Chris Brokaw of Codeine speaks about the reforming of the band and about the upcoming vinyl re-release of the band’s records through The Numero Group. Interview by rockerzine.com
I got an email from um a guy named ken shipley who is one of the heads of this label in chicago called the numero group um and basically he just wrote to me and said um codeine final what do you say and um which i was kind of stunned by because um i mean i was really familiar with numero group’s work and and what they do is primarily um i mean it’s it’s reissues
Of of primarily uh really obscure soul music like 60 soul music from you know belize and places like that and uh so you know it wasn’t we weren’t quite in their typical profile but um ken is a really huge fan of the band and uh and just asked um all of those records um are um i mean the contracts are owned by subpop in perpetuity um which is like a contract we
Signed when we were you know young and stupid and at a certain point i thought that was a really bad decision to have made and i’ve realized since then that that was actually probably a pretty good decision because to their credit subhop has kept the kept the cds in print and and even more significantly right now they have kept them in stores so even though the
Band hasn’t done anything since 1994 like we still make a little bit of money from those sales every year which is kind of amazing at this point um but the vinyl’s been out of print for a really long time um we asked subpop if it was cool with them and they said it was fine um they’re what they get is so pop gets a percentage of the pressing kind of small percentage
Of the pressing that they can sell themselves at their website and um so ken is a real completist and he was like just send me everything you have like any unreleased stuff that you have and and then allow me to kind of sift through it so he did some sifting and we did some sifting and basically um the three records are going to be reissued as double albums
And so each extra record will be um b sides and four-track demos and live stuff and appeal sessions and all kinds of stuff like that um and it’ll also be available as a 6lp box and um there’ll be cds included inside because ken really hates those mp3 download strips of paper he was like this mp3 card that you get and he just finds it offensive so um so those
Are going to come out may 9th and uh we’re going to do about a dozen shows um in the us and overseas we’re going to um it looks like we’re going to start at the baltimore house parties festival of london and um primavera festival in barcelona and in porto and um and we’re gonna do about half a dozen shows we’ve gotten i mean i’m still really good friends with
Those guys and um so we see each other quite a lot um all tomorrow’s parties started waving money at us several years ago barry’s a really big fan of the bands and um so we’d actually gotten together and played just to see what it would be like uh and it was surreal and um and we just weren’t sure if if this was the time if that was the time to do anything um
But once once it was clear that we were gonna do these reissues um we agreed that would make sense to play some shows and uh barry was the first person that i notified um so um oh we also do this thing uh pretty much like every christmas for the last 20 years uh johnny the guitar player will call us up and uh he’s given to um recording covers of like ridiculous
Pop songs to give like to give like to his sister for christmas so there’s a there’s an archive of um coding covering like you know indian reservation by you know paul revere and totally stupid songs and um that’s that’s an archive that’s going to remain underground but that’s not going to be on
Transcribed from video
Chris Brokaw – Interview – Codeine By Rockerzine.com
