About the CWCC

General information

Who are The Catherine Wheel?

If you were a fan of British indie music in the early 1990s, you might remember a 1992 radio hit called “Black Metallic.” The Catherine Wheel, a band from Great Yarmouth, England, followed up this song with other 1990s singles including “Balloon,” (from Ferment), “Crank” (from Chrome), “Waydown” and “Judy Staring at the Sun” (from Happy Days), and “Delicious” (from Adam and Eve). Known initially as a shoegaze band, CW moved further from that sound with each album. The band enjoyed some commercial success and MTV visibility, especially in the mid-1990s, but mainstream success proved elusive. In 2001, the band took a hiatus, which has yet to be broken, though we occasionally hear rumors of a possible reunion.

The core band members were Rob Dickinson (vocals and guitar), Brian Futter (guitar and vocals), Neil Sims (percussion and vocals), Dave Hawes (bass. 1990-99). Bassist Ben Ellis and keyboardist Peter Whitaker joined the band on tour in its later years. Merck Mercuriadis, then of Sanctuary Management Group, took an active role as the band’s manager and promoter.

In addition to releasing five studio albums, an album of b-sides, and nearly two dozen singles, the band covered songs by Sebadoh, Mission of Burma, Scott Walker, Rush, and many others. The band toured and recorded with such diverse acts as Slowdive, Blur, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Charlatans UK, Belly, The House of Love, Tim Friese-Greene, INXS, Jeff Buckley, Live, Buffalo Tom, Geneva, and Tracy Bonham.

Most of the band members are still active on social media. If you’re interested in their further adventures, various collaborations and side projects such as 50ft Monster and Good Day Father have yielded a few tracks, which can be found online. The most well known of these is Rob Dickinson’s 2005 solo album, Fresh Wine for the Horses, which is available on major streaming platforms.

At this point, the best resource for up-to-date CW information is probably the Catherine Wheel Facebook page, on which Brian and Dave occasionally make appearances. You’re less likely to see recent activity on the Catherine Wheel email list, Texture, but that list still has hundreds of active members, and they’ll gladly answer a question if one arises.

What is the Catherine Wheel Cover Compilation?

The Catherine Wheel Cover Compilation is a large collection of Catherine Wheel cover songs submitted by fans of the band. Originally conceived as a professionally-produced multi-CD set, it is now a compilation on the Web.

The project was started by US-based fans in August 2000, shortly after the band’s North American tour in support of their final album Wishville. Four members of Texture, the Catherine Wheel email list, have been involved from the beginning: Jeff Elbel (CA), Heather Parsons (AZ), Marsh Portmann (CA), and Aaron Tapscott (WA). Mike Garcia (OR) joined as webmaster later in the year, and Dan Loeffelbein (CA) was selected to do the cover art in a Spring 2001 contest.

The idea of a CW cover album had been batted around intermittently for years before Aaron decided to post a serious proposal for the idea to Texture. Marsh emailed Heather about pooling their resources (Heather had the web space and Marsh the business experience), while in a separate email to Heather, Jeff mentioned that he wouldn’t mind producing a cover album if it came to fruition. Marsh contacted Aaron, and the CWCC was essentially born.

Originally, the group looked into professional mastering, real CD manufacturing, professionally printed artwork, and so on. Song submissions came in while the group crunched numbers and did research. The project was a huge success on the musical end with over 70 songs submitted from around the world. Unfortunately, this level of success increased the cost of producing the compilation. Some risk was involved since it was difficult to estimate how many people would pay money for the compilation—and the decline of the CD was beginning at this time as well. Finally in 2003, after a series of disappointments and a loss of momentum, the compilation was converted to a more feasible web-based project. Mike launched the website with mp3s at the end of 2003.

We are pleased to say that the CWCC is still active! All of the submissions are currently available on the site, and they’ll be here for the foreseeable future. Download tracks and use them as you wish.

If you’ve completed a track and would like it to be part of the CWCC, click here for more info.

Is the CWCC endorsed by the Catherine Wheel?

No, it is not. There is a difference between being endorsed by the band and having permission from the band’s management to publish the submissions. Before launching the CWCC, we obtained permission from Catherine Wheel manager Merck Mercuriadis.

There are a few conditions to our agreement:

• We’re using our own artwork and design (no copyrighted band photos or logos).
• Cover versions can’t include samples of original CW recordings.
• Although we are permitted to distribute the mp3s freely, we can’t license them or make a profit off of them. Each recording remains the property of the band that wrote it. The lyrics and music, of course, remain the property of the Catherine Wheel.
• Any CW song can be covered, but songs they have covered (such as their version of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”) are not eligible for the CWCC because we don’t have permission from the other bands.

The CW band members are aware of the project, and some have expressed appreciation for various tracks, which we take as a sign of success.

Note: There is another CW cover project called Strange Fruits. We dig it, but we’re not affiliated. They sell their compilation for a nominal fee; we’re unsure whether they have permission from the band to do so (though they’ve been defunct for so long now, maybe it doesn’t matter). We wish them the best; the more the merrier. Other covers can be found online, especially on YouTube. This site only features the songs that have been submitted directly to us.

Why did you decide to call the album Too Much Is Not Enough?

