Sell-out, with me oh yeah.

Alright then!

A couple of rate interesting and timely little questions here…

Katy asks "1. What are your thoughts about playing some gigs recently 'for / to impress the industry' and having to plead with fans to come along and support you? Especially gigs when you clearly wern't over enthusiastic about having to drive alllll the way down to London to be there, (ie Barfly), but have to put on a great show to impress certain people..."

NOTE: If people are wondering what (we) are talking about, it’s no secret that for one reason and another we’ve been working hard to get our next record out on a label. The reasons for doing so and the differences between self-releasing and all that are all very interesting but that’s another discussion. Let’s just put it out there that our last few London shows have had some people from different labels and other industry people coming down and checking us out. At the end of the day, a show is still a show, so we’re giving everyone a proper go of it (so it shouldn’t really matter at all to someone in the crowd) but that’s one reason why we’ve been so adamant about people coming and showing support at the last few.

Well, first of all, we are always enthusiastic to do a gig and we enjoyed that gig and pretty much find a way to enjoy all the gigs we do one way or another. There was a lot of trouble with the PA at the particular gig you are talking about so maybe some of that came across but I thought everybody had a great time. Playing those kinds of things is actually really fun and different. We like a challenge. I was probably kidding to be honest!

My approach to this kind of stuff is really the same as it's always been in that 'it is what it is' is my general philosophy. As well as being a shallow hellhole full of crashing bores and egotistical bellhops, the music industry is a business with people in there that are doing a good job. There are certain hoops you've got to jump through and brass rings you have to grab if you want to have someone come and risk spending lots of money on promoting you. That’s the end of it. You don’t go to someone-else's house for dinner and tell them they have to take their shoes off because you do in yours. It doesn't work that way round. We've kept the whole thing relatively quiet but anyone that follows us closely could probably figure out what was going on with us over the last couple of months. If that can push people into caring about us and thinking further than their own concerns about us that's great, but they don’t have to. I never liked those bands that acted like the audience owes them something because they've got on a stage and played a gig. So we're going to try to get people attuned and into the idea that we're trying to find a new home for our record and consider where things are going without banging everybody over the head with it. We don't want to take anyone's support for granted and we don't think anyone owes us anything. The reason it’s taken a while is that we need it to be right and we thank everyone for being patient. But if you DO care then it's a cool time to sit up and get behind us at the moment, because we're really THAT CLOSE to make this thing happen.

Ahem… Get your tickets HERE ladies and gentlemen.



2. How sucsessful would you like to be? I went to see Frank Turner at the Hammersmith Apollo a few months back. I remeber seing him years ago, on his own, on a barstool, with an accoustic guitar and an audience of about 40. This was a seated, over 5,000 capacity venue, with chilren, families and middle-aged women screaming 'we love you', but a sea of blank faces when Against Me opened the show. It was weird. Would playing sell out arena shows make you guys happy?

I too have seen Frank Turner sat on a barstool in front of next to no one and have seen him at Reading Festival where you can't get in the tent. We've had You Me At Six play before us and have a nightmare gig where their guitar broke and now they're HUGE. You've got to look at that and be inspired, not envious. It's cool to see.

“Would playing sell-out arena shows make you guys happy?” This question is a bit like at the end of Spinal Tap and Marty Di Bergi asks Nigel Tufnell if he could be a shoe salesman. The answer; “I dunno, what are the hours?”

It really is too hard a question to answer. Without hesitation I would say that if pretty much any band acquired that amount of success to headline that kind of show it would be a cool experience, obviously. But it's the other things that would come with getting your music out there to so many people that would be most rewarding I reckon. Having that many people singing that they're proud to be living in a land where we have the right to be who we are would be amazing.

Even if you look at interviews with me from 2006 I've always said that we are not a band that would be against being huge as a concept but I didn't realistically think that what we were doing was all that marketable because it was too crazy by design. That wasn't what we were trying to create. As time's gone on, we've evolved as a band and people and over the last few years we’ve had to think about where we’re going with this. Now I see the band differently than I did a few years ago in this regard. The new album is, in my opinion, heavier and more powerful than the old stuff but I also think it’s also hopefully more accessible. There's no shame in that, there's a skill in that kind of writing. But of course, you can’t always please everyone and even now I’ve noticed mixed reactions online to the new stuff from old fans. But we've always had that. Reactions have been very positive by and large. It's always difficult judging off a single before you hear an album anyway. It’s funny to me because I’ve seen kids citing ‘Piggy In the Middle’ as a classic dissing ‘Kids’ for instance but, to me, the riff and middle 8 on kids is heavier than any jog on the spot saxophone ska-core thing could ever be. It’s a different kind of energy and I love that youthful ska-punk madness but to be a big stage to see people bouncing to a rock riff is a different rush. That groove is completely different to our old stuff and, to me, way more 'heavy'. I read a Tumblr review the other day of us live when someone who was doubtful said he really 'got' Kids when he saw it live. If anyone’s got the impression we’ve tried to go pop, well, wait for the album. The raw and raucous energy of 'Ruff Guide' is another man's crazy mess. It's subjective at the end of the day!

Thinking about the old fans watching from the arena and losing that connection, it's weird. A lot of the times over the last five years, I've felt like our real fans have stood by us but we've, at times, felt like battered wives to the punk scene because it was so good to us as people and a band growing up. After people complaining 'Arcade Perfect' was too poppy we made (and wanted to make!) 'City Of Thieves' which was our love-letter to punk and in my opinion, our best album. But the best, punkiest moments of that album were ignored by our fans and largely not appreciated by the punk scene. In fact, all the kids that had loved Ruff Guide as teenagers and then got older didn't like 'City Of Thieves' but I have no idea what they were expected because if we'd have dropped an album with 'All In' on it in 2009 they'd have hated it. So, with that album, I realised that we were never going to please everyone. So we should please ourselves first and foremost and be what we set out to be when we started.

Sometimes you feel a huge sense of closeness and love for your fanbase and then sometimes you read some fan, or ex-fan or whatever, saying some stuff on the internet that blows your mind and you think ‘ah well, bugger what they think’. We literally have had messages telling us that our last few singles have got people back into us after not liking us for 5 years and then you get kids that used to love us talking about how we should have quit after Ben left. It’s all very hard to get to grips. It's impossible, you just try your best. With every person there are opinions about music that take in so many personal outlooks from their social circle and their age and fashion that change across time. Your band just slots into that. What represents heavy and underground and cool to a teenager in 2006 isn't going to appeal to them in the same way 6 years later if it's repeated, but the memory of it doing so the first time around will always remain like that. You just have to look to the fans you trust and believe in and take that with a pinch of salt. And remember to appreciate the good times that it does bring you!

