The Cravats released two albums and numerous singles during their original tenure between 1978-82, but were not a prolific live band. In fact, I’ve only come across a handful of people who ever saw them live during that period. Rob Dallaway and The Shend were a lot less stage-shy with their following band, The Very Things, but that was an entirely different escapade. So I must admit I was quite surprised when The Cravats reformed in 2009, but also a little wary that they would be performing without original guitarist Rob. But that being said, when they did eventually play in London and I got to see them for the first time, I was more than impressed. Although only performing old material with this ‘live ensemble’, they did so with considerable style and aplomb. I managed to see them in a variety of locations over the next few years and they were always very entertaining and enlightening, but I couldn’t help but think that something was missing and that ingredient was new songs. But, as The Shend himself declared during my interview with him and Svor Naan back in 2012, they were not interested in writing any new stuff.
But in the meantime, The Cravatian line-up changed once again, this time introducing guitarist Viscount Biscuits and bassist Joe 91 into proceedings, alongside The Shend, Svor and drum-wizard Rampton Garstang. I’m glad to say that this combo provided a whole new chemistry that was set to change the dynamics quite positively. They took their time to do things properly, but in 2016 they returned to the world of vinyl with two excellent new singles, ‘Jingo Bells’ and ‘Blurred’. The reception was very positive so they continued with their plans and, this year, rewarded us with a brand new album, ‘Dustbin of Sound’. It’s superb, that’s all you need to know !
With this monumental moment taking place, I arranged an interview with The Shend and went along to meet him before the albums’ launch show at The Lexington. Complete with a few asides from Rampton, this is the conversation that followed…
But in the meantime, The Cravatian line-up changed once again, this time introducing guitarist Viscount Biscuits and bassist Joe 91 into proceedings, alongside The Shend, Svor and drum-wizard Rampton Garstang. I’m glad to say that this combo provided a whole new chemistry that was set to change the dynamics quite positively. They took their time to do things properly, but in 2016 they returned to the world of vinyl with two excellent new singles, ‘Jingo Bells’ and ‘Blurred’. The reception was very positive so they continued with their plans and, this year, rewarded us with a brand new album, ‘Dustbin of Sound’. It’s superb, that’s all you need to know !
With this monumental moment taking place, I arranged an interview with The Shend and went along to meet him before the albums’ launch show at The Lexington. Complete with a few asides from Rampton, this is the conversation that followed…
My first enquiry had to be about the comments Shend had previously made in this very same music hall, a mere five years ago, to the extent that the band were ‘not really interested in writing any new stuff’. Since ‘Dustbin of Sound’ has proved otherwise, I have to ask what brought about this very commendable U-turn ?
Shend ; I’m a hypocrite and a liar, what can I say ? No, I think it was when Viscount Biscuits and Joe 91 joined us. They just fit-in perfectly with what we wanted to do and the new stuff started writing itself. We released the two new singles last year to see how it would go and they sounded great so we just carried on. We already had a lot of new material by then so we thought we ought to make an LP out of it.’
The new album is still very identifiable as The Cravats, even though the material has obviously moved on from what the original band were doing in the Seventies and Eighties…
Shend ; I think that’s the way it should be. There’s five people creating the sound and everybody knows what it should be, but each person will have their own view of it. Someone will come up with an initial idea but everyone else will know what they need to add to it to make it a Cravats song.’
Rampton ; The songs all end-up with 20% of everyone in there, which is lovely. We’d just start-out with maybe a rough bass-line and a vocal melody, or perhaps there’d be a sax-break. There were a few where Joe had riffs and played them to us, which we used as the root while we played through. We’d all join-in to bash them out so they really were full band efforts. Everyone had their own ideas at first but the songs didn’t really get in to shape until we all came together to work on them. Maybe Joe would start playing something on the bass but then we’d all start to jam-along in a Cravats style, which basically means, we were doing things wrong ! We tend to start on a wrong beat and in a wrong key, but some great things came out of that. We’d just play together until we heard something coming through that sounded good, and we’d go with it. Me and Joe really seem to lock-in together when we’re playing, so I think it was easy for the others to join-in and I think we got some great stuff from that. For a while, we were taping all of our practice sessions so we could listen to them afterwards and see if there was something we thought was good. That way, even if it was just a little riff, we could go back and use it. So I think it all grew together very organically.
