In Session 10 w/ Jan Alkema from Compulsion - 343
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This week our pal Jan Alkema, drummer of the bands The Drum/China Drum and Compulsion returns. This time here's here to discuss the story of Compulsion. We cover the band's history, its ups and downs, and some behind-the-scenes stories. We hear about Jan's journey from joining The Amazing Colossal Men to Compulsion's battle with record labels, relentless touring, and eventual disbandment. Along the way, Jan drops some memorable anecdotes, including a run-in with Dave Grohl, a misadventure with Cradle of Filth, and plenty of backstage dramas. It's a helluva a ride, a candid real and entertaining look at a band that never quite got its due.
9:27 - Compulsion History and Formation
21:20 - The Amazing Colossal Men and in court with Virgin
29:24 - A fresh start and London
34:25 - The early EPs
39:49 - Touring, Elektra and Comforter
48:14 - Demostikon
50:34 - Timings, genres and peers
01:02:11 - The arrival of Britrock
01:06:21 - The Future is Medium
01:12:11 - The beginning of the end
01:17:08 - After the band
01:22:56 - Reissues
01:24:59 - Late trivia and gossip
Transcript
Mark Fraser: [00:00:00] Hey folks, this is the Unsung Podcast. Once again, Chris and I are unable to saying that we can't be together, we can't be within the vicinity of each other for this particular moment in time. So, hi Chris. Welcome. Those are the terms of the trial [00:01:00] separation. Yeah, respect them. I am at home and Chris is also at home.
We've also been joined by somebody else from his home. Um, and if you've read the description, you know who it is already, but do you want to introduce yourself, Jan?
Jan Alkema: Uh, hi there, dear listener. My name is Jan Alkmaar. I was the drummer in, uh, Compulsion.
Mark Fraser: He sure was. For this week's purposes. For this week's purposes.
Chris: Many things besides, but
Mark Fraser: yeah.
Jan Alkema: Different hats, but yes, today's hat. He's a compulsion drummer.
Chris: Jan has been part of the show before. Jan took part in our episode on The Drum, aka China Drum, for the Diskin album. Jan, that went pretty well. How did you feel about it after the fact?
Jan Alkema: Well, it was remarkable. I mean, as I said, I think at the time I couldn't believe when I [00:02:00] heard the, uh, unsung podcast, just on the album.
You know, I, I never heard of you guys. I just, I think it was via the China Drum Facebook page that I became aware that there was your podcast and that you've done one on. And you asked so many questions and you said so many things, you guys, where I was cheering on the podcast, going, yeah, because you were, you, you said things that I had hoped someone would say.
So, for me, it was just completely, uh, yeah, it was, it was just a wonderful experience. And then I reached out to you guys. I said, look, you are so many questions. I can answer them, um, either in a podcast or by email, whatever you want, and then it took us only what a year to organize the follow up. It was almost like the anniversary, which is hilarious because I, I'm one of life's great procrastinators, but.
You know, so I'm in good company. Why rush, you know, as, as [00:03:00] the slogan goes, why put off today what you can put off tomorrow. So that's kind of my motto.
Chris: I got the impression there was a bit of cathartic release when I was lambasting the press. Yeah, maybe a wee bit of that this week as well.
Jan Alkema: It was really nice.
And it was especially nice to hear at the end that I think it was you, Chris, wasn't it? Who actually saw the drum when we were desperately trying to show the world. We'd changed, we'd moved on, there was another way to make music with sampling yourself and doing all that stuff that we did for that album, uh, and you went, Oh, actually, I was there and it was, uh, yeah, it was, it was really touching.
I was really touched by the whole damn experience. It was really nice. What a surprise. What a lovely surprise. So I'm back for more. I want
Chris: more. Yeah, I remember Mark and I musing on the fact that it's a very rewarding experience as well when not just a listener engages with an episode but when the actual musicians and the band [00:04:00] engage with an episode in that kind of way because, I mean, I guess one of the consequences of this show is that you're covering music that I'm sure the people that made it often feel was underappreciated as well.
So, yeah, it's nice to be able to hook up with them. Yeah, it's got to be nice
Jan Alkema: for you guys in a way to get. The actual, you know, the, uh, monkey and or organ grinder to get in touch and go, yeah, we are here. We're listening. And it's, yeah, I just find on, on the whole, you're, you're the shows you guys put up a way broader than I'm used to from podcasts.
You veer off into every direction. And like I was saying just before. You started recording to mark that, um, I didn't know who Siobhan Wilson was. Now I do. One of our biggest fans or proto men. I have no idea. Uh, and there's other stuff I've learned. The, um, the stuff from former Yugoslavia and, uh, what's it called?
Um, turbo. Yeah. Some crazy stuff and [00:05:00] all the movie themes. Yeah. I did think, um, that's why I suggested, Hey, but how about you do one on compulsion? Yeah. If there is an unsung band, um, even though we all did things afterwards, you know, we're all still alive and life's good, whatever we are, you know, are following on Spotify.
Barely
Chris: Scratches 2000. Yeah, I remember Compulsion obviously came up during that episode by virtue of going into the backstory and it was a band that Way back at that point when I was first really starting to get into, you know, music press and that kind of stuff Um, I do remember seeing it never clicked at that time.
But when we started digging in, it was like, there's something here because yeah, this band was sharing stages with all manner of people that have gone on to all manner of great success. And you know, often they were supporting you. And yet It's curious to see how fates diverged and how, you know, the band fragmented.
And yeah, I mean, various members of the band went on to great things, but yeah, it's, it's definitely going to be [00:06:00] a rewarding exploration. Uh, before we start grinding you in that though, Mark, uh, I'm sure you have the, the weekly admin
Mark Fraser: to get out the road. Yeah, the endless admin, the admin that haunts us, I suppose.
So, if you're a fan of this podcast, there's a few things you can do, right? The first thing you could do, which we really appreciate, is if you could give us a rating and review on the podcast platform of your choice, whether that's Apple Podcasts, whether that's Spotify. You can now ask questions and actually leave comments on Spotify, too.
I don't know if you knew that, but that's pretty cool. So, yeah. If you haven't and you want to say it and you're, you know, not part of the elite club, which I'll talk about in a wee second, then you're, you're more than welcome to leave your comments there. Um, but if you want to be part of the elite club, then you can join our Patreon, which is patreon.
com forward slash unsung pod. Once there, you will see there are two tiers. Our first tier is the Unsung AAA group. So basically, we will give you access to our lovely Facebook group, which people are really enjoying lately. We've had so many excellent suggestions for albums. Last week's episode was one.
Next [00:07:00] week's episode will also be one. And then, yeah, we've got loads. And then we also, you also get episodes a few days early and you will also get access to bonus episodes, et cetera, when they become available and who knows what else in the future. But we've also got an enhanced tier,
Chris: Chris. Yeah, we do have an enhanced tier.
Can I just throw in at this point, but the last couple of weeks we've had a segment on politics, clearly inescapably because of the current circumstances with the US election. And during the edit, I was kicking myself for failing to refer during the admin bit. to our, uh, pricing as a liberal tears, given the inherent sort of lesser center politics of the, of the podcast itself.
But yeah, the second of our liberal, liberal tears, which I think we rechristened the musketeer, which is definitely not a liberal is the record club and the record club is 15 quid a month. But for that money you are first of all you're supporting us. Secondly, you're [00:08:00] supporting yourself because each month we send you a record that we have sort of sourced from around like genuinely around the bands from all over the shop and we're buying directly from the bands and from the labels.
So the third advantage is that you're actually supporting those bands and supporting those labels with a share of revenue as well. That's far in excess of just, you know, going on a streaming platform and watching their tunes. So for 15 quid a month, you're really getting in and about the underground music movement.
You're hearing new stuff. Uh, you're keeping this podcast to float. You're helping me buy a new camera for my laptop because look at this piece of shit right now. And, uh, yeah. And you are financing these bands sometimes. stuff, sometimes helping them pay off the debts that they accrued trying to make the music and sometimes, in a couple of cases, leading to reissues of things that they didn't think anybody cared about.
And it's a bit like when you start discussing bands that have been a bit overlooked or feel [00:09:00] underappreciated. These bands that we are sending out as part of the record club, a lot of them feel really appreciated as well because they thought that's it, nobody else is going to really listen to them.
Stumble across this but then they get a little injection of interest from the people that hear their music via this avenue So yeah get involved in that please It comes with all the benefits of the four pound tier But just a number more and you get to feel like you're a better person than the rest of them
Mark Fraser: Yeah, your social conscience can be satiated.
So yeah But that brings us back to what we were talking about before all the admin, which is Jan. Let's get into it, Chris. Yeah,
Chris: Jan of Compulsion. Uh,
Music: referred to by
Chris: the Irish Examiner as the Indy ACDC. Yeah, that's, that's,
Jan Alkema: uh,
Chris: yeah. To [00:10:00] give a bit of context here, voted in 1993 in NME alongside Rage Against the Machine and Elastica as the hot musical acts on the scene at the time. Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's, again, referring back to your comment earlier, Jan, you're keeping good company there.
So we'll, we'll dig a wee bit into compulsion here. We'll dig a little bit into the prehistory the scene. Yeah. We'll look at a little bit of the discography. Uh, albeit in fairly fleeting detail, uh, maybe especially landing on, on the, the last record. Sure. And then we'll just sort of fish around inside your head for some interesting stories, some interesting musings, your reflections on it, and maybe any updates because Compulsion, a bit like some of the other bands that we've covered, uh, like Head Swim, Black Chain of Drum, have a fairly loyal core of supporters online.
