Long ago, I was a teenage punk. I did not have a ticket to the final Ramones show at The Warfield, and didn’t have any tricks yet for getting into a sold out show. My friends and I waited a bit, and eventually got a flyer that said “Free All Ages Punk Show at Trocadero Transfer: The Queers, cub, The Potatomen.” This was a key show for me. I bought a cub / Potatomen split 7″ and cub became one of my very favorite bands. The record they were touring was Come Out Come Out, which has become a twee punk classic. Mint Records has recently released a 30th anniversary remaster of this classic jam(buy it here), and we got to talk with Robynn “Cup” Iwata, the band’s guitarist as well as a member of Bay Area experimental legends I Am Spoonbender, and once part of the highly influential and legendary record store, Open Mind Music.
1.) Things have been quiet with cub for a long time. What made you folks decide to get together for this reissue after all that time apart?
Mint Records — the label that released Come Out Come Out — asked us if we would like to do a 30th Anniversary edition of the album. The members of cub have never really been far out of touch over the years (even if sometimes big chunks of time went by). So, we touched base and quickly found out that we were all happy to put the package together. It was painless and fun. And actually, it wasn’t the first time. We reconvened under the same circumstances and with the same enthusiasm in 2018 for the release of an excellent live recording (with Neko Case on drums) that was originally broadcast by the CBC radio show Brave New Waves. (Editor’s Note: This is GREAT and the pictures of baby Neko Case in the liner notes are adorable)
2.) Will we see other archival releases, like Mauler and Box Of Hair (please?)?
We’ve long wanted to re-release Mauler. It was a terrific odds’n’ends compilation that was released on the Australian label, Au Go Go. As I understand it, most of the pieces are still in the possession of the various original labels, and those can be time-consuming to track down.
Happy to let you know that Box Of Hair is still available on 12″ vinyl and CD from Mint Records. (Editor’s Note: Mint Records is currently selling the CD of Box Of Hair, but appears to be sold out of the 12″ record. If the good people of Mint decide to do a repress, my credit card is, indeed, waiting.)
3.) When cub broke up, what prompted the move to SF?
I had been in a long-distance relationship with Dustin Donaldson for about a year and a half before cub disbanded. We wanted to do projects of many kinds together, and so when cub ended, we kind of did a “my place or yours?” (i.e., Vancouver, BC or San Francisco, CA). We felt that SF held better prospects for the array of things we were talking about and, in some cases, were already doing.
4.) What have you been up to since the dissolution of I Am Spoonbender?
Since IAS was principally Dustin and me, it never formally dissolved. We have a couple of albums’ worth of material that we never got around to releasing, as we just became interested in doing things other than music full-time. We still make music and have a few full new albums (completely unrelated to IAS musically/stylistically) ready to go. We’d like people to hear them, but the process of releasing and selling is really not interesting for us, so I don’t know if we’ll ever put any of it out.
We’ve done many, many other artistic and scientific things since that time, but the primary focus for us since about 2008 or so has been our work in Egypt. Most centrally, we just finished 15(!) years of research work centred around the decoding of Prehistoric cave paintings located deep in the Egyptian Sahara Desert. We made a couple of Archaeo-Astronomical discoveries at temples in Egypt during this time as well. This is all too much to go into here, but those interested in further info can get started at TheSourceInTheSahara.com.
5.) Will I Am Spoonbender’s catalog ever come to streaming or return to print?
I sort of addressed this in the previous answer, but to be more specific, we just don’t have much interest in going too deeply into the past. These reissue projects take a lot of time and energy. We love the works themselves and greatly appreciate the interest that people continue to have, but we feel that it’s more productive now to spend energy elsewhere. There’s another point as well. For IAS, we feel that it is kind of nice or refreshing that you have to already have it or know about it in the first place. There can be implicit value or rewards in the search for things, so we’ve decided against releasing them to streaming. That being said, we’re not trying to be willfully obscure. So, maybe someday we will dedicate the space to get it all back out there in a more convenient way for people.
6.) There are some excellent cub covers out there on the internet. Do you have a favorite?
I’m not online much, so I’m not sure that I’m up to speed on the subject. I have heard some good ones through the years, though!
7.) Have you been to the new(ish) Open Mind Music in Oakland? Are you involved in the new store in some way?
No, I haven’t. I didn’t even know about it until now. I’ve been pretty out of the loop on North America stuff since coming to Siwa Oasis, Egypt, in 2012.
8.) While working on the remaster, was there anything that surprised you that you didn’t recall from the original sessions?
Nothing surprised me per se, as it’s all frozen in time exactly as we left it. But I’ve learned an immense amount about writing and producing music since those days, and so when listening to those recordings now, I feel like I am able to more accurately hear them for what they actually are. Time/distance and experience has allowed for more objectivity in my evaluation, as opposed to the subjectivity that’s related to being directly immersed in the work at the time. I still like it though, which is gratifying!
9.) My mom passed away late last year, and one of the songs that helped me manage my feelings about it was “Mom and Dad.” What songs in the cub canon do you hold onto in order to manage tough emotions?
It is really nice to hear that a cub song helped you through such an important transition.
For me, the songs don’t function in that way, in a sort of therapeutic sense. I don’t listen to them for fun or any other reason, really. Encountering artworks that you’ve worked on in the past is very much like looking at old photos of yourself or re-reading your High School or University journals – it’s mostly varying degrees of awkward mixed in with a certain acceptance that you were doing what you thought was best at the time. Oftentimes, creators of things are just too close to it all to experience it as fresh ears do.
10.) One time, as a bratty little kid, I was in Open Mind Music in SF and saw that a “Robynn” recommended the They Might Be Giants record with “New York City” on it and made a snide remark about how you only recommended it because you get a royalty, and you were behind the counter at the time. My question is: are you still mad at me?
Hmmm. I think that this might have been a dream that you had? First, I never used the name Robynn after cub. So, no one in SF ever called me anything but my nickname, which is Cup. Put another way, only cub fans know me as Robynn. Second, regardless of whether our song is covered on the album, I would never have recommended Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants over Flood or Lincoln. And of course I’m still mad, which is why I am stopping talking to you right this very minute… unless you have more questions! 🙂