Shend ; I think Svor is the real arbiter of taste when it comes to the new material. If we come up with a new tune but we can tell that he’s not too happy with it, that seems to be a good test of quality. In fact, he’s told me that the new LP is the first Cravats recording that he really enjoys listening to. He never really listens to any of the other Cravats recordings because he’s always thought they could have been recorded better. But he loves the new album.
Much that I love the older Cravats records, I do have to agree that this album is very accomplished. The whole production and arrangements are perfect for the songs…
Shend ; Mr Rampton Garstang was responsible for all of that !
Rampton ; We started out by just making rough recordings so we could take them away and listen to them, to decide how we wanted them to sound on the finished album. But when the guy in the studio started producing them, he was cleaning-up the tracks too much, taking out all the rough bits like the feedback and the rumbles… After a while, we thought, What’s going on here ? He was trying to make it sound like The Killers or someone like that ! So Shend suggested I should have a go, because I had done a little bit of mixing and production stuff in the past. I went right back to the original recordings that we’d done in the studio because we’d already done all of the hard stuff. We’d made sure that we’d got really good sounds from the amps and the drums and the guy had recorded it all really well, so there wasn’t much more to be done there. All we had to do was make the best use of what we already had and mix it the way we wanted it to be on the album, so we went back to where we’d been about a month before and started again. I think, because I’m the drummer, I was able to listen to what was going on with everyone else while we were playing and get a really good feel for it. I wanted the drums to be right in there but not too loud, which is what a lot of people do, and I wanted the guitars to really kick-in. You can hear the drums really clearly in the verses, for example, but when it comes to the chorus, they’re really battling for their place. I wanted the guitars, sax and drums to all be battling for the same space. Shend heard what I was doing and he liked it so he told me to go with it. I didn’t want any frilly bits, I just wanted it to represent what we sounded like in that room, which was bloody loud ! And I’m chuffed to bits that we got there. I think it’s the only recording I’ve ever done where I can sit down, listen to it and really hear what I wanted us to sound like. It sounds like me… it’s definitely me !
Shend : I think it’s also a case of now having forty years of experience and forty years of listening to other people. Everything we’ve done in between times will come into it, even the acting I’ve done.
Shend ; Mr Rampton Garstang was responsible for all of that !
Rampton ; We started out by just making rough recordings so we could take them away and listen to them, to decide how we wanted them to sound on the finished album. But when the guy in the studio started producing them, he was cleaning-up the tracks too much, taking out all the rough bits like the feedback and the rumbles… After a while, we thought, What’s going on here ? He was trying to make it sound like The Killers or someone like that ! So Shend suggested I should have a go, because I had done a little bit of mixing and production stuff in the past. I went right back to the original recordings that we’d done in the studio because we’d already done all of the hard stuff. We’d made sure that we’d got really good sounds from the amps and the drums and the guy had recorded it all really well, so there wasn’t much more to be done there. All we had to do was make the best use of what we already had and mix it the way we wanted it to be on the album, so we went back to where we’d been about a month before and started again. I think, because I’m the drummer, I was able to listen to what was going on with everyone else while we were playing and get a really good feel for it. I wanted the drums to be right in there but not too loud, which is what a lot of people do, and I wanted the guitars to really kick-in. You can hear the drums really clearly in the verses, for example, but when it comes to the chorus, they’re really battling for their place. I wanted the guitars, sax and drums to all be battling for the same space. Shend heard what I was doing and he liked it so he told me to go with it. I didn’t want any frilly bits, I just wanted it to represent what we sounded like in that room, which was bloody loud ! And I’m chuffed to bits that we got there. I think it’s the only recording I’ve ever done where I can sit down, listen to it and really hear what I wanted us to sound like. It sounds like me… it’s definitely me !