There's a number of bulletin boards. There's, you know, they're one of those bands that whenever you look into the comments on a YouTube video, it's always people asking for reissues or asking for [00:11:00] some new shows or asking for any demos. You know, there's, there's a, there's a loyal audience there. So I think anything you can throw at them, any bones, you can throw them.
They'll be grateful. So I will be going to the back story for some basic bio. I have pieced this together from various sources and what I found was that some of the sources contradict. So yeah, have you ever seen that? What is it? What's the metal magazine that does that thing where it brings people in and asks them how accurate their Wikipedia is?
What's that again?
Mark Fraser: Metal sucks. It's loud
Chris: wire. element of that to this. Yeah, let me throw some of this out there. The band effectively formed in Dublin. I would query, we'll come back to this the exact when, um, the wikipedia says 1990, um, but irishrock. org talks about the precursor band, the amazing colossal men way, way, way back into the early eighties, which I didn't realize at the time the guys The names of which we'll start to throw about shortly.
The previous group, The Five Cigarettes, was like back in [00:12:00] 1982. That was Joey, Sid, Paul O'Brien, Garrett and Declan O'Sullivan. And then they became The Amazing Colossal Men from 87, which was Joey, Sid, Dave Clifford and Mark O'Sullivan.
The Amazing Colossal Men only had one record, right? Total? That's it. That's their
Jan Alkema: debut album.
Chris: Yes, yeah, in 1990.
Try to describe them, I mean, people use things like bits of 60s psychedelic rock. There's not a lot of that. There's like little elements of kind of like Rolling Stones, rock and roll mixed with [00:13:00] some neo punk. Um, Joseph Mayday. On, on vocals. Uh, Joey Barry, that's
Jan Alkema: his real name, right? Joey Barry. Well, you know why he's called Joseph Mary.
Because he was born on Christmas Day and the Catholic Irish tradition, any child born on Christmas Day is, you're called Joseph Mary, or I think if your girl is Mary Joseph, but his birthday brought him his name. It's his real name, Joseph Mary, but we always just called him Joey because, you know, he's Joey.
Something. Jesus's real name was Joseph Mary . It might be, yeah. I mean, you can't really name Jesus after the parents. Can you, God, Mary . Yeah, Trinity Mary. It's, it's, it's a fair point, but it is what it is. It's let's, let's not go, let's not go into religion too much,
Chris: aren't we? Yeah.
Jan Alkema: Yeah. But it's, it's, it's, they were, yeah.
The amazing colossal men were um, I think a five piece. It was at the [00:14:00] time when. All the big labels went to Ireland to find the next U2, the next big thing, because U2 were hugely successful already. In, you know, late 80s. So, yeah, so, you know, they were just snapped up by Siren, who were part of Virgin, brought to London, uh, in a nutshell, Siren said, right, you've got to get rid of your drummer and your keyboard player.
So, the band was suddenly a 3 piece and they spent as far as I know, because I wasn't part of, I didn't even know they existed. Um, they just spent a very long time in Abbey Road studios. recording with a producer. I can't remember who it was, um, but they almost didn't play a note for month after month.
They were just in London and the whole album structure with their songs was being kind of created, mapped out with, I don't know, studio musicians or something. I mean, the details are a bit sketchy, but [00:15:00] eventually they did perform on it. The album's released and then they have to tour it. So they had to become a band and they used a session drummer who fell out on a tour bus with Garrett and threatened to, I think, stab him.
It was an Argentinian drummer and it was like, you know, I will kill you. So they realized he wasn't maybe the right fit for the band. So they just started auditioning. And I was with a company called Session Connection, uh, desperately trying to get into bands. I was playing anything going. I just, I just played, I done some recording for a couple of studios who knew me.
So they would do kind of like, you know, vanity albums and I drum on them or program Lynn drums, whatever. I just played working men's club bands. I mean, literally anything teaching drums just to earn money. And waiting and waiting and waiting. And then finally I get a cassette from the session connection with Total, the album, [00:16:00] the first album by The Amazing Colossal Men.
And I listened to it and I thought, Oh, that's right up my alley. I can do that. It's kind of rock. It's kind of hard rock. It'll do. Yeah. And auditions met the lads and we just, It was like falling in love for the four of us. It was just the weirdest audition I've ever done in my life. I don't know if you want an anecdote of how that went, my audition, or you got other stuff you want.
Okay. So I had a very large drum kit, you know, with like rack Tom rack Tom rack on floor floor to high hat symbols everywhere. Even a little splash, you know, it was one of
Mark Fraser: those guys.
Jan Alkema: [00:17:00] I was desperately trying to just be whatever you wanted, but my, my heart was in, um, I'm really honest. Heavy metal. I was, you know, I was into Sabbath Motorhead, a CDC.
That was my Holy Trinity of music. So I'd rehearsed in practice. I was ready for the audition. Someone was just finishing up. It's my turn. I dragged my kit in. It takes me forever to set up. And the lads walk in looking just cool as fuck. It's all like hair and leather and denim and same as me, hair, denim, leather.
I'm just thinking, okay, these guys, you know, that's a good fit so far. So Garrett, the guitarist is like, what do you want to play first? I go, Oh, how about this song? I don't know. Lies. I go, all right. I counted off one, two, three, four, go start hammering away. But after about 30, 40 seconds, they just stopped playing.
Shit, what's happening? [00:18:00] Okay, what else do you know? So I named another song. So, again, count off 1, We all go in, it's glorious, Dean, but within a minute, again. It just, they stopped playing and I'm thinking, what? We did that for one more song. So I'd played maybe three minutes in total and Garrett just turns to me and he goes, Jan, do you smoke?
And I go, yeah. Cause Jan, do you drink beer? Sure do. Do you play pool? And I go, yeah, I play pool. Right. Let's go to the bar. So we just stopped and left to go to the bar. This rehearsal studio had a bar with a pool table and we spent two, three hours getting Absolutely shit faced playing pool, getting to know each other and suddenly the lads peel away.
The guy just hang on young, they went to a corner into a little huddle and whispering away, then they come back and Gary goes, you've got the audition and more than that. We want you to be in the band permanently and I'm just. [00:19:00] Absolutely. My mind is just blown away. I've barely played. It took me longer to set up and play.
And, um, yeah, they phoned their manager who I could hear the manager going to promise things. You can't keep, you know, just chill out, chill out. So I was initially employed as a session drummer, but eventually they bought me out from the session connection. I think I cost 500 quid. That was the buyout for my contract and I was in the band, so I was in suddenly I'm in the amazing colossal men.
And I think a month or two later we play the failure festival in Dublin, which is the first year they ran it. I'm not sure if they still do it, but it was huge festival. I'd never played a festival meatloaf. Was headlining the night we played, you know, I met meatloaf. He wished us luck. He was a lovely man.
I'm just thinking I've arrived. I am now going to be a rock star. [00:20:00] This is amazing. And we're doing our gig for the failure festival and there's flags with TACM, the amazing colossal man and. I just thought this is insane. These guys are really well known and blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, the album, I don't know if you read any of the total reviews, but it didn't land with the reviewers and the lads told me that, you know, what had been done to their demos was shocking.
It was the classic example of the label, take a really cool band, stop fucking around with the lineup. Give them a producer who makes them sound like something they've never wanted to sound like, and it doesn't work out. No one buys into that shite. So, you know, we changed the name from The Amazing Colossal Men to Colossal Men, got a budget for the second album, the follow up album.
So, of course, what do you do? Three months in L. A. and we went to Sunset Sound to record with a producer called Nico [00:21:00] Bolas, who does Neil Young b sides he used to now he just works. I think exclusively with Neil Young is like his favorite producer Um, and he does loads of other acts, but yeah, we just had the best time in L.
A. doing an album that Virgin hated.
Chris: So, you know. So this brings us to this story that you've hinted at, and I think this actually came up in the original episode we did with you as well. The Virgin Records debacle, because I think it's pretty well established that The two guys in particular, was it Joey Barry and Sid, uh, they took them to court and won?
No, the four of us, the of you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, the line up. It gets reported just as the two of you. Yeah, so like you were saying,
Jan Alkema: wiki is just wrong or other website wrong, you know. The Amazing Colossal Men, I joined them in 1990 and spent the best part of two years First touring total just didn't go well.
And then we [00:22:00] went to do another album, which, you know, took ages to write. We kept being told to write a single. So we'd spend a week or two trying to write a single two days in a studio to do one song. I mean, the money wasted was just, it was obscene, but that was what happened then. That's what labels like Virgin did.
They threw a fuck ton of money at us to become something that we never were going to be. So we're a four piece in 1990 and in I'd say a year and a half later, um, the shit hits the fan, the album that we've made. Which is very different to what the Amazing Colossal Memoir were, as well as what Compulsion became.
It was a very weird Americana record. Still pretty good, I've heard a few of the songs recently. They're okay, but Virgin hated
Chris: it. Who has the rights to a ticket that's totally spiked by Virgin?
Jan Alkema: Nope, we won [00:23:00] everything. They told us, we're not dropping you, but we're going to stop you working. You will not work again.
