The moving target of Black Country, New Road

'Forever Howlong', and how BCNR fans learned to not expect repeats

How about this for a name-drop: I was BACKSTAGE at PRIMAVERA SOUND drinking FREE Jack Daniels, interviewing MOON DUO. This was not recent. Free Jack Daniels doesn’t exist anymore. Not for me, at least. It was easily 10 years ago. Long enough for you to be still waiting for the name-drop. But wah-wah wizard Ripley Johnson – also of psychedelic drone band Wooden Shjip – said something to me that night that I’ve not forgotten: if fans didn’t like the new album, they can simply catch the next one. That was how his fandom operated, so why would fans of his band abandon him so instantaneously?

Johnson’s point – which even at the time was starting to push its luck – perhaps dates this glamorous anecdote most of all (perhaps not the opener of my currently unwritten, unpublished and unwanted memoir, but definitely something for my future editors to consider for picking up the pace following my overlong chapter about falling in love at a Stereophonic gig). I’m not so sure the world is full of su…