Flipside

GRANT: In that year [1983] there was obviously a whole sort of movement at that time which has changed so much over the years. It seems that our popularity is more so now in the States.

CAKE: Are there any bands thatyou've been listening to in the past five years that helped influence this latest recording, or is it the same influence that you've always had in the past? In past interviews, you mentioned bands such as Minor Threat who you used to correspond with in the early 80s.

GRANT: I don't think that any of us really listen to much of the music that comes out now. What I've done is gone back and looked at what we had done over the years and what I think has been more successful, or moving in the right direction. And I've tried to take that and improve it. So in a sense, we've built on what we've already done. That, onviously, is derived from certain influences back in the early 80s of bands that were around. But there really aren't any modern influences that I'm aware of. If you wwere to look at my record collection, you wouldn't find anything in there that was released in the last five years (laughs). There just isn't anything there.

CAKE: Your past music totally stands up because it has the old punk rock influence and it also has a lot of originality included at the same time, and I'm sure that you agree about that. Rudimentary Peni always seems to take a lot of time to write out the music, especially Cacophony, which was such a developed record. It must have taken years to write the music for that project.

GRANT: That one was surprisingly quick, but then again we hadn't done anything four or five years previous to that so there was a lot of creativity stored up.

CAKE: I consider Cacophony to be the best album that Rudimentary Peni has done. Musically, and everything. I really enjoy that album the most. Death Church is equally as creative as it is spontaneous, as well.

GRANT: Yeah, that's interesting. Opinion seems to be very much divided about it. I think that artistically, Cacophony has more to offer, but in terms of popularity and sales that Death Church has always been infinitely more popular. It surprised me, really, but that's the way it was.

CAKE: For Cacophony, did you guys listen to more progressive rock?

GRANT: That album has all kinds of influences and all kinds of music in it, from jazz chords through classical through oriental music, as well. All kinds of things in there.

CAKE: On Death Church, the bass playing on the first track (1/4 Dead) reminds me of some of Charles Mingus' early work.

GRANT: I'm not familiar with his stuff. I mean...I listen to various things, but jazz and that sort of stuff, I personally never listen to that. Unless I picked it up subconsciously, it might just be a coincidence. I'm more likely to be influenced by the classical that I listen to than jazz because there is no jazz in my record collection at all(laughs).

CAKE: That brings up another point. About nine years ago, both you and Jon were interviewed by Sounds magazine. You said, at the time, that the next record was going to be mostly instrumental. Is there a chance that a mostly instrumental album will be recorded by Rudimentary Peni in the near future?

GRANT: I don't think so. What I'm interested in is building and improving what we've already achieved in what we just recorded. And I'm still writing more lyrics and stuff.

CAKE: No more looking at the past, then, just looking forward?

GRANT: Yeah. To say progressing in the sense of with the lyrics. I try to improve what I write all the time. Putting much more depth into it and stuff so that if people could even be bothered, they would have to sit down and really try to work out all of what is going on. In terms of the riffs and that, it's not terribly difficult to play. But in terms of understanding the lyrics and whatever, I think that it's a lot more difficult now than some of the earlier stuff.

CAKE: Whatever happened to the material that you and Jon recorded with Steve Albini back in 1987?

GRANT: I have absolutely no idea. You really have to ask Steve Albini about that. The last thing I heard was this: we did an album of bass and drums that was very avant-garde and very almost -but not quite- improvised. It was worked around the seams, but it was very avant-garde and very much built on elaborate bass lines and such. I sent it off to Steve, and that was the last that I ever heard of it. He probably regarded it as too off-the-wall to do, but I really don't know. You should ask him. If you hear something about it then, please let me know, too (laughs). I really don't want to hassle him about it. If it's not his thing, then that's alright, but it was quite a project (laughs)!

CAKE: Have you been to any clubs, lately, to see new bands?

GRANT: I haven't seen a band play, outside of ourselves, for years.

CAKE: What are your thoughts on Chumbawamba, an Anarchist band, being in the top 10 in America?

GRANT: I'm actually not very familiar with them, but being around Southern, I have been aware of their presence. The only thing that I heard was the single that was such a big hit over here a couple of weeks ago [Tubthumping],. but I don't know how it compares to other things tthat they've done in the past.

CAKE: I started thinking, "well...if Chumbawamba can have a platinum record, then so can Rudimentary Peni". It's kind of frightening!

GRANT: There are various reasons why we'd never get mainstream acceptance. The point about it is this: the name of the band, straight away, is immediately going to cause problems if you're looking at a mainstream market. So, that's not going to go down very well. On top of that, let's face it: it's not going to get FM airplay!

CAKE: I don't know if you know this, GRANT, but there are a whole lot of internet web pages devoted to Rudimentary Peni.

GRANT: I heard that a few bits and pieces are around, but I was never too aware of what was going on with all of that, really.

CAKE: It's weird because the last interview that I did with Rudimentary Peni for Flipside is on someone's webpage. They transcribed it, and everything. The fans have really been looking up stuff, and have been putting more and more information up. It's really fascinating

GRANT: That's one of the things that, with this recent record, I'm trying to really understand because I thought, "Right, let's really spend a couple of years writing seventeen minutes of music to get the quality up to what it should be". Because there is that small hard core of people that are genuinely interested, and that's why we made the effort to really get it together. It can be really easy to just keep churning out stuff, and I said that I really put out small amounts and put it under a magnifying glass, and make sure that it waas up to the quality that I wanted.

CAKE: Were you happy with the way the last album turned out? Because, there was a three year delay in releasing it...

GRANT: There was some dissent about the release of that particular record. Some members of the band felt that it should come out, and some felt that it shouldn't, so we spent some time in dispute about it, and finally, the ones that wanted it to come out won the day, so it came out.

CAKE: There were some good quality songs on that record, but it wasn't the same quality of material that both Death Church and Cacophony had.

GRANT: Exactly. That's what I thought. That's why.

CAKE: I also didn't think that it was up to par with what Rudimentary Peni could do in the studio.

GRANT: Opinion in the band was definitely divided, but I personally agree with what you just said. So, I said, if we're going to put out another record, then we are going to spend some time with it, you know? You have to improve on what you've done before, not come out in a lower quality. So that's what we did. My personal opinion is that I have no problems with everything that we've put out apart from that last album. But that's my opinion.