Darius Interview
1 What happened to the flashing Cable logo from the Sublingual tour? Does each member of Cable own a letter? And who owns the fifth?
We were pretty much homeless after cable split, so we converted them into small maisonettes– mine has a really nice conservatory now.
2 What was your guitar rig for Cable? Amps, guitars and peddles? I remember you had a guitar made for the Blue birds are blue single (something like that).
I had this ancient Morley pedal which looked like a cake tin with dials glued all over it. If you left it alone with a guitar for an hour it would make all these crazy barking noises. The internal mechanism was a small piece of leather which flapped around when you trod on the pedal… it was so coool. I used it to make the silly noises on Arthur Walker and Song 1.
3 What have you been listening to the last few years and what is your favourite album/ band at the moment?
I just listen to ‘Heroes’ over and over again. Really loud. I love that song sooo much.
4 What do you think of the British music scene at the moment?
They don’t let us listen to much new music here at the Home – the residents get too frisky – but from what I hear, all this Joy Division, Duran Duran 80s pastiche stuff is a bit rubbish.
5 What did it feel like when you walked offstage at the last Cable show at Dingwalls?
I have the reactions of a slow-witted, visually-impaired snail, so it didn’t quite register with me that cable was over for a long time after the Dingwalls gig. It wasn’t till I was sat in an accounts department six months later, doing data entry that I suddenly noticed I wasn’t hanging out with Kramer in New York any more. I got quite upset then, actually.
6 What is your fondest Cable memory?
Sitting in stinky, dark rehearsal room, with cheap lager indigestion, playing random atonal nothingness, and suddenly noticing we have the beginnings of a song. Every time that happened I’d get a rush of adrenaline that was like jumping out of an aeroplane with no pants on. Sad as it may sound, all my favourite cable memories are to do with that kind of thing.
7 What is in your pockets right now?
6p
8 What is your favourite Cable song and which was your favourite to play?
Favourite to play: murdering spree, favourite to listen to: Brothers and Sisters
9 Can I listen to any of the songs that you recorded for Transcopic anywhere?
They’re not really songs as such, and they’re not on line anywhere. I have mp3s of some of them, but they’re not likely to appeal to cable fans though (They’re sort of fey folk ditties.)
10 Have you ever been attacked by an animal?
I got thrown out of a second bookshop recently by a twisted old goat-faced bastard of a woman. Does that count?
11 Was Arthur Walker a real person?
Yes, he lived in Derby and was very weird. Matt could tell you all about him. I think he appeared in Dad’s Army too.
12 What was it like playing at Brixton Prison?
Awesome. Matt pulled.
13 What was you're favourite / worst gig you played with Cable?
We were mistakenly booked to play a reggae night at a venue in Coventry called the General Wolf and the confused, angry crowd were literally baying for our blood by the time we’d finished our first song. The whole thing ended in tears, broken instruments – and Matt being escorted from the building by baseball bat-wielding security guards. That was a pretty bad one.
All the others were great though.
14 If it hadn’t been for the unfortunate demise of Cable, were there many future plans for the band, i.e. more tours, new music, more singles from sublingual to be released etc?
Richie was planning to invade Tunbridge Wells and set up a fascist drumming regime. Matt was going to be the first big French celebrity TV chef. Pete wanted to take the band in a new, interpretive dance direction and I wanted us to open a small cable teashop by the seaside.
15 Was it a conscious decision to write so many songs in odd time signatures? (5/4, 6/4, etc.)? Why is 6/4 so prevalent in Cable songs?
Mainly accidental I think – we were never the most technically proficient musicians (apart from Richie, who’s just a big show-off).
16 How did you get the guitar sound on the start of Song 1? It's really odd – like some kind of chorused feedback!
(See previous mention of my Morley contraption.)
17 Flattened fifths/augmented fourths seem to appear in your guitar parts quite often (e.g. in Hexagon Eye, Pocket Promise, the intro to Land Speed Record, etc) – are you not worried about summoning the devil?
What are you talking about? I’ve never consciously flattened my fifths.
18 Most of the guitar playing in Cable songs is quite restrained – did you never feel the urge to put a proper metal solo in a song with shredding, tapping and everything?!
Richie was the only good guitarist in cable, that’s why we made him play drums.
19 Do you have any plans to do anything musical at all in the next few months/year and is there any real chance of a Cable reunion?
Living in different countries probably makes a reunion tricky. So as far as I can see, it’s not likely to happen.