Hong Kong Ham

Here is a transcript of the bulk of my recent interview with Robert Smith, which led to stories in the South China Morning Post (under a pseudonym) and the New Zealand Herald. It’s close to 3,000 words, so I’ve put most of it after the jump. I’ve interjected throughout the interview with notes or questions, to put his quotes in context.

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It was 4:15am in England when Robert Smith called from a London studio, where he was working on the Cure’s 13th album. Smith is a nocturnal creature, usually starting work at 2pm and heading to bed around 5am.

“I’m trying to wrap up the new album before we set off on our trip around the world. It’s looking a bit bleak at the moment because it’s a strangely evolving project that we’re involved in and it’s a huge, sprawling mass of songs. There’s like more than 30 songs and I’m trying to put them all together, which I’ve been postponing for as long as I can. It’s proving to be much harder than I thought. It’s good fun, it’s interesting. We’ve been re-recording stuff and I’ve been re-singing stuff…

I wanted it to be a 26-track double album from the moment we started making it, but I’ve kept it kind of quiet. I think what will happen is there’ll be a single album, and a double album — I think I’ll have a limited edition double album that I’ll do, and there’ll be a single album for the less hard-core fans…

It’s just taken up so much time to get the whole thing to work together.

(more…)

Today my first story for CNN.com went online. It’s about the pirated Olympics merchandise that has been on sale in Hong Kong’s street markets, and the associated crackdown — which proves China’s and Hong Kong’s authorities can stifle piracy, in pockets, if they want to.

But that’s the thing.

Piracy is a massive industry in China and at the moment it is helping, rather than hurting, the economy. Of course, they won’t tolerate the embarrassment of having Olympics merchandise ripped off — but that also conveniently provides them with a chance to show how vigilant they are about intellectual property rights. Whether or not that vigilance will extend to foreign brands is another question.

The story was published as part of a just-launched special report on the countdown to the 2008 Beijing Games.