Interview from start of 2000 with Slide Show Fanzine. This site has recently disappeared, if you want to find out where it's gone you might try Steady Cam Records.
Firstly, who makes up National Park and how long have you been together?
National Park is/are myself (John Hogarty), Scott Walker, Michael McGaugrin and Simon Shaw. Scott and I have been playing together since we were at school, Michael and Simon joined at the end of 1998 after we had been offered a gig with Future Pilot AKA at the Pastels club "Illumination".

Although I'd played lots of gigs before this was the first time I'd ever sung live. I was really excited about our first gig but when it came to the night I was very nervous, thinking: "Why on earth did I agree to do this weird thing?" I felt like I'd agreed to do a strip.
From an outsider's point of view, Glasgow is a thriving hot spot of musical activity at the moment. What is the scene like on a smaller scale, are there plenty of places for bands to play and is there very much camaraderie amongst the bands?
It's become quieter lately, everyone seems to be between records. It would be great if Appendix Out, International Airport, the Telstar Ponies or the Pastels were playing soon, but there's nothing on the horizon. The last gig I went to see was Bob Dylan, the next two, Jonathan Richman and the Go-Betweens.
There probably are plenty of places to play in Glasgow, it's not very difficult to put on your own show if you really want to play. The stumbling block most bands seem to have is that they don't see that it can be that easy.

Some people are more supportive than others, the Pastels and Belle and Sebastian are very helpful. One advantage of making music in Glasgow is that it feels very removed from London's career driven music scene. Belle and Sebastian embody activism, giving financial help to other musicians and trying to build their community but to lazy hacks at the NME looking for an easy byline they are somehow seen as less committed than Primal Scream who blow their money on coke and deliver a couple of shallow Political Slogans with all the savvy of Citizen Smith (a charming 70's British Sit-com whose naïve hero dressed like Che Guevara. Catchphrase: "FREEDOM FOR TOOTING!" [An area of South London]).

Galaxie 500 always seem to pop up when comparisons are drawn to National Park but having said that, I think Galaxie 500, along with the Pixies, are one of the most 'cross referenced' bands when it comes to indie noise makers. Any thoughts? Happy with comparisons to G500?
Galaxie 500 were a band that I missed at the time. I came to them after someone who had heard us told me that we sounded a bit like Galaxie 500. They've since become one of my favourite bands. I don't mind comparisons with Galaxie 500, it's usually a compliment.
Your first two releases were available only on vinyl, was that your decision?
It really just happened that way, I was very keen that our releases should be available on vinyl. I didn't know that it was the only format they'd be available on.
Great Western was only available on 10", possibly the most anachronistic format, but that seemed appropriate since it was meant to be a rallying cry for those that had become increasingly disenfranchised, deliberately locating the song in the centre of our universe.
Since then the best independent record shop in Glasgow has been closed and it's become difficult to get more obscure new releases here. I passed Fopp recently, it sells new CD's for a fiver and they have a wide range of 'classics' but I was filled with this creeping feeling of dread that everyone was buying exactly the same records. I thought that this must be what it's like for most people in Britain now. I was on holiday in Paris recently and it was fantastic, they haven't been fully homogenised there yet.
Have you had any feedback from people upset that your music hasn't been available on CD yet?
Is this something you're pushing? There was one guy in France who said he would have preferred it on CD.
Could you describe the recording of the two tracks for the Great Western 10"? You took a very lo-fi approach didn't you?
It's strange how many people have become involved in a debate about 'fi'. We didn't consciously take a lo-fi approach. I don't think 'fi' is important, if we'd had better facilities we'd have used them. Phil Spector's recordings are covered in hiss and don't have a wide frequency response but it would be ridiculous to judge them on those terms. It's way more important to try to create a magical recording. The best records are those that show imagination and belief, not the ones that satisfy "What Hi-Fi?"s criteria for a five star recording.

How we recorded Great Western, two answers:
1)Scott brought his super expensive, top-of-the-range four-track into the studio but while we were setting up I dropped an amplifier on it, destroying it.
After the dust had settled and the tears had subsided we decided to do a couple of tracks and just record them on the tape deck at the back of the rehearsal room so that our time wouldn't be completely wasted. We played No More Rides and Great Western once each, at the end of Great Western you can hear the guy who owns the studio telling us our time's up. When we got the tape home we discovered that it had only recorded on one channel. I decided to transfer this onto two, I sang over the top of the tape whilst transferring it because the vocals were a bit quiet and that's the recording that was released.

Or:
2)We went into the rehearsal room. After a while we began moving away from conventional structure, random notes collided, the world shattered and we forged something of our own from the pieces. Afterwards, when we tried to recollect what had happened, the events seemed blurred, no one could remember exactly what part they had played.

The vocals on that release are very minimal. Do you approach vocals as a textural addition to the song or are you intentionally trying to deliver a message through the lyrics? Do you give lyrics any more or less consideration than you would give to any of the instrumentation? Do you leave your songs open to improvisation, live and in the studio?
Most of our songs have a lot more vocals on them. I think you've only really heard one side of us so far. I don't think lyrics are all important, sometimes all you need is the sound of someone's voice. There's a song at the heart of everything we do, we'll play it in a different way every time and there are parts that are completely free. A message? Eat more fruit.
Your second release was an interesting split/collaboration with Future Pilot AKA, could you describe who they are and how the single came about?
Future Pilot AKA is Sushil Dade and he has been many things to the band - collaborator, bass player, cover photographer and driving instructor (I passed). I've known Sushil for a long time, the Norman Dolph's money single was recorded very quickly, shortly after Sterling Morrison's death. It's an improvisation, more or less first take. The track on his album took Scott and myself days to mix because of lots of technical problems and limitations involved in using cheap equipment. Scott had to play the guitar solo live while we mixed it.
Your track is called 'Norman Dolph's Money', who is/was Norman Dolph and what is the big deal about his money?
Like I say, we recorded that track shortly after Sterling Morrison had died and I was looking for a title. It sounded slightly whimsical and I was trying to think of something from their early days. I had read in "From the Velvets to the Voidoids" that the first Velvets album was paid for by a shoe salesman called Norman Dolph. The idea that such a radical album could have been paid for by a shoe salesman… Before the track was released I learned that he was actually an executive at Columbia records but our apocryphal version of events seemed to suit our track better.
There is a new single expected soon, a cover of a Kendra Smith track right? Has a release date been set for that? Why a cover?
Although it's a cover, I played it from memory and it's not very similar to the original. Hopefully we'll be releasing it soon, the other side's been recorded too. We've got enough tracks ready for an LP and a couple of EPs so hopefully we'll be releasing a lot of tracks at the start of next year.
Copyright Slide Show / National Park 2000.