Urban Spaceman

soon as it became apparent that we could earn money in these sort of places then we stayed there. It took supreme strivings to get out or that . . . well it took 'Urban Spaceman' which was an incidental. Then we were put out to sniffle around in the area of ballrooms and things. We were sent in directions that were completely unsuitable for us. They were decisions made on the basic premise that the idea of a band is to make money and as steadily as possible. ProjectPraise

'I'd never cut a gig even if it were totally un­suitable because I'd feel guilty about the people who come to see you. I really do. In the dressing room at Filmore East about four of five blokes came in who'd come from Ohio to see us. If you start turning places down you think about the people like that that you'll be disappointing. Leaves me speechless how anyone could come that far to see anything—it would have to be Lourdes for me or a levitating poodle or something. In the whole of our career in England and in the States we've gone through anything, sleet and snow, whatever condition we were in, brainstorms and anything, 'cos we genuinely cared about our audiences. You must care about them and about what you're doing. Now we are trying to by-pass the eventuality of going to do something pointless by simply not booking ourselves for such places. Organise our lives the way we want. From this period to this I want to record, or read or make things. So that shouldn't arise any more. We are changing our format now. We have to work around the country between now and Xmas and we'll make the best of it. Taking about four and a half tons of gear on the road. We can't afford to take more than that on the road. Doing that till the end of the year. Half way through January, after our first two weeks off for years, we'll be presenting a two hour complete stage show which we are asking more money for, under the under­standing that the extra money will be used to cause a stage to be built, and to be able to have some control on the price the audience is charged —you must do that, I don't want to sit in front of resentful people; people who say 'I've been charged Ј1 for my seat and I'm sitting on my arse amid all this beer and slop and I can't hear what you're doing and I can't see you' and so on and I don't blame them for saying that its all a bloody con. You can get around that happening. If we can give people what we can give and we give them our best then we stand a fair chance of surviving, people won't resent us and we'll be value for money. We'll be taking the two hours show about six or seven times on the road. Plays sketches and so on. In order to do that you can set it all up the day before so it goes perfectly. People have a right to demand this. At the prices that people are charging at clubs all over people should get concert conditions, or if its a dance the very best conditions to dance. The system gives little or no encouragement to people with talent and sincere ideals ... its just a terrible set up. SimplePraise 

'I don't look upon this as a load of artistic wank. I really think that there is a business way of doing it too. You can make a handsome profit and share it and utilise it to help the people who are doing it to do better things. There's a jolly handsome profit to be made that way, and an honourable one. That's what I believe and am going to do. I will. No reason why not. I shall beat the business at their own game simply because I don't want what most of them are offering and secondly because you can't beat the cut price store. There's no answer to the supermarket in the arts or anywhere else. You either reduce your price and increase your integrity or you're out of the market. In all of this renaissance which people tell us we are undergoing at the moment, people are being militant with the wrong weapons. You should be militant with the tricks, gimmicks, loopholes, knots and porcupines of the establishment. Find out those and start using them against it and destroy it that way. Then introduce new and better laws and ways of doing the thing. Senseless badges, demonstrations and exterior manifesta­tions of frustrations and hatreds seem silly. I don't blame people for being out of control. I'm filled with hatred too, I am full of paranoia, fears of being persecuted. My whole life now has somewhere or other this idea. If I can do these arty farty things then I can use them as weapons too. That's revolution you're preaching there buddy . . . stop at anything but that . . . Paranoia is one of the themes of the album. There is a track on that about hatred of the system which did its best to put me off Shakespeare and any poetry, painting . . . stuffed down my throat things that were obviously unsuitable and made things that were exciting to me unpalatable by making reverent, dead things out of them. I mourn the loss to so many people of so much because of the way they were taught. The odd boy also inhabits Keynsham because he doesn't like algebra and woodwork and games. He's a freak because he doesn't like things that are normal.