You They used to do this shitty thing back in the day, they wouldn't drop bands. They would just stop you from ever doing anything else. It was like really vengeful, but back then you could get legal aid. You could literally phone a number, um, find a lawyer and they would pay for the court case, the preparation, everything.
So we found a really good lawyer. I think his name is John Smith of all names, uh, who became, I think eventually maybe CEO of Seagrams and it became huge. Um, if I, Misremember, apologies to John Smiths and Seagrams, but whatever, um, basically we got as far as a court date and I think two weeks before the court date, uh, we got a call from our lawyer and he said they're chickening out, they've blinked, they want to settle for an amount of money that I can't tell [00:24:00] you because it's the usual NDA shite.
Uh, we sued them for restraint of trade, uh, and they settled out of court. So we suddenly had a pile of money and just started again. Literally just went, we're never playing a Colossal Men song ever again. That's just in the past. We're gonna start all over again. And that's how Compulsion was born. Uh, with our own label,
Chris: Fabulon.
Was there ever any sense of that second record coming out? Is it available? We
Jan Alkema: got the masters, they literally gave us a pile of money. Gave us everything back, including the master tapes. I mean, who the hell does that? So, I remember going in my Passat estate to the Virgin offices or Siren. To the back where the warehouse was and we just loaded like 35 four inch reels into the back of my car and drove off.
But yeah, the, we've got, [00:25:00] I think the best copy we've got is probably on a cassette. We each got given a cassette of the final mixes. Sunset Sound cassette. It's so fucking cool. Cause it's Sunset Sound, you know, who wouldn't? wouldn't want to be there. So,
Chris: yeah, you're not tempted to get that sort of extracted and maybe like upscaled.
No, no, it's,
Jan Alkema: it's a skeleton in my opinion. Uh, you know, there's four of us, so maybe the other three feel differently, but we, you know, kind of got back together via WhatsApp about a year and a half ago. And, um, it's come up a few times where we just keep finding bits and pieces and then we share it on our WhatsApp group and it's fun.
It's really endearing. But I think it's probably best left well the fuck alone. I think there's a lot of
Chris: enthusiasts
Jan Alkema: might disagree with that man, but maybe it's yours. It's yours. Yeah, maybe, maybe, but I can't make that decision. Personally, I have no pride. Like I just told you, I used to be in working men's club bands.
I didn't give a shit. [00:26:00] I did what it took to do music and to try and make a living. until I found the band that yeah, shaped me, which is compulsion with the guys when we were colossal men, but that wasn't quite fully formed. I don't know if that makes sense. We were together and got on really well. It's just the music we were making was, it didn't really fit us.
It was too, uh, click tracks and re recording. And we tried to be a on the American album, the follow up album. It just didn't quite land. I don't think it was, we were true enough to who we were and what we really believed in. We were always trying to be, to emulate our heroes, if that makes any sense.
Mark Fraser: Yeah, I think I was going to say, I think it's quite fortunate that you managed to get a second chance out of all that.
It's
Jan Alkema: incredible. Oh, Lady Luck has spanked me over and over. It's just [00:27:00] amazing. Yeah, we got a fresh start.
Mark Fraser: It's obviously quite rare that somebody takes a record label to court, let alone win, especially in this era, in that particular era where, you know, they were a legion. Is there any indication as to why they decided just to give you what you wanted or like Oh, they were going to lose.
Jan Alkema: They were going to lose,
Mark Fraser: but so they obviously have been working, they were obviously working on the assumption with all those bands that this, that the day of reckoning could potentially come and then it did come and they threw in the towel, but then the practice continued and has, I know people that have been in similar situations in the late 2000s, you know, um, so it's not like the, it's not like the practice ended.
No, no, no. I
Jan Alkema: know it's, it's kind of weird. Uh, I think it's probably also to do with the lawyer we had who I've called John Smith. Cause I really do think that's his name. But he was so good, which is why I think he became, you know, CEO of a big label and drinks company. You know, he was just a very, very, very, very fucking smart guy with the thickest Cockney [00:28:00] accent you can imagine.
I mean, he was just such an amazing guy. He was just brilliant. Um, I think, yeah, we were just really lucky to find him. We stayed with him for a while. I think he negotiated. There was used to be something called a breakage clause in contracts. So you would, you're kind of the money you would earn wouldn't be based on 100 percent of the.
Physical items, the vinyl or whatever you were selling because there was a breakage clause of, I think, 10 percent harking back to Bakelite when 10 percent of all stock would just be so brittle and delicate, it would shatter. And companies were trying to do that in the age of CDs. So our lawyer was like, that's ridiculous.
So I had that struck out. Um, stuff like having tour support, not part of recoupable, you know, like really, really kind of dull admini money things, but none of us were really stupid. So we [00:29:00] always kind of smelt a rat in the industry and found an allegiance with this lawyer. To get the crap out of contracts.
So yeah, a lot of stuff that other bands still sucked up because they're so keen and desperate to get on with it. And I get that. Um, we were a little bit more savvy and I guess, or lucky, I don't know. bit of both.
Chris: So see as part of that second chance and that, uh, you know, the rebirth, it's maybe oversimplified in the accounts of the band online, but did you literally just decide to move to London?
Was that?
Jan Alkema: We were already in London. Colossal men, the amazing Colossal men were plucked out of Dublin, moved to London, well, ditching two of the five members. So Sid, Joseph, Mary and Garrett. All moved to London to do Total, the album that didn't do well. That's where I met them, in London. Uh, I was living in Richmond.
They were living in Camden and [00:30:00] Highgate, round about there. Um, yeah, we just stayed in London and then obviously spent three months in America and came back, uh, and then had to go on the dole while Virgin was trying to stop us from working. Um, and yeah, we sued their ass and won.
Chris: Yeah, that's interesting.
I'd read that about you guys all living on the dole while you were trying to do that first compulsion record. Um, what was that like? What was the experience like? Are there any fond memories? Or, you know, does it send shivers down your spine?
Jan Alkema: No, it doesn't send shivers because this settlement that we did get in the end so that the phase where we were on the dole and really, like, just thinking We're fucked, like literally we're fucked.
We're doomed. Nothing's going to happen. But the four of us were so tight together. We were so, I don't know, just all the pieces just fit really, really well. And I knew how rare that was because I've been in loads of bands [00:31:00] and acts and fuck knows why, you know, the skeletons in my closet are just insane.
It's ridiculous. But we knew there was something there and we just had to ride out a brief period. While this legal thing resolved itself, then we got this settlement and we knew we had enough money for about a year to live off, record, put on shows, buy equipment, you know, stuff like, you know how expensive a symbol is Jesus Christ.
It's like, you know, hundreds of pounds for a symbol and I'm not a light hitter. So I, you know, there's a lot of breakage and a lot of stuff and we needed money. But yeah, we just went for it with our own label, Fabulon Recorders, uh, and just put out a first EP called Compulsion by Compulsion with all the artwork done by Garrett.[00:32:00]
Chris: Yeah, I think Garrett referred to a bit of an us versus the world mentality at that point. Yeah, truly.
Jan Alkema: We were so fucking pissed off. We were so, with the, the anger was ridiculous, but we could channel it into. This new thing, you know, when we started compulsion, um, funny enough, the name, I really didn't like it.
We were looking for a name, you know, it's like, we're never going to be blossoming again. Uh, we need a new name. We all chipped in some ideas, this, that, and the other and Garrett one day goes. Uh, I found the name, uh, we're going to be called compulsion and I went, Oh, that's a shit name. It sounds like a disco band or something.
I hate that name. I, I, I don't want to be in a band called compulsion. So he lit just world round and he said, well, you can fuck off then. And I went, actually, that name's going to just grow on me. And it did, he was right. The thing working with [00:33:00] Garrett is, and he's now, as you know, known as Jack knifely. And he's a global phenomenon in the world of, um, record producers responsible for, I mean, his wiki page is just, how does it fit in?
It's insane. I mean, it's truly, and I knew just being with him for those years before compulsion was like, fuck, and all this kid's got his head screwed on so well. And he's so driven and so compulsion. Really fit kind of the spirit of what we were trying to do. We were really angry, but we were going to do it on our terms.
So Garrett came up with the font for the name because it's a weird scribbly font. All the artwork, everything, the direction, the we wrote a manifesto, everything was going to be in a certain way. And he was our glorious leader. He was our dictator and it was brilliant because I don't [00:34:00] cede easily to others.
But with him, it was so obvious how good he was. I just wanted to see where we're going to go. And you start kind of almost like mind reading what's required. And it became just the best time. The, those initial compulsion that year or two, when we were just doing EPS, yeah, it was absolutely glorious. It felt like we were going to just take over the world.
Chris: Yeah, there's quite a lot of EPs. I mean, how do you reflect back in them? I think you brought out a record, was it Hi Fi in 95, which was a compilation of select cuts EPs. It was four of them, I think it was, wasn't it? When you go back and listen to those early EPs, are there some that you feel more fondly towards?
Are there some that you feel are a bit overlooked?
Jan Alkema: We pinned our Colors to the Mast with the first two EPs. So that was, The compulsion one and then followed up with casserole. I[00:35:00]
think that was in 92. We did two EPs and it just felt like that's who we are. And the reviews for them were really, really promising. Like you referred to earlier, we were suddenly linked with other artists. Like, you know, your Elastica's or whatever, whose first gig was supporting us. And I think it was in the Camden Falcons.
