Quotes
'Your Woman' was originally released on US indie Parasol in July '96. I played it when I was DJing and noticed that everyone loved it and started dancing. With encouragement from my then girlfriend (now wife!), I sent it off to a few radio stations.
With my close mates nothing changed. And it only strengthened my relationship with my grilfriend cos we went though so much together.
What I most hate is endless rock'n'roll anecdotes about ODs.
We, the artists, make the stuff they sell and they're like ticks on our backs, sucking the life out of us.
They sing along to love songs that feature lyrics that must be meaningless to them. And people write songs with lyrics deliberately shorn of adult emotion, adult ambiguity to fit this market. Pop becomes only about candy-coloured pre-teen pop.
They consistently hobble artists' in the name of selling more units then are surprised when the fans don't buy the lukewarm music this produces. So they then drop the artist.
There's so much excellent new music around that I can't afford to buy it all and I haven't the time to review as much as I'd like. I can't remember a better time to be a musician or to listen to music!
There's a place for constructed, machined pop. Hell, one of my favourite bands is the Monkees and, as they originally started, you couldn't get more constructed than that (cept maybe the Archies!).
There should be a place and the space for all pop.
The most important thing is perseverance. I didn't have a hit because I'm thin or beautiful or had major-label backing, I had a hit cos I never went away, no matter how many walls of apathy I came up against.
The first band is Plans And Apologies and they're kind of folk-emo, very catchy melodies coupled with very loud bits.
The best press stuff I did was with French pop journalists, people who knew about Francois Truffaut, Wilhelm Reich, Noam Chomsky and Marxism. Most of the other press stuff was 'what's your favourite colour?'
The Americans are more honest about it and just call it college rock.
Sometimes, an afternoon spent in bed with someone can be the most important thing in the universe.
Rusk are melodic post-hardcore and their singer has one of the best voices I've ever heard. He's destined for stardom, I'm sure.
Real experiences with real A&R people. Most of the stuff isn't made up, just slightly exaggerated. Really, the average musician has no idea how craven and devious A&Rs are.
On some songs you're hearing the vocal as I improvised it (as in 'Function Of The Orgasm') so you may hear me stumble.
Number one in eight countries, over 350,000 albums sold in North America alone. All of which I'm proud of - I did that! From a little bedroom recording done on a cassette multitracker!
Now, having dealt with both Universal and EMI, I can say that I directly know that two major corporations are run by idiots who have no knowledge of music and little understanding even of basic bourgeois economics.
My contract had a clause in saying I had total control over all artistic aspects. They wanted a cover of naked robot women. I objected. They said you can have whatever cover you want - you're the artist. But if you have that cover, we might not release the single for, ooh, four months.