Rock underdog Nikki Sudden is back in the spotlight with bonus-reissues of old music.

Nikki Sudden represents rock's underdog, says Jonathan Cargill at Bloomington's Secretly Canadian records. Bands Sonic Youth and Pavement cite the Swell Maps, Sudden's early project with brother Epic Soundtracks, as an influence on their music. Nonetheless, after first releasing music with the Swell Maps and then as a solo artist and later teaming up with Dave Kusworth in the Jacobites, Sudden has not received the same recognition as some of his contemporaries. This is one of the reasons Secretly Canadian has begun rereleasing Sudden's work, both solo and with the Jacobites. There are others too.\n"It's fun to be able to provide a new context for something that's had a life before," Chris Swanson at Secretly Canadian says.\nIn October, Secretly Canadian released Waiting on Egypt and The Bible Belt as one double disc set and then Texas and Dead Men Tell No Tales as another. Beginning this February, Robespierre's Velvet Basement and The Ragged School, his work with the Jacobites, will be released. Most albums contain bonus tracks and all have a booklet, which Cargill saw as a necessity for the rereleases. \n"For this reissue campaign, almost everything has bonus material and the booklets are chock-full of photos and as much information as we could find," Cargill says.\nTen albums will be rereleased in all, bringing a large portion of Sudden's material to one place. Much of this English rocker's work found its home on different record labels, which is another reason the label launched the campaign. Swanson believes that each of Sudden's albums is solid. While there might not be a Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of Sudden's work, Swanson says that each album is good and has a certain "Nikki Sudden sound" to it.\n"He's such a personality on record. You hear it and it doesn't like anyone but Nikki Sudden -- kind of like a loner, cowboy, or drifter," Swanson says. "All of his music comes from a very personal place. It's very personal, yet very universal. I think there are a lot of music lovers out there who would be doing themselves a favor by giving him a shot."\nNikki Sudden Interview\nQ:What have you been up to lately?\nA: Well, nothing at all. I've done one gig this month. I've got a French and Spanish tour coming up in March, and hopefully I'll be doing my new album in March. It depends on if Secretly Canadian gives me the money to record it. They're one of the peoples who's interested in it. It'll tie in with the reissues.\nQ: What's it like to have Secretly Canadian re-releasing so much of your material?\nA: I've only got the advance. They seem really nice. I was at the office one day last March, and they all seem like really nice people. They're very enthusiastic. They didn't want to do it in a slapdash way. They wanted to have proper booklets with the CDs and things like that. It means they look good, and they sound really good. I'm pretty pleased with them.\nQ: What's it like to have this stuff that you've had years and years ago in front of you again?\nA: There's some of the outtakes on the albums, and it's good to actually have them out. Some bands, you know their outtakes are better than their official stuff. Possibly that's true of mine as well. There's a lot of more outtakes that I've remastered when I was doing the reissues. I think it's really good that I've done this. I won't have to remaster for another 10 years. It took a whole month of making tapes every night and going in the studio and sorting out all the reels. I've got so much stuff -- actually, I wish I had more. I always think I've only done about half of what I should have done. My last album came out three or four years ago. Four years between albums now is just totally ridiculous.\nQ: Why do you say that?\nA: It's like being the Rolling Stones or U2, do an album every three or four years and do a massive world tour. I like doing an album every year. I've got about 60 or 70 songs for the new album, I've just got to work out which ones are the best to use.\nQ: Is that typically the case, that you would have enough material to put an album out every year?\nA: Oh easily. I (recorded in) the States in December and in both the sessions I made up the songs on the spot. I went into a studio in Bavaria last Friday and the guy said, "What do you want to record?" and I just made up a song on the spot… Someone once said that 20 years experience makes you able to write a song in five minutes. \nQ: Has that always been the case for you?\nA: Yeah, I've never had a problem writing songs. If you're in the studio or whatever, when the red light is on, you come up with your best work anyway, hopefully. Probably because I haven't done an album in so long, I've got so many songs inside me, just kind of waiting to come out. You just have to catch them at the right minute, or else they've just passed you. \nQ: How do you keep improving? How do you keep things fresh?\nA: I mean sometimes if you come up with lyrics over a certain time, over a six month period, you might come up with the same basic lyrics all the time. You've just go get rid of those and think, "No, I can't use those." To me, being creative is like, if you've ever become a grown-up, you've basically given up. I think to be creative, you have to keep that naivete in you, that innocence. You always look for something new, that child-like thing. Too many people want to become grown-ups in this world. \nQ: You're writing two books now, so did reading actually get you started on wanting to write? \nA: My books are half finished. My books are never more than half finished. I'm doing a book on Ronnie Wood. I'm doing an interview in February. \nQ: That has to be amazing.\nA: Yeah, the Rolling Stones are my favorite band ever. \nQ: So, where do you stand on the Beatles/Rolling Stones debate?\nA: I always the thought the Beatles were too groupie, so that put me off them as a kid. I always liked the Monkees better. They had their own TV show and the songs were great. My favorite group is T-Rex. I've seen them a bunch of times and met Mark Burlin a bunch of times. I always think if you want to meet someone, you have to be in the right place at the right time. It's up to you to be in that right place at the right time. If you're introduced to someone you get on a lot better than if you meet them as a fan. I mean I know people come up to me too scared to talk to me. Or they don't come up and talk to me. This friend of mine once asked John Lennon for his autograph, and she was interviewing him at time and said she felt nervous about asking John for his autograph. I said, "Don't be stupid," because I used to wait outside the Liverpool Empire for Little Richard and get Little Richard's autograph.\nQ: So, you've done solo stuff and you've collaborated with a lot of people. What are the advantages of each? What do you like about doing each of those things?\nA: When you're in a band, you like the companionship of the band. Playing in Swell Maps, it was my brother Epic and me, and it was in the blood. He knew if I was going to make a change, I knew if he was going to change a rhythm or whatever. It went together. It was the same with Dave Kusworth and me in the Jacobites. Those are the two people I've played with the most. With Kusworth it's a really good relationship, and he's one of my favorite guitar players ever. We write songs really well together, on the occasion that we do. It's good to have someone to bounce ideas off of. When you're doing it on your own, it's more or less up to you. When the pressure's all on me, I have to come up with my best stuff. It's like when you do an album and you get a really good review, you think, "Well, my next one's gotta be really great, so they keep on saying that"