So
Tom what are you up to now?
With the Inspiral Carpets, we did some 25 gigs last year; playing
at every major festival … we were on the main stage at Glastonbury
- the first band on after The Darkness, which I don't think will be
happening again!
This
year I've been working with my new band - The Lovers and we've just
put out a new album called "Abba Are The Enemy. Spitualised
Are The Wombles."
Great
title - where did it come from?
Yeah ... It sounds like a doctorate for a pop music degree, but
it came from my general obsession with mediocrity and just seeing
fifth-rate soap stars doing Abba-mania on ice on a Saturday night
- I find all that un-ambitious and depressing.
The
album has quite a mix of styles to it - some very like the Inspirals,
other tracks very much like The Fall. Was this deliberate?
We didn't consciously set out to make the album sound like this
band or that band, Steve (Hanley) was in The Fall for 20 years and
his bass sound is very full … If you hear Fall records now
they have the same full sound, because they got someone in to sound
like Steve.
There's
two instrumental tracks on the album too - "Temperamental Jimmy"
and "The Third Cumming", which are very different to the
rest of it ... I mean "The Third Cumming" is almost heavy
metal in its sound.
Mmm.. That could possibly be us (The Lovers) taking the piss out
of the Stone Roses and their "Second Coming" album.
We
were just having fun on this album. I mean the debut album from
any band that has the lead singer of The Inspiral Carpets it - people
might expect the obvious thing on the first track - me shouting'my
bollocks off for five minutes! So it seemed like a good idea not
to do it, so that people can actually hear the band and not just
me screaming my head off!
Apart
from playing a gig at the Brickyard tonight, you're also here to
'teach' song writing technique too.
I've
done a few song writing workshops, including one at the Brewery
Arts Centre in Kendal with 60 people! We all wrote a song together
… which is interesting with 60 people. It's something I try
to do more end more as I really enjoy doing it.
You
can't teach people to write songs - all you can do is make people
believe they can write songs, and realise they can be creative and
write songs. You can't force people to write.
So
what can we expect to hear from a solo Tom Hingley?
Some Inspirals' stuff, some of my solo stuff, a few cheesy covers
may be even the occasional song by Janice Joplin as she's not around
any more to sing them - though they'll probably a massive international
hit by someone like Moby (Tom then said a very rude word here ...
which we just can't print!).
What's
in your CD player at the moment ... Or mp3 player?
No mp3s -I'm a bit of a Luddite.
I'm listening to some old compilation albums of Kate Bush! I've
three daughters and I'm getting them in to listening to that. I
actually hated Kate Bush when she first came out - it took me 20
years to realise that she totally brilliant! I find quite good 'girl
music'. I know that's going to cause problems. But I find it very
sensate and feminine - very different from what I do.
I also
like a band called Grand Drive who play country rock. And there's
loads of good bands coming out of Manchester too: There's The Forest,
Nine Black Alps. There just loads of good bands coming up.
So
what's in the Future for Tom Hingley?
I'm actually putting a compilation album out from the band I was
in before the Inspirals, called Too Much Texas. We supported New
Order, The Beloved & House of Love and we did a Peel session.
We put a single out on the Ugly Man label - (which might be where
the comment about the Inspirals being the ugliest band in Britain
may have come from). The alubm will be called "Juvenillia"
and we might even do a couple of gigs … that's the plan but
I haven't told the rest of the band members yet!
There's
more stuff with The Lovers - there's a single coming out and the
album's going for release in Germany so we'll probably be touring
there and Austria too.
Tom
Hingley was talking to BBC Cumbria's Robbo.
You
can read the concert review here »
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