On Crime and The City Solution

E: What happened to Crime and The City Solution?

M: Well, it got to the end of '86, and I don't know... we weren't really agreeing on what we were doing, and we had two camps within the group,. which is always a problem... it was horrible... I don't know what the other three-Rowland, Harry (Howard) and Epic (Soundtracks) wanted... I think they wanted what they've got now, which is Rowland's group (These Immortal Souls).

They certainly didn't seem to be there at all to work with Simon (Bonney), which, when Simon's the singer in the group, you have to do, because he can't sing like a normal human being...

E: Er, could you clarify that?

M: Well, he can't sing in time, he has no sense of timing whatsoever.

E: He goes very much for the lyrical flow, doesn't he?

M: Yeah, he goes for the lyrical flow, and he can sing in tune the whole time, but he can't ever sing the same thing twice, and he very rarely remembers his lyrics properly anyway. So it just becomes this organic flowing thing which you just have to follow, you really have to be locked into what Simon's doing. So I think those three were more interested in having a band that played pretty straight, and they didn't work directly with Simon, and a lot of the time, their decisions about what they wanted to do were very much without Simon.

E: What camp were you in?

M: I was in the me, Simon and Bronwyn (Adams) camp, which was completely geared towards working directly with Simon's singing. Well, singing is always the most out-front in a group, it's what most people listen to anyway. With Simon being so idiosyncratic, I really felt that you had to play with him the whole time, just to try and make it work.

By the end of '86 it had gotten much worse, arguments about the stuff that's on Room of Lights, and just finishing it in the form it was done in, was all... it just went on and on... these arguments about what was going on with the album... I just figured out that the other three weren't very happy playing with the group anyway, so what were they doing there?

And Simon had moved back to Berlin, and I decided it was about time I moved back to Berlin, as both my singers lived there. So I did that, and the other three were in London, so we just never got back together.

E: That's sort of sad, really...

M: No! It's not at all sad, no!!

E: Oh? It's not?

M: No! Because in the middle of '87, we put together a new Crime in Berlin, which is infinitely superior, because everyone in the group wants to work with Simon!

E: Has it toured? Will it?

M: Well, we've played three Berlin gigs... and we're meant to start touring at the end of April, we actually start with a tour of Eastern Europe...

E: !

M: We're playing Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia...

E: Hm!

M: Mmm!

E: !

M: It should be good, actually... East Germany's supposed to be rough, though...

E: I thought you had to play things called 'rehearsals' with an invited audience, rather that 'gigs' in East Germany?

M: Yeah, there's a bit of a problem in some places, you can't play an official gig, you're being a, aah... tourist in transit, traveling from Germany to Hungary or something. Czechoslavakia's particularly difficult, you stop off, and you go into some basement where everyone who heard about it via the grapevine shows up, you put a hat at the door and that's about it... I've never played there, although the Go-Betweens have.

E: It must be awkward darting back and forth between two bands, how do you stay committed for both?

M: It's not really a matter of commitment to one or the other, it's just what I do. A few people have asked me about that, but it's not really an issue with me... I don't really think about it, I just do it.

E: Does that mean you like the people you're involved with just as much as you enjoy the music?

M: Oh yeah, yeah, I really do like the people in the groups I play with... and the new Crime is particularly... fabulous... Bronwyn's playing violin now, we've dragged her out of her bedroom where she'd been writing her lyrics... we've got a guitarist (from Neubauten! I've got a Neubauten member in both of my groups now!) and a bass player (who you wouldn't know, some old Mothers of Invention fan... ), and I'm playing drums again, which is a good change... I really feel that the people in the other camp did not play with very much 'feel', and the new Crime's got that very strongly.

Crime's new single should be out in mid-March, 12" I think... they're releasing our stuff locally, the old Crime's compilation stuff is already out, and out new album's meant to be out in April, on Rampant.

E: Good, I'm getting sick of spending lots and lots of money on your imports.

