I've been meaning to put this up for a while, finally got to it today. Have a free download of The Cartographer by Rockets Burst From The Streetlamps, our great lost Pop single.
There's also a less distorted version available on the Know Your Enemy: Friends Of The Archenemy Record Company compilation as we could never agree on a final mix.
December 1996. I run into my friend Erin Carey who takes me to a holiday party at The Umpteens' (featuring Don Lennon) house in Allston, MA. There I meet Keith Uram who I'm thrilled to discover is as into BritPop as I (a rare thing in Boston back then). The following summer, Erin takes me to The Model (a beloved Allston bar) on a Monday night, where I meet Craig Uram (Keith's twin brother) and Rick Webb. The new Spiritualized album (Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space) is due to be released the next day but of course we all already had it. And thus began lifelong friendships. Later that autumn my sister drops me off at Lupo's in Providence, RI to catch Spiritualized on tour. I'm on my own but I run into Rick again who invites me to sit with them. I meet Annie Smidt for the first time.
I'm vaguely aware they have a band. It had been a while since I'd played in a band. I was thinking of getting back into it. Turns out Craig & Keith are living across the street from my sister Jaime and I (Royce Road, Allston) that year, and I'd often see them out walking their dog. Occasionally I'd ask about their band. The next summer, after I've graduated from Boston University, I ask again and Craig tells me that they're actually looking for a bass player. "I can play bass," I tell him. And soon I'm invited to audition. Only thing is I didn't own a bass when I stated this. So with some of my graduation money, I headed down to the Guitar Center and bought a beautiful inexpensive Mexican Fender Precision Bass. A bass I still have and love today. We rehearsed a few times and then I was off to backpack around Europe for a month and a half (I remember I decided not to take a Walkman with me. Ever since I could remember, whenever I'd go on vacation, I'd bring a bag stuffed full of tapes. From the age of 15, I tried to limit it to 40. But even this was difficult - you never knew what you would want to listen to at any given time. So I thought of it as an experiment. What would it be like going without your own personal music for a month and a half? To be fair, I would be living out of a backpack for all that time so there wasn't much room. Up until the last minute I toyed with the idea of making just 5 really great mix tapes. But no, I decided to go without, deluding myself that this would free up my ears to soak up the music of the cities I found myself in. Needless to say, it was one of THE WORST ideas I've ever had, and the aftereffects lasted months. I remember going to visit my friend Sia in Paris and when we got to her dorm, being filled with such delight, like a long thirst being quenched, as I sat down at her boombox with her selection of tapes - The Wannadies, The Pixies' Doolittle...)
So yeah, I get back from Europe and we play a gig days later. Very quickly we started writing songs, coming out of jamming, almost always coming from a bassline I came up with at rehearsal (I'm a guitarist most of all, but I do love playing bass. Of course a lot of it then ends up sounding like Peter Hook ; ) The first song we wrote together was called Parks & Gardens, which I just listened back to last night and thought it was brilliant. You can see the Nick Cave influence, who we were all obsessed with at the time, mixed with our love of indierock. It's available on the Odds & Ends EP which is the bonus disc of our Departed album (if anyone's interested, I'd be happy to send you the mp3s, and I'm sure Rick would send you a cd if there's any left).
Our second song sprang from a bassline I had. The way I was playing it at the time, it really reminded me of The Sea & Cake. When I heard what Annie did with it, I was really pleased and surprised. I had not expected it to turn out so poppy (this happens with almost everything I do ; ) It was a lot different from the rest of the songs and the rest of the stuff we were continuing to write. In the winter of 1999, when I was becoming a partner in The Archenemy Record Company, we decided to release it, coupled with All The Same (an old song of Rick's, again that didn't quite fit with the others), as a 7". Sean Drinkwater recorded it at his house, the first time he and I were to work together. I had a lot of fun making the guitar noises on All The Same. A video Rick made for it:
It's strange thinking back to the beginning of it all. It was a really great time (the making of the album, whilst a lot of fun in places, is quite a different story, with us all sneaking into the studio independently to put down things we'd hope the others wouldn't catch. But a story for another time). We'd rehearse 3 or 4 times a week, in a loft spaced they rented with a bunch of people. But a lot of that was sitting around drinking wine and talking about music, film, and literature. I learned about a lot of cool stuff. I still feel indebted to Craig for introducing me to The Divine Comedy and Opal's Early Recordings.
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