Wang Chung will be releasing Tazer Up!, their new studio album, on December 11, 2012. We caught up with singer Jack Hues on the eve of its release and spoke about the album, the five songs that define Wang Chung, touring, scoring movies, and, of course, the phrase "everybody wang chung tonight."
Your latest album, Tazer Up!, is coming out on the 11th. I think it's a great album. It has that Wang Chung sound, but with a modern feel. Where does the name come from?The perennial question. It came from Nick and I, having had various bands back in the late '70s and early '80s, trying to get a record deal. We decided instead of getting a bunch of musicians together and gigging and having the labels come and see us, we thought we'll just do it ourselves, basically. We managed to get a little independent deal. I guess we were in that space where we were trying to keep things enigmatic and under the radar. Part of the thinking was Huang Chung was that it was going to be this really mysterious thing that nobody would quite know what it was, so mystery was always a part of it. We got a deal with Arista in the U.K. and put out an album under the name Huang Chung.
But at that point, we realized that nobody could pronounce it. So we really thought about changing it when we hopped over to Geffen. It was really David Geffen who said, "No, it's a great name. You should keep it. But just respell it so that it's not so alienating." That's where it came from. As to what it means, that's a whole different thing.
What I was really asking was where did the name of the album come from?
Oh, Tazer Up!? Tazer Up! is really just coming off the artwork. It's what we're using for the cover, that sort of ray gun thing. I saw this painting in an art gallery where I live here in Canterbury in the U.K. I just really liked it. I took a picture of it with my phone. Very naughty. I sent it to Nick and a couple of other people and said, "This would make a great cover." At that time we were talking about Abducted By The '80s being the album title and I looked at it and thought, "Oh, 'take me to your leader' this looks like with this little ray gun thing." But talking to the artist, the painting's actually called Tazer. We put out an EP last year called Abducted By The '80s so we had to think up something new for this one. So I thought Tazer Up!. I guess my thinking was along the lines of when this album comes out, it's gonna kick off a bit and we need to get ready. Tazer Up!
