Novak
formed in late 1995. Adele, Jeremy, Tamsin, Kirsten and Phil were all old friends.
Dave and Jane were recruited when Kirsten went round to buy a bass guitar that
they were advertising. "We had to all check that they were not Goths though!"
says Adele.
The band mix so many musical sounds and instruments together, once described by the NME as looking more like an after school music technology class who got lucky rather than "sonic innovators". And they've not run out of possibilities - Phil used to play the trombone and Kirsten the clarinet, though they'd rather put that behind them and probably will not forgive me for mentioning it!
Jane and Dave are on holiday. The remaining five meet me at the Flapper and Firkin in the centre of Birmingham. It's one of the major small venues and they've played here many times. In fact Delta are playing downstairs tonight and every time the door opens all conversation is drowned out. But that's the least of my problems as I struggle to keep up with the rapid flow of ideas flying round the table.
The Novak sound
Adele: We're different people with different influences. We're not just one of those bands that goes back to a classic period like the 60s or 70s. We don't have this thing where we've always loved a band and are heavily influenced by them. Seven influences tend to keep things under control.
Tamsin: You know when it sounds right, you do know when it sounds wrong. There are no predetermined guidelines.
Adele: We do have these debates when we are doing something and we don't know whether we can do it well or do much with that idea. It may not quite be us but then someone will just say, "let's try it!"
Kirsten: Sometimes we find out that we slip into the easy route where you do not have to structure it too much. It sounds all right but then someone says, "hang on this isn't going anywhere."
Phil: It's normally you that says that.
Kirsten: I have the lowest boredom threshold!
Getting started
Jeremy: We did the demo with Bob Lamb who'd produced the first Spacemen 3 album and also did UB40's "Signing off"
Adele: We met him through Trish from Broadcast. I phoned her up asking her advice where to record; she said, "try him first." It took a while to get in but I think that it was good because we sorted out a few bits for different songs and got things more organised.
Jeremy: We had all the time in the world when we went round his place, there was no rush. He was saying that it should not have been taking so much time but not to worry about it. We stayed up until the early hours. He totally subsidized our first demo; we were so lucky to have him! We sent off the demos just before we went off on holiday.
Adele: we came back and the phone was just ringing all the time.
Jeremy: People were quite impressed by the demo. Those that phoned us said that they were usually sent garbage. The majors came to see us live and thought we were shit though.... a good thing in retrospect.
The
Quickspace connection
Adele: I was listening to Jo Wiley's Saturday Social. The weather was hot and I was writing my dissertation. My life was hell with all this work and I was just writing down things I heard off the radio making little top tens.
Jeremy: You hear things on the radio that you really like but then you never hear them again and forget about them so we decided to start writing them down.
Adele: I wrote "Quick-bleep" because I could not hear the name but I knew the track was called Friend or Friends. I went and bought the record and thought it was ace. A very cool cover as well! We'd just done the demo and just sent them a copy saying "can we play with you, you might like us." I had no idea they had a label.
Jeremy: They got us a date at the Sausage Machine at the Hope and Anchor in Islington. They did not say that they were interested it was more like "come down and play."
Adele: A couple of members of Quickspace came along and they were really hammered. They told us that we were playing with them at The Garage in London. And I said, "excuse me? What? Are we? Cool!!"
The
product
Q magazine recently mentioned the first single Silver Seas in its hand-sewn cloth sleeve in its article on innovative packaging.
Kirsten: We wanted a personal touch on the single. It's cool if someone has actually taken the time.
Adele: We all made them. I did most of the sewing.
Jeremy: Dave read the paper in the other room.
Adele: He did a good job stamping the labels...we made him!
Jeremy: We did have a real laugh making the sleeves. We had this right little production line going.
Adele: Do you know about the fakes? We saw them advertised, "genuine Novak leather sleeve single". We never used leather and Jeremy phones them up pretending to be interested. It turned out that it was not this bloke who was doing it and without mentioning any names he said he was sold them by another shop.
