were very far from London. We also had day jobs, were at uni or had families so it wasn’t easy to get into the ‘scene’ at the time. There is a lot of luck or being in the right place at the right time involved in being in a band. I guess we weren’t in the right place at the right time so we had to do it the hard way. So it took longer.

++ And how did Stella 5 Records came to you? Care to tell me a bit about the label and how did the negotiations were?

Neville from Stella 5 picked up at tape of ours from Probe Plus in Liverpool and liked it. He had a few releases on his own label and he offered to put a single out by us which we eventually did. Neville is a top top bloke

++ Then what happened? I hear you toured quite a bit with some bands like River City People and Babylon Zoo. What were your favourite gigs in general? Any anecdotes you could share?

We would play anywhere but the best gigs always seemed to be in England. We always had fun watching peoples puzzled faces trying to understand what the hell our drummer was talking about. He had a very strong west of Scotland accent

++ Then there was a one-off gig in 2000, a decade after breaking up, right? How come? and how did it go?

That was just for fun because I was moving to Canada. More on that later….

++ During those touring days you became good friends with the Blue Aeroplanes. And with Angelo Bruschini you recorded your next single “Let the World Smother You”. How was that experience?

Angelo is a friend of Neville’s and he offered to mix Smother. So he came up to Scotland with Neville and we had a fun weekend… recording studio, gig and a lot of booze. Good fun. My favourite Hardy Boys song still.

++ I have to say “Let the World Smother You” is among my favourite songs ever. Would you mind telling me what the song is about and how did you get inspired for it?

I asked John this one…..his answer…

“Hmm, I don’t like being asked what songs are about but hey hoo….LTWSY is an angry song.- it’s about celebrity culture and consumerism, about the fact that pictures of £2,000 shoes will get space in the newspapers above a story about people starving.”

Little extra info on Let the world….
When Alan quit the band we were in the middle of a short tour to promote the single. We still had one English date to play and we had about a week to rehearse Derek for all the songs and davie had to learn the guitar. During one of the rehearsals Derek started to play this riff that we liked and it turned into LTWSY. We played it as a new song at that English gig. It was a bit slower and didn’t have the big ending at that point but it was exactly what we needed at the time. A bit of fresh input. We fine tuned it pretty quickly and it we always finished the set with it after that. My best memory of the Hardy Boys is when we were in full flight at the end part of that song.

++ Talking about songs, I always find odd, but in a good way, how “Fifteen” sounds very different from everything else you wrote. Perhaps it was an early song of the band?

This is also John’s answer……

“Fifteen was one of the first songs I ever wrote. It was written in G after reading that Johnny Marr specifically wrote This Charming Man in G because many hit singles are in G!..it’s a key that lots of people like. The song is basically about the universal experience of being young and awkward and having a crush on someone. It’s about imagining that when you speak finally to her that you’ll be as charming as Cary Grant, but you end up coming across like a stuttering idiot.”

++ Back to the second single… it didn’t come out till 2005 on the Egg Restoration Series. It was supposed to come out in 1991 in the same label (Egg Records). What had happened?

In the UK in the 80s there were a bunch of regional distribution companies that were generally referred to as “the Cartel’ but were individual companies. The one we used was Probe Plus and they were having financial trouble hence the single being shelved. When we split at the end of 1990 we didn’t see any point in releasing it somewhere else. Again it was bad timing for us. Egg had wanted to release it in 1991 but we were not going to promote it so that was that until they approached us again in 2005 and released it as a CD single with three other tracks on it. Plink plonk fizz, Storm and Send Me a Sign

++ Then the next logical question, is why did you break up? And if there was any major label interest at all?

Inter band tensions that all just all got a bit out of hand. The disappointment with the single (Smother You) not being released didn’t help. It was a low point that just spiraled out of control and we ceased to exist as the Hardy Boys after a gig in Aberdeen in December 1990.

++ What happened after? Were any of you involved with other music projects?

