Popping Cherries

When I think back to the early days of Popping Cherries, I'm carried back to cold winter nights writing music in badly heated flats (the warmth provided by vodka), road trips in my Rover 214 with the dodgy fuel pump, starting to make rock and roll videos without having a clue what we were doing, and exploring themes of paganism, Crowleyanity (little did I know that in later life when my hair got thin and my waist expanded I would end up looking like old Crow), fetishism, vampires, Discordianism, witchcraft and things that go bump in the night.  

I'd come out of a couple of projects that were meant to get national attention, but instead collapsed into puddles of conflict, egotism, too much of the stuff musicians like to do that are very bad for you, dodgy business practices and so on.  I was left feeling utterly disillusioned with the music business and ready to jack it all in.  That was when I met Gwen, who seemed to be on a similar wavelength to me, and Popping Cherries was born.  The whole thing from the stupid band name to the overblown and ridiculous projects, the role-playing as 1980's rock stars, the potty-mouthed lyrics, the book releases and documentaries (I know how many people there are on Earth, and I know how many of them have listened to Popping Cherries) was just an utter piss-take of the music business's branding, marketing, corruption and rock and roll pretentiousness.

What was wonderful about those times was that we were young, free and had all the time in the world on our hands to watch Hammer Horrors, Forever Knight, Robin of Sherwood, The Wickerman and sundry other things we drew inspiration from that would feed into our music.  Best of all, we were not, and never have been, beholden to any record label bosses who could tell us what we could and couldn't do.  This CD follows our evolution from those halcyon days in the opening decade of the 2000's, through two decades of music and video production and conceptual art projects that were faciliated by the technological advances as we transitioned fully into the digital era.  Hopefully the next two decades will be just as much fun, with just as much creative output, before I'm into my seventies and ready for the knackers yard.  --C0unt WAVnstein, 2025.