Shend : I think it’s also a case of now having forty years of experience and forty years of listening to other people. Everything we’ve done in between times will come into it, even the acting I’ve done.
I assume that Shend is behind all of the lyrics ? What kind of topics inspire you these days ?
Shend ; How much the tyres on my four-by-four will cost… No, I think it’s still the same things as always. Things that I come across when I read the news or, nowadays, things that you discover on the internet. You come across things that will trigger ideas. ‘Bury The Wild’, for instance, is about that period in the late Eighties when there was that massive outbreak of Mad Cow Disease and they ended up slaughtering 188,000 cattle. I think everyone remembers those images of the dead cattle being burned. For some reason I started thinking about that again while the album was being made and that started me off with those lyrics.’
With a lot of your lyrics, you don’t seem to actually make a statement as such, but rather just raise the issues or images so that the listeners can think about them for themselves…
Shend ; Well, yeah, because in a way, what right have I got to make a statement ? All I’m doing is observing. I mean, the best comedies, the best plays, the best journalism, it’s all observational. Everybody can see the same thing and form their own opinion, so mine is no more important than anybody else. I can think what I want to think about something, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to come to the same conclusion.
The album opens with the track ‘King Of Walking Away’… you’ve had a thing about Kings over the years… ‘King Midas In Reverse’, ‘For King Willy’…
Shend ; Hmm, that’s an interesting point, although it’s never really entered my mind before now…but I’ll probably start pondering over it now. Someone else actually said they thought ‘King Of Walking Away’ was about Brexit, which was an intriguing idea. But it’s really about a relationship where someone turns out to be an utter arsehole and instead of being nice and supportive to the other person, just tells them loads of lies. It’s a song about lies, really, and not just in personal relationships. Governments lie to the people they’re supposed to represent, the Media lie to the people they’re supposed to inform… everyone is capable of telling lies when it suits them. But the problem is that people are happy to just accept what they’ve been told. They always have and always will do. I’m sure it was exactly the same in Saxon times and I’m sure it will be the same in another fifty years’ time. I think that’s what makes it valid for The Cravats to be back after thirty years, because the situation now is exactly the same as it was then. That’s why we haven’t needed to change our aesthetic at all. I mean, it’s only supposed to be the young that are angry, but in our case, the older you get the more you realise why you were angry in the first place.
Shend ; How much the tyres on my four-by-four will cost… No, I think it’s still the same things as always. Things that I come across when I read the news or, nowadays, things that you discover on the internet. You come across things that will trigger ideas. ‘Bury The Wild’, for instance, is about that period in the late Eighties when there was that massive outbreak of Mad Cow Disease and they ended up slaughtering 188,000 cattle. I think everyone remembers those images of the dead cattle being burned. For some reason I started thinking about that again while the album was being made and that started me off with those lyrics.’
With a lot of your lyrics, you don’t seem to actually make a statement as such, but rather just raise the issues or images so that the listeners can think about them for themselves…
Shend ; Well, yeah, because in a way, what right have I got to make a statement ? All I’m doing is observing. I mean, the best comedies, the best plays, the best journalism, it’s all observational. Everybody can see the same thing and form their own opinion, so mine is no more important than anybody else. I can think what I want to think about something, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to come to the same conclusion.
The album opens with the track ‘King Of Walking Away’… you’ve had a thing about Kings over the years… ‘King Midas In Reverse’, ‘For King Willy’…
Shend ; Hmm, that’s an interesting point, although it’s never really entered my mind before now…but I’ll probably start pondering over it now. Someone else actually said they thought ‘King Of Walking Away’ was about Brexit, which was an intriguing idea. But it’s really about a relationship where someone turns out to be an utter arsehole and instead of being nice and supportive to the other person, just tells them loads of lies. It’s a song about lies, really, and not just in personal relationships. Governments lie to the people they’re supposed to represent, the Media lie to the people they’re supposed to inform… everyone is capable of telling lies when it suits them. But the problem is that people are happy to just accept what they’ve been told. They always have and always will do. I’m sure it was exactly the same in Saxon times and I’m sure it will be the same in another fifty years’ time. I think that’s what makes it valid for The Cravats to be back after thirty years, because the situation now is exactly the same as it was then. That’s why we haven’t needed to change our aesthetic at all. I mean, it’s only supposed to be the young that are angry, but in our case, the older you get the more you realise why you were angry in the first place.
