ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Offspring, Motorhead, The Yo-Yo's, Everclear, Alice Cooper, Green Day, T-Rex, Kiss, Iron Maiden, Manic Street Preachers, Rachel Stamp, Metallica, Status Quo, David Bowie, Guns 'n' Roses, The Jellys, Terrorvision, Cinderella, Meat Loaf, Queen, Quireboys, Ozzy Osborne, The Vandels, Black Crowes, Lenny Kravitz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Monster Magnet, Lynyrd Skynryd, Faith No More, Little Angels, Garbage, Free, Brian Adams, The Doors, Poison, My Vitriol...

Mark: The songs on the first album we’re written when I was 15, 16 so they’re relatively old even though I’m a little boy still, they’re quite old for me. They’re very simple which is good, but we’re all better, at our instruments now, and we’ve a better sense of way to record things, even boring technical stuff that you don't even want to know. But yeah, the next album will be better and will be less obvious, cos the last album was where I’d sit down and write a song and where I couldn’t put a riff I was, so lazy like, I’ll just make this into a song then, so you’ve got the same thing over and over again then the middle 8 is where there’s extra distortion on it! But now cos I’ve got time and I know this is my job, cos when I wrote the first album I was in school and I had to do my homework after I wrote the song, but now it’s my job so I better give 100% into this. I like to think that whatever music we do create remains power over people. It’s not just supermarket music. If it comes on in a room then something... no mater who the person is whether they’re into guitar music or whatever music doesn’t matter,.. that they actually feel something stir you know, whether they get really sad or whether they get really violet or whatever, just once it has a strong effect, once it connects with someone, we have to keep that otherwise there’s no point to making music

JJ72

Recorded in April 2000 at the Joiners Pub, Southampton with Chas Byrne and Hillary Woods and Fergal Matthews from JJ72

Q: Has this headlong dive into the limelight been somewhat of a surprise for you?

FERGAL: No it hasn’t, cos we just planned to do it and we’re doing it, so it’s not a surprise at all

Q: This is what you planned to do?

FERGAL: Planned to do this and now it’s happened

Q: You’ve been touring almost none stop since Feb. and looking at the itinerary, all over the country, but I didn’t notice any Irish dates. Is it difficult to get dates in Ireland? Is there much of an Irish scene?

HILLARY: No, we made a conscious decision not to play many gigs in Dublin. This scene as you call it is quite stagnant , the same bands playing the same venues all the time

Q: And almost none stop you started touring in Feb. and this doesn’t finish till the end of Mar does it?

FERGAL: No it finishes on the 26th this one, then we’ve got dates in Apr. and May and another little tour between then so we just get on from now till the summer really

Q: You hope its easier to make it in England than it is in Ireland

H: It’s not easier its just more people will hear us over here

Q: But you will return to Ireland and...?

FERGAL: ...and take it over

Q: You supported Ocean Colour Scene in the London Astoria last night, did that go well?

FERGAL: Yeah it went brilliant

H: It was very enjoyable

Q: And you went down well?

FERGAL: Yeah we went down a blast, it was gas you know

Q: And that’s the first time you’ve played the Astoria, that must be a big venue for you and that must be the next step up from small places like this at the Joiners?

FERGAL: Yeah well it’s a bit weird dealing with last night then coming doing this tonight

Q: A bit of a come down you mean?

FERGAL: A bit of a strange gig!

Q: Snow is your 2nd single, released in Feb., and a follow up to the much acclaimed October Swimmer. Now you’re doing an album?

FERGAL: Done an album. Made an album a while ago and we’re just finished it about a month ago, just got it mastered. And it’ll be released at the end of August probably but we’re going to have 2 singles between now and that album, but its made

Q: And another tour once you’re finished?

H: Yeah non stop gigs till May then we’re doing festivals

Q: Which festival?

H: Most of them

THE JELLYS

Interview at the Joiners in Southampton, in April 2000, with Chas Byrne talking to CJ, Stidi, Davie and Jeff from the Jellys.

Q: Your first tour for a year kicked off Newcastle on March 8th and covers most of the UK, how’s the tour going?

STIDI: Not bad

Q: Elaborate slightly on not bad

CJ: It’s going absolutely brilliantly. To tell you the truth we had a couple of really really bad gigs, but most of the gigs have been quite well attended, and obviously because there are some people out there who like us

Q: Have you played anywhere new this year?

CJ: Anyway new on this tour? Um we have, we played in Doncaster and Hull, which I highly recommend, they were very interesting places where people should go for their holidays.

Q: And there’s somewhere where you haven’t played before?