Put it this way. I'd like to think that if a fan has ever enjoyed our music and what we've created at any point and saw us on stage now and we looked like we were genuinely having a good time and we were happy in what we were doing, whether or not they 'prefer the old stuff', I'd hope they could be happy for us. Call me an idealist but there we have it!

Happy talky talky happy talk. Talk about the things you like to do.

If you don’t have a dream. If you don’t have a dream.

How you gonna make a dream come true?

Tumblr Question Reblog: Between your samples and Horrotheque (thanks for that find) you seem to know a lot of public domain shit, how can I get more free shit? Do you take inspiration from the White Stripes with the colour schemes, particularly the original red black and white combos, and why do you do it?

Oi oi!

The Public Domain stuff has all been something that kind of fell together from researching for the Boom records. I guess I probably err on the side of caution more than I need to but if you know it’s PD you can really go to town on it like at the beginning of ‘Strange Transformations’ which was pieced together by me from stuff across the whole broadcast (rather than being one continuous bit of prose). It’s funny because on tons of dubstep records they used big chunks of film quotes without apparently invoking the wrath of film companies so I reckon you can actually get away with a lot. I often wonder did GZA have to pay the makers of Shogun Assassin anything for the repeated use of those samples on the ‘Liquid Swords’ album (one of my favourite albums of all time, hence the little Shogun Assassin nods at the beginning of ‘Danger! Danger!’ and ‘Ya Basta!’). Because that’s the dubbed version of the film, I wonder if the fact that it’s dubbed has something to do with everyone’s ability to sample it? Probably not but it’s interesting because it’s so sampled in hip-hop.

Anyway, here’s the list of sites I use to come up with the sampling stuff. The best site on the net for PD stuff is Archive.org. For City Of Thieves, and loads of other stuff, this was absolutely vital as all the public info films were from the Prelinger Archives on here which has a cool search facility.

http://www.archive.org/
Another thing I will do is find films that are public domain and then check them out on IMDB and check the Quotes page. If you read through the quotes and find one you like, it’s then a case of having to watch the film. Which is a good excuse for work! When we were recording City Of Thieves I was basically watching two or three old films a day.
This is a great site for all films.
http://www.openflix.com/
This is a great list of horrors.
http://steve-calvert.co.uk/pub-dom/pub-dom.htm
And this is a decent list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States
The main thing though is to check through a lot of different sites because there are lots of films that were never famous enough to go on all the lists.

Of course, there is horror radio too, which is where I got the Vincent Price stuff from!

http://www.steve-calvert.co.uk/old-time-radio/horror.htm


In terms of the matching colour schemes, no it was absolutely nothing to do with The White Stripes! Not a band I’ve ever really listened to but I know they’re good.

When we started the band, one of the ideas was to capture that element of bands like The Specials and The Ramones that seemed like a gang, so being colour-co-ordinated was one way of doing it. Another element was that we aren’t one of those bands like The Lost Prophets or Young Guns who are five lads of the same age who are all very handsome and dress similarly. Put us together, and we didn’t really look like a band and we knew that and that wasn’t really a good thing. Like eating food, a lot of appreciation for a band comes through the eyes, conciously or not. That’s not to say that a band has to look amazing, simply that the way they look needs to reflect the music they make. Those disparate influences were part of our music so it was fine that they were there but we wanted a way to be able to wear clothes we were comfortable in (which would be very different from person to person) but still looked ‘together’ as a package. And we still do that, but change the colour schemes around now and then. My favourite ever was the black with camoflague I think, which you can see in the ‘Sound of a Revolution’ video.

It’s funny because there was a point where we dropped doing it for a while because it got stale and Ben got really sick of it but now looking back they’re the worst photos of us live. We all look like we’re in different bands, even though we all thought individually we looked alright. So we went back to the colour scheme things, but just tried to keep it more subtle. It’s just another little gimmick of getting out there and performing as a band, just another small way to make it more interesting than stepping out of the crowd in what we would wear to the shops and going through the motions. It’s just an effort to do something.



Old school!

Ta! Great questions. Keep them coming in people and I’ll keep on blogging!

Barney :)

Tumblr Question Reblog: Who writes most of the lyrics in the band? Do each of you contribute your own sections to each of the songs, or is it generally one person writing the whole lyric, and then sharing the sections out in the studio? Also, as we're on the subject, who wrote the line "I'm scared of you, but that don't mean a thing, you know I'm scared of dogs too"? By far my favourite lyric in the 10 years of Sonic Boom Six.

I write all the lyrics now. Nearly all the lyrics on the early stuff are mine but across the first few albums Ben started writing more stuff that we used. Yeah, I work closely with Laila and a lot of tunes we kind of write together so I’ll get a demo of a song with her singing dummy lyrics and write to those. There’s a lot of printing out and practising and going back and changing stuff as we go along.

There are songs on the first three albums where Ben wrote lots of lyrics, especially Arcade Perfect. He’d often start a song off about one thing and I’d give it a twist and take it somewhere more political and less personal which was a fun way of doing things… ‘While You Were Sleeping’, ‘September To May’, ‘Floating Away’, ‘Through The Eyes Of A Child’ and ‘Welcome To The City Of Thieves’ were all totally like that… basically songs Ben had written on his own and we added to lyrically to make the message of them relate to the rest of the Boom content. That was a really cool way of doings things and I miss it! It would be too simple to say Ben wrote the ‘song’ and chorus’ and I wrote the verses but that’s not far off. Ben wrote all the lyrics to ‘Northern Skies’ and ‘Face Forward’ and I just added the raps and he wrote ‘Flower’ and ‘Passing Through’, ‘Sister’ and ‘Not Yet’ on the BabyBoom EP which are great. On all the more rap stuff Ben wrote his own verses. There’s definitely other songs of mine where he added stuff but I can’t remember off the top of my head!

I really loved Ben’s ability to make a big chorus line in a song stick in your head and the way he crafted proper songs, he’s a very good songwriter. He was massively influential on me. He believed that you shouldn’t, if possible, write music then write lyrics over it… you should come up with the chorus, beat, vibe whatever with the chorus of the song so the song is there before you write the lyrics. That means the song’s lyrics and music are married together. For instance, if you think of something you want to write about (say kids involved so heavily in the punk scene squabbles that they miss what’s happening in the world that’s important) and then come up with a phrase to describe it, you should have the phrase on the tip of your tongue and then pick up the guitar and marry it to music. ‘Meanwhile, Back In The Real World’ was me trying to write a song with that concept. It was a song that sounded like Mouthwash but with a concept of song and strength of chorus that was like a Ben song and what he’d been pushing me to do.