I think that’s why so many bands from the original ‘anarcho’ scene have been able to reform successfully in recent years… So much of what they were originally singing about is still unfortunately relevant today…
Shend ; Well that’s certainly true in many cases, although with others their lives have moved on, maybe they have jobs or they’ve got married, so it wouldn’t really be honest for them still to be singing about smashing the system. That would be pretty stupid, which is why I made my facetious remark earlier on about the cost of tyres for a four-by-four… for anyone to reform and still write songs that specifically relate to when they were young, it’s always going to be awkward. I mean, maybe they were singing about not being able to get a job at the time, but since then they’ve been working for the last twenty years so it isn’t going to ring true. But others, who addressed things in less obvious ways are much more able to maintain their relevance. That’s the thing… everyone’s going to move on, so you have to sing about what you know, not about what you were. If what you know now is something that other people can recognise, then it’s great.
The song ‘Blurred’ begins with a mention of ‘Toytown’… obviously that references The Cravats’ first album, but it does also seem to be an allusion that maintains its’ poignancy…
Shend ; It’s that idea of a charmed life… we all live in Toytown, we all live in this ridiculous world and we all either go mental and kill ourselves or you learn how to live through it. You don’t have any control over any of it. You don’t create it, but we’re all part of it.
It seems that you’re interpretation of Toytown is actually a quite sinister place…
Shend ; Well, it is ! I mean, even the original concept with Noddy and Big Ears… I wouldn’t have liked to meet them in a dark alley !
Shend ; Well that’s certainly true in many cases, although with others their lives have moved on, maybe they have jobs or they’ve got married, so it wouldn’t really be honest for them still to be singing about smashing the system. That would be pretty stupid, which is why I made my facetious remark earlier on about the cost of tyres for a four-by-four… for anyone to reform and still write songs that specifically relate to when they were young, it’s always going to be awkward. I mean, maybe they were singing about not being able to get a job at the time, but since then they’ve been working for the last twenty years so it isn’t going to ring true. But others, who addressed things in less obvious ways are much more able to maintain their relevance. That’s the thing… everyone’s going to move on, so you have to sing about what you know, not about what you were. If what you know now is something that other people can recognise, then it’s great.
The song ‘Blurred’ begins with a mention of ‘Toytown’… obviously that references The Cravats’ first album, but it does also seem to be an allusion that maintains its’ poignancy…
Shend ; It’s that idea of a charmed life… we all live in Toytown, we all live in this ridiculous world and we all either go mental and kill ourselves or you learn how to live through it. You don’t have any control over any of it. You don’t create it, but we’re all part of it.
It seems that you’re interpretation of Toytown is actually a quite sinister place…
Shend ; Well, it is ! I mean, even the original concept with Noddy and Big Ears… I wouldn’t have liked to meet them in a dark alley !
The song ‘Big Band’ includes references to that musical era, but it’s obviously about more than that…
Shend ; It’s about isolation, really. Keeping a beat but you’re not the lead singer, you’re just existing. You’re not the important, famous person so everything’s wobbly and could fall to pieces at the drop of a hat. The majority of people are just ordinary and trying to keep a rhythm through their life, hoping that someone else picks them up.