CJ: No we haven’t played there, we’re playing Liverpool next week for the first time, and what we found in a lot of the places where we’re going first time it’s like 2 years ago when we first started touring, but were just joining the dots now, connecting up the county

Q: You’ve been to The Joiners before and presumably this helps wheedle out where you want to go back to on tours

CJ: We just, I mean a lot of the places I don’t know how we’re getting these gigs but they’re just offering us gigs and we’ve never done these places before. Some of these venues are very small and they kind of resemble like you know, they’re just like upstairs function rooms and pubs and stuff like that and I think a lot of bands don't play there and I think cos we’d never been there before the joke was on us

Q: Was it Louisiana’s in Bristol was a bit like that, an upstairs room?

CJ: It is yeah but that’s pretty nice compared to some of the places we do

Q: Last year you played Reading festival, are you planing on any more festivals this year?

CJ: Yeah, we will play festivals if we can get them, you know, but basically we’ll play anywhere

Q: You mentioned something about playing, hopefully going across to Europe this year?

CJ: Yeah, the plan is come summer time is to do something in Europe. The hardest thing over here is not being taken seriously by the press and you know, at the end of the day if we sell albums in other countries none of us will loose sleep over this, but it would be nice to be taken seriously in the UK. I’ve got to say though our lead guitarist Davie Jelly is very nice

Q: Is he?

DAVIE: Thanks a lot CJ

CJ: He talks a lot as well

Q: Does he? Oh good. So what’s it like as a four piece then?

JEFF: [Rubbish!]

CJ: It’s exactly the same just with an extra guitar

Q: It’s a fuller sound?

CJ: It’s a much more fuller sound and also cos Davie’s a you know good singer the vocals are in tune now

Q: Where did you come form Davie, where did they find you?

DAVIE: In Hell I think. I came from Hell

STIDI: That’s where you went

JEFF: It’s where you’re going

DAVIE: I was just in a band before and started watching the boys playing quite a lot and it just went from there

Q: And you’re North of the border then? You must be made up of the entire nationality of the UK now are you?

CJ: Just about

Q: Milk and Honey is your second single, now you’ve had songs about pets and ice-cream, what’s this one all about?

CJ: It’s about the UK music scene and our trip to Japan combined in one silly nugget

Q: Cos you’re big in Japan?

CJ: We’re not big, we’re more popular in Japan than we are over here

Q: And you’re actually signed over there?

CJ: Yeah we had a licensing deal over there with a big independent label and we went over in January to do a promotional tour and Stidi got into a lot trouble on the plane and its kind of about all the trouble

Q: Stidi what happened then?

STIDI: No comment

CJ: We got this manager...

STIDI: You caused all the trouble

CJ:...this manager call Tim who was like the real ring leader, he was spurring him on and like just making him do really terrible things on the plane

STIDI: Kept giving us pills, don’t know what they were. Travel sickness pills I got told, most bizarre effect

CJ: We had a verbal warning for laughing too much. So when I got back from Japan, I wrote this song called Milk And Honey because we had done a lot of interview in Japan and it just seemed like a lot of people were taking an interest in the band, so I combined both stories.

Q: Are you back to Japan then?

CJ: We will do yeah

Q: Milk And Honey is your first release this year is there going to be another single?

CJ: Another single is coming out on April 24th called Ship Goes Down, and that will proceed the album which is called Doctored For Supersound

Q: Is the album already recorded?

CJ: Yeah all done, in the bag, sounding very good, there’s 19 tracks on there. It’s not as twee as the first album but it covers more topics and stuff like that

Q: And hopefully when will that come out?

CJ: The album will be coming out on May 20th

Q: Has the release of the single in this county, talking about being big in Japan, has it helped, have you had more record company interest over here?

CJ: It’s really hard to drum into us in a band when you get very little backing from the major music press in this country and you know, this is our 3rd album, our 2nd studio album, but its our 3rd album coming out this year and we still haven’t done a feature, a interview, in any of the main magazines in this country. We’ve done a lot of touring, we’re a popular live band but until certain people actually get off their arses and start looking at us and start treating us as like a real band it’s very hard to be noticed by bigger companies

Q: So at the moment how are you releasing stuff?

CJ: It all comes out through our own label with a lot of help from our manager and a lot of help from the guys in the band and if it wasn’t for all 5 of us the band wouldn’t exist we’d be no one

STIDI: That’s Mere Records, Second Floor, Enterprise Point, Brighton

Q: And you’ve got a website?

CJ: I believe so. I’ve heard rumours of it. I can’t pick it up on my just radio yet! Well that “I believe so” answer you can just put any question before it.

Q: Just a few more open ended answers like that and then I’ll put my own questions in later!

