FELT Forum

Welcome to our Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart forum. Feel free to post a message.

FELT Forum
Start a New Topic 
Author
Comment
View Entire Thread
Re: Interview

I've read the interviewer's text but it doesn't answer any of the questions that I've just posed.

Re: Interview

What "invaluable little text" are you refering to?

Re: Interview

Is this the text?

"THIS IS HOW MAURICE DEEBANK FELT

Maurice Deebank, founding member of Felt, legendary guitarist and unparalleled aural architect, looks back at Felt's early career, and welcomes the fidelity of Cherry Red's remastered vinyl reissues..."

If it isn't - and the text has now disappeared - can you let us know what the text was?

If it is the text you speak of - as I said - it didn't answer any of the questions I posed earlier.

Re: Interview

Yes, that's the one.I was referring to the link provided by Robert.

Re: Interview

Wow! Has Maurice ever done an interview before? A fascinating read, even if I agree with Lee that it would be interesting to know what he has been doing for the last 25 years.

There's an almost ghost-like quality to hearing from him after such a long time with no releases, interviews, photos, I found it quite odd seeing a contemporary photo of him, until now he has only existed to me in those images from 1980-85.

As we've only really been able to go on Lawrence's version of events, hearing the reasons behind Maurice's various departures particularly stuck out, as did his comment about being autistic, but none of the band knowing that. Good of Cherry Red to send him a set of reissues too - I wonder if he got a copy of Let the Snakes (or whatever it's called now). Shame that he had to ask them for it, but I guess if you've been out of touch for so long, it's understandable.

I wonder what it was about that particular publication/website that prompted Maurice to open up? Maybe nobody has asked before, but I hope it is not the last we hear from him.

Re: Interview

Fascinating piece (not an awful lot gets revealed that we didn't already, but there are one or two insights, and just the fact that MD agreed to this is amazing in itself). I hope what reaction follows in the wake of this interview is positive enough not to dispirit Deebank to the point where he disappears from view again. I like Lawrence a lot, but it's high time the other major player in the Felt story told his side of things. I always considered them a band with two leaders or guiding-lights or what have you, but there's a danger that if the Felt history is left in the hands of Lawrence. his sometimes slanted version of events becomes gospel. When you think about it, Primitive Painters had to have been primarily Maurice's creation - the parts in the interview where he discusses the early influences on him, and his view of what music as an expressive art is or should be, just serve to strengthen what you already felt (arf), but maybe hadn't fully credited before. Surely Lawrence and the others could never have concocted such a grandiose, almost proggy swirl of sound without MD at the helm (and the input of Guthrie and Fraser). And they never really concocted anything like it again, did they.

Re: Interview

It's interesting Rich that you mention the input of Guthrie and Fraser in Primitive Painters - and particularly Guthrie here. My favourite review on the latest reissues comes from Jimi Fletcher on his blog Fletch Talks - this is the review for the whole catalogue.....

https://fletchtalks.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/felt/

and this is his review on the Ignite "de-mix"

https://fletchtalks.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/felt-a-decade-of-music-ignite-the-seven-cannons-1985-2018-remix/

Jimi Fletcher opines that the new version of "Ignite" is a bit of a mess because only part of the album was remixed. For me it's quite telling that the only vocal track that stayed as Guthrie mixed it was "Primitive Painters". The grandiosity of the track for me is as much to do with Guthrie's mix as it was with Deebank's guitar work. I wonder what the results would have been like if this song had been remixed in the same way as the others. Personally I feel that it may have been left too stark, clinical, and sparse. Overall I feel that Guthrie's original mixes win the day over the new versions - they bring the kind of atmosphere to Felt that Maurice alludes to wishing for in the interview - but "That's just me" to quote another track on the album LOL.

Re: Interview

When you think about it, Primitive Painters had to have been primarily Maurice's creation

Lawrence said as much in his Record Collector interview in 1993:

It sounds untypical because Maurice Deebank wrote all the music.
Usually, we wrote songs together but this time he had the whole thing
ready. What you hear is how he'd presented it to me, and then I
filled in the melody and the lyrics on top. So it didn't have my
stilted rhythms. It hasn't got a basic Felt song structure which I
used to provide. I think that's why it breathes a lot. He was a lot
more experienced at songwriting than I was.

Re: Interview

Amazing interview Crystal (nice name too).

There's so much more to be said, more for Maurice to say.

We're getting a glimpse and a understanding of what was happening and the mood.

Re: Interview

That's very true.