The thing that a lot of fans don’t realize is that we continued after that. Myself, Davie, Derek and Ian decided to start practicing again and just see what happened. Kate at that point was too ill to take part. We would go to our rehearsal space and just jam out new ideas. The sound without John became a lot harder and noisier but at that point it was just music with no singing. I think it was only about Feb 1991 when John came along to see what we were doing and really liked it. He basically picked up a guitar, joined in and by the end of the night had added vocals to our first new song. We sat down and discussed a more inclusive approach to writing songs which resulted in Davie singing a few and John and Davie sang on the same songs and John sang solo on some. The question of the name came up. Do we keep the Hardy Boys or do we change it because the sound isn’t very hardy boys-ish anymore. We decided to change it. Probably not the best decision we ever made. With a new name (we decided on Flame Up) we effectively had to start again. We continued as Flame Up until 1994. As flame up we never got anywhere near the popularity of the hardy boys and people didn’t realize that it was the same 5 people. We weren’t a massive band so a lot of stuff was word of mouth so when you travel half way across the country to play the same venue that you played a year before as the hardy boys then not everyone is going to realize its basically the same band. It may come as a surprise to you but as far as all 5 of us are concerned … Flame Up around 1991-1992 was the best we ever were creatively and live.
We released 1 7”single called Need I Say More. As Flame Up we never played any Hardy Boys songs. Our first gig as Flame Up had Let the World Smother You and a song called Famous Last Words. We dropped them both during the gig so we never played them. FLW was a very very early Flame Up song that we decided sounded too much like the Hardy Boys hence the reason we never played that.

John quit Flame Up in 1993. He wasn’t happy with the direction it was going. We limped along without him for a while longer and then stopped. In 1995 myself, John and Derek started messing around again writing songs. We recorded an album which we called Nova Scotia. We kept using the name Flame Up. We also put together a CD of the earlier flame up songs that we call ‘Crank It’. Usually people who inquire about Hardy Boys material end up with this stuff as well. After I went to Canada, John formed “Mouse Eat Mouse” and released a single and an album (Mair Licht) to critical acclaim around 2004. It’s a very strange sounding album as it is sung in ’auld Scots’ (that’s a language that they used to speak before they anglified us). He quit in 2008 not long after Davie had joined. Davie has since quit Mouse Eat Mouse and now both of them are in Spy Movie which John started in 2008.
I was back in Scotland in 2008 for a few days and took the opportunity to record John singing that very early ‘Flame Up sounds like the Hardy Boys’ song “Famous Last Words”. I had recorded a rough backing track for him to sing to. I asked Davie to record the guitar but he didn’t want to. Derek came to Toronto on holiday the same year so I recorded his bass then I filled in the rest of the guitars and mixed it. So I class that as a new Hardy Boys recording even without Davie actually playing on it. I play his guitar lines so that’s close enough

And that’s pretty much that.

As far as Hardy Boys are concerned there will be their first proper gig in 20 years on April 29 2010. Line up will be

John White, Davie McArthur, Derek Mullen and Paul McArthur (Davie’s son). Paul will be playing drums. Most of us haven’t seen our original drummer Ian for years. He no longer plays music. They are currently arranging for a short tour in the UK for September which I will hopefully go over for.

We will have another CD available shortly called Outakes. This is a CD of all the other stuff we recorded but didn’t include on the Lenin CD. Its currently being remastered. Much of it is made up of recordings from 1988-89. The master tapes of these recordings were lost in a fire before the mix was done but I had a partly mixed cassette of what we had recorded. Famous Last Words is on it and some other recordings from 1986 and 1987.

++ Oh! I think I’ve asked way too many questions, more than we agreed, it’s just that it’s fantastic to be talking to you, I really do love The Hardy Boys music. Thanks again so much Mike for this interview. Anything you’d like to add? Maybe some shameless promotion about the CD?

The CD is a pop masterpiece from the 80s but still fresh and great today. Direct everyone to out facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Hardy-Boys/189925802324

and

the zzzing recording company

http://www.zzzing.co.uk/

and

myspace site

http://www.myspace.com/thehardyboysmusic

and if you are only of the ipod generation then get it on itunes worldwide

++ Oops! one last minute question! What does Plink Plonk Fizz mean?

There was a TV commercial in the UK in the 70s and 80s for a headache remedy called Alka Seltzer which had 2 tablets drop into a glass and the little slogan was plink plonk fizz. The song itself is about the music scene in the UK in the late 80s where bands like happy Mondays glorified the use of drugs… hence Plink Plonk fizz (here’s another song about drugs. Make sense?

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Listen
The Hardy Boys – Let the World Smother You