M: Yeah, I know, I don't want that situation any more, but Rampant have said that this compilation is coming out, and they'll do the next album.

E: We weren't too happy about the price of Your Funeral, My Trial

M: How much was it?

E: $30, $32 or something... maybe it wasn't that much...

M: No, it probably was...

E: It was fairly expensive...

M: It's a great record, though...

E: Says he, with a big fat grin on his face.

M: It's a great record!

E: Were there any really good crime gigs that really stood out? (the old Crime)

M: Well, yeah, there was some, that's hard to say, I'd have to go back... we did a tour of Germany in September '86, 6 dates. That was really successful we were playing really well every night... but the new line-up's going to be twice as good as the old, I'm quite looking forward to that... the new album's completely different to the old Crime... most people look at me and go 'Oh yeah? That's you talking', and then they hear it, and then they're telling me a couple of days later, and I'm saying, 'Yeah, really? It's really different? You think so?'

E: In the old line-up, about how much of the music did you actually end up making... or was it more a case of following Simon, as you were implying earlier?

M: Well, ummm... about half of it, usually there'd be some music that Simon would sing to, and sometimes they'd be arranged to suit him, although I couldn't always force people to do that, but the new Crime, ummm... well... there's not really any real writing of music... if you can believe that... songs just aren't written at all.

E: Is it more improvisational?

M: Well, we went into a demo studio, and we just, uh, didn't have anything basically except a couple of people who wanted to work with Simon! Simon put down some songs to a click-track, just singing them the way he wanted to sing the words; and a couple of things were recorded at a three-chord pattern, over and over to begin with, and Simon sang from that, and then we completely changed it, just so there was a melodic structure for Simon to work something to, and the other songs he'd sung the click-track, we played the music behind his vocal, so it's a bit hard to say, isn't it? I mean, if I sit down and write three chords, A, D and F, it's hardly as if I've written the song, is it? Especially the way they end up, they're often nothing like the original three chords at all...

From the outset, it's a totally different way for us, of working out the songs, that's why the whole thing's so different with this group, it just sounds really different... Simon always seems to have immense paces to sing his words in, that the group creates for him.

E: I did notice the amount of space he seemed to have, in the old Crime...

M: Not enough.

E: Not enough?

M: Not enough space, no.

E: I remember seeing him in the old Crime at the beginning of '86, thinking "Fuck, this guy can perform!"

M: He can show off, yeah. No, he is quite into the idea of performing. Most people find him... indigestible, basically, his performance... people don't 'buy' it.

E: Maybe they expect him to stand at the mike and wave his arms?

M: I think they think he looks like a nancy-boy... I get this from people, they don't like the way he flails about... I don't really think about it one way or the other, it's what he wants to do, so I leave him alone.

E: The album, Room of Lights, wasn't there an argument about one of the tracks on that?

M: Well, there were arguments about several of them.

E: Oh dear. Perhaps I'd better not ask then... I know, Untouchable took along time to come together...

M: Well, we did one version, Simon put down his vocal and decided it was perfect, and Rowland and Harry and Epic decided we had to record the basic track, so we recorded it, I think it's a very stilted version, no real dynamic potential, and, uh, we put Simon's vocal back over it, spun it in on tape. Simon was totally unhappy with that situation, he felt they'd lost the feel of his vocal, and I'd have much rather used the original version, which was a bit sloppy, but I didn't mind, if it sounds right, it sounds right.

E: Were there any songs from the old Crime that stick out, that you really liked?

M: I really liked about half the songs very much...

E: I really liked '(Text lost here! Sorry! -KB)'

M: Mmm, mmm.

E: I like Adventure...

M: Yeah, I like them, yeah...

E: Rose Blue

M: Yeah, yeah, that one, yeah...

E: !

M: !

M: I don't like Untouchable, for instance.

E: Yeah, I thought that was a little clumsy and I was wondering why it didn't come off more.