I wrote the dog line. ‘Rum Little Skallywag’ just started off as a song I wrote myself on an acoustic guitar so it was quite personal but it fit on the album. That’s a funny lyric to pick up on! I think most people like ‘Knob Head’ on ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’ (not a line I ever thought people would pick up on) and people like ‘getting on together like chips and samosas’ from what I’ve heard.

Without starting to sound like Paul Simon on Classic Albums(!) or something, I think my favourite lyrics by us are ‘September To May’. That started as a song by Ben about people moving from Manchester and getting jobs in the city and I added the whole extra layer of fairweather student political activity which, for me, made it one of our best songs because it’s not something I recall ever hearing another song about. It’s an attempt of that marriage of the personal and the political that makes bands like The Clash get their message through on some songs like ‘Stay Free’. Not that ‘September To May’ is on that level but lyrically that’s a song I’m very proud of us for. I’m also very proud of the lyrics to ‘Jericho’ which are mine… ‘You seem surprised our race survived, you’d almost call us civilised’. Knowing I liked that line my girlfriend got an artist to put them in a framed picture for me. But I’ve only ever met one fan that liked that song!

On the new album I aimed to get rid of writing for a ‘target audience’ (i.e. like on ‘Meanwhile’ and ‘Bigger Than Punk Rock’ which are basically about the punk scene) and tried to write for everyday people. I wanted to stop second guessing what people were like who were listening to it. There is a song called ‘Gary Got A Gun’ that is going to really challenge people I think. I’m proud of that one too but that might be famous last words. We’ll wait and see...

September To May

Walking down Oxford road,
It seems that nothings changed,
Why does it leave me cold?
Must be more than Manchester rain,
Great place to piss a loan away,
But god forbid you’d ever stay.

Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You used to be a friend of mine)
Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You left that life behind)
Have you really changed so much since then,
Has it really been that long?
One minute you’re here and then you’re gone.

Oh when the locals quaint?
Oh weren’t the protests fun?
Second you graduate,
Join daddy’s firm in London,
Last seasons look inside the halls,
Was having Che Guevara hanging from your wall,
Three foot tall!
I guess those lies were just your size,
While you were dreaming of the money and sunny skies.

Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You used to be a friend of mine)
Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You left that life behind)
I thought that we were gunna smash that system,
Sing along to the Billy Bragg song,
One minute you’re here now you’re gone.

Took a little time to find out,
Took a little time to find out.
Took a little time to find out,
Took a little time to find out.

REVOLUTION EVERY SEPTEMBER TO MAY
I GUESS THE SYSTEM’S HERE TO STAY!

See you Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You used to be a friend of mine)
Come and go, come and go, come and go.
(You left that life behind)
Have I really changed so much since then,
Has it really been that long?
One minute you’re here and now you’re gone.

Here we go! Music, gear and bass-playing…

HELLO JOE!

If you’re reading this, you’ve noticed that I’ve moved my blog from Blogspot to here on Tumblr. The problem was, that I was finding it hard to get motivated to write a blog on Blogspot because you get very little in terms of feedback and it’s just one of those things where one day becomes a week, becomes a month etc. There’s rarely a day goes by that I’m not doing something band-related so it’s sometimes difficult to fit in and I’m often contacting people on Twitter, Facebook and the mail-outs so it’s easy to forget about a blog. I guess it’s the instant gratification of Twitter that make them so easy to just jump in and out of but I often reflect on the fact that if I was to put half the man-hours I spend shooting the shizzle on there on something constructive then I’d have something to show for my time. Ah well, I guess at least I don’t play computer games any more. Anyway, here we are on Tumblr where sharing is easier and everything’s a little more pretty and fun. In theory. It’s going to be business as usual blog-wise, please send me questions and all that good stuff. But this is much easier, you can do it from here…

All that being said, my questions folder in my email is bulging so I’m gonna get through just a couple of these and make a new start this year. I’ll try and do something much more often and hopefully a bit more activity and interaction will inspire me to do it. There’s been some really interesting questions coming in about where we are with The Boom at the moment so I’ll get into those after these that have been waiting for ages…
 

Kev asks… One of the worst bits about underground music is that they’ll never be in guitar magazines or other spots where you can talk about actual gear and techniques, it does my head in. So, if you could talk me through some of the rigs in the band? I know Nick and Ben had crazy different styles and James seems to take a spacier approach, evidenced in the Midas stuff and his synth skillz, and the guitar tone on the newer records is completely different.

This is a really interesting question but a slightly difficult one to answer at the moment because it’s very much undecided in terms of moving forward with the new material… maybe I should take you through that. In the past, we always had a very clear idea of arrangements and being able to play stuff live as a unit, starting with the bass, drums and vocals of the first couple of records. On “City Of Thieves” we knew everything we were playing and Nick and Ben knew exactly what each other were playing as guitar left and right and we could sit down and play the album ‘live’ and it would sound that way (the versions of the City Of Thieves tunes we did on The Punk Show session are testament to that…). That was very deliberate. With the new album we recorded it was totally differently… between the amount of stuff that went on it and the different way it was written, all those rules went out of the window. We literally demo’d and wrote the songs directly onto a free DAW called Reaper on a laptop and added and subtracted from there adding synths, loops, beats and all that much more like a dance or pop act. This was done because we wanted it to sound like that, but we also had so much happening live with the sequencers, it wouldn’t have made sense to write without them. We would jam in a room once we had some ideas but the ideas would come from different places. James sits there on his own with all the instruments and writes pretty much alone once he’s got an idea and then brings a finished piece of music for everyone to put stuff on. Nick brings in riffs and we jam them and me and Laila and everyone will try to turn them into songs. I will come in with anything from a riff to a pretty-much finished song so the way of writing became very much based around the central idea of the recording. The upshot of all this is that when we got into the studio to record it properly there was a lot of stuff where in terms of the bass and guitars we weren’t even sure of who was supposed to be playing it. We kept a lot of the bass off the original demos and, for instance on bass, there is tons of stuff that I didn’t play. There’s metal bits on the album where I don’t play the bass because I can’t. What this has meant is that when we’ve come to have to approach playing the new album live, it’s going to be very interesting. There is a huge amount of stuff on the album where I’m doing so much vocals that having me stood there playing bass is taking away from the performance. On the King Blues tour, I was playing bass on ‘Kids’ and then I decided to drop that because the song was dying. On the forth date of the tour or so, I switched to being away from the bass and suddenly the song came alive. So the new songs are going to have to go in that direction. But that’s not the perfect compromise, because we’re dropping a whole guitar that’s part of the track. So the point of all this is that we don’t know exactly what we’re going to be doing once the new album comes around and we don’t know how we’re going to approach things… clear as mud.

