Gary Jarman of The Cribs Shared a Story of Payola and Johnny Marr

We couldn”t hide our excitement when we found out Upfront presented The Cribs for the first time in Kuala Lumpur. Following our excitement, we caught with Gary Jarman to dig more about their upcoming “Payola”, hidden stories about the album, and the band”s latest work with Johnny Marr.

So Gary, this would be your first time in Malaysia. After being around south east Asia, Thailand and Singapore earlier, how does it to feel to make your debut live performance in Kuala Lumpur?

Gary : It”s an obscure feeling really, its real overwhelming to realize that our music has travelled so far in the last 10 years. Getting from England to Malaysia is a real long distance, and I honestly don’t know any of our friends that’s gone to this part of the world. It’s surreal. Honestly I don’t even know how the show tonight is going to turn out and we don’t even know when we”re going to come back. I guess we just want to leave a good impression with our fans wherever we go. We play every show like its our last and its as real as it gets.

Recently, the band has released the latest album ‘Payola’, which means an illegal practice of payment in The American music Industry. So what came about for the thought of this name? Is there a message you guys are conveying to the public?

Gary : There isn’t really a deeper meaning behind it, just because y’know. It just fit.You guys looked up the reference, it means what it means.

Johnny Marr once said that you guys are amazing musicians. How was it like working with someone of his caliber? Did it feel more fun in opposed to be pressuring to work with him? Johnny also said that the Cribs would be the last band that he’d be in.

Gary : He was great fun to be with, it didn’t even mess with the chemistry we had with brothers, he fit in perfectly and we made great music together. He thought us a lot of things and performing with him has never been less than amazing. A mentor to us too.

“Be Safe” happens to be one of my favorite tracks from you guys, the depth to the song really gets to me. How do your fans respond to having such deep music?

Gary : Its pretty cool. Initially we didn’t even know our fans would be able to get it, or might even think its weird but were more than happy to know that our listeners could relate to the depth of our music. We didn’t even think it would get around much but it actually became one of our more famous pieces. Another cool part about the song is that it was a collaboration with Lee Ronaldo (Sonic Youth) whose another one of our idols. Sonic youth happens to be one of my personal favorite bands and collaborating with him was like a dream.

The new track, “Leather Jacket Love” from your new album wasn’t meant to be released but then you online casino decided to put it in for Payola. Ryan once said that he wanted it to be more of a “lost track”, so why did you guys release it anyway?

Gary : Real cool story behind that, wrote the song when Johnny was still in the band but we didn’t really get to finish it. That was like, 2-3 years ago? So we dug up the pile decided to pick it back on and finish the song, improvising from Johnny’s parts. Another thing would be that we didn’t want to just make ‘Payola’ to be “just” a compilation album that most would think. We just wanted to add some elements to keep it fresh for our listeners.

Ryan said that all the tracks from “The New Fellas” really evoke the strongest memories in him, what makes The New Fellas to be very memorable?

Gary: I guess it would be that it was our first album that really hit. Back then when the whole indie rock scene was picking up, Celebrities to people of all age was adopting the genre. It was a good place to be in, especially that were brothers and we love the music we made and we were young at the time, a lot of things were going on. Most of the tracks in the album was written late at night. Drunk nights, Exhausted nights, you name it. You could probably call it a “nocturnal” album even. We loved making every bit of it.

Emma in Leeds sent over a question for you the Band. she asks : “Harry Styles from one Direction happens to be a huge fan of the Cribs. What do you think of it? Some rock bands don’t consider their music to be relevant. How do you guys feel about them?”

Gary: yeah, we’ve heard that before actually. I don’t really “hate” any other genre, they appeal to the pop industry and they’re great at it. Its an honoring feeling actually to know that he has our band in his playlist, maybe someday their music could be influenced by us, who knows.

Last question, The Cribs has performed in Singapore and Thailand for your Asian tour, and now in Malaysia, when will be the time for Indonesia? Is it true that you guys almost made it to Indonesia for a show?

Gary: We’ve thought about that before actually, we’re quite surprised that we have so many fans there. We get messages from fans in Indonesia all the time asking us to come to their country but we somehow never make it, every time planning for Indonesia was made something always came up and wed have to cancel. We almost made it there in 2005 even. Hopefully some day we’d get to experience the crowd over there and give whatever we can. Someday, definitely.