This month, I am offering you two interviews which never were. In late August, I set out to get major interviews ready for our September issue, which was our return-from-vacation issue. In both of the cases below I proposed to do an e-mail interview which, in my mind, is more convenient for busy people like the ones below (and myself, too).

I managed to get in contact with Miles Holloway of Salt City Orchestra fame, a major production outfit if ever there was one. Here was his reply:

sebastien,

been a bit slow checking e-mails, so only just got yours, but yeah... would be well up for it.
whats the best way? maybe if you send some questions and i reply, you can then follow anything up.
anyway, like the mag, and look forward to hearing from you soon

cheers miles

I was excited as a kid in a candy store. I've always been a fan - and that, believe me, is an understatement - of what Holloway, Elliot Eastwick and Simon Bradshaw produce, together or alone. So I e-mailed him the first of what I had planned on being about 5 or 6 e-mails containing about 5 or 6 questions each, and then...

Nothing!

I have been e-mailing Mr. Holloway ever since and I have even tried getting some news of him through P.J. Jenkinson who runs Paper Recordings, but to no avail. Now, I am aware that Miles has been on tour in October, but that still leaves the whole month of September to e-mail me letting me know my questions suck and he is no longer interested in doing this interview or asking me to postpone it because he's going on tour and won't be able to follow-up on our endeavor for a few weeks (or months).

That, as they say, is that. Thank God his (their) music is still as good as it ever was...

The other interview I had managed to secure (or so I thought) was with Dick Johnson and his pals of Shaboom/Shaboom Records. Again, it faltered. And I don't know which is worse between the Holloway and Shaboom fiascoes, because at least Holloway never answered one question, therefore not letting me have any hope that it would be the greatest interview I did so far.

In this case, as in the previous, I sent a first bunch of questions, about 6-7 of them following our initial contact and what I got was:

dick: i met mark 8 years ago through djing at clubs around Blackpool and the northwest of England. He was making trax back then and asked me to come up and do some stuff in his studio. i used to work at underground records manchester and met ben in there where he used to buy his tunes. the first shaboom release came out in 1995 on pleasure records and then was followed by two releases on paper which gave us the idea of setting the label up.

ben: i was record shopping at honest johns in notting hill and gambled on a gospel accapella album. one of the tracks was bessie griffin singing which i took to mark's studio and 'bessie' was born. the break in the middle was inspired by the drop in armand van helden's mix of tori amos and that gives the tune it's whole vibe.

Now, that would be fine in itself, but what's deceiving here is that except for Ben's answer (and only to a certain extent), those answers weren't answers to a particular question but rather answers which gave the impression of trying to answer all questions at once and be done with it as soon as possible. I e-mailed them back to thank them for their time and that I would wait for them to send me the answers to the other questions before sending new ones. And then...

Nothing!

I don't know what this means because even to this day I refuse to think of these people as complete assholes and I'm also willing to bet my self-confidence that my questions were relevant and interesting ones. I still wanted to share my disappointment with you and I had told myself I would give those artists plenty of time before I decided to give up, so as to offer them the benefit of the doubt, as in any case requiring one's judgment. So on this note, I am letting you, the reader, pass judgment on what my judgment of these events is and what your judgment should be. This being said though, I would appreciate getting feedback on this as I am truly puzzled and really don't know what to make of it. Two or more minds are better than one, so let me know.

Yours truly,

DJSC
November 1999