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Buy Bounce EP!


Beatscene Interview, Beat 106, 23rd March 2003

Interview by Jim Gellatly


From left:  Cbob, Jim G, Sbob, Jbob

Sbob: Hi, I'm Stuart, lead vocalist, guitarist.
Cbob: Hi I'm Colin, drummer.
Jbob: I'm John, bass.
Sbob: And we are Bob Cuba.
Sbob: The band got together originally because Colin and I are brothers, so we've known each other a wee while.  A friend from a previous band approached us, who was a singer and we started a cover versions band which we thought we'd stick out for a wee while to see how it went...ehm.. it didn't go that well.  During this period of time, we auditioned several bass players and one of these was Mr John Watt, doctor John, who turned up dressed as a Rastafarian (laughs), so he stood out a bit!  We jammed and we got the band going.  The singer left because the covers thing wasn't working.  We got bored playing cover versions, and we weren't used to playing covers since we'd played in original bands all our lives, so we started doing really silly covers just 'cause we liked them and no-one else knew them.  We wanted to get some money on the side and we enjoyed playing music so we thought we could get some money doing this, playing at weddings, and we thought it would be fun.  As it turned out, it wasn't as much fun as we anticipated.  Invariably, what happened was that the practices degenerated into a random shambolic noise which we then made into some songs, and that's part of what you can hear today in our band actually.  We continued as a 3-piece and that's how Bob Cuba was born.  The name "Bob Cuba" is a name that we thought sounded cool.
Cbob:  I call Stuart Bob and my brother Bob, he calls me Jim for no apparent reason, and he had a Cuba T-shirt on one day (sbob laughs) .. and his girlfriend at the time said "Bob... Cuba" and this had a good ring about it.
Sbob: It sounded like a kind of DJ or something.
Cbob: It was then that we came up for various explanations for, it to suit the occasion.
Jbob: All of us had been in bands previously, and we all had a back-catalogue of the stuff that we'd wanted to do in bands but we never got the chance.  The 3 of us got together and it was pretty much anything goes.  Anything that was brought to the table was dully belted out until it bores the hell out of anyone (laughs).  A lot of us are into bands like Primal Scream and a lot of the Creation guys like My Bloody Valentine.  Being our age, that's probably what most of us were listening to at that point and that ties a lot of the songs together, but really it comes from all over the place through dance music, a bit of reggae, the occassional rock anthem.
Cbob: We try to have as varied a set as possible when we play live.  We've seen so many bands where the first 2 songs are promising and then it deteriorates into a kind of blandness.  Although we are basically an indie rock band, we do some crossover dance, a wee bit of reggae and what not.  We try to have as varied a sound as possible.
Sbob:  That would maybe confuse people, but it doesn't because we have the Bob Cuba stamp on all of our songs.  People do say to us all the time that they are quite interested in watching us because they don't know what kind of style of song is going to come on next.  We sound maybelike  various bands that they know but we have a unique sound about us as well.  A lot of the music that I'm into, in a song-writing sense, I suppose comes from Colin because we shared a room for donkeys years and I was a youngster at school and I was into The Smiths and stuff when I was about 10 and everyone else was into Madonna.  So he's responsible for some of that.
Cbob: I dragged Stuart with me through my musical progressions I think, and hopefully that's now coming out in his good song-writing.  This varied from the Pooh Sticks, to The Pastels, The Vaselines, My Bloody Valentine, and obviously the main bands at the time The Smiths and The Cure, and hopefully we are still showing some of that in our songs but hopefully we can also move on and come up with some new sounds as well!
Sbob: We've got a bit of an obsession with spacehoppers at the moment.  We all agree it was our favourite childhood toy just because they were so ridiculous and didn't seem to serve a great purpose.  You bounced about, got nowhere, got injured and they looked completely stupid... and we just like the idea of this: that they were so popular but fulfilled no purpose.. so we're going to put a spacehopper on the front of our next EP that's coming out, which is going to be called Bounce, by the way, just to keep on that theme.
Cbob: Before we came up with the idea for the single, I'd been bringing a spacehopper to gigs.  It's a good height for a drum stool.  In a couple of gigs I've actually played on the spacehopper, which has been a good novelty item, leaving the stage at the end on my spacehopper which also seems to go down quite well!
Sbob: The first song on the EP is called "Never Let You Go" which was a song that was written very quickly, just in time for us to go down to London to record a god quality, well produced single with the Sound Joint people in London.  This song, I suppose, was written by myself and I brought it to the guys at a rehearsal and they added their own kind of sound to it.  John added a kind of funky bass line and it went on from there.
Cbob:  I think we're trying to combine the songs by having light-hearted with serious.  Karaoke Tribe, for example, is having a dig at manufactured bands.  Songs like Prodigal, which is on the EP is obviously having a deep look at yourself, in all the seriousness of straying and coming back, and going through every emotion in life.  So hopefully during our gigs and on the EP, we can bring people to a moment of joy and happiness and then thinking again and a bit more serious, to hopefully have the overall package.
Sbob:  We have a website which is "bobcuba.com" where you can find out about us.  We update this every day with events as they happen: upcoming tuors, releases and so on.
Jbob: "www.bobcuba.com" - check it out!