Flying Saucer Attack #2

FLYING the man for the better portion of two rebroadcast. The BBC is finally hours. waking up to the fact that they have a SAUCER lot of stuff on those old transcription PT: Tell me what music you’ve been discs. Like the Small Faces BBC ATTACK listening to lately -- I assume you’ve sessions CD that just came out; those amassed a big collection of records are plainly taken from the It’s been some time since the since you’ve worked in a record store [transcription] albums because of the Terrascope checked in with Dave and haven’t been moving as often as interviews. Those are not the full Pearce, the sonic auteur behind you did in the early ’90s. sessions, just three or four songs from Bristol’s Flying Saucer Attack. A lot each session, along with sort of of changes have transpired in recent DP: I’ve been in the same house here introductory/interview, “we’re gonna years regarding both the FSA camp in Bristol for several years now, but do this next song” stuff. and Pearce’s personal life, and in fact I’ve only got maybe 40 CDs -- I had Pearce dropped out of sight for over more, but I cracked up for a little In addition to the increasing two years, temporarily silencing what while, and I ended up taping some of availability of old and archival was once one of the most prolific the CDs and trading them in. So now I material, the Internet is opening up voices operating in the indie world. just have a hard-core bunch of CDs. new avenues for musicians -- of all Yet he’s come back with the strongest Things like The Monks, that demo ages! -- to make their music available. FSA statement to date, ‘Mirror’ album; the (English) Birds, their CD (available in the UK on the FSA label with unreleased stuff added on it; Yeah, bands don’t have to wait for and in the U.S. -- with different things I’m really attached to. the record label. They can just shove artwork -- on Drag City). As you’ll it all up onto the Internet. You know, shortly read, making the album was a I’m all for the reissue of vintage back in ’84, when I was 18 and we had painstaking process for Pearce, and it albums, and with CDs, the archival a band at school, no one was involved a conscious moving away movement appears to be stronger than interested at all. You didn’t have a from some of his trademark lo-fi drone ever, both here in the States and in hope in hell of even getting the indie elements and adopting new strategies, England. labels like Rough Trade interested. including a heavier reliance on simple They were “up there” somewhere acoustic guitar arrangements and Yeah, for awhile you couldn’t get a lot while you were “down here.” You had clear (as opposed to previously murky of stuff. Remember Simon [Edwards] to save up an awful lot of money even and poorly mixed) vocal passages. who did the first FSA album? He’s to put out your own single, which we Meanwhile, it’s great just to have done my new album over here, and we did. And not only just the pressing Pearce back among the working did the Electric Prunes in Stockholm cost for a 7-inch single; the recording musicians. He did, after all, play a CD as well. He did all the money side; cost, too. Then, you had to go into a hugely important role in the ’90s I did the persuading, making all the studio. Even if it was someone’s shed explosion of droney spacerockers, not phone calls to people and making the it was still going to cost a lot because to mention the fact that many of the connections, kind of the packaging the only recording equipment was the FSA recordings still maintain an too. Simon used to do the English “proper stuff.” The first basic 4-tracks otherworldly effervescence years after punk label Riot City, Vice Squad, in were available over here, but they their release. And while it was never the ’80s, and a label before that called were horrible. Pearce’s intention to be an icon or a Heartbeat who did early Blue spearhead -- as he puts it, when he Aeroplanes, Glaxo Babies. Now he’s I wanted to ask where you fall on the and Rachel Brook initially formed thinking of starting up another label. side of technology nowadays, since I FSA some 7-8 years ago, and even And we’re seeing about maybe doing know you don’t have a computer and later when many of their Bristol some other Stockholm radio stuff. you prefer to record at home. associates such as Third Eye Foundation, Crescent, AMP and The Konserthuset venue has generated Well, as a process of communication I Brook’s other band Movietone began its share of bootlegs over the years. Off think computers are fine. My friend operating under the glare of the top of my head, I know I’ve got Rocker [long-time FSA international fanzine attention, it was both some Hendrix and Doors shows cohort/collaborator], because he’s a simply a case of a couple of people from there. dentist he has lots of money and he having a go at making some music -- likes all this modern stuff, you know? he should be content to know that his Yeah, that’s where they were He’s got the computer, sampler, what legacy is assured among his many fans recorded for radio. They’re all proper have you. But round here it’s just the and friends. Given his artistic talent recordings, Swedish radio broadcasts. basic setup. And I have had some and the insightful manner in which he They’re like the German TV stations experience with using computers for ponders matters of the larger cultural but unlike the BBC, generally the the visual arts; when I was in college picture, Pearce would seem to be a Europeans keep their masters -- if not they had one of the earliest painter variation of the Robert Frippian the 4-track masters, then the programs, and I played around with archetype: a small, not-so-mobile, mixed-down masters. But not in that. But my problem with computers highly intelligent musical unit. Britain; the BBC just destroys them. is that when you seem to say that the It would be interesting to see what digital way is the only way. I still I reached Pearce via telephone from was recorded at the time. Apparently can’t agree with that. In music, there the U.S. to Bristol one wintry evening some of the tapes were remixed for is a bit of place for that. But there’s on Dec. 27, 1999, and rambled with stereo and rebroadcast in the mid ’80s, still a place for the old fashioned like that Traffic bootleg, that was a approach. The thing is you always have to adopt an apologist’s position, no...” You can’t say, scrap this! I best in the long run. But I stopped and sometimes it doesn’t have to be remember standing up for pretty believing that, you see, just before we done digitally because the texture, much everything up until that one; last spoke. either pictorially or soundwise, the you ship them off to a label in the digital way is different to the analog States or somewhere and you know Were you songwriting? Or was there way. That’s not to say you can’t that what they get is the finished ever a period when you weren’t doing record some digitally and transfer it to thing. But that one... it was wrong. anything musically? cassette or load it up to an 8-track. It But it wasn’t just, “oh, my music’s all doesn’t have to be one or the other; wrong.” It was more... stuff. And as I Right. The “new album phase”. Yeah, you can still hand-draw something said, [depression] runs in my family. there was a good long time I was then scan it onto a computer and So yeah, you spoke to me when it was doing absolutely nothing at all. The work with it that way. But there the start of all that. 8-track didn’t get switched on for a seemed to be a lot of talk that you had year. This new one was recorded over to go digital like, 3 or 4 years ago. It seemed like a long lay-off, especially a long period of time. Each song was Everytime I’d talk to the label in considering the sheer volume of done individually; they weren’t done London they’d always ask me, “When records that came out under the Flying like three going at the same time. It you gonna ‘go dance’?” In my mind Saucer Attack Name prior to that. was just the odd bit of musical dance meant digital. And there was all activity going on here and there, each that trying to kill off the vinyl thing, Those early FSA records occurred in recorded separately. So I’d heard you know. And it’s just a different such a blur! In many ways, it was a these songs so many times, sound. Okay, you could say to me, nice time. Then about the time of individually, that when I got the test “Your records are pretty scrappy.” Chorus we tried to do some gigs in pressing for Mirror I thought, And I wouldn’t disagree with you.

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