Norman Blake Quotations

When I was a kid I listened to a lot of punk music, but then along came Orange Juice, ... They really broadened my musical perspective. They were self-deprecating and had a great sense of humor. And they sounded like Velvet Underground meeting Al Green. They called themselves 'the sound of young Scotland,' a play on Motown's 'Sound of Young America.'

We're so much happier now. We were in a position we didn't want to be in, dealing with labels that didn't know what to do with us. This album is on our own label, and we're responsible for every aspect of the release.

Right from the start John said, 'Look, you guys have been doing this for years, so I'm not going to tell you how to arrange things,'

On the other hand, there's never pressure on one person to come up with an album's worth of songs every year, ... We only have to concentrate on four or five songs each. It's something we're all comfortable with; some other people wouldn't be. We're not very confrontational people; we like things to go smoothly.

We're pretty happy with the level of success we have now.

Over the years, 15, 16 years, we've picked up all sorts of bits and pieces, ... And normally when we make an album we load a van up and deliver it all: old Wurlitzers, odd synthesizers and things.

Over the years -- 15, 16 years -- we've picked up all sorts of bits and pieces, ... And normally when we make an album we load a van up and deliver it all: old Wurlitzers, odd synthesizers and things.

We do hope people like what we do, but you certainly can't expect people to buy your record. But we've been pretty lucky. I'm not complaining.

We played with Superchunk on our first American tour. We've always liked the records they release. They're a good, classic indie label, and they're genuine fans of music. And they're really just as enthusiastic about it as they were when we first met them.

With some of our previous records, we had songs with 14 vocal tracks and three pianos. We just wanted to strip some of that back and make a record we could (easily reproduce) live. And we achieved that. We were just in London and played the album from start to finish.

Unfortunately, I believe that we were uninformed because management and outside experts who reported to us failed to do their jobs and give us full, complete information.

There's more pressure on the melody when you don't have all the embellishments,

It was sort of liberating in a way. We had to concentrate on arranging the tracks, we couldn't embellish them needlessly.

That sounds too much like hard work for us.

All you can do is make the records, and hope a group of people will pick up on it, and it will become the received wisdom that that's the record to buy, ... Because that's kind of how the music business works, isn't it? You think of the Coldplay record or something like that. The received wisdom is that you should have that on your coffee table, if you buy one record every two months or whatever.