Music: And
Jan Alkema: it was rammed, Elastica come on and it's rammed. We're just thinking, yeah, there we go. Elastica finish, fuck off. and take two thirds of the crowd with them. And we're
Chris: like, well, just, just, she'd left suede [00:36:00] hadn't she? So I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
Jan Alkema: We, we were never pals with, with Elastica, but it was just funny to see the industry at work, especially the NME were really like, you know, cracking the whip in every, all the sheep run in that direction.
And, um, we will run in, you know, and we was staring at this going, what the fuck's going on? We're doing something very, very different. You know, we were clearly very full of intent, purpose and faith. We really, really believed that it was special and I think it's, it's survived. It's, it's, um, yeah, I didn't listen to it for almost 20 years once we split up.
It was my kids who suddenly were like, Oh, actually, you know, that band you're in it, then that's not shit. Like your kids can only bring you down to earth. It's like, no, actually, we quite like that. And I thought, okay, I'll give it another listen. And I thought, yeah, it's all right. But the first EPs were my favorite time.
So, and then we followed up [00:37:00] with another EP called safety, but I think still stands the test of times in 93.
And they came out of sessions. We did with, uh, Brilliant engineer called Ian Capel, who became a producer, really, really successful producer. I think he's still, still doing albums now. Um, he just engineered in the studio called the Stone Room, which is, uh, In London, uh, and we do, we book it for like two days and we would just record like 10 songs and mix them up and then write some more, go back.
So we did that a few times and just had this massive collection of songs released three piece. At which point, um, one little Indian found us now called one little independent and [00:38:00] we stopped, you know, we signed to a label and that's all thanks to the genius A& R guy who found us, Rick Lennox. He's like, he's almost like, like the fifth member without him.
I don't think I'd be sat here talking about compulsion with you. Yeah, no one would ever have known, but yeah, he, he saw us play live and just, We thought he was a fan. He had like multicolored hair, just tiny kid. I thought he was just some crazy teenager who was just really nice. So we were chatting and then suddenly he goes, Oh yeah, I want to talk to my boss about maybe signing you or this.
What the fuck? Okay, one little Indian, now
Chris: one little independent. Yeah, who was working with Bjork and Skunkinancy, I think, at one point. The Shaman Sugarcubes. Yep. As well. Queen Adrena. Great label. Queen Adrena. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Um, yeah, I mean, those, those L. E. P. 's, I, I heard, Closer comparisons with stuff like the Wild Hearts for me.[00:39:00]
That kind of end of rock and also, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but of Feeder
when they were a bit more of just an out and out melodic alternative rock band, you know, but with more of the Wild Hearts edge to it. You know, there's an accessibility there. And yeah, I mean, I can hear the flavors of stuff that would emerge from it as well. That's going to be a little bit of a theme maybe shortly.
Yeah. Comforter just as that came out, I understand that was quite a heavy period of touring for you, wasn't it?
Jan Alkema: Insane. Yeah. We just toured nonstop, which we really enjoyed. It's just the things [00:40:00] that we didn't enjoy. And that hit us after a while is the bits surrounding playing live for that hour, hour and a half.
It's the endless traveling, the just doing essentially, you know, that what's the same, hurry up. Yeah. It's just, we did so much of just sitting on, you know, folded arms in the back of a van or small tour bus and just going. To another gig, then having a great time at the gig, but yeah, it's, it's, it's not, it's not humane to, to do that for too long.
It really does hurt you, but we toured. Yeah, we were 1 of the hardest touring acts around with some great support. We had, you know, from, uh, support acts that we. Took with us who all went on to do really big things and selling bucket loads of records. It's just like, what is going on here? I'm trying to think of the Northern Irish Band three piece.
They're really young. Ash Ash. Ash. Ash. Ash did their first tour supporting us.[00:41:00]
And they were doing their O or A levels or some shit, they were just children.
Chris: Tim Wheeler was on Top of the Pops doing Kung Fu the day after his exams or something like that, when he was like 15 or something like that.
Music: They're the Aggie and the X Men, we've called in for a while as well. I'm thinking strange,
Jan Alkema: it's They came on tour with us.
I was just thinking, what the fuck, these are children and, you know, they would be really upset and really missing home. So we'd kind of take them under our wing and go, look, it's okay. You know, when you do tour, you can expect this first days [00:42:00] are a bit tough, then you get tour fit and it's okay. You'll be, you're doing really well.
You're great at, you know, it's going so blah, blah, blah. They were just lovely kids. And then next thing you know, they're just, their record sales are over there and we're still just trying to just enough. But what can I say? We had a fairly long run, you know, to not race ahead too far. But yeah, we just kept at it and toured relentlessly, especially the States.
We spent so much time in America touring and then everything's out of sync. When you tour America with material that you're really sick and tired of because you've already played it to death in Britain, in Europe, and then you've got to go to America, start again, the same shite, um, and you want to move on.
Chris: Your first American release, am I right in saying it was Boogie Woogie? Yeah,[00:43:00]
on Elektra. 1994. Yeah, so I also saw a comment that said you bailed on a deal with Elektra. Are you able to unpack that at
Jan Alkema: all? Yeah. So Elektra wanted us, um, this brilliant A& R person, I think her name was Caroline Vickers or, but anyway, I'm so bad with names. I should know better. Um, we're doing like sound in the city or something, some event in Manchester where there's just a thousand bands playing every venue.
And this woman, yeah, Valerie Vickers, I think her name was, came up to us after the show and said, you guys rock my socks off. And she was so American and almost like a school teacher in a way as well, but a cool one. And she said, yeah, I'm with Electra. I'm going to get you guys, this, that, and the other. So we went with Electra, but didn't fully go with Electra.
It was more like, we're going to release Boogie Woogie. And if you promote it properly and do your job, we'll sign to you properly. And then, you know, we [00:44:00] can really get on with this. And of course they were shit. They talked a good fight and then. When we went there, we could see that it was never going to work with Electra.
So we wanted to leave and they said, ah, well, we're going to sue you. You will never work at this town again. You know, shades of what happened with Virgin. We're like, shit, we're fucking around with a major label. This is what happens when you fuck around with a major label. We must learn this lesson. So we were a bit desperate.
Next thing we know, a guy called Chuck Reed, who's A& R with Interscope, has seen us and is desperate to get us to sign to Interscope. We explained our deplorable situation with Electra, said leave it with me, and I think it's, uh, is it Jimmy Iovine?
Music: Yeah.
Jan Alkema: Had a, had lunch with whoever owned Electra just with the purpose of, I think it was, um, like corporate dick swinging.
Who's gonna get, and we were just the toy that they were fighting over. And [00:45:00] Interscope won, yeah, that swinging contest.
Chris: Before it slips my mind, I just want to mention, uh, you talked about those first EPs you were recording like eight and ten songs. This is more fuel for the fire of the fans that really want you guys to release some of this rare stuff that you're sitting on.
Cause I mean, those EPs have five, six tracks on them, but if you were recording eight, nine, ten tracks, there's a bunch of stuff there that people will never have heard. Well,
Jan Alkema: that's on Comforter. So when we signed to One Little Indian. We'd already released these three EPs, but we had so much more material already recorded.
I think this, this maybe also helped make signing to One Little Indian really easy. We had so much material. We just signed and then released Comforter. We didn't have to go and record it. It was all the material was there. So everything that came out on the three EPs and on Comforter, was essentially as meant for our own label, Fabulon [00:46:00] Recorders.
In a way, Comforter is what was left over. It was, we thought the strongest material were the EPs, and we were just going to keep releasing EPs under Fabulon Recorders as our label. Next thing we know, we're with One Little Indian, and they're looking at this shit ton of music. You just go, oh, you can do another album.
So I think it's got, don't even know how many tracks it's got. 15 or 18 or it's just comforted. It's just, yeah. And that's all from the Stone Room sessions, essentially. I think there's one or two songs we may have recorded somewhere else.
Yeah, we just really, really prolific. Because, you know, if you know a song, you guys know this, you know, you're in a band, you know, your songs, if you're just going to record them essentially as a live thing with very few overdubs, how long is it going to [00:47:00] take you? You know, one or two takes next one or two takes next.
So you can really quickly get everything out of the way.
Chris: If you're well rehearsed, absolutely.
Jan Alkema: Oh yeah. We rehearsed like every day we could, we were just, especially the three of us, Joey was more cerebral and. Like the pub so frequently the three of us Sid, Garrett and me would be rehearsing and we'd be like, where's Joey?
And then we'd phone his house and his girlfriend. We go. Oh, no, he didn't get home till five And you know as a lock in at the pub and yeah, maybe he and he just wouldn't show up his lyrics I think that set us apart from bands, maybe like Wild Hearts feeder and The lyrics weren't like the normal lyrics.
They were all kind of characters and stories and
Chris: Yeah.
Jan Alkema: weird imagined worlds of Joey's mind. It
Chris: just worked. Yeah, I mean, the subject matter of Basket Case alone is just a very good example. [00:48:00] The
Moses analogy. Um, Yeah, there's one thing I want to flag up as well. Compulsion's Domestikon, a collection of like alternate versions that included things like audio clips of interviews that you used to give out free at gigs. Who's, who was the driving force behind that?
Jan Alkema: Well, Domestikon is, um, uh, based on, uh, the song Domestique, uh, which is from the Tour de France.
