I get interviewed by Peru’s Mr Indie Pop

It was, I guess, a headline waiting to happen.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that a chap called Roque from Plasticina Records (from Peru) got in touch asking if I’d do an interview for his blog.

I’ve interviewed many people over the years but this is, I think, only the third or fourth time I’ve been on the receiving end, talking about our bands.

Anyway, Roque has published the interview here, with a nice picture of me, Gaynor and Jim in Madrid.

In other news, I’ve been remembering how much I loved early early Primal Scream and have been downloading their, yes, early Peel sessions and some bootleg live stuff.

(I interviewed Bobby Gillespie once, you know. Maybe I could have used that as a link here?)

This was around 1985/86 and I just thought the Scream were possibly the greatest band in the world. All their songs were two minutes long and sounded like genuine classics: even if you didn’t love the jangly guitars and Gillespie’s erratic singing (and I did), you could see they were great songs.

Surely.

I also quite liked that they had a full-time tambourine player.

They didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard. I guess the guitar sound was ripped off of the Byrds but to my teenage ears the Byrds sounded very MOR.

I might argue that these Primal Scream sessions achieved everything that Sarah Records and loads and loads of other little indie labels were later trying to do.

That Gillespie would go on to be come the nation’s foremost light entertainer, chemical experimenter and Mick Jagger impersonator would obviously stick in the craw of real indie-ists.

But, you know, get over it.

(Of course, when you read a Gillespie interview you often get the idea that he believes he is a black man, fronting a reggae/funk band. This irritates some people, but I find it quite entertaining.)

Anyway, given the whole wistful, unrequited vibe of this early stuff, before the Scream donned the collective leather trouser and went all rawk, it’s entirely appropriate that possibly their best songs (like Subterranean and Aftermath) only exist on BBC sessions and live bootlegs. Even though many of those early songs appear on their first album, Sonic Flower Groove, there’s something a bit glossy and unsatisfactory about that record. For one thing, all the two-minute songs have been stretched out in length with strings and gloss, kind of defeating the point. It’s still worth a listen, though.

So: here’s a surprisingly good live (bootleg) recording of an early Scream song that I just got hold of on the web – Sonic Sister Love – from Middlesbrough Town Hall in September 1986. Enjoy!

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