‘Batter House’ seems to be more about things that you can’t avoid…
Shend ; Yeah, it’s literally about being surrounded by noise and not being able to escape it. Whether it’s machinery or just the general noise of life, you can’t really get away from it. You either have to go along with it or make your own noise to try and drown it out. It’s not a specific noise, just noise in general, the white noise. Whether it’s TV, radio, mobile phones… every era has its’ thing. It used to be newspapers, but that was over-taken by the internet, and right now we’ve got this whole thing about ‘fake news’ or whatever. But it’s all just noise that surrounds you.
I was also intrigued by the song ‘Motorcycle Man’. Lyrically, it’s a very wry addition to the ‘biker’ genre of songs…
Shend ; The song is about someone thinking they’re got freedom when, really, they haven’t. You know, people get on a motorbike and suddenly start thinking that they’re Marlon Brando, without any cares, but really they still have to conform to certain rules even to be able to do that. It’s all about what’s in your head, but then again, that’s true of everything. What’s inside your head that is important to you, but it’s quite probably not important to anyone else. So you may as well be your own God, if you like. That’s all you’ve got, really, so you should be as nice as you can be, as thoughtful as you can be, but you shouldn’t try to put these things down on anyone else because they may not be so impressed with them. Everybody’s got their own thing, so maybe there is a freedom in just blasting down the road… Also, I think this is the first specific motorcycle song since Chris Spedding released ‘Motorbikin’’, so my other idea was, whenever they show fast motorbikes on TV, perhaps they’ll use our song on the soundtrack… At least it’ll give them the option ! But, no, really it’s about that idea that some people embrace, that when they get on a motorbike, dress in the leathers and go down the road that it makes them a rebel. In their heads they are, but they’re not really. It’s a sense of false freedom, but in their heads for that brief time, that’s how they feel. I think everybody finds a way of achieving that feeling, whether it’s drinking down at the pub or playing squash or paying-off the mortgage… Everybody tries to find a way of feeling like that because it’s a release. Otherwise you’re just stuck in a place that you might not be enjoying.
Shend ; It’s about isolation, really. Keeping a beat but you’re not the lead singer, you’re just existing. You’re not the important, famous person so everything’s wobbly and could fall to pieces at the drop of a hat. The majority of people are just ordinary and trying to keep a rhythm through their life, hoping that someone else picks them up.
‘Batter House’ seems to be more about things that you can’t avoid…
Shend ; Yeah, it’s literally about being surrounded by noise and not being able to escape it. Whether it’s machinery or just the general noise of life, you can’t really get away from it. You either have to go along with it or make your own noise to try and drown it out. It’s not a specific noise, just noise in general, the white noise. Whether it’s TV, radio, mobile phones… every era has its’ thing. It used to be newspapers, but that was over-taken by the internet, and right now we’ve got this whole thing about ‘fake news’ or whatever. But it’s all just noise that surrounds you.
I was also intrigued by the song ‘Motorcycle Man’. Lyrically, it’s a very wry addition to the ‘biker’ genre of songs…
Shend ; The song is about someone thinking they’re got freedom when, really, they haven’t. You know, people get on a motorbike and suddenly start thinking that they’re Marlon Brando, without any cares, but really they still have to conform to certain rules even to be able to do that. It’s all about what’s in your head, but then again, that’s true of everything. What’s inside your head that is important to you, but it’s quite probably not important to anyone else. So you may as well be your own God, if you like. That’s all you’ve got, really, so you should be as nice as you can be, as thoughtful as you can be, but you shouldn’t try to put these things down on anyone else because they may not be so impressed with them. Everybody’s got their own thing, so maybe there is a freedom in just blasting down the road… Also, I think this is the first specific motorcycle song since Chris Spedding released ‘Motorbikin’’, so my other idea was, whenever they show fast motorbikes on TV, perhaps they’ll use our song on the soundtrack… At least it’ll give them the option ! But, no, really it’s about that idea that some people embrace, that when they get on a motorbike, dress in the leathers and go down the road that it makes them a rebel. In their heads they are, but they’re not really. It’s a sense of false freedom, but in their heads for that brief time, that’s how they feel. I think everybody finds a way of achieving that feeling, whether it’s drinking down at the pub or playing squash or paying-off the mortgage… Everybody tries to find a way of feeling like that because it’s a release. Otherwise you’re just stuck in a place that you might not be enjoying.