In terms of the guitars, James and Nick are quite different players. James is very good with the more modern metal stuff and is fantastic with stuff he’s made up himself with a herbal remedy and an evening in. Nick is more versatile and solid as a straight-up rock / pop guitarist and picks things up quicker and is easier to jam with. I’m guessing that, looking forward, even if we do have to bring a new bass player into the mix, Nick’s still going to be the ‘main’ guitarist in that he plays on everything and James will hopefully be able to do some live synth work on stuff like, say, ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’ to make the synths side of things more interesting and organic. Its cool the way that we’ve all been able to move in and out and between in terms of roles but at some point we’re going to have to ‘shit or get off the pot’ as they say and maybe bring someone else into the fold as a live bass player or multi-instrumentalist.

In terms of the actual gear we’re using, click the picture below and that answers that. I’ve posted it properly below on the Tumblr so you can get a better look. Apart from a few additions to Nick’s arsenal like a new delay pedal, it’s pretty much the same…

While we’re at it, why bass? Do you have sausage fingers, think it’s the cooler hip-hopier approach or just prefer a back seat? 

I definitely didn’t and don’t have sausage fingers(!) There was a variety of reasons. Bass is very much my first instrument and I felt I was late in actually taking learning music seriously (I was about 16) so I felt that picking up bass was more achievable in terms of learning to be good more quickly. To be honest, it totally is. Any bass player that tells you otherwise is trying to defend the instrument, which is fine, because it is a rich and interesting instrument in lots of ways but it is easier to pick up and play at a basic level. My school mate Simon played guitar really well and Neil (as in Neil Macca who is still our drummer now) played the drums really well so I learned the bass, basically (argh!). My dad was a bass player and played bass for some decent names like Rufus Thomas back in the day and there was always an acoustic guitar in my house, so I was always familiar with instruments in general. But being a stubborn little sod I was always resistant to picking them up and taking lessons etc. When I eventually did, it was to help my mate Simon to play his GCSE music and accompanied him by playing ‘Under The Bridge’ by RCHP on bass, just as a favour to him and it was the first thing I learned. Inspired that I could play something by a band I liked, I dived head on in and decided I was a bass player and he, Neil and I were a band. And it went from there.

I think I liked the bass because I was so into rap-rock with bands like Rage Against The Machine, Fishbone and Primus who always had interesting bass stuff going on before I even realised it. And then there was the whole Cypress Hill, Dr Dre stuff I liked too which was all basslines so it just fitted with me right away. I’ve always listened to music with the question ‘does it move my neck back and forward?’ as something that was vital. And then as time went on and I got into ska and punk and hardcore and drum n bass, it became almost chicken and egg but I always liked the stuff that was bouncy, with what I would consider good rhythm sections, be it The Specials or The Smiths or Bob Marley or Green Day. I never had that ‘two-guitarists with a bass player stuck at the back’ like Oasis and Radiohead in my head because I always had that Led Zeppelin 3-piece plus vocalist archetype. The whole taking a back-seat thing wasn’t a thought to me. In RHCP Flea was as cool and in your face as the guitarist, as was Timmy C in Rage and Geezer Butler in Black Sabbath and Eric Avery in Jane’s Addiction. Even with the whole ska-punk thing, I was always drawn to the bouncy stuff like King Prawn and Suicide Machines over the chaotic brass-on-punk, say, Lightyear and MU330. When Big D and The Kids Table slowed down and did Strictly Rude I became a massive fan, I think that’s because I’m pre-disposed to liking more groovy stuff rather than liking it because I’m a bass player. Maybe that’s just how I hear things so maybe that’s why I can play the bass and make up basslines. I dunno.

I guess sometimes wish I’d have learnt guitar or piano earlier, because I think my song-writing would be better in terms of chord progressions. Being a bass player, I kind of liked to write a bassline and shout on it and call it a song and didn’t get the idea of chord movements and the like until much later and didn’t really get totally on top of that aspect of song-writing until ‘Ruff Guide’ (even on our original SB6 demo some of the chord progressions are unconventional. Shit might be a better word). But what I will say for bass is that if you’re wanting to write whole arrangements being the middle-person in the mix gives you an immersion into an arrangement where you are in a great place to know exactly what everyone is doing in a song, drums, guitars, vocals and all. That’s why I think people like Charles Mingus and a lot of bass players make good band leaders. Being in a band, I’ve always written songs and found being behind the bass a very comfortable place to listen to what EVERYONE is doing when writing songs whereas, say, the drummer, has to concentrate on what they’re doing. Cos the bass in SB6 is quite simple, it gives me time and space to check everything else out. Nowadays I definitely write more on the guitar or just in my head but I ultimately think of myself as a bass player. Even if I move onto more vocals and leave the bass behind in the future, I think I will still write on it and always jam with it. The bass is good.

Anyway, that was fun, sorry if it’s a bit long-winded. I get on one and just break on through to the other side as Jim Morrison was so fond of saying. I’ve still got a ton of questions to answer but maybe if I can reblog silly pictures of girls on roller skates and cupcakes between blogs, I might be more drawn back to this page. I think I’ve already got more people following this than the other blog and I’ve imported all the old stuff so sonicboomsix.blogspot is dead. Long live sonicboomsix.tumblr!

Until The Sunlight Comes…

Barney x

I still don't know when it's gonna be out... but it's good!

Hello!

It's taken someone to remind me that it's been months since I've done a blog to even realise it wasn't a week ago. The last few months have gone by so fast, I think it's really a symptom of having the main thing you do in your life preparing for the release of something that's going to happen in the future. Every day you're looking forward to what's going to happen tomorrow that sometimes you forget to think about today. And it's important to think about today!

Anyway, the vast majority of questions we've been having recently have been about the new album, what direction it's going in, when it's coming out etc.

I'll let everyone know where we are now. First of all, the album is 99% finished and it's going to be out next year at some point. At the moment, we're actually speaking to different labels and people and have just signed to a new management deal (which you can read about HERE) and we're deciding what to do with ourselves. Because we had the line-up change back at the start of 2010, we really wanted to take the time to make an album that was going to re-establish what Sonic Boom Six was rather than hurry out a continuation of what we'd done before. I think we went the right route, because the album, coupled with a spell of festivals over the summer where we debuted the new material, have certainly been met with a lot of enthusiasm by those that have heard it. There's lots of question marks going forward in terms of performing the new material live and how much old material we'll be doing too but it's good to have a challenge. Hopefully we'll see a lot of you on the October tour and we'll be playing a nice selection of new stuff with a nice amount of the ones you know and love in there too.