Jeremy: The fakes are actually better than the originals. They're leatherette with a Velcro top, we ought to have sent the little "handmade by Novak" labels to sew on and taken the credit. They were nice sleeves! The second single was coloured in by us.
Adele: I liked the hand-coloured ones because everybody who bought the record got one. It was cool, having a drink and everyone sitting around colouring. It was not laborious.
Jeremy: We wanted to do something with the third single but it was a run of 2500. There was no way that we'd be able to do a hand-sewn sleeve for all those twelve-inch singles.
Adele: We would not have just wanted to do the first 200, I don't like that. That's how those fake ones came to be made and selling for £20. We're making them because they are cool and some people are buying them because they are going to go up in value. Kirsten's boyfriend came up with the idea of the "Melon Man" (the cartoon insert in the twelve-inch single). He makes up these strange stories and we all thought that they were quite cool.
Jeremy: When you are thinking of a cover idea it takes bloody ages. It's only the pressure when Shaun from the label rings up and says he wants the cover by Tuesday or the release date gets put back again. That makes us decide.
A
Birmingham scene?
Adele: I think that's coincidence with us. We just bumbled along at the right time. For our first gig we were put on with Jameson. Arthur from the Jug of Ale had no idea what we sounded like. Trish and Roger from Broadcast just happened to be there, they only caught the last song though...
Jeremy: Which was lucky because we were shit!
Kirsten: Trish came up to Adele afterwards and said that they were quite willing to help out. She put us in touch with Keith at Wurlitzer Jukebox. He did not want to put the single out for us but gave us loads of advice and people to write to.
Adele: We have the least Birmingham connections of all of the bands, none of us come from Birmingham. We'd never seen any of these bands until after we'd had a record out.
Jeremy: When we met Trish we'd seen the name Broadcast on posters but had no idea what they sounded like.
The Disasters
Jeremy: We were going to play Oxford with Quickspace.
Phil: Kirsten decided to jump out of a plane for a laugh - or was it charity - and broke her legs.
Kirsten: I forgot to get into the landing position!
Phil: Just before we did all the radio sessions I was trying out skateboarding and lasted four seconds! I ended up only being able to use one arm. We weren't using the full kit, just bongos and percussion - Still a bit tricky though!
Other problems seem to involve Kirsten's map reading, the un-roadworthiness of their van and having to find another spoken intro for Rapunzel
"We still have used the Disney one live but bank balances stopped us from being able to record it," explains Adele. "We almost did the Yo La Tengo tour, it was all lined up but that fell through. We had to turn down the Prolapse tour. It came at the wrong time and in places we could not get to."
1998
and beyond
Jeremy: An album, play loads of gigs, write more stuff, record more stuff.
Tamsin: We've all got full-time jobs.
Jeremy: Hope to give the jobs up some day.
Adele: I don't think that any of us are the sort of people who would throw everything in and go for fame. Fame was never really the big thing.
Jeremy: We all thought that we were never going to be a band with records out. It was just being in a band with your friends.
Adele: We've sold about 10% of our stuff abroad and that really surprised me, how do they know about us? You forget that there are all these little fanzines all over the World.
Jeremy: We had a letter from some French people saying they'd really like to put on some gigs in Lille, we also got a letter from some bloke who runs Motorway records in Japan asking us to do a split single. I got this Japanese girl I know to write back to him in Japanese (then admits that he's not posted it yet!). We also got a letter from Malaysia.
Tamsin: Birmingham and London are certainly the focal points at the moment.
Kirsten: As for Europe, Japan and Malaysia, we're up for it!
The Novak connection
Tamsin: Kim Novak's got our single! She was at a re-showing of Vertigo at the ICA in London. A friend of ours who works there saw her walking down the front after it had finished. He bottled out at first and started walking out but the he ran down to her and went "this is for you, they're named after you." She blushed. She might be a fan!
Jeremy: You can just imagine her sitting at home in her rocking chair with a cup of coffee listening to Silver Seas thinking "quite nice really!"
Novak were interviewed at the end of 1997. 1999 saw them release their critically aclaimed album but also saw them split - allegedly over when/where/if to tour to support the release.