‘Hang Them’ is possibly the most obvious satire on the album, talking about capital punishment…
Shend ; Well, exactly, but I tried to write that almost like a cartoon, you know ? Putting it in sensationalist, tabloid terms. But the point was to ask, how can you justify having the right to kill somebody even if that’s what they’ve done ? It doesn’t make sense. If you’re saying what they did was wrong, how can you then say it’s okay for you to do the same thing ?
The final track on the album is ‘All U Bish Dumpers’ which I assume is, lyrically at least, a sort-of cut-up experiment ?
‘That was based on a sign that we came across… we’ve included a picture of it on the album artwork. I think that’s the one song that’s totally Dada-inspired. The rest of the lyrics are random sentences taken from Wikipedia, with every third word changed so that it becomes nonsensical. I think we could have probably done that with a lot of things on Wikipedia without changing anything, anyway… I enjoy doing stuff like that because we always get people coming up to us saying, ‘I think that song s about this…’ but it really isn’t about anything specific. It’s just cut-up words based on a sign that was falling apart. It was a simple observation that started me off in a different direction. I saw that sign, ‘All U Bish Dumpers’ and I thought, that sounds brilliant, so when the others came up with an appropriate tune, I started putting all the random stuff together and that was it.’
The Cravats always had a very solid but relatively small following. The people who got into it, really got it, but you never managed to cross over to a wider audience. But since the reactivation of The Cravats you seem to have been playing a lot more regularly and you’ve also received support from the likes of Marc Riley and Gideon Coe on BBC Radio. Do you think that’s helped to get you to the attention of a new audience as well as the original fans ?
Shend ; Well, definitely, but it’s still a small scale thing. It would be nice to not be in the position of having to win people over and that they just heard us and decided, Yeah, we get it ! But in reality, this is the nature of the beast and if you’re trying to do something different then this is what you’ve got to accept. People will hear you and say, this isn’t what we’re used to hearing, but of course it isn’t because that’s not what we’re trying to do. You could always just try to sound like somebody else, but that’s pointless. I wouldn’t want to do that. I don’t want to hear anything that just sounds like somebody else.
Shend ; Well, exactly, but I tried to write that almost like a cartoon, you know ? Putting it in sensationalist, tabloid terms. But the point was to ask, how can you justify having the right to kill somebody even if that’s what they’ve done ? It doesn’t make sense. If you’re saying what they did was wrong, how can you then say it’s okay for you to do the same thing ?
The final track on the album is ‘All U Bish Dumpers’ which I assume is, lyrically at least, a sort-of cut-up experiment ?
‘That was based on a sign that we came across… we’ve included a picture of it on the album artwork. I think that’s the one song that’s totally Dada-inspired. The rest of the lyrics are random sentences taken from Wikipedia, with every third word changed so that it becomes nonsensical. I think we could have probably done that with a lot of things on Wikipedia without changing anything, anyway… I enjoy doing stuff like that because we always get people coming up to us saying, ‘I think that song s about this…’ but it really isn’t about anything specific. It’s just cut-up words based on a sign that was falling apart. It was a simple observation that started me off in a different direction. I saw that sign, ‘All U Bish Dumpers’ and I thought, that sounds brilliant, so when the others came up with an appropriate tune, I started putting all the random stuff together and that was it.’
The Cravats always had a very solid but relatively small following. The people who got into it, really got it, but you never managed to cross over to a wider audience. But since the reactivation of The Cravats you seem to have been playing a lot more regularly and you’ve also received support from the likes of Marc Riley and Gideon Coe on BBC Radio. Do you think that’s helped to get you to the attention of a new audience as well as the original fans ?