A lot of people have been asking are 'Sunny Side Of The Street' and 'New Style Rocka' going to be on the album. Never say never, but the plans are that the new album is a full, fresh set of songs, the first of which will be the single 'For The Kids Of The Multiculture' which will be available on October 10th and you can hear a few little previews from HERE.

One thing that's REALLY been drilled home to me over the last few singles is that you can't please all the people all the time. 'New Style Rocka' was met with enthusiasm from the majority of fans and was all good. 'Sunny Side' we expected more of a backlash (there was a bit of 'going mainstream' grumbling but not a huge amount) but we actually had kids and fans that hadn't been in touch for years telling us how much they dug it, as well as quite a bit of other stuff that was attracted by it. We love the song and the video but, to be honest, with what's being going on politically since the coalition got in power, our heads simply wasn't in the place to write songs that don't address what's going on around us more directly with more energy across a full album. There is a tune on the album called 'Flatline' which has a very interesting back-story and I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Remind me to tell you about it when it comes out.

There are a few questions in the mailbag, but it's all looking a little scant. Get on it people, barney@sonicboomsix.co.uk you know the drill. I'm not doing this Formspring thing, I'm staying on here like a Luddite.

Kev asks Coheed & Cambria, yay or nay?

I really don't know. I know that song that sounds like a girl singing when it comes on in clubs and it's nice enough. I saw them at Reading on the Lock-Up stage one year but I was so off my head on goofballs if you'd have struck a match I'd have burst into flames. I remember a man with an afro that was well good at guitar. You could be talking about Mungo Jerry. I have an album by them that is red and has a Roman Numeral four on the front and is still in it's cellophane wrap. That's as far as it goes. So yay nor nay really.

Anonymous asks When are you coming back to the States, mainly Florida? 

We hope to get back over to the States next year. Our priority now is basically re-launching the band here in terms of having the new material and having the line-up and live show 100% representing our new stuff and sound before we come back over. But that should definitely be done in the early part of next year. We're always talking to people over there so we have plenty to do there... and plenty of burritos to eat. We will definitely be back to LA, New York, Boston and hopefully Florida, we promise!

Have you thought about putting your music in the video game Rock Band? 

We've spoken to a content provider company about this over the last year and decided to wait for the new songs. I'm pleased to say we're currently sorting three songs from the new album to be downloadable content on Rock Band. That's definitely happening, 'For The Kids Of The Multiculture' will be up there first, as soon as we can make it happen.

Last question, are you going to release any more of your albums on vinyl?

Definitely, when there is the demand there. The great thing is we own the rights to the vast majority of our old material on a label level so once we get our feet on the ground with everything we'll be looking into re-issuing older albums in different formats and vinyl is one we're most fond of...

Lastly is this peach of a question from James Rodger Brown. And I promise, this is the full question your man James emailed me...

i can't remember if i have ordered sunnyside of the street and t shirt bundle?

Firstly James, grammatically that isn't a question, it's a statement. But I get what you mean. I'm afraid that I don't deal with the mail order side of things. You'll have to check your paypal or email the Boom shop. Thanks for the mail though mate, it's surely made a few people smile! :)

OK, that'll be that. I might have to start reviewing films on here or something because I need something other to talk about than where we are with the record. Mainly I'm still banging about on Twitter and Facebook to answer questions but if anyone needs some longer answers send some questions in yo!

Also, I did do a video blog when Mouthwash split up that you can see HERE if you haven't already checked it out.

Safe

Barney


I don't know what to leave you with so here's a picture of me and a dog.

Alright, I'm back! Hip-Hop, Record Labels and STOODUNTS!

Hello fellow earthlings!

First of all, massive apologies for being away from the blog for so long! Basically, this period of inactivity started with me wanting more time to answer a couple of questions and then having to wait to do so and basically weeks slipped into months. But no longer! As of today I'm back on the blog and back on the questions…

So, what have we been up to then?! First of all, rest assured we've been mad busy. Unfortunately, the end of last year ended up being a bit of a damp squib what with Laila's chest infection and a few cancelled dates but I hope you guys enjoyed our new songs and the 'Addicted To Bass' cover. A few people have asked if that song a good indication of where The Boom is going with the new stuff we're writing and I'd have to say yes and no. Yes in the sense that there is a lot more going on in terms of loops and synths than we've done before but we won't be playing it quite as safe with it in terms of the song-writing as we got away with that particular cover version. We're really stretching things out at the moment and some of it feels pretty far out there... I'm doing more vocals than I ever have before. There is a lot of stuff with me rapping and Laila doing the chorus's which are really exciting for us all and certainly represent enough of a departure and progression from the way we've done things in the past that at times it does feel like a different project. It's challenging and exciting to find ways to actually sprinkle in some SB6 in terms of a bit of ska or rock or the kind of lyrical content that will be a bridge from our new stuff to our history. It's still a bit of a mystery to us how the kids that have got into us via a frantic moshpit song like say 'Blood For Oil' will take our steps towards a more dancefloor-orientated sound but we're going to be brave and bold with it. We've just finished about 10 demos and we feel we've nailed the new 'Boom' and are heading into the studio at the end of this month to record a new single. We'll keep you up to date with it from in there. Exciting times ahead!

Right then, I better get stuck into some of these questions... first, a question from James Pitt..

"Just wondered if you guys had ever considered any other side projects that take you on a different style to SB6, something like a dedicated hip-hop/dubstep/d'nb style thing?"

Personally, I've contemplated doing a proper hip-hop thing and was really dead set on it a few years ago but my interest in current hip-hop has, unfortunately, really waned. Maybe it's being immersed in it for so long but I find it a challenge to get worked up about current music. I recognise it's good but I don't always get excited about it like I did back in the day. Much as I loved early grime stuff I'd say that in particular I'm not especially feeling the electro-crossover-pop UK hip-hop thing at the moment because, for me, it strays too far from what I like most about hip-hop; the lyrical content, which, apart from the odd punchline or two, just isn't really that featured. I really like Proffessor Green at the moment and I've had a few listens to Devlin and Giggs and enjoyed Maverick Sabre's mixtape but apart from that there's not much UK stuff I've listened closely too since Braintax and Jehst etc yet I expect there's loads of great stuff out there. For us, it's finding the time and the energy. There is a lot of emcee-ing inside me that's dying to get out and to say that I'm doing more vocals on the new SB6 stuff than I've done before is an understatement. As I said above, in some respects it feels like whole new thing in which stuff I’ve only been able to express a smattering of before is well more featured so that's really satisfying my creative appetite. One thing I would say is that I'm always up for guesting or emceeing on other people's stuff so if anyone has anything please let me know...

