Your first album, Disorientated, was released in April 1996. What have you been up to since then. Are you currently working on new songs for instance?
In the summer vacation of 1996 we didn't play for almost three months. After that, we had a lot of shows. During those shows, we played the songs from Disorientated, our older songs and a bunch of covers. Since we had a show almost every week, we got a bit tired of playing these songs. We therefore decided to stop doing shows for a while, so we could focus on new material.
When was that?
That was approximately two months ago. It so happened, that at that moment there were not much shows offered to us either. So it all worked out very nicely.... We first practised some covers and sofar, we have written five new songs. But this number will grow.
Can you name the cover songs?
Yes, Aeroplane by the Red Hot Chilipeppers, Bullet with Butterfly Wings by the Smashing Pumpkins, Far Behind by Candlebox, Know Your Enemy by Rage Against the Machine and Lightning Crashes by Live. Yeah, that's it.
And the new songs you wrote. How do these compare to the songs from Disorientated?
We now write songs differently. For the old songs, it was always, well almost always, the case that Ardan had already written the lyrics, the chords and the melody. So, the song was almost finished. We only had to fill in our own parts. This has changed. We now start jamming and when we play something that we like, which sounds promising, we start working from there. Ardan will then start writing lyrics for that, or it may happen that he can use lyrics he already wrote. We then continue working on the song until it's finished. So these new songs, because all members now contribute more equally to the songs, sound eh..., differently. They are now more versatile.
Are these new songs all in English?
Yes, these new ones all are. Ardan still has two Dutch lyrics lying around, so who knows, but the majority of our songs will be English.
What about the keyboard? You didn't use keys on the songs that are on Disorientated. However, some of the older songs did feature keys.
When we will record songs in the studio, we will certainly use a keyboard again, I think. I will certainly prefer that. One of our new songs was written on the piano. I played the piano, while the rest played the other instruments. And that worked out very well. We will probably do that in the studio too. However, live it will be more difficult. Dragging around an extra synthesizer simply is more trouble, it's quite heavy you know, and furthermore, we would then not have two guitarists. So we won't do it live.
What do you intend to do with the new songs. Will you distribute a CD, the same way you did with Disorientated?
Well, we noticed that we cannot really do much with Disorientated. Suppose, we could get considerable airplay for it, or people want to buy it otherwise, it is hard for them to get it. They will have to come to us to buy it. We do, for instance, sell it after our shows. However, we would prefer it, when someone would distribute the CD for us. So, we now plan to send demos of our new songs, together with Disorientated and a biography of the band, to record labels who we think might be interested. And then we'll just have to see what happens.
You also recorded a song for a CD that is a project by Sfinx, a club where you have played often. Which song is that?
We recorded an old song for that, Wind. We chose that one because the CD is a grunge, punk, hardcore CD, and so, it made sense not to use our softest song... We therefore chose a song that was a bit more... eh... heavy.
This CD will not be sold in the stores either, by the way. It will feature about twenty bands, and every band will sell a number of CDs. This will finance the project. Oh, Jan Sikkes from Landscape Studios voluntarily recorded the songs. We like to thank him for that.
Are there currently any Pique Poque Poetry gigs scheduled?
I think one or two, but those are still somewhat in the future. Once we have written enough new songs, we will try to arrange a whole bunch of new gigs. We have a number of addresses of clubs who said, just call us, you can always play here.
Final question. Will the song The Making Of Me ever be released as some kind of B-side or bonus-track?
No!... Or wait, maybe as a very special bonus track. One that's a bit hidden. For instance because it's pressed on the other side of the CD. Only people who'll discover that, can then listen to it.
- Erwin Bonsma