I think Domestique is like someone who serves the main right team rider. And Domestikon was with, uh, Ian Harris. journalist, John Harris, not Ian, not his brother Ian. No, John Harris, the uh, NME or Melody Maker journalist. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: So he's somewhat notorious actually given a part of the story that we're about to get to.
Jan Alkema: Yeah. He's, he's [00:49:00] back then he was just another journalist into our band and we thought why don't we do something because before social media, you know, we keep, I'm so old and everything is from so long ago. But yeah, we just thought if you hand out the CD with interviews, so people hear what you're all about, and there are questions and answers and, and then you have bits of music and different mixes.
We just thought it'd be like a really good giveaway. That's cool. It'd be really interesting, but yeah, it was highly collectible. I would imagine as well. Yeah. And it was literally because there was no social media. You had to do this stuff for yourself. Like, we even made something really rare. We made a CD that had a screen saver.
Do you remember? You used to have to upload the screen saver on a disk. Otherwise you wouldn't have a screensaver on your computer and it would melt your screen or something. And yeah, we, we made a screensaver where each corner of the screen would be our little heads filmed and they would bounce around into each other and then go, [00:50:00] and it would just, yeah, it's all Garrett.
He just had great idea after great idea after great idea. You know, couldn't sit still. I've never seen a human being so. busy. It's tiring to be with someone who's that active. You feel guilty all the time, like you should be doing more yourself, you know? It's like, just bizarre. I've never seen sleep, just worked, worked, worked, and came up with great ideas, I think.
So,
Chris: can I draw a couple of things you've mentioned there together, including John Harris? One of the things that strikes me about Compulsion is the timing of the band. Clearly, nothing you can do about that, but you know, the world moves around you. And Compulsion was caught in a strange time for British guitar music.
First of all, pop wise, it was coming off the back of all the explosion of rave music and electronic music and dance music. And the press were kind of, seemed like they were kind of searching for a sense of a movement to form the basis of their coverage, because clearly. [00:51:00] As a music journalist, throughout the eras, it's easier to get behind a sort of wave, a movement, than it is to just write bespoke articles about individual bands, you know?
So there was a lot of fishing for that. I guess, first thing I would want to ask is, it must have been strange for you guys, because obviously on one side of the Atlantic, grunge was just overwhelmingly huge, and then on this side of the Atlantic, you had the Britpop movement completely taken over. You were somewhat sandwiched.
Yes, completely.
Jan Alkema: Yeah, um, and that was our problem in a way is we, you know, it's the old saying, you don't want to be a member of a club, of any club that'll have you. We railed against. Every genre that people try to shoehorn us into, whether it's being called the indie ACDC, it's not, I love ACDC, but the idea that we were doing that it's just preposterous or the Irish Nirvana.
We also had that hanging around our neck for so [00:52:00] long because Nevermind changed everything. I mean, I think without, you know, Nirvana, so many bands would never have got a sniff. But
Chris: it's not already an Irish Nirvana, because remember there was a Nirvana, the folk band as well. Oh, there
Jan Alkema: could have been a genuine band called Nirvana, but yeah, we were just shoehorned in lazily with Nirvana.
Oh, well, we're clearly grunge, and we just thought, well, we, we don't, no, that's not what we're doing. It's not, that's not who we are. Um, we're broader than that. I mean, I don't know.
Chris: At the risk of re traumatizing you, um, I want to throw another one into the mix here. New wave of new wave. It's a genre kind of invented by Melody Maker, I believe, at least that's who's attributed to the whispering and hollering zine that's done a bit about this and they called it surely the most ridiculous of all of the 1990s increasingly desperate press based scenes described as early 90s grouping of bands, guitar based rock that often included keyboards, [00:53:00] pre Britpop.
But many of the bands who were initially referred to as, you know, new wave of new wave, including the likes of Alaska, became part of Britpop, uh, John Harris, the guy you were talking about, uh, who, who also in his own way kind of helped to popularize the term, called it a Britpop without the good bits. And apparently, uh, Fierce Panda, their first ever release on Fierce Panda obviously became a really influential label for a good decade and a half.
Shaggin in the Streets was partly inspired as a celebration of that New Wave of New Wave genre. That was their first thing to put out. Yeah. Some of the bands that included was, uh, These Animal Men, uh, Done Lying Down.
Smash, with asterisks between each, uh, letter, um, other bands [00:54:00] that got associated with it included Sleeper, Echo Belly, uh, Shed 7, who I believe you played with, uh, in the
Jan Alkema: They'd supported us for ages and then went stratospheric. I'll have you, then
Music: if you hold me back I'll kick you in the shins and tell you that the night's on fire It's good to be alive Yeah,
Chris: another band, yeah.
And they all kind of ended up, well certainly the last three mentioned they ended up as part of big parts of the Britpop movement. Who did Compulsion feel a kinship with? I mean, you must have been part of some really unusual bills.
Jan Alkema: Yeah, well, I mean, you just said Dumb Lying Down. They're one of our favourite bands that toured with us.
We had them as support to as many gigs as we could feasibly. I don't know how they got lumped into that scene as well. I mean, the bands we identified with were not [00:55:00] our peers, I guess is the best way to put it. We would identify with bands like Kraftwerk or almost like anything other than the people we were touring with.
We weren't part of the scene. We were, um, not dismissive of other bands, but we could be exceptionally rude about other acts, you know, like an Oasis. We would just find it just preposterous that there's these bands who just look back all the time. All their references are backward looking, like to recreate the cool Britannia.
Just such bullshit, you know, Britpop to be lumped into that when I'm a Dutchman and the other three guys are Irish. It was so fucking lazy and we didn't feel there was, uh, there were any other bands that were like us. We were very confident and could be very rude and upset the wrong people. Like [00:56:00] an example of us being very, uh, maybe, you know, like being rude to the wrong people is we did a cake.
We just played in the Netherlands, had to go back on the night crossing to support Smashing Pumpkins in London. Uh, and I thought, ah, smashing pumpkins. It's great drama. You know, that's all I was thinking of. And Joey and Garrett were like, ah, they're just a business. They're not like a real band. And I thought, whatever the fuck, who cares?
We played things went well. Pumpkins play. I go and have a look and it's near the end of the set. Uh, I go back to the dressing room. We can hear that the crowd screaming for more and it's the end of the gig. Suddenly their manager, pumpkins manager comes bursting into our dressing room. Uh, this American woman and she goes, does anyone have a first aid kit?
Cause Billy just pulled on one of the symbol stands and it flew off and the symbol hit him in the head. And Garrett immediately goes, I hope that knocked some fucking sense into him.
Music: [00:57:00] And
Jan Alkema: she just looked at us and just, Oh yeah. And just slammed the door shut and fucked up. He was vindicated by time. You know what I mean?
It's like that was a normal day at the office for us where we would be with bands or in scene scenarios or part of a group and we would just tear lumps off them because we didn't think they were doing it the right way. We were the only ones in a way who were doing it correctly. We were honest and sincere and angry.
And, I mean, there were other bands that, that came up, they're like, unlined out. I f ing love them. Just, there were other
Chris: bands. I don't want to overly generalise, and I'm mindful of the fact that we're talking to you, you're very well spoken, obviously you're from a Dutch background, but that response you just, uh, detailed from Garrett.
I can hear it in an Irish accent, and to be fair, it is, it's [00:58:00] one of those things that Scotland and Ireland have in common, that kind of quite coarse, challenging sense of humour, and it actually seems quite in keeping, like, I think, oh, and again, crass generalisation here, but I think we do suffer fools less than many others.
Jan Alkema: But with the press being very English, not even British, The very English, the enemy in the melody maker, the ones that really have your nuts in their hands and can just dictate your future. Uh, they didn't take kindly to us. I don't, I don't know if they just, maybe they didn't even bother to listen. They were just dismissive.
Some people remembered that there was a previous history with the amazing colossal men that they'd not forgotten about, but we were very keen to just, we drew a line under that and we'd moved on. Uh, and other people, I think were. A bit kind of like, well, those were shite. So this is going to be shit and never gave us even half a [00:59:00] chance.
And we always felt like it was an uphill battle. There was, even though there were moments where, you know, you get single of the week or. You'd be on tv on whichever show there were a few really cool shows that had live music and you can see the clips on youtube where we played um naked city and stuff like that great fun it just never translated into the next thing and i don't know why i think it's probably because we were not easy smiley happy go lucky not like i am right now i used to just shut the fuck up and sit in the back with shade And Joey the singer and Garrett guitars would do all the talking and Sid and I would just sort of
Chris: sit
Jan Alkema: in the
Chris: back and smoke.
My sense is now that the media would be thankful for a band that at least was a little bit provocative, gave a good soundbite or a good kind of shareable tweet. that kind of thing, but maybe it just wasn't the time for it. Maybe you weren't respecting their [01:00:00] sacred cows. And I guess the fact that you didn't doff your cap to the bands that they were putting on a pedestal in a way that undermined their own sense of importance, the enemy demanded that it was taken seriously because it was a kingmaker.
And if you refuse to acknowledge that, yeah. And you know, not acknowledging kings is very good. Irish tradition. It's
Jan Alkema: exactly. Yeah. They couldn't help it. And we've got a bit of it yourself. And all of us were readers. All of us read books nonstop because you have so much time to kill on tour. So all of us were really quite well read when you compare it to most bands where they're just Sex, drugs, rock and roll, I guess.
And for us, it was, you know, we were really interested in how the world worked, how human beings, culture, history, politics, very, we were really interested and always had very strong opinions, especially Garrett and Joey, who would [01:01:00] almost every interview. You know, I barely ever got to speak in an interview.