Shend ; Well, definitely, but it’s still a small scale thing. It would be nice to not be in the position of having to win people over and that they just heard us and decided, Yeah, we get it ! But in reality, this is the nature of the beast and if you’re trying to do something different then this is what you’ve got to accept. People will hear you and say, this isn’t what we’re used to hearing, but of course it isn’t because that’s not what we’re trying to do. You could always just try to sound like somebody else, but that’s pointless. I wouldn’t want to do that. I don’t want to hear anything that just sounds like somebody else.
I don’t think The Cravats ever played outside of England originally. Have you had the opportunity to play abroad since the band reformed ?
Shend ; Not recently, but we did play in Athens a few years ago, which was amazing. It’s something that we’d really like to do more because, to be honest, a lot of European audiences seem to have a much more open mind towards different kinds of material. The UK does seem to produce a lot of great stuff but at the same time, the audiences seem to like putting it all into specific genres. In the rest of Europe, they seem to be a lot happier to mix things up. A gig will start with a band, but then they’ll show a film or have someone doing spoken-word before the next band play. Over here, you just have a band, followed by another band, followed by another band… It makes it a lot more interesting when you can mix it up rather than just having more of the same thing. I like gigs that trigger things in your brain rather than just giving you exactly what you expected. That being said, there are a lot of really great venues you can play in this country and we’ve certainly played in some really lovely places. But it would be great to play more around the rest of Europe, because it is very different, although unless you have an agency doing it for you, you’re just the same as any other band phoning up and saying, can we have a gig, please ? Hopefully it’ll be different now that we’ve released the new LP and it’ll be the case that people won’t just say we haven’t done anything for 30 years… We’ll be able to tell them about the new album and maybe they’ll be interested. All the reviews we’ve had so far have all been very positive and a lot of them have been from people who had never heard of us before or who didn’t know anything about the band… They’ve had to go away and look up things before they found out that John Peel liked us and we did all those sessions, or that we released records on Small Wonder and Crass… It’s great that we’ve got that background and passionate support from yesteryear, but it’s also people who are listening to music now that we want to attract. There are still a lot of bands that are breaking new ground and are tired of the turgid old dinosaurs of the Punk Rock era, just in the same way that we are. We were never really a part of that even back then. People would hear us and say we were too bloody weird, but we were thinking, that’s great, that’s the way we want it to stay ! We never made a conscious effort to sound like anyone else because we lived in a bubble in Redditch and we had to make our own thing, which is exactly what we’re still doing now. We may all have our different influences and we’re all a lot older than we were, but we’re all aligned now and this is the happiest I’ve ever been in any band. Without a shadow of doubt !
Shend ; Not recently, but we did play in Athens a few years ago, which was amazing. It’s something that we’d really like to do more because, to be honest, a lot of European audiences seem to have a much more open mind towards different kinds of material. The UK does seem to produce a lot of great stuff but at the same time, the audiences seem to like putting it all into specific genres. In the rest of Europe, they seem to be a lot happier to mix things up. A gig will start with a band, but then they’ll show a film or have someone doing spoken-word before the next band play. Over here, you just have a band, followed by another band, followed by another band… It makes it a lot more interesting when you can mix it up rather than just having more of the same thing. I like gigs that trigger things in your brain rather than just giving you exactly what you expected. That being said, there are a lot of really great venues you can play in this country and we’ve certainly played in some really lovely places. But it would be great to play more around the rest of Europe, because it is very different, although unless you have an agency doing it for you, you’re just the same as any other band phoning up and saying, can we have a gig, please ? Hopefully it’ll be different now that we’ve released the new LP and it’ll be the case that people won’t just say we haven’t done anything for 30 years… We’ll be able to tell them about the new album and maybe they’ll be interested. All the reviews we’ve had so far have all been very positive and a lot of them have been from people who had never heard of us before or who didn’t know anything about the band… They’ve had to go away and look up things before they found out that John Peel liked us and we did all those sessions, or that we released records on Small Wonder and Crass… It’s great that we’ve got that background and passionate support from yesteryear, but it’s also people who are listening to music now that we want to attract. There are still a lot of bands that are breaking new ground and are tired of the turgid old dinosaurs of the Punk Rock era, just in the same way that we are. We were never really a part of that even back then. People would hear us and say we were too bloody weird, but we were thinking, that’s great, that’s the way we want it to stay ! We never made a conscious effort to sound like anyone else because we lived in a bubble in Redditch and we had to make our own thing, which is exactly what we’re still doing now. We may all have our different influences and we’re all a lot older than we were, but we’re all aligned now and this is the happiest I’ve ever been in any band. Without a shadow of doubt !