CJ: “Oh yes definitely”

STIDI: “I believe do”

CJ: “He made me do it”

STIDI: “without a doubt”

DAVIE: “Great gig”

CJ: “It took me 2 months to recover”

THE YO-YO'S

Broadcast on Sat 23/9/00 - interview for Delta FM by Chas Byrne ...Earlier this week I popped down and saw the Yo-Yo’s as they played at the Wedgwood rooms in Portsmouth and I had a chat to them about life in general, the release of their album and their tour of the United States.

Q: You’ve toured America twice now?

TOM Spencer: We’ve toured twice, first time we went with the Backyard Babies and we went for 4 weeks and then we were back for a month when we did some business, and then we went back again supporting Murder City Devils who are another Sub-Pop band for 7 weeks, and we’ve just come back from that one. 7 weeks is a long time to be in a bus

Q: How does touring America differ from touring over here?

BLADZ: It’s a lot bigger, a lot hotter and a lot more yanks!

NEIL Phillips: more Americans, less English!

TOM: Can’t be compared to a sold out Hebegebe’s on a Saturday night which is obviously brilliant

Q: Have many people actually heard of you out there?

NEIL: It’s getting there, slowly.

Q: You’re now signed to Sub-Pop, has that made much difference?

TOM: The record came out a week into the tour when we were there and the first tour we toured with the Backyard Babies just to see how we went down as an experiment, and we went down well and a lot people from that tour bought T-shirts and when the record came out it was very obviously different, people coming up knowing the words, and that applies to over here, as this is the first gig with the album being out

Q: This is the 2nd day now, yesterday you played at Bristol, and this is the first time you’ve played the UK for a whole, what was the reaction there?

NEIL: Fantastic!

BLADZ: Amazing!

TOM: Brilliant!

Q: And you’ve got a single coming out next week?

TOM: The thing is, the album came out when we in America and we haven’t actually promoted it, so this is more likely to chart during this tour when the single comes out, than when it actually came out. The fan base bought it but no new people. The idea is to get air play and promote the record, that’s the plan

Q: The album is called Uppers and Downers, does that reflect the mood of the band?

TOM: That’s a good answer for this band, when its good its good, and when its bad it’s f*cking awful!

Q: Obviously with Danny [McCormack] in the band there’s a Wildheart connection, is that a gain or a pain?

BLADZ: No comment!

TOM: Uppers and downers! We got an initial load of publicity through there and obviously we get read about in Kerrang! that’s all been a help and stuff. In America the Wildhearts never broke, they toured with ACDC so there they treat us equal... which is nice.

Q: This is the start of the tour here at Portsmouth, when does it finish?

BLADZ: 29th is the last gig in London

TOM: It’s a ten gig tour. Ten gigs in ten days

Q: That’s culminating in the London gig?

TOM: Culminating in the Garage, then after that we’re going to Japan at the end of November

Q: And presumably the albums out there as well?

TOM: The album came out the same day as America and to be honest I’ve got no idea how its doing

Q: Japans always a good market I imagine you’d go down quite well there

TOM: There’s a good example of the Wildhearts thing, the Wildhearts were massive there so that definitely helps... without a doubt.

Q: The singles Time of Your Life, are you having the time of your life?

BLADZ: Generally yeah, there the odd bits that aren’t, but yeah...

TOM: Uppers and downers!

Q: Has there been a video?

BLADZ: We’ve got a copy of one the other day... that’s going straight back!

TOM: The geezer that made it, he did the film Being John Malcovitch and he met us up in Georgia when we where there and he was working on REM then and we bumped into him.

NEIL: He was doing Brad Pit and Jennifer Anistone’s wedding as well.

TOM: And he met us on the west coast of America and filmed for 5 days, like fly on the wall and life and he sent us a video which we thought was going to be great.

Q: This is Time Of Your Life?

TOM: You see the thing is it’s a bit corny just filming us on the road in America, but it worked for over here cos it is time of your life. It’s got us swimming fully dressed with brothel creepers underwater in swimming pools in San Francisco!

Q: So those are the high-lights

TOM: The high lights were fantastic. I mean the lot of the tour was travel time, just relentless, 27 hour drives between gigs sometimes, that was the longest one, right, and you can’t remember a 27 hour drive. Your mind can’t remember pain or boredom, it remembers the good bits. So like playing Texas someone says do you want to come back to a party in a mansion with a swimming pool and endless beer and brilliant people, and we had some great times, like spontaneous parties and that. And you pick extreme as well like gigs where its 110 degrees at night and when you leave the venue, cos its so hot, and it’s hotter outside in Arizona! And hurricanes in Alabama... its extreme!

Q: Will you go back to America?

TOM: We will be going back

NEIL: Its a American record label so they want us to do a lot of work over there...