And I remember the one time I did, we were on tour in, in America. And we would, I think we were in Vancouver. We'd crossed over, went into Vancouver to do a gig and local radio show. And suddenly the, the, uh, disc jockey goes, Oh, we've got a call for. Uh, the drummer, uh, Jan Alkmaar is going, Oh, no, that's good.
Okay. Hi. And I heard this Canadian voice going, is that, is that Jan Alkmaar? Yeah. Yeah. It's your family from, um, this place called Snake in Friesland. In the north of Holland, I go, yeah, it goes, your cousin fucked up my roof. He was, and basically the guy used it as an opportunity to tell me off about a long lost relative who was a roofer and screwed up his house.
Cursed your family. That was my one interview in God knows how many years of just sitting in a studio. Nice and quiet at the back [01:02:00] because yeah, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to behave like that and Garrett and Joey did such a good job. Yeah, let them talk. Apparently they had more
Chris: reliable refer relatives.
That's it. Yeah. So to continue that thing as well about I'm using on the timing. So you had obviously grunge and Britpop in the early nineties, up to maybe around about 94, you bring it your first record first full record in 1994, but then I was looking at some of that kind of Brit rock first wave that started to emerge mid to late 90s.
Um, and I'm guessing that a number of these are bands you at least crossed paths with, but a little bit of the chronology that I came across, uh, humor me here. Earth versus the Wild Hearts was 93, And fuck was 1995, so that was happening either side of that first record you put out. Terror Visions, How to Make Friends and Influence People was 94.[01:03:00]
Trouble Gum by Therapy was 94, again also an Irish connection there. Manic Street Preachers Was Holy Bible 94 and then Everything Must Go 96, so that was sort of around about the same time. Paranoid and Sunburnt by Skunk and Nancy was 95. They're
Music: selling Jesus again. They're selling Jesus again. They want your soul and your money.
You brag and you won't. They're selling Jesus again.
Chris: I also remember Little Indian. Stoosh was 97, they were fucking huge at that point. Yeah, they were great. Replenish by Reef was 95.[01:04:00]
And then Glow was 97, really big in the Brit Rock scene. And then you released your last record in 96. Right. And just as the shoots of a kind of genuine movement are starting to emerge that I feel like you do have something quite in common with. You've, uh, you've mentioned Ash. 1977 1996. Yeah. And again, another Irish band.
The band from Glasgow, Baby Chaos.
Music: Curse my luck, I'm stuck here with a pair of eyes Screaming all day of how
Chris: hard I miss you. They brought out that album Love Yourself Abuse in 96 as well. And then, am I right in thinking you guys officially split or started? stopped in 97 and that's the same year that Three Colours Red brought out Pure, who I think you have quite a lot in common with.[01:05:00]
Feeder Polythene, Stereophonics, Word Gets Around, uh, and Garbage by Garbage and they sort of became the face of Brit Rock at that point. It is interesting I think though that by 97, for example the last two bands there, maybe even three bands there, Feeder, Stereophonics, Garbage, Kind of exemplified a mainstreaming of that movement.
'cause I don't think anyone would ever say that the Wild Tarts were mainstream. No. Um, but then it started to become quite mainstream and I noticed actually that it stops getting referred to as Bri Rock and Stereo Phonics and Feeder kind of fall into that new category of post britpop.
Alongside [01:06:00] Coldplay, Catatonia and Travis and stuff, and the trend in British guitar music becomes something slicker, like, because obviously OK Computer came out around about that time, and suddenly that rougher, punkier, grungier kind of sound, that you guys were certainly more akin to, is gone from the landscape, and it all becomes quite polished.
And so I noticed that a comment and whispering and hollering about this, and it says To the band's credit, they survived the rapid fall of the spurious new wave of new wave, yet with Britpop's inexorable rise, it was the mad frat oasis at main road climate that greeted Compulsion's criminally underrated second album.
It is Compulsion's finest hour, aided and abetted by producer Mark Freegard, whose crisp techniques had previously assisted the breeders with Last Splash and Manic Street Preachers, The Holy Bible.
Music: I don't know what I said I set this [01:07:00] place on fire Given that awkwardness of how you guys
Chris: were sort of falling through the cracks of these movements and Be honest, do you feel that in particular The Future Is Miriam is an overlooked classic of that era?
Jan Alkema: Yeah, it's a, it's completely different sounding record to anything that was around then it was on purpose.
So we got Mark Freegard in because just loved what he did with the Breeders. We had a bit of a crush on the Pixies. So that can influence so many bands, including us. We really, really did love what they were doing. We found that really interesting. It was on purpose that Garrett decided because obviously Garrett is the force, the driving force.
What are we going to do next? Are we going to do another, you know, I think of Comforter and those first EPs that were very rock, that were very hard, loud guitars, loud drums. It's, it's, [01:08:00] it's very live and direct. And we'd done that to death because we played and toured it first in Europe and Britain, and then we had to go do the whole thing again.
Promoted again in America. We were just sick and tired of that in a way we were sick and tired of it. So Garrett decided he wanted a record where as opposed to all the other acts around, you could, you barely hear the drums. It would all be just like a weird wall of guitar. Krautrock was more important.
We'd have more, we'd have keyboards. Uh, it would be a completely different sound for the band. And we had this look where we all had the same orange hair, the same outfit. Whose idea was that? Was that again? Yeah. It's just everything. Literally everything. is about Garrett just steering us. It's almost like a cult in a way, you know, for want of a better word, where we were willing participants in this crazy journey that just seemed to make sense to us, maybe not to anyone else, [01:09:00] but for us, it was, yeah, it was, it made total sense.
So we may on purpose sort of changed again, the same as, You know, when we ditched that Colossal Men stuff and started Compulsion, this was similar. There was like a point where it's like, we're not going to write songs that are like Basket Case or More Monarchy. We're not disowning them. We'll still play them live because, you know, they're great fun to play live, but we want to do something different.
So we were really getting into more like Neu and Faust and the bands that we'd identify with more would be Like I said pixies, um, but yeah We got really into like just dragging out the end of the song and just over and over again You would just do that kind of kraut rock thing where nothing much happens But a lot's happening if you really open your ears and listen to what's going on, subtle little note shifts and this, that and the other.
Music: [01:10:00] We fell
Jan Alkema: in love with the studio a bit more. So it's far more of a studio album. The first one was just like a live album. Futures Medium is more conceived with the capabilities of the studio and Mark Freegard. Futures Medium is a better album. It's, it's designed as an album. Whereas, uh, Comforter was almost like the leftovers of Yeah, but what's more listenable
Chris: to you?
Jan Alkema: What do you enjoy hearing more now? I can't I can't choose. I mean, because I'm a metalhead, I'd probably go for the harder sound because the drums are louder, but that's a pathetic way to judge something. I mean, for me, it's the, the thing is, it's probably, um, it would be an emotional response. Everything seemed possible for comforter that [01:11:00] era when we were self financing, just doing everything by ourselves.
Futures medium, we're already having a really tough time trying to get somewhere. It was like just no one was really paying us attention in a way that meant we could then do the next level and go on a proper tour. No bigger venues. It was always, we were always chasing something, being told, go over there.
You know, we went to tour with that band Die Toten Hosen. Two months of our lives just thrown away. I've still no idea why we did it. I think we thought we'll see a big audience because they play to between 15 and 20, 000 every single night in Germany. But we realized very quickly they weren't [01:12:00] waiting for the support act.
They really couldn't give a shit who was supporting them. Funnily enough, um, Green Day supported them in Germany and, um, the Wild Hearts who you mentioned earlier. Yes, it's a crazy thing. We've spent a lot of time touring and nothing was happening. So we were very, yeah, not just. angry or afraid, we were getting quite mentally fucked up by the whole thing.
So to be able to do the futures medium while writing it, while we're touring, uh, it was exceptionally challenging. We never really had time off to just breathe, go hang out with our partners and go, you know, smell the flowers or anything. It was just, the work rate was, you know, Ridiculous. And we didn't really have any money to show for it.
We didn't, you know, it wasn't like we were making money. So
Chris: basically music, music aside, it's hard for you to separate the sort of recollections of the time. So, you know, the future is medium is a [01:13:00] much more emotionally jarring and, uh, fatiguing time. And that's, that's what you hear when you hear it, I guess.
Jan Alkema: Yeah. For, for me, it's, it's, it, I remember how we all felt. We could kind of feel that there wasn't that much to go. There really wasn't. It's, we were not a spent force. It's, it's just the world kept telling us to go to fuck off. Really or just not even that, just not interested with, with this whole, you know, it's 30 years since comforter, so there's.
a re release happening in January of all our back catalogue on vinyl. There'll be, uh, three vinyls coming out. Okay, but you preempted my last question. I'm so sorry. That's great. No, that's absolutely rambling incoherently. But yeah, it's, it, it was, um, Yeah, it was, it was, we could see not the writing on the wall.
That's too cliche. It's just, it just felt like we were the anger that we used to be able to send outwards was now really being internalized and we would take it out [01:14:00] on each other. And it wasn't, we weren't, We were, I think, I know I was depressed and I think so were Sid and Garrett, I don't know about Joey, it was really tough mentally.