Laila has been working on some tracks in a 80s electro style with a mutual friend of ours (the guy that did the 'While New Were Sleeping' remix on Play On) that sound great. I'm not sure exactly what the plans are there but it's good stuff. James is always tinkering about with remixes and tracks and is currently working with Mark that used to be the vocalist of Myth Of Unity and also a band from Wales called Miacca whose stuff would be well worth checking out for anyone into The King Blues or Dirty Revolution. 

This one has come from quite a few of you but it's Dave Sharpe's I'll answer now.

"So my question is, what with seeing how tight knit the whole Rebel Alliance bands were (are?), I'm wondering why bands such as Random Hand and The Skints have left the label. I refuse to believe there's any bad blood, because why would anybody lie about that? Also, tying in with this, will there be any more Rebel Alliance signings in the future?"

Hey man, thanks for the question. This was a difficult one to answer because we're actually still dealing with things to be honest but as I did say I'd answer all questions in the blog, I'll give it a quick stab. There absolutely isn't any bad blood between us as a band and The Skints or Random Hand at all and, as intriguing as it may seem from the outside, it really is a case of this is boiling down to private business. Suffice to say, we found 2010 very difficult in terms of running the label and running the band, both financially and work-wise and as Rebel Alliance became bigger it got to be more work and require more finances. In terms of Rebel Alliance and it's output of bands other than SB6 in the future, we're going to take it one step at a time again and we're not going to feel too pressured to go this way or that or make any promises or statements that we can't keep. We certainly feel that what we were attempting to do with the label remains very important. A focal point like a label for bands and music in any scene is invaluable but with so many other challenges in terms of the music industry at the moment, just running SB6 is a task in itself right now. We thank everyone for their interest and support and wish those bands the best.

Stacey Jones in Devon asks "waht did you feel about the Student Tuition Fees debate? Do you think the protest action is right and works?'

Wow, that's a big gun. Well, me and Laila were actually discussing this in the van the other day before the full extent of the cuts and what was going on were revealed to the public (Laila's best mate is a Uni teacher and had told her some horror stories about what was happening in her department). Laila was very much of the opinion that not enough is done to encourage lesser privileged children to attend uni, or at least push them towards it. While I understand this viewpoint, I feel I need to be honest about my view on this and before hearing about the cuts I made the point that, in truth, I see the dilemma faced by the higher education institutes in terms funding and entry. And discussing tuition fees while completely ignoring this is simply not getting to grips with the issue. So many kids joined my uni course and dropped out which is a waste of time and money so pushing everyone towards university isn’t going to make anyone’s standard of living better. I think that the biggest challenge that is faced by the people running higher education is to engage and attract students that actually want to work hard and be there, which sounds obvious but, amongst the hoopla about fees and class (that a hell of a lot of people don't actually fully understand) it seems to rarely come up. Whether it's a working-class kid with a low level of education 'eased into' uni only to potter about for a bit and drop out or a middle-class 'gap yah' type having a 3-year party at daddy's expense they're both costing the education system if they aren't in it above the age of 18 for any reason other than to apply themselves to their course. That might sound a little stuffy but how else can you view further education in times where cuts are being made everywhere across the board? That's the problem with the myopic focus on fees and class and I feel that a lot of the coverage on the news doesn't always explore all the facets of the matter.

In principle, I'm totally and completely against raising the fees but I'd like to add the addendum that I acknowledge that more can be done in the area of money wastage in higher education. The obvious trouble with the raising of the finances it takes to get into uni is that it simply raises the stakes of debt and financial impact that the education will have in the life of a less-wealthy student to levels that may well prohibit them from attending. While for the wealthy it might be more of an impact on the wallet but it isn't life-changing. I believe it is a responsibility of the government and an adherence to the idea of a ‘United Kingdom’ to strive for the playing field of university-entry to be levelled. In my experience, there has certainly been no evidence that I've seen that someone from a wealthy background is any more likely to apply themselves in uni, many simply expect it, are expected to go and get that privilege without any consideration for what it entails. Financial inequality and class-based distinctions cause a huge amount of unfairness within the university system as a whole. So yeah, I think that university education should be accessible to all but I accept someone has to pay for it and I feel that does sometimes get ignored in hubbub. Ultimately, raising the fees is not the answer and that's the bottom line, especially when it exposes promises before the election as the blatant lies they were. What's that? What should we do about it?! I don’t know, but I know that while the government is spending the amounts that they do on military action overseas they should certainly be able to figure out how to tighten up higher education expenditure without turning universities into luxury consumer products for the highest bidder.

Anyway, as far as the protesting goes, I thought it was exciting and inspiring and heartening. I'm behind it 100% (maybe in that case 99%, the 1% for the guy that threw the fire extinguisher which compromised the credibility of the action somewhat in my opinion). I think that it's got the public standing up and looking at the problem at home in the way that a peaceful protest wouldn't. People argue that the violence compromises the message and a lot of the time I’m with that (smashing Burger King windows at a G8 summit in a ham-fisted jab at capitalism only harms the kid on minimum wage that has to clean that shit up) but in terms of something as palpable as education, people tend to be a little more magnanimous in their reaction to what’s going down. While it’s simple enough for the silent majority to sit there and caricature anti-capitalists as violent, loony, lefty wackos, it's another thing to say the same about such a culturally diverse and socially-accepted group as students. I think they shouted loud enough and expressed their anger in a constructive way and put across the disappointment a lot of people are feeling with the government's decisions at the moment.

Anyhoo, that's that for now, please keep the questions coming in a barney@sonicboomsix.co.uk. Best of wishes to Oli from the awesome Anti-Vigilante who is currently battling a serious illness and could do with all our support. Look out for our new single next month. Check out the bands Tree House Fire, Tyrannosaurus Alan and Clay Pigeon. I think that’s it!

Safe

Barney x

I'm well aware that I'm never going to be on the 'Cool List'.

Well, well, well!

Sorry it's been so long. Life rolls along whether you're rolling with it or not... Salut to those that came over to the UK shows recently, we’ve really enjoyed pulling a lot of the old tunes out of the box and giving them a play with. We've been recording our version of 'Totally Addicted To Bass' with our old pal Christophe this weekend which has been great fun and the first time that we've actually recorded with James. I can't wait to hear it mixed actually. There are tons of dates coming up including France, India(!) and a European tour with Less Than Jake so we're certainly keeping ourselves busy. Anyway, enough of my yackin, let's get into those questions...