Since the idea for the compilation sprang from Texture, we decided it was only appropriate we turn the naming of the album over to the members of that list. Over the course of two weeks in September of 2000, Texturites contributed 39 possible titles, and in two rounds of voting, narrowed it down to Too Much Is Not Enough. The phrase is a lyric from “Fripp,” from the 1993 CW album Chrome. Despite this process, the name has never stuck, and the project is more often called the CWCC.

Submitting songs

I want to cover a song for the compilation. Which song should I do?

Whichever one you like! Browse the pages, and listen to the mp3s. If you notice that a particular song hasn’t been covered yet, feel free to go for it, but if you have your heart set on one that’s already covered, that’s fine, too. As you’ll see, quite a few have been covered more than once.

If you can’t quite figure out how to play the music, check out our guitar tabs page to see if we have tabs for your song.

Your band will probably not see any exposure by participating. The project’s heyday was in the mid-2000s, and we only receive a few mp3s per year at this point. We still get a couple of thousand downloads a year, which is actually pretty remarkable given the age of the CWCC, but it’s always been a low-profile project. You’d be doing this for the love of the band. Feel free to self-promote, of course.

Have bands needed to sign a release form, or any sort of waiver, for participating in the CWCC?

Because this is a fairly small nonprofit project, no. We’re not causing any huge ripples in the music industry, so the legal folks don’t really care. As stated before, we have the band’s permission to do this. And, although both Jeff and Aaron have worked for record labels, we’re not directly involved with any.

Is there any other legal stuff I should keep in mind?

Please use your own common sense. You can certainly record any song you like on your own free time, but make sure you’ve got all of your legal bases covered before distributing it to the general public. As mentioned above, we have permission for this project, so if your song ends up here (and it’s a genuine cover, with no additional lyrics, material from other bands, or samples), you’re good.

Keep in mind that these downloads are free and unrestricted, and you should be OK with that if you choose to participate. We can’t put restrictions on downloads for you, nor can we enforce the copyright on your recording. If you would like us to remove your submitted track from our site, email us, and we’ll do so ASAP.

General questions

Why do some songs sound louder or more dynamic than others?

As mentioned above, we didn’t go through with plans for professional mastering of this compilation. The songs were recorded by different bands using different equipment in different studio situations. Some have gone through an intensive recording process, while others are comparatively low tech. Some were professionally mixed while others weren’t. Vocals or individual instruments will stand out on some songs more than others. We’ve tried, using typical Windows software, to normalize volumes somewhat. Hopefully it’s not too much of a problem for you. Keep your volume control handy if it is.

What are the legal issues surrounding downloads from this site?

Once you’ve downloaded the songs, you’re free to share them with others. Bands that have submitted their work to this site are fully aware that it will be distributed.

“Hotlinking” (good lord, it’s been a long time since I typed that word) directly to mp3s on this site is discouraged. If you want to download a song, do it through this website, not because we’re control freaks, but because we’re trying to preserve our bandwidth. We’d prefer it if you didn’t host the mp3s on your own site, though we won’t chase you down if you do. Legally speaking, though, don’t attempt to try to make any money off any of these recordings. No one has permission for that.

If you want to use any of the artwork for any purpose beyond just printing it for yourself, please email us for permission. Unlike the other stuff, the artwork is protected by copyright.

I don’t like some of the covers! How do you choose which songs to feature?

We don’t decide; we post everything we get. For a while, we tried to prioritize certain songs, but now we just organize them by CW album. This is an international project open to everyone; we want as many covers as we can gather. Getting picky about quality seems to be at odds with that mission. And to be honest, some of the less-polished songs are quirky and interesting. Most of the downloads are pretty small, so take a chance, and give ’em all a couple of listens, at least; you might find a hidden gem.

How did you put this site together?

Since most of our work was done long ago, this is going to sound pretty old school. The early submissions were encoded from CD into 192 kbps mp3s using Exact Audio Copy. In more recent times, we’ve been accepting songs at higher bitrates and trying to re-encode some of the oldies as time permits.

The website was originally constructed using Dreamweaver, but now, it’s a WordPress-based site using the Tracks theme. Although Mike runs this site, some of the content (especially in this FAQ) was written by Heather Parsons and a few others back in the early 2000s. 

Site graphics were done in Photoshop using Dan Loeffelbein’s original cover art as a basis. The fonts used in Dan’s artwork and our site graphics (Pricedown and Zero Twos) were created by Ray Larabie and used by license. Everything else is in the public domain unless stated otherwise on the site.

Last but not least: this site has been hosted with impressive reliability by DreamHost since day one.

Who is Lisa Maree?

We dedicate Too Much Is Not Enough: The Catherine Wheel Cover Compilation to Lisa Maree of Sydney, Australia, who passed away March 5, 2001. Although she spent many of her last days battling cancer, she remained one of the most fervent supporters of the CWCC.

In a post to Texture, Heather Parsons wrote, “I just wanted to say, in a public forum, that Lisa Maree was one of the bravest, strongest, and most incredible people I have ever had the pleasure of conversing with … She was funny, candid, and she tried to protect some of the people she cared about most from her illness because she thought that was what would be best. Lisa Maree was a survivor, and she never stopped fighting her illness … She won, because she never gave up. … She was made of the good stuff; ‘a fierce soul.'”