The 5 Most Memorable Gigs I Went To In 2014

Thankfully, this was yet another year in which I saw loads of amazing bands play and where I had loads of great experiences at gigs, festivals, and club nights. This was my first year at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona (which was awesome! Even if it did drown one pair of my shoes), and this was the year two excellent new pop venues opened close to where I live. The new Doornroosje at a stone throw’s distance looks wonderful, and the new Tivoli Vredenburg with all its different rooms on different floors is just perfection. I saw new and upcoming bands like Years & Years and Thomas Azier (2x), people at the top of their game like St. Vincent (3x) and Spoon (2x), and old dogs like Morrissey (almost 2x, you know how that goes...) and Giorgio Moroder. Oh what a year, and the following five gigs were the ones that stuck out of that whole pack of great experiences for me for one reason or another. (vids not from the gigs listed below)

1. WhoMadeWho @ Ekko

These boys, when they’ve got it on, they’ve got it on. In the small venue Ekko in Utrecht these guys were really doing their thing, with those soulful vocals and those melancholic-yet-dancey sounds they create. Add to that the fact that these guys, whilst playing an instrument, still manage to add some theatrics in there as well, and you’ve got a live show with great music plