Episode 27 - Vintage Poison

The first half of an interview with the four members of Vintage Poison, who are Lucy Leagrave, Kevin Reinhardt, Gareth Lewis and Robert Yates.

I'd met Robert at a Wolf Magazine launch gig, and got off to a great start with him, sharing many interests, lest of all Role Playing Games (I mean the Orcs and Wizards kind of course) but what got me interested was his translations of French poets, many of which had already been translated to English, but Robert was keen to point out to me the vagaries of language and how the translator comes across in the artists work.

This point I explore a bit further in a future episode when I interview James Bryne of The Wolf magazine, who also works as a translator, among other things.

Vintage Posion then, Robert invited me along to the launch of their book, a collection of the four artists works, at Borders on Oxford street, at which point I started to pester them for an interview. It took me trailing along to a number of the crews live nights, and the consumption of much beer, to finally get them to sit down together in a church in Covent garden, last January. Other than a few out-takes, this recording is pretty much as it went.In the first half of the interview I leave in a fart from Robert Yates prior to his performance - if I wasn't so kind I'd make some sort of derogatory remark about it being the best part of his performance (Sorry Robert, you know I don't mean it and couldn't avoid the pun!). In the second half of the interview I had to leave the room, and left the recorder on and picked up some choice remarks when the poets guard was down!

This was of course with the groups permission - my first reaction was to edit it all out and make them appear angelic, but you know, they insisted on me showing their true colours!