GRANT HART - Evergreen Memorial Drive

Una bella intervista del 2004 a Grant Hart, con tanto di inedito Evergreen Memorial Drive. Buona lettura e buon ascolto. Di seguito un estratto:



[How can people hear the song "Evergreen Memorial Drive?" It's a really stirring number that people may have heard at your live shows but they may not be able to hear it again after that.]


Well, unfortunately, two sources I believe, are both out of print. Now, one that I would discourage people from seeking out is the Restless [Records] album. If I could edit that into an extended play single, I'd be happier with it. But it was a project that was compromised from the very beginning. Then there was like a BBC-only, no wait. . . a small label named "Black Box" that did a different version. . . that was uh, I think limited to 500 copies. I'm going to have to do my homework on that one. But what's really funny about that Restless album and that's the Nova Mob album with the chimney on it. . . is that for eight months we had been talking to Rykodisc and Rykodisc was talking to us. . . They dropped the project back in my lap after we were already in the studio. So signing with Restless was kind of like a bail out the lifeboat kind of operation. And Restless at the time had made P&D [packaging and distribution] deals with Twin-Tone Records and immediately started dropping things from the catalog. They immediately started dropping entire labels from the catalog. And just not fulfilling what Twin-Tone had set out to do. And what's really ironic now is that now Restless is out of the picture but their liabilities have been assumed by Rykodisc. And according to a letter I got, it says that there have not been any copies sold in nine months, which to me tells me that they're all at distributors already or that they've kept it out of print. What I'd like to do with the next group of people is to take a small group of those songs and put them back in the hands of the listeners. You know, record them again. You know, you can never go back to the place that you were when you were originally recording it but with an eye to the past and grounded in the reality of the present you can do just as good of a job.