The album that has been cryingly absent from our collections for two, long years now has finally seen the light of day in late February 1998. 99th Dream is both the album title and title of its first supercharged wall-of-guitars single. It is classic Swervedriver, the essential elements of all of their seven minute driving, riffing epics which succeeded in setting Swervedriver apart from the UK and Creation Records era of the early 90's are present, the stereophonic scope of the much underrated Ejector Seat Reservation is also there, as is Adam's distinctive vocalisations best exemplified by their breakthrough epic 'Duel' (from 1993's Mezcal Head): you've been awaaay, for sooo looong... Performing on stage at Mudslinger in 1998, the fact that such a song as '99th Dream' was kept locked away for so long seems absolutely criminal.
"There are a lot of people who have bootlegged copies of the album, which is annoying," says Jimmy of the profuse underground distribution of the recordings, most of which were obtained from Geffen samples sent out to reps in late 1996 and its brief appearance on the internet in mid 1997. "But it's actually wrong, it's the wrong version, we re-recorded 'These Times' two weeks ago. We didn't like the other one, it was lacking a bit.
"I mean, with the album, we recorded it three times (with their oft-used and legendary 'shoegazer' producer Alan Moulder - Ride, NIN, Elastica, MBV, Smashing Pumpkins, Jesus and Mary Chain etc.) and we couldn't get it right. We are re-mastering it next week in New York and, er, all those bootlegs will be (pause) I s'pose they will be rare. I only have one copy myself."
Their three albums, Raise (1991), the opus Mezcal Head (1993) and Ejector Seat Reservation (1995) emerged in the Creation period, the latter two being punctuated by Sony's acquisition of Creation. In fact Swervedriver's leaving Sony/Creation, on the verge of release of Ejector Seat, caused immense damage to the point where they were subsequently robbed of any record company support for it, no major touring and, worst of all, no domestic distribution in their biggest market, the US. A fantastic album it was too, but Swervedriver fans still managed to import their own copies and filled rooms whenever the Oxford Four hit the 'States.
Then came three torrid months with Geffen - a sudden signing and then dumping - in a bizarre and ludicrous outcome which undernourished Swervedriver fans have been trying to piece together for years now on internet chat channels.
"Oh. Well. I mean Geffen, the thing with Geffen, it was just a short lived thing really. David Geffen sold it didn't he (and went on to form multimedia company DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Disney's ex-chief Jeffrey Katzenberg), bought by a whiskey company, Seagrams, they sacked 300 staff and dumped loads of bands. We were one of those bands.
"Our A&R girl who signed us got the sack three months after she'd signed us so we had no one at the label to support us or anything like that. But at the end of the day, they gave us loads of money and we spent it on a studio. They dumped us with a studio and an album (99th Dream was to be their first Geffen release) so that's their tough luck aint it? We did all right, eh?"
The only supplement Swervedriver fans (without access to the prized 99th Dream early version bootleg) have had to contend with for the past two years have been a split 7" single with US band Sophia titled 'Why Say Yeah', another boutique 7", '93 Million Miles from the Sun... And Counting' and that Who cover, 'Magic Bus', released as a single but originally appearing as part of the soundtrack to the snowboarding movie Day Tripper. Whaddafuck?
"Aaarrgh!" Jimmy moans with a little turn of his head. "The guy who made it is a friend of ours. We had just built our studio and we thought yeah, we'll do it, a) to test out the studio and b) to help him out, so we did it, pretty happy with the results and so on and the next thing we know A&M have put it out as a single. By this time we were thinking 'Oh god, we donšt really want this out, we don't want people to hear it, a cover version!' I mean, we just thought it was a laugh for a film that hardly anyone would see and the next thing we were asked to perform it on TV, a show in England. But nuh, we hate it. Sort of regret doing it."
I can't envisage there being much regret with the finished product of 99th Dream. From the moment it kicks off with the massive title track, weaving through to the anthemic strum of 'These Times', the unsettling warble and discordia of 'You've Sealed My Fate' and a high point for me, 'In My Time', with its backward guitar-sounding pitch-bending a la 'Son Of Jaguar E' (from Ejector Seat), Swervedriver seem to be continuing on the path that they beat with the aforementioned 1995 album. Finishing off the dream with 'Behind The Scenes Of The Sounds And The Times' and you will no doubt agree, Swervedriver are still the gear for elongating every syllable while drenching themselves in a multitude of minuscule but fully amped ditherings and riffs, the last stand from that great period of saturated guitar music and spaced expression that seems so distant now. That's because it is.
As is the way with these things, the stage was left for anyone to jam. Dave Graney? Paul Kelly? Swervedriver? Adam and Steve mount the stage and grab a drum kit each, two guitarists providing the beats to the young lead singer of Eskimo Joe, Kav Temperly, and Brad from Beaverloop on bass. I see the first smile of the day on Adam's face, something missing this time around in our first meeting. Maybe as 99th Dream finally kicks off, is "finally put to rest" as Jimmy paradoxically puts it, with its wistful sonic booms and psychedelic guitar flutters, maybe we will see more of this. I would like to see that again, in my time.