Tim Johnson asks…

Aite man! so, what was the story with Grimace?

The story of Grimace! OK, Grimace was a ska-punk band that lived from 1997 – 2001 and involved Laila, Neil and I and had our good friend Dave Kelly on guitar and a parade of different brass sections (Ben C ended up on sax in the final line-up) We started out when we were in our teens and friends at school and were playing funk-rock, ska, pop-punk stuff influenced by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, No Doubt etc. We were playing general band nights rather than punk nights but we started to get a few gigs at ska nights and with bands like Vodoo Glow Skulls and Spunge which introduced us to the ska and punk scene and really turned our heads. As we got into more US ska-punk like Dance Hall Crashers, Less Than Jake and Save Ferris we went more into a US sounding ska-punk thing. We had a couple of songs on some compilations like Know Your Skalphabet and Compunktion, from which the tune ‘Push You Back’ is probably our best tune. Laila actually sung a duet with Alex from [Spunge] on their second album after playing with those guys. Cos we’d just been rock kids who kind of fell into the ska and punk thing by mistake, we didn’t really come from a punk place so we had difficulty fitting in with the scene at the start and by the time we’d figured it out, we had become a bit burnt by it and felt very disillusioned (which is what ‘Play Inna Day’ was about). Musically, we’d discovered hardcore punk, reggae and drum n bass and I got really into hip-hop so Grimace quietly died a death. We were adding these elements into Grimace once Ben had joined and some of the stuff on the final Grimace demo ‘Demonstrate’ is re-recorded on the first SB6 EP. I think we needed to go out and figure out what we were then come back to the punk scene and do something different.

The rest of the story can be followed just by going and checking out the discography on the Sonic Boom Six site HERE! If enough people ask for it I'd be happy to upload the Grimace discography at some point.

Aaron Lohan asks (well, challenges!)

I've loved a lot of the support bands you've toured with but I
challenge you to take a hardcore band on tour, and if you do, which
hardcore band would you like to take on tour?

Hmmm, sorry to be ‘genre-dude’ but it depends on whether you mean hardcore-punk or hardcore hardcore. We did a tour with Chief in support in 2008 who are my favourite hardcore-punk band around. I think that hardcore-punk bands work really well alongside us and it’s great to play festivals with bands like Strike Anywhere and Paint It Black. We asked The Steal to come on tour a long time back and they couldn’t but one band I’ve really got my eye on at the moment is Our Time Down Here. Those guys supported us in Southampton and we leant our gang vocals to their album and we’d love to take them out one day if we could. You can hear them HERE.

If you mean more in the realms of ‘proper’ tough hardcore like Madball and Judge and stuff, I don’t know if that kind of band would be right for our crowd, much as I love it personally!

And finally, a couple off Kev H

Managing your own label between you guys, being all self-reliant, and constantly touring and merching, doing all that full time, if it's not in bad taste mentioning money, you guys must crunch alot of numbers?
 

Hell yeah. At the moment Neil actually does the accounting but the whole thing is very much run by us. The operation is divided into a division of labour. In theory, we divide like Voltron and we all do different things within the unit that divides the work into manageable chunks and makes sure that we’re all playing to our strengths towards a common goal. And all that. For instance, I'm shit at business and can't drive so I don't go near the money or the steering wheel but I write all the lyrics and lots of the music and Neil does the opposite so, in theory, we all meet in the middle somewhere... in theory. :)

                            
Double Header! It seems this band you're in, more than any other I've ever seen, are totally open to talking to fans & wasting time listening to drunk people tell you they loved the first album. You've got all this vault stuff on your website and are the 2nd most prolific poster on your own forum, and are merch standing it at every gig... Why and how do you put up with it?

Well, I can only speak personally here but I think it’s basically to do with the whole idea of Sonic Boom Six, which was to be a punk band that embodies a lot of different ideas without trying to draw too much attention to that fact. I personally just think the ‘rock star’ mythos is out-dated, corny and narcissistic. I don't dig on that whole Motley Cru thing in terms of that kind of hokey rock-star image, even when people do it ironically. I remember being totally bummed out meeting Red Hot Chili Peppers outside their gig back in 1995 and I’d made a birthday card for Flea and he basically just pushed past and knocked it on the ground. And this is someone who always likes to go on about how punk he is. I tried to give it to his security but they all just shoved past. Who knows whether he got it. Whereas, not long before that year, at the same venue Pantera had come out and hung with the kids and Dimebag was a proper nice bloke and that meant a lot to us.
I don’t see that remaining aloof brings any mystique or air of mystery to a band in this day and age. I like to interact with our fans because being pragmatic and down-to-earth was definitely always an aspect of what SB6 was about. Pricking the bubble of ‘the cool’, which is generally just something that reminds me of 6^th Form common rooms. Like the ‘cool list’. Something journalists write about for kids to read that need to re-affirm their coolness by liking something that a magazine that they sell in Asda tells them is cool. I’m not losing any sleep over it but it’s total bobbins isn’t it? Fuck it. Act like a nice bloke that you’d like to hang out with, not ‘cool’.

As Babar Luck so consistently points out, it's nice to be nice.

Rightio, I'm aware there are another few questions on another specific subject but they'll have to wait until we've got all our ducks in a row to be able to speak about the thing they're asking about! As ever, keep those questions coming in to barney@sonicboomsix.co.uk

I'm off to see Inception in a bit. I like Leo DiCaprio but Christopher Nolan's Batman films - apart from the odd flash of brilliance - haven't been for me. It remains to be seen what I think about a film that he isn't making about a character that I'm irrationally demanding about. I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised!

Barney x

Questions that demand answers!

Alright then.

All is as busy as ever in the land of the Boom. We're currently getting ready and rehearsing the set for the new tour, dusting off some old classics and spring-cleaning the tried and tested. We're gonna have sax on as many of the dates as we can manage and we're raring to go. Come and check out the dates HERE and grab a ticket if you haven't already. These could well be the last UK dates of 2010.
So, I've had a nice little mailbag over the last few weeks, time to get through some of these here questions!

First, I've got a few from Joshua Parker...

"I saw on your MySpace page, on the animated banner advertising City Of Thieves that it "includes the singles The Concrete We're Trapped Within (It's Yours), Back 2 Skool and Strange Transformations". Does that mean at some point you guys will be releasing Strange Transformations as a single?"

