Thursday, 7 August 2014

Claude Bessy... huh? where'd he fit in??



Look, I wasn’t there, but apparently Steve first got to know Claude Bessy when Claude was working at Rough Trade, doing promo. Then they used to bump into each other during the first-flushes of UK action for Sonic Youth (Thurston once took a bunch of Creation records he’d purloined from the RT warehouse, broke them into pieces, scrawled ‘Fierce Records’ on the bits, and gave them away from the stage one night: anybody keep their bit?). Anyway, it turned out that Claude liked Fierce too (he wrote some bumf for a Jesus & Mary Chain release) and although I’d’ve put good money on him drawing the line at The Pooh Sticks, apparently not: seems he saw something in it he liked, though I’m not at all clear what.

So anyway, even after Claude moved to Spain, every now and again they’d talk on the phone (about what? I used to hear giggling this end, is all I know). There was talk of him doing a ‘split’ speak-release on Fierce with Sonic Boom (or with Alan Vega from Suicide, I forget which). Anyway, that didn’t happen, but when this “Think Bubble” thing was in the air, fair play to him, Claude suggested he record spoken-word links between tracks (I dread to think….). But I liked him too, and he made me laugh the couple of times I met him, so it’s a pity it didn’t happen.

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