With the gig already underway, we end on that appropriate note and I return to the main room to watch the first band of the evening, The Astronauts. I’ve not really paid too much attention to this band before, but they’re actually pretty good tonight. Playing with a full band (they sometimes play acoustically) the songs come across much more effectively and I quite enjoy their short set on this occasion.
Main support comes from Interrobang, but I have to admit I wasn’t particularly impressed with their first few songs and ended-up downstairs meeting-up with several friends. Oh well, I’ll give them another go next time.
Finally, it’s time for The Cravats and although they play a fairly short set (around 50 minutes) it was certainly one of the best I’ve seen them perform, sounding totally enthused with the mass of new material. Starting with the first two tracks from the new album, ‘King of Walking Away’ and ‘Batterhouse’, they’re clearly enjoying themselves and the feelings are infectious. Even thoungh many haven’t yet heard the new album, the audience are right behind them from the outset. The new songs are instantly recognisable as The Cravats even though they’re a definite leap forward from the original output. With new material as strong as this, I doubt that anyone is going to be complaining and even though it’s not until the seventh song of the set that they delve into their back catalogue, with an appropriately frantic version of ‘Off The Beach’, I can honestly say that I hadn’t heard a single call for any old songs before that point. A great version of ‘Hang Them’ follows, creating an almost unnerving edge to the set, before an unexpected live version of ‘All U Bish Dumpers’ builds into a wonderfully chaotic climax that segues into the excellent finale, ‘I Hate The Universe’. This ends with the band members taking leave of the stage one at a time leaving their amps still feeding back, until the stylish young lady who has been watching Cravats TV at the side of the stage nonchalantly strolls over and switches-off the reverberating tones. Perfect !
Main support comes from Interrobang, but I have to admit I wasn’t particularly impressed with their first few songs and ended-up downstairs meeting-up with several friends. Oh well, I’ll give them another go next time.
Finally, it’s time for The Cravats and although they play a fairly short set (around 50 minutes) it was certainly one of the best I’ve seen them perform, sounding totally enthused with the mass of new material. Starting with the first two tracks from the new album, ‘King of Walking Away’ and ‘Batterhouse’, they’re clearly enjoying themselves and the feelings are infectious. Even thoungh many haven’t yet heard the new album, the audience are right behind them from the outset. The new songs are instantly recognisable as The Cravats even though they’re a definite leap forward from the original output. With new material as strong as this, I doubt that anyone is going to be complaining and even though it’s not until the seventh song of the set that they delve into their back catalogue, with an appropriately frantic version of ‘Off The Beach’, I can honestly say that I hadn’t heard a single call for any old songs before that point. A great version of ‘Hang Them’ follows, creating an almost unnerving edge to the set, before an unexpected live version of ‘All U Bish Dumpers’ builds into a wonderfully chaotic climax that segues into the excellent finale, ‘I Hate The Universe’. This ends with the band members taking leave of the stage one at a time leaving their amps still feeding back, until the stylish young lady who has been watching Cravats TV at the side of the stage nonchalantly strolls over and switches-off the reverberating tones. Perfect !
‘Dustbin of Sound’ has exceeded all expectations which is a remarkable achievement when you consider that it’s been 37 years since the first LP ! But this is The Cravats and I really don’t think they would’ve done it unless it was going to be this good. If you haven’t already got this album, trust me that it is one of the albums that you have to buy this year. Similarly, if you still haven’t seen them live, make it a priority. For more information ;