If a picture paints a thousand words, then why did our parents paint us; they only know four words between 'em. Once you deal with that particular cucumber, you need to deal with the "why-do-punks-cover-christmas-hymns-and-so-forth"? Is it funny? I think not, schoolboy. Scares your mum? Oh, come on, your mum knows better.

So why would anybody choose to cover any song. Well, if you're not a punk band yr reasons can be more desperate than a lame attempt at so-called humour. In our case, we had written, sorry, come up with 6 songs in 38 years. A cover at this point seemed not only appropriate, but necessary. We'd tried it before, basing our motivation upon the "less chords the better". We did Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight". People may have paid attention had we run a "Guess the Song, Win a Tractor!" competition. Some things die as soon as they're born. That's God's way. Anyhow, how do you practise a song like that with 25 pigeons flying about in the room next door to you?

Pigeons evicted, we tried again. Somehow the riff came up. Whatever, an alternative to playing an Into the Void song was welcomed, much like a man lying on a bed of broken glass with an oven on his chest would welcome a consignment of polystyrene pellets.

It wasn't that hard: Riff...riffriffriffriff...quiet bit ...riff...riffriffriffriff.

Thing is if you're going to do a cover, pick one you're capable of. We would have done "Another Brick in the Wall" but all our schoolteachers are dead and holding a grudge just seems immature and unnecessary. "Interstellar Overdrive" not only reflects the bands co-joined love of fine embroidery, but a need to play someone else's song without trying to shock yr mum. Punk-covers be damned! When we did this, we were DEAD FUCKING SERIOUS. The reason it sounds funny now - we sobered up.

 

Into the Void are a band of merry men - with the exception of the nomadic one - based in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Jason Grieg plays a Fender Stratocaster, through a finely upholstered Fender twin.
Mark Whyte plays an almost ridiculously silver, set of Drums
James Grieg plays Dave's Gretsch, also though a Fender Twin.
Dave Imlay plays George's Sister's Bass
Paul Sutherland plays records and other things
Ronnie Van Hout sings, writes the words and owns a harmonica.

Interstellar Overdrive was written by Pink Floyd (Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason) and appeared first on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1967.
Interstellar Overdrive MP3 (10.36 MB)
Real Audio (2.68 MB)
128.0 kbps
32.5 kbps
 11:19

back