Artistic Vice

You lucky Spaniards! The upcoming WP's tour to Spain has the interesting premise of them doing a set of Daniel Johnston covers - in fact, the whole of Johnston's 1991 LP Artistic Vice.

 They've covered him before, and indeed played as his backing band, but the real scoop is the band will be selling a studio version of their covers as a tour only cd. File next to their Springsteen and Molina covers records. Will they sell copies when they return? Will they put it on bandcamp? Will the rest of the world forever be envious of the 100 people who buy it over the course of the gigs? Time, as ever, will tell. I imagine this is the sort of thing they can bang out in the time it takes to listen to, so hopefully some of the recent recording sessions which have been mentioned were to capture original material. Don't let 2014 be the first year without a WP's album!

In other news, a recent interview here - http://www.histericasgrabaciones.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=121%3Athe-wave-pictures-city-forgiveness-2014-entrevista-a-david-tattersall&Itemid=114 - was happily translated on the site:

Why the name The Wave Pictures?
We took our name from a book that my parents gave me for Christmas one year. It was called ''Art Now''. It was a little paperback book about modern artists. In it, there was a chapter on an artist called Zoe Leonard. She created a series of photographs called ''Wave Pictures'' which gave us our band name. It's not that we were fans of her or even that I liked that book especially. It just sort of sounded right. It's not a very exciting story, but that's the truth. That's where the name comes from. We've been called that for so long that the name has absolutely no meaning to me, it's just what we are called!
 

The songs of The Wave Pictures sounds to Rock, to Folk, and obviously to Pop, a curious mix of styles that results in the exquisite sound of your music, what really are your musical influences?

We listen to loads of things and take whatever we can from wherever we can. I suppose the biggest influences on the band are the 60s groups like The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, and also 70s things like the Ramones, Television and Jonathan Richman. We all listen to loads of blues and rock and roll, music from the 50s – T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, which is all about feeling and musicianship. We can't really play as well as those people, but it certainly inspires us a lot. As for songwriting, ''The Natural Bridge'' by the Silver Jews was a really big influence on me. It affected the way I thought about what lyrics could do. Again, I can't write as interesting stuff as David Berman, but it's something to aspire to.

 

Why you titled "City Forgiveness" to your new disc?

The title came to me in a dream. It's the only time that anything useful has ever come to me in a dream. I woke up, and wrote it down, and then went back to sleep again.

 

Something has changed from previous albums, who is different in “City Forgiveness”?

We have some great special guests on City Forgiveness: our mate Dom playing a whole second drum kit on some tracks. That was a great day! Two drummers playing at the same time! Chaos! We also did a bunch of tracks with Paul Rains from Allo Darlin – he's a great guitar player. And we did some with Stanley Brinks, who is always so creative and talented and just brilliant to be around. It was a lot of fun!

 

12 albums and 16 years on the road. Many things have happened at this time to The Wave Pictures. Any anecdote you can tell us?

I'm afraid not – musicians have a saying: ''what happens on tour stays on tour''.

 

You will start a new tour around Europe. What are you going to offer in your live concert, and what do you hope from the public in your shows?

Franic Rozycki has been playing some really amazing bass lately. Every show he does something new that impresses me. He is very creative and a really original bass player. I can't believe that he does it every show – every show he surprises me! You should watch out for that at the shows. 

 

Do you have any surprise or any plans alternative to this tour for 2014? Can you anticipate anything to us?

We're recording an album at the moment and it's going to be great when it's finished! It's really really fun at the moment. We're having a lot of fun in the recording studio. That'll be out soon. I hope it will anyway!

 

Do you think the digital world will end with music as we know it today? What do you think is the future of music?

The thing that makes me most sad is that record shops struggle to survive. They sell so few records these days that they can't afford the rent anymore. Ever since I was young I really liked record shops. I even like the smell of them! When The Wave Pictures go on tour we really look forward to checking out the record shops in each new town we go to. Unfortunately, a lot of times the record shops are closed down, or maybe there will be just one left in a town. Loughborough, which was the nearest town to where I grew up, used to have four record shops. Now it doesn't have any. I guess I'm just nostalgic, but I don't think the internet is a good substitute for everything. The internet is wonderful in all sorts of ways, but I think it has taken over in too many areas of life. The internet is no substitute for record shops. But it is putting record shops out of business. 

 

What is your best memory about music?

We did a tour a few years ago where we played as Daniel Johnston's backing band. I just found his music so uplifting to play. It was so much fun playing his songs every night. That's a great memory. It was a really happy time.

 

What do you think about current economic situation in Europe and World in general?

I am worried about Britain. A very right wing party called UKIP has become popular here. They are quite a racist party. I am afraid that this is a trend all over Europe. I wonder if the economic situation makes people scared and the fear makes them vote for more conservative parties. It is a worrying time.

 

Could you tell us about...

 

... A book?:

Savage Night by Jim Thompson

 I really like Jim Thompson. He writes these very dark, strange thrillers. A couple of them were made into films. There's two really great films of Jim Thompson: The Grifters (directed by Stephen Frears) and The Getaway (directed by Sam Peckinpah). You would get a sense of how dark and strange Jim Thompson is by those two wonderful films, but when you read him you see how much more experimental he was than most pulp fiction writers. Sometimes you're reading pure prose poetry, other times it's a hard-boiled thriller. I particularly liked ''Savage Night''. That would be a good one to read first. He's great.

 

... A movie?:

Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven.

This is a really strange, long, very dark film, with these incredible moments of beauty in it, too. It's also completely kitsch, very camp and completely fake. It's kind of just it's own reality – it's very postmodern but it also works just as a straight film. It's not really like anything else. I think it's great. So entertaining and funny. I love Paul Verhoeven: Total Recall, Robocop, Basic Instinct... he made so many fun movies!

 

... A song?:

Be My Baby de The Ronettes

The other day i was in a bar and ''be my baby'' by the ronettes came on the jukebox. There's just nothing better than that song! The intro is so great and it's all so melodramatic and moving. It's a little bit kitsch but just incredibly emotional at the same time. It's just one of those songs that gets me every single, it doesn't matter how often i hear it, i always respond to it.

 

... An album?:

Leave Home by The Ramones

The last album I listened to was ''Leave Home'' by The Ramones. That's a great album! So many fun songs, including their excellent cover version of ''California Sun''. It's got a lot of their best stuff on it:   Oh Oh I Love Her So, I Remember You, Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment. I always liked Joey Ramone's voice, he is a sort of a ridiculous singer but he's still kind of moving. He does a fake British accent, which is very unusual because usually British singers put on American accents! 

 

.. A group or soloist?:

Barbecue Bob.

Lately, something that I really like is a cd called ''Chocolate to the Bone'' by Barbecue Bob. Barbecue Bob was very popular in the 30s. He was a blues singer, but with kind of a humourous, gentle style. In his day he was much more popular than Blind Willie McTell or Leadbelly, but history hasn't been especially kind to him. He's not exactly a very famous name! He doesn't get mentioned when they talk about the great blues singers. There's something kind of humble about what he does. It's very simple, almost innocent music. But the more I listened to it the more I realised what a strong and brilliantly intelligent musician Barbecue Bob was. The first track on the album is called ''Motherless Chile Blues''. You've got to hear it: it's one of the most beautiful pieces of music that I've ever heard. Somehow the sound and his voice and the really simple guitar part just make this perfect, mysterious little whole. It's like a dream, that song! The whole ''Chocolate To The Bone'' cd is worth getting, though, in my opinion. It's such a brilliant collection. I have to say, I'm a Barbecue Bob fan!