Credit: Found On Internet

With this being the mighty Clinic’s 10th anniversary, Music Towers tracked down frontman Ade Blackburn a few days after their Meltdown appearance to talk about their new compilation and to find out if they were suffering any onset of nostalgia.

It seems that Clinic’s big birthday has not triggered a bout of navel gazing, far from it. “We feel flattered that people are interested in our tenth anniversary,” says Blackburn humbly. “It’s not something we really think about but at the start, I suppose, we thought of ourselves as a punk band that wouldn’t continue more than two years.” Luckily, they weren’t thinking about anniversaries back then either.

Their most recent studio album, the excellent ‘Visitations’ came out in 2006. It is an interesting decision then to release a retrospective of B-sides. Ade sees it as a natural choice, “The B-sides in some ways have got more freedom. And I thought it was worthwhile people being able to hear them because some of them are out of print now. We tried to compile it like a proper sequenced LP. It wasn’t just thrown together.” 

The compilation ‘Funf’ (Domino) works as a slightly looser, more warped, more ‘60s influenced, normal Clinic album actually, just with more Joe Meek, Phil Spector and surf guitar moments. “We’ve got that ‘60s side to it, definitely,” Blackburn agrees. “Joe Meek is an underrated producer. Look at Brian Wilson, he’s got a lot of respect but Joe Meek? Maybe it’s because he’s British, he’s not seen as cool like Brian Wilson.”

The fact that several tracks have been left off ‘Funf’ might annoy those completists who get their knickers in a twist over such things. “There were a few B-sides that were just more punk type ones which we already had on the LP,” explains Ade, “and a few that maybe weren’t quite good enough.”

Releasing a B-sides collection seems somehow heroic or perhaps historic considering the inevitable demise of the B-side; redundant in an increasingly download driven world.  “You know, when you think about what it was like in the ‘60s with EPs, then they’d have four songs on a single. Then if you think about the ‘80s - that’s when remixes started - with the remixes and live songs for B-sides it gets a bit dodgy with the quality. If you look at The Beatles, for example, or The Stones sometimes their B-sides were better than the A-sides.”