The Primitives

How was that you decided to form the band again?
The news of the death of our original bass player Steve put us back in touch with each other. We hadn’t spoken for years. We were asked to play at an exhibition about the local music scene in our home town Coventry later that year (2009), so we thought that would be a fitting tribute to Steve. We then played a small secret London show the following week and ended up meeting with a booking agent and so a small tour was organised for early 2010.

It´s been a long time without The Primitives, have you been involved in music in these years?
Not so much in the years before we reformed, but up until the late 90s we were all involved with musical projects.

Which were your feelings and sensations when you got together again with the first rehearsalls?
At first it was odd to be doing the songs again and being about 20 years older, but the music was still there, programmed in, and it soon felt normal again.

Which things does the band keep from the late 80´s?
We still have the same equipment and attitude towards making music, but there isn’t the stress and expectation of being involved with a major label

Which things are new? How different are you in comparison with the 80´s?
We are essentially exactly the same band, we just had a big rest. Some might see us as a tribute to our former selves, but who cares? We exist again and that is that.
I would also add that we are completely in control this time round and Tracy is a much more confident front person.

You just do covers in the new album, didn´t you have any new songs for it? are´nt you writing your own stuff for a possible new record?
We recorded and released a couple of new songs at the start of 2011 and have a few others ready to release soon.

How did you choose the songs for "Echoes and rhymes"?
I began collecting rare vinyl about 15 years ago. A lot of which was singles by 60s girl singers. I often thought how some of this stuff  wasn’t that different to my old band and that maybe if, by some slim chance, we ever got back together we could do a tribute to some of these great, long lost songs. So a lot of the songs are out of my record box, but we found new stuff as well, once we had started the project. For instance Tracy heard ‘Sunshine In My Rainy Day Mind’ in a music shop and found out who it was by and when we heard it we knew straight away it was one to cover.

We also wanted to emphasise the girl singer aspect, because as a female fronted band, you often feel that you are marginalised and not granted the kudos of the ‘serious’ male fronted bands...that you are somehow trivial and throwaway, so we wanted to throw these ideas in certain people’s faces.

It´s great it really sounds like The Primitives...
We chose songs that reminded us a bit of ourselves or that we felt we could adapt to our sound.

What does "Crash" mean for you? It gave you a big success, but at the same time did´nt it hide the rest of the songs?
Yes, that’s exactly right. Most people only know that song and don’t realise that we have a pretty decent repertoire, including songs similar to and as good as, if not better than, Crash, but it’s great to have one massive hit, otherwise we may have been completely forgotten about.

You are working with an indie label, how good is this and do you miss anything from the times you had a big support of a major?
Working with Elefant has been perfect for us, they understand what we’re about and leave us to get on with things. They’re also very efficient once it comes to getting our music out there. The major label we were on made some horrendous marketing mistakes and you can get very pampered on a major label and lose sight of what it is you’re actually doing.

Things have changed a lot since you were playing, how has been the comeback to the industry in that way?
We’ve had to learn a lot of things this time round...boring business stuff, because we our self managed.

Obviously it’s very different now because of the whole internet/digital revolution thing.  I think there is now an older generation that have stayed with music, because of the internet. What used to happen is people would grow up and leave youth culture behind. Their music collection would be put away somewhere and forgotten about or sold. whereas now they can revisit all these things and other previously unaccessible related stuff, via the internet, and this in turn has lead to bands reforming and musical careers being extended.


You´re playing in Madrid next week, what can you tell to yor fans about?
We will be playing about 2 thirds of Echoes and Rhymes and most of our A sides and a few personal favourites.