We just had nothing to show other than we had loads of records, loads of memories, but we, you know what I mean? We had nothing to show for the seven years we've been together. It was just, it was just relentless trying to get to that bit where you'd be taken seriously and people would give you the time of day and want to know, what are you guys doing next?
It just didn't happen. And the end of 96, we, we broke up.
Chris: It was, uh, What were the circumstances around that? Was it an actual, like, guys we need to sit down and chat, or was it a bus stop? Was it done remotely? How did it, how did it happen?
Jan Alkema: We did a tour, first and last tour of Japan, uh, and it was a co headline with China Drum, believe it or not.
Music: [01:15:00] It
Jan Alkema: was kind of, who had been our support act whenever we went to Newcastle. Yeah, this is coming back to me now, I think. Yeah, we tried to get China Drum to be our support, because Just hilarious guys, great fun, singing drummer, what a laugh, many beers had and always good fun. They can talk as much shite as the Irish lad.
So it was, it was, it was a good fit for fun. Musically it made no sense because trying to drum with this kind of power pop punk. And we really weren't, but we just did this brief tour a couple of weeks, I think, in Japan, uh, where it was just surreal. It was like being the Beatles. The fans out there were just adorable, incredible.
Uh, we come back and we know there's something wrong. One little Indian are making weird noises and [01:16:00] it turns out that they're going to drop almost their entire roster. Because, um, Derek Burkett, the owner of One Little Indian, just kept spending money on acts like us. You know, we'd go to Derek, Hey, we want to make a video.
Go. Yeah, sure. Make a video. Hey, Derek, we want to record this and that. Yeah, sure. Here's some money. We want to do remixes with scanner and how we be and yeah, here's some money. So he just kept pouring and he was doing that with everyone, I think. And his accountants, I think one day just went, right, Derek, we need to sit you down and you know, money doesn't grow on trees.
And they dumped their entire roster, except for Bjork, Skunk and Nancy. And one other act, I can't remember who the hell that was. Yeah. So we were just suddenly told, you no longer have a record deal with one little Indian, which then Interscope went, well, then we're not interested in renewing your contract.
Uh, so we literally met at our manager's office and we said goodbye and we didn't see each [01:17:00] other in the flesh, but I haven't seen the singer Joseph Mary. in the flesh since that day. So 96 spoke to him a few times and we WhatsApp now and have bright laughs, um, remotely, but yeah, he just fucked off back to Dublin.
Um, and we all went our separate ways. It was a landscaping. Is that right? He did. He became, I've got to say of all the human beings. To be a landscaper. I mean, he would barely lift his microphone at loading, you know, classic singer. Um, and he did all physical work. I've just found it bizarre. You know, we used to, on the road, we'd play games like, uh, one of our games was least likely job.
I think Garrett would be, um, uh, Samaritans. on the end of a phone, you know, he'd be terrible at that. And, and Joey, we should have thought landscaper. Yeah. He became a landscape when the fan broke [01:18:00] up, but yeah. Yeah. So you
Chris: obviously went on and joined China drum and then later the drum, uh, you also formed the driven to collision.
Jan Alkema: Yeah. After the drum were also finished. One album with them. That was a maybe I'm the kiss of death here. Yeah, it was a that was the end And then I was just looking for some fun and just I was living in Brighton and I just reached out to a guy Who owns a studio here? Uh, now called Brighton Electric and he had a band and then his brother was a bass player and they were looking for a drummer and it was, yeah, it's hobby band and we released three EPs driven to collision and invented a new genre of rock called bin man rock, [01:19:00] which is, um, you know, it's the kind of, we made the kind of tunes that your bin man would hum and whistle when they're working.
Like, you know, pop acts make milk men sing the tunes of the day. We try to inspire bin men as a noble trade. It is. Yeah.
Chris: So Sid became an animator for the BBC, didn't he?
Jan Alkema: Mad, isn't it? Sid, for a while, didn't know what the fuck he wanted to do. I was still in touch with him. He's living in London. So I'd see him three times a year.
If I was in London, I would just say, Sid, how are you doing? We go for a beer and whatever. And yeah, suddenly he's, he was always writing stuff. Like I said, on the road, we were either reading or doing, you know, we were always thinking we weren't just, just getting drunk. We were also getting drunk, but just, and he was, he was really keen on standup comedy, stuff like that.
And so suddenly he said, Oh yeah, I'm doing this animated series called underground Ernie. I've got Gary Lineker voicing the main character. Your man from, oh, [01:20:00] fucking hell, I've forgotten the name of the band, the guy who did the music with Sid is a well known, from a well known English act. But yeah, he got, it was a kind of syndicated kids TV program, ran a bunch of episodes, and it, it just, yeah, bizarre to see Sid doing this weird and wonderful thing, Underground Ernie.
Chris: Well, yeah, and I know you're familiar enough with the podcast to know that Mark and I have just hit Nexus Gold with that one. Gary Lineker to you in two steps. And we've already got you to Meatloaf in two steps as well, which is, yeah, we're, we're, we're clocking them up. And the last one you mentioned is up.
You got a great Nexus. Is that? Yeah, keep that for the end. So I've got a question coming up. But, uh, and Garrett became Jack Knife Lee. As you said, he's produced. Here's a list here. REM, Taylor Swift, Killers, Snow Patrol, Block Party, Weezer, The Hives, Modest Mouse, Robbie Williams, The Cars, U2, One Direction.
Nothing, nothing [01:21:00] significant, obviously, but, uh, , are you still in touch with him? Are you still in touch with the other, I know you've got a WhatsApp thing, but, well, yeah, I mean,
Jan Alkema: he, he immigrated to America about 15 years ago. Yeah. Clearly. And before that I would go and see him. Uh, he had his, uh, he was, I was in Maiden, I think he was, and two young kids.
I've got two young kids. Similar age. So we would go see each other once in a while, but he was always really busy. But yeah, we just go in the car, go hang out with them. And then one day it's like, Oh yeah, I'm immigrating to the States. Uh, it's like, okay, give me your address. He gives me his address. I look it up on Google maps.
Like you do. And I'm like, fuck me. That's a spread. That's a property you're doing so well. And so deserved. I mean, if there is someone He's clearly easily the most talented human being I've ever worked with. And I learned so much from him. I mean, without him, I would never have been able to do what I ended up doing with a China drum, then the drum.
He just [01:22:00] has, uh, he just leads by example, shows you what you can do. If you're just determined and have a vision and have a fire in your belly. So yeah, he does this with these acts who otherwise wouldn't exist. Let's snow patrol would never have been a household name without all the, all the editors.
There's no way. Uh, and he gave Block Party a good old kick up the rear, made a great album with them. Yeah, he's just on spectacular stuff. Astonishing. But yeah, he lives in LA. I'm in Brighton. Um, yeah, it's, it's gotta be remote. It's got to be a remote thing, but it's amazing how the years roll away, uh, when the four of us sharing a screen and frequently joined by Rick Lennox, the A& R guy from Little India, he's just, you know, he's just adorable.
And we're doing that anniversary release plan that is he's instrumental in that. I know there's been
Chris: a couple of sort of abortive attempts at doing re [01:23:00] releases or re issues or there's been, let's say, like, gossip that's come up. Oh, it'll be out in November and it's not happening. Is this a, is this a hard and fast definite thing that's happening now?
Can you tell us exactly what it is?
Jan Alkema: So we're releasing Comforter and the EPs as a double vinyl and then Futures Medium as vinyl. All three vinyls have been remastered. So all the tracks have been remastered and it's got nearly everything. I think there's not quite enough room. So a handful of songs we're not able to put on there, but that's okay.
New artwork done by Garrett. It'll come hopefully with a booklet that is like a bit like a fancy with clippings and stuff. It'll be a nice collectible and it's, it's just on vinyl. We're not releasing on cassette or CD. I'm sure it'll be, there'll be a digital format as well at some point. But yeah, we were all set for December because chronologically 30 years is [01:24:00] this year, you know, from 94 Comforter to 2024.
But yeah, the vinyl production, there was a fuck up somewhere in some factory somewhere. They couldn't deliver for December. So it's January. But it is 100 percent going ahead. There's no pulling back from this. It's too late. The fetus is gestating. It's got to come out. Yeah,
Chris: it'll be folks will be really chuffed to hear that after all the rumors as well.
That'll be great.
Jan Alkema: Yeah, it's, it's, it's honestly, I had no idea this was going to happen. We were musing that, you know, we're just saying in our WhatsApp that we started a year, a year and a half ago. Oh, isn't it funny? It's nearly 30 years. And the next thing we know, Garry goes off, had one little Indian reach, now one little independent reach out and they want to do an anniversary release.
Fucking hell, Derek Burkett just won't stop throwing money into the fire to put a smile on our faces. It's just, he's a legend. It's just insane. Yeah, it's, uh, but it's really going to happen
Chris: for real. Excellent.
Mark Fraser: Amazing.
Chris: Um, [01:25:00] well, I've got a couple of leftover questions. I just really want to fish around inside your head.
And given that you said your band were not scared to, uh, speak their minds, I suspect there might be a couple of interesting answers to them. First of all, you were hinting at a really good Nexus connection there. What was that?
Jan Alkema: Well, we're playing the Rock Candy in, um, Seattle. It was the year we released Comforter and we're in America promoting it.
Yeah, we played a really good show, you know, really full energy, full crazy stuff we used to do. Uh, and the promoter after the gig, you know, we're all having drinks, whatever, uh, people are milling around, there's still a bar open. So we're just hanging out and the promoter goes, Oh, here's Leslie from Silverfish and uh, David.
