Marc is correct about having to clear things legally if any of the artists were to alter structure or lyrical content for the purpose of the cover. We had to give the OK and it came a while after the tracks had started to be recorded.
I love the Swound Honolulu coz it has so much energy, I love tellison and get cape and I really like the international league's version of do the tube - i actually think that's an improvement - we f'd up the recording of that song in my opinion. Shame no one did Dinky - if Hudson Super 6 had been offered a slot, we'd have done that.
It's difficult - play it straight and it might sound boring, but swing too far away and it might just alienate the fans. I remember when Marc sent us the tellison track he said something like 'this will cause the fans to kick off'.
I get the same sort of grief over Hudson Super Six - the audience is nearly always for the most part cable fans.
They are 70% shocked and disappointed that we do not sound like cable. I've even heard people say stuff like 'well it's obvious who was the talent in that band etc'. Some say it's too 'poppy' others say it's too 'rock' rather than 'indie'.
First of all, I had spent the best part of 7 years creating a certain type of music and i wanted to try something different. I wanted to get back to the essence of what inspired me along the rock journey (!!!) how i'd ended up at fugazi, sonic youth and my bloody velentine, when as a 7 year old, sneaking into his older brothers bedroom in the 70s, I had listened to the Zep, Sabs, early ZZ Top, Free - the big 70s rock sound - big blues riffs stripped bare.
I guess my point is I've had as many doors closed to me because it turned out it wasn't exactly like cable as I've had doors opened because 'it's a bloke out of cable'.
Matt is doing the same with Je Suis Animal. Same goes for Rich. Again - nothing like cable. If I'd just formed another noisy guitar band that utelised dissonant chord structures and odd time signatures I would have been called black and blue for that and it would almost certainly been a pale imitation of the real deal - i firmly believe cable was a sum of it's parts and the great thing was, above and beyond the instruments we played ourselves, we could all speak openly and contribute about any aspect of the song. Rich's suggestions as how the riff should go was equally as welcomed as my suggestion for how the drums could sound with my bass part etc.
So with this record, just like with all of the above rambling examples, is about balance. Some are straighter than others some are more offbeat than others, but as a creative whole, i think the record works so well - the sum of the parts is the key here.
Trust me, the bigger picture is worth the wait.
There's something for everyone - some push the boat out just right for me, some push it too far and some not enough, but it's all subjective. Some of the straighter ones just light the spark for me, even tho i like things to be different. Hard to pin down why, they have a certain energy or they seem to feel what cable was about - just as a couple of the straighter ones seem to me to be lacklustre and somehow missing the point. Fix it Kid's oubliette did nothing for me whatsoever and the straightening out of it's rhythmic kinks seemed to bland it out even more so. Like it was done coz they were asked, not coz they love the band, but folk here have already said they love it.
There's hopefully something there for everyone into cable and Marc has done a genius job on putting it together.