Hey Joshua. There was a plan to do that and make an elaborate video but unfortunately the timing/plans/budget simply didn't allow it at the end of last year. It would have been really cool to follow up 'Concrete' and 'Back 2 Skool' with it but, alas, it was not to be. We may well make a video for another tune from 'City Of Thieves' but it would be unlikely to be 'Strange Transformations' as I think only a really ambitious video could do that tune justice. We're going to be releasing the 'Rude Awakening' compilation on CD in France and Germany so we're thinking about doing a video for one of the tunes on there.

Also, in regards to your new sound, with the introduction of Jimmy T Boom and synths, will it be going the same sort of way that "Charge!!" was for The Aquabats, dropping the brass section or will it integrate both? I have a small idea after seeing you last at the Camden Barfly, playing "Bandito" and "Shockwave"?

This is a funny one because it was the plan to move in that direction with absolutely no brass but after playing with Robin from Random Hand at Slam Dunk and our sax player Alex in France we decided that we really loved having brass in there. We're actually rehearsing with a sax player this coming week (Dave from Kid's Can't Fly) who will be playing with us on a lot of the dates on our forthcoming UK tour and on the gigs that The Hostiles are playing with us, Lynsey will be helping us out. Our ideas change everyday but me and James have been speaking a lot about the new stuff incorporating a cross between heavy rock and ska with drum n bass and dubstep while using a lot of very minor hornparts inspired by the Latin American ska-core bands like Voodoo Glow Skulls that we played with over in the US. So on the one hand there is going to be more samplers and synths but still as much brass as we normally use. Anyway, our ideas change from day to day but one thing is sure, we're definitely very pro-brass section at the moment, whether it's deemed cool or not!

What will Ben C's involvement be with the band now? Will he help with songwriting or recording, or just general support of the band?

In terms of what we're doing at the moment, nothing really, but the door is always open. He isn't involved in terms of songwriting or recordings... Ben's living in the US and doing his own solo thing so there isn't much time and we're all happy and getting on with things. I'm sure we'll work together in the future again. Maybe sooner than people think actually! But that's all I'm saying for now...

Hey man, just a short one, but i was wondering if anything new was happening with Babyboom or if you guys were done with that as a side project.

Hmmm, that's a very well-timed question, nudge, nudge, wink wink. ;) We're playing a Baby Boom set at Rebelllion and that's it for now. We really didn't think of Baby Boom as a side-project anymore, it was really just Sonic Boom Six acoustic. But who knows what's going to happen there, we certainly aren't done with it but time and financial constraints make it a very difficult project to put the time into at the moment. In fact, it's nigh on impossible.

Farran Key asks...

With regards to militant anti-fascism, which i am in support off, do you think anti-fascism should widen its scope to include the unfair immigration policy toting Conservative Party?

Wow. Personally, no. I'm loathe to get too into politics because I always wanted our lyrics to speak for themselves and be taken how they're taken. But in a nutshell, no, I don't think it should include the immigration policy of the the Conservative's because, although it's not my idea of the appropriate take on immigration, I simply don't think it's anywhere near extreme enough (especially within the context of other country's immigration policies in Europe) to be deemed 'fascist'. I'd go as far as to say I think that deriding any attempt to regulate the entry of people with different citizenship into any country as 'fascist' is probably a bit idealistic and hysterical. But, much more than this, blaming immigrants for taking jobs, rising crime and anything else that the dim and feckless use them as a scapegoat for is ignorant beyond belief.

A big one from Николай Волков (!)

I fetl curious, and wanted to ask just this: what do you think of anarchy? (An' overall anarchy, not just the anarcho-communism "anarchy", which itself is something I dont like.)

I think it's an interesting concept to speculate about and use as a notion to build discussion around but, ultimately, I think it's pretty clear the boat's already sailed on that one and there are more relevant things to improve within our current way of life. A solid, academically-sound concept of humanity without church, capitalism and the law as we know it is useful as an ideal to strive for and maybe the thin end of the wedge in terms of the presence of civil liberties in the minds and hearts of the decision-makers of the world. However, in my head, it's our ambition that is at the heart of the way we live, not necessarily greed or bloodlust or power-hunger, just ambition to do something more than the next man. And that ambition is ultimately what has allowed us to sit behind computers and pontificate about anarchy... But yeah, I like the thought of it and will put my fist up in the air and weakly shout it but I don't really think of it as a legitimate possibility. In a nutshell, I think if the world had a little more anarchy, it would be a better place but I'm not holding my breath on seeing it as a full-on human reality any time in the next aeon and nor would I really want to.

Here's a few of Henry Raby!

It's been puzzling me for many years now, and I keep meaning to ask you whenever I bump into you or any of the other guys/gal. In the song 'Tell Me Something That I Don't Know' from Arcade Perfect, what does the line "I'm not a fucking hippie 'cos there's races I don't hate" mean?

Maybe it's just a rubbish lyric! The song is about my observation that in the UK music press, any bands that have a slightest message that deviates from songs about love or dancing at a disco are pigeonholed as 'political' bands, almost always in a negative way. I meant, "the fact that I don't hate other races doesn't make me a hippie" ergo, "just because I don't write songs about love doesn't make me political".

Also, what's your favourite comic book/comic book author. Mine's Neil Gaiman and 'The Sandman' (specifically 'Season of Mists')

Wow. Neil Gaiman and the Sandman 'Season of Mists', literally! It's as great as any great novel. I like Neil Gaiman's prose books too but nothing comes close to Sandman. I also love all the usual Vertigo suspects; Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, Garth Ennis's Preacher (the best ending to any comic series ever), Jamie Delano's early Hellblazer and Fables. I love stuff by Peter Milligan, Brian K Vaughan, Frank Miller, Alan Grant, and generally love Batman stuff. More recently, I enjoyed Y The Last Man and Grant Morrison's All Star Superman. If you want something that hasn't been overly-lauded, I think Grant Morrison's work on the first 50 or so issues of Animal Man in the late 80s is amazing, ahead-of-it's-time stuff. And I loved Watchmen obviously, first time around, but that's been somewhat played out now.

And 3rdly....what band that are still gigging that you have never played with would you love to play with?

I'd love to do some shows with Gogol Bordello because to see their live show every night couldn't help but inspire a band to work on that side of their show.
Alright then. That's it for now, please keep those questions coming in at barney@sonicboomsix.co.uk

If you haven't checked them out yet, I've just posted up the full series of 4 tour vids from our recent US tour below. They took me ages to do and I don't know if I'll bother again unless I get a bit more feedback you buggers. Please watch them with your head-balls and laugh at the abject ridiculousness of our little troupe...

Till next time!

Barney x