So I meet these two people and we're just chatting away. Leslie peels away. And so I'm just left with David. We're chatting away. It's pretty nice. Cause I love your band and this, that and the other. Yeah. You know, your album, uh, comforters one of my favorite five albums this year. And it's [01:26:00] fine. I'm looking at it and suddenly I get the kind of the hairs on the back of my neck and I'm going fucking Dave Grohl.
David, who the hell is David? And he's a bit taller than me. And I thought Dave Grohl would be shorter than me. It's the effect. So stupidly tall, everyone looks tiny. So I always assumed Kurt and Dave would be five, eight or some shit. And I'm talking to him and he goes, yeah, is it okay if I give you my demo?
I've got a new band called foo fighters and I'm like, sure, give me your cassette. So he gives me his demo cassette, which I obviously still have go and play it. And that's like classic kind of rock, very American. And then a month or so later, I get talking to our manager and she said, Oh, I've been approached by the food fighters manager.
They've asked you to audition, not get the job, but audition. And I'm like, that's flattering. I said, yeah, just say, thank you very much. But I think my band is better. [01:27:00] So I didn't bother to audition because for me, my whole life, my whole, Who I was was compulsion cut me in half. You'll see compulsion But yeah, so that's one for your nexus.
Chris: Yeah, the nexus used to be entirely a dave grow nexus That'd be that'd be a one step nexus. Yeah, um another one Who was the biggest bastard that you shared a stage with? And I'm not sure if the two are connected, but before we actually did this interview, you dropped a hint relating to Cradle of Filth.
And I wasn't sure if the two of these would be connected.
Jan Alkema: Right, no, but that would be with China Drum. Cradle of Filth was with China Drum, so it wouldn't be a compulsion era. So this is way later. Before we're the drum, we're China drum, and we're playing a festival, uh, the Jaisalmer beach bum festival in it's.
Yeah, I know. Right. I think it's still going. It's near Venice and it's like a two, three day festival, [01:28:00] whatever we rock up. We've got like, there's no budget. There's a budget for a rental car that we have to drive ourselves. We've got no equipment with us other than I think Bill the guitarist brought his guitar and we just turn up and supposed to be Marilyn Manson headlining.
But they pulled out at the like the 11th hour, so they got cradle of filth to stand in for them and they were awful, but I mean, they were just awful. I hate what they do. I just think it's so cartoony. I'm not not remotely interested, but it was fun. We're at a festival and we've got drinks. The drinks are free.
So I'm sat with your man from corner shop at the side of the stage. Cause they played earlier that day and we're just smoking a joint and having some beer and the band come on, everyone goes mild, you know, and is it Danny, the singer he's
Mark Fraser: Danny,
Jan Alkema: the band just start playing and looking around, like, where's the singer, what the fuck's going on?
Like not for [01:29:00] 20 seconds, two and a half minutes, three minutes. They're just going through the opening bars over and over and over again in their stupid outfits going, where the fuck is Danny? Suddenly Danny comes running over and does all that stuff. Find out later. He was having a shit on the portaloo and he, he wasn't finished.
So he could hear his plan playing while he's having a dump. Um, I met him afterwards and he kept fiddling with his eye because his, these fake lenses really irritate his eyes and he's tiny and I'm sat with it. Is it all right if my sister really likes china drum? Can I have your autograph? No way. Yeah, they were appalling the drummer.
They had then I saw him pour out most of a jack daniels bottle And then fill it up with coca cola so he could look like he was after the gig, he could see the fans and just be swigging from like pure jade [01:30:00] and it's like, yeah, I hate that cartoony bullshit. Yeah. I don't know if they're the biggest bastards though, the biggest, I think Billy Corgan is hard to beat.
He really is. Just not not pleasant. You know, I think, um, your woman Osborne, who used to manage him said she quit managing them for health reasons. She was sick of Billy.
Chris: Yeah, so yeah, he is a tough one to top. Well, certainly allegedly.
Jan Alkema: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, another terrible. Hell, were they sponge? Oh yeah.
Did you just play
Mark Fraser: what, wait, there's two sponge, right? You're talking about the SC Band or the other one? No,
Jan Alkema: sponge. The American Rock Band. Oh, yeah,
Mark Fraser: yeah. Uhhuh
Jan Alkema: [01:31:00] playing at a festival that brought back all these memories. You guys put something on like, Hey, look who's playing on this? And the poster. Yeah. Oh yeah. And it has sponge on there. I'm like. Tell me they're not still going and I quickly looked them up online and fuck me, they're still going with this. I mean, their front man is just a wanker.
I mean, he's just a horrendous, nasty, self centered human being. Who's trying to be really interesting. I think he was trying to hone his character. So before a gig, when they were supporting. China drum on this tour, he would be doing this, would be wandering out looking pensive and mouthing words and it was just, he was just fucking weird and horrible.
Mark Fraser: I have it in fairly good authority that, uh, Danny Filth is not a nice person, you know,
Jan Alkema: doesn't surprise me. He's, um, But he was, it was good to see the man called shorter.
Mark Fraser: Yeah.
Chris: Any other particularly salacious bits of gossip you want to throw in here, Dan, while we're able to vent your [01:32:00] spleen?
Jan Alkema: No, just fun.
Just had lots of fun times. Just really must say the highlights, uh, you know, I've got over the emotional hurdles back in the day. We've licked our wounds. They've healed quite well. So for me, it's just, it's, it's glorious to be able to talk about this band that shaped me, you know, literally shaped how I ended up drumming as well.
Because as I said, for the audition I did for the amazing Colossal Men, I had this gigantic drum kit. So over the years, Garrett was like, you don't need that. And he would just, just take things away. You don't need that. You don't need that. You don't. So in the end, I just had, you know, one rack and a floor, couple of crashes and a ride, you know, all you need.
Chris: Here's a thought to close us out here. Imagine in one of the other timelines, you had destroyed the Dave Grohl Nexus with that story about Foo Fighters and Jan had been [01:33:00] one of the people roped into that fundraiser in the background. That
Jan Alkema: would be good. That would have been, yeah. That would have been something else, but it saved my life.
I've got to be honest. You know, the, the fact that, uh, like I said earlier, lady luck has slapped me about compulsion at a time when I was already 26, when I joined the amazing colossal men, you know, well, I wasn't a spring chicken, so suddenly lady luck shows up then compulsion with the lawsuit. We won lady luck and then it doesn't work out.
I find China drum and then the drum and, and all that and never really made. Huge amounts of money, which I think is, is to my benefit. Cause I'm, I'm quite a weak person. I'm, I have a highly addictive nature and the thing that kept me alive is I couldn't afford enough Coke to kill me, but if I'd have some money, I'll, I'll, I'd get myself or speed or whatever.
You know, I didn't have enough spare cash to kill myself with. So for me, not being [01:34:00] overly successful, but always getting close probably worked to my benefit. So. You know, so celebrated my 60th birthday, July just been, I think I'd be like, um, Taylor Hawkins. If I'd gone really successful when he died, it really, really felt a tiny.
My God, they're for the grace of whatever. Yeah. Uh, it goes me, it, it, I, I'm weak and I see that in other people, and I see how hard it is when, you know, when you tour, you know how hard it is. It's not fun all the time. It's just there are elements of great joy and then just huge amounts of nothingness that you fill with booze and drugs and doing stupid shit.
So, yeah, so I'm kind of thankful it didn't go huge because everything would be different and I'm really actually very happy with how things are worked out. I like doing this. This is great fun. This is we are very
Chris: happy with how things have worked out as well because you know, for no lack of trying, we couldn't [01:35:00] get Taylor Hawkins on the show.
But yeah, thank you so much for your time, Jan. It's been brilliant. If you're listening to this and you want to contribute to the show, you want to give us your. Thoughts and feelings. As we mentioned at the start, you can subscribe to Unsung. You can come in at the lowest level, which is from four pounds a month, and that gets you access to the AAA group.
And I happen to know, because Jan is listening to the show, Jan's also in on that AAA group. And occasionally gets involved in some of the chats. So any thoughts on Yan or do you want to just compliment him on his work? Um, there's a very high chance you'll see it in there so we can upsell on the basis that Yan's there.
And if you're Billy Corgan out there and you've got our Danny Filth and you want to give him your two cents, then That's the way to do it, guys. Yeah. Subscribe to the show. Maybe we can just turn the AAA AAA pass, into a huge backstage rammy of people settling old grudges. That'd be so
Mark Fraser: sweet. [01:36:00] Wonderful, it'd be wonderful.
Chris: Yeah, and in there throwing hand grenades and everything. And then running off
Jan Alkema: bravely.
Chris: Yeah, thanks again. Thanks so much, man. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm sure Mark agrees. I do
Mark Fraser: agree. That was really great, Jan. Thanks for doing that. Thanks, Chris. Legends. And it didn't take us a year to sort that one out.
It only took us about a month, so that was good. We're getting better. Awesome. Yeah,
Chris: you actually, you mentioned something during that episode, and this is a teaser for future. Jan mentioned the band during this show, and I think we're going to get them back on at some point in the future to do Just a dedicated episode, you know, just about one particular band that we've discussed, but we'll leave that to your imagination.
Uh, and you'll see that down the road. Thanks guys. Have a good [01:37:00] evening. Take care, see ya.