Just As I Imagined You To Be

(Pic taken at Roundhead Auckland by Lola Fountain-Best)

Okay - this is part two of the inaugural Let’s Do Breakfast video interview with Jenando. We discuss moving down from the north (and to the city from the regions), playing in covers bands, big breaks, and touring with the Bull sisters.

The song we play at the end of this one is another of Ando’s faves from Riveresque - In You Room.

In Your Room was written in London while on tour with the Weddings which means it was 1994 as that was the last time we were in the UK (not counting the one show at the end of the reunion tour in 1998). I recall we had finished in mainland Europe and we had a few days to get back to London so I had stayed in Holland with my friends from the Wild Pumpkins at Midnight. They lived in the central Netherlands town of Wangeningen. It was a blessed couple of days I spent there in the middle of that tour which was quite pressured for me in all the wrong ways.

We were signed to RooArt at the time and there was a fair bit of expectation around these dates and the release of whatever record we had out in Australia at the time. I can’t quite remember exactly how it all played out. It was all to do with the original deal we had with Warners being for the world, with no obligation for any label outside Australia to actually release our records. Some had been released, some had done all right, some had stiffed. Somewhere along the way Cooking Vinyl had released something and done quite well and then Warners had taken up options which hadn’t done so well. Then to confound everyone we’d turned around and had a hit in Australia for RooArt who, to confound us, decided to route their distribution back through Warners. It was a mess. A fucking unholy, hot mess.

And here somewhere in the middle of it, we found ourselves in Europe with talk of releases, extended tours and possibly even relocating the band. It was an intoxicating prospect of a whole new frontier opening up for us. We had UK management, we had a label, we had gigs, we had a tour van. But everything seemed to be dependent on everything else. Ultimately it came to not much at all really - but at the time it all felt crucial and maybe, just maybe we were closer than it seemed.

And there I was with my friends in Holland who just seemed to be playing music and touring the places I dearly wanted to see and hanging out with a whole new crowd of people. Those few days meant more to me than anyone knew. In retrospect they had as many problems as we did but to my mind that little University town and those slightly affected bohemians represented a defiant alternative to the industry machinations that seemed to be ruling my life so completely. So perhaps unknowingly, the simple whimsy of the song was a metaphor for something a lot deeper and more problematic in my life.

I can still picture the hotel room where it was written. It was somewhere down in the west of London. We never cracked it for anywhere decent to stay over there and I’m pretty sure on that tour we were back to three people sharing a room as the expense of the whole trip was alarming. I think that’s a problem a lot of Australian bands face when they head to the northern hemisphere. After a bit of success in Australia it is easy to find yourself accustomed to a level of production and on the road comfort that the budget just doesn’t allow in Europe.

So, there I was with a weird kind of brain fog in a run down overcrowded, slightly squalid hotel room in London - totally preoccupied with a share house in central Holland that to be quite honest was overcrowded, antiquated and possibly even more squalid than my subsequent London abode. But with all that stuff going on - the frustrating record company music industry scenario and the trying domestic situation, it is easy to imagine someone else has got it better than you. And it is easy to conflate that with a woman you have never actually met. And for the record, to this day that I still have never spoken to.

(Pic by Dave Suttie taken at Glastonbury 2024)

So here, for the paid up subscribers only, is a duo recording of the song In You Room. I was going to replace the vocal as my voice is sounding a little tired but I think after a few listens I kind of like it being world-weary. It really suits the sentiment of the tune to my ears. Next week will be the third and final instalment of the Let’s Do Breakfast interview with Jenando and the final song is an absolute cracker. I think it might be time to jump on board folks and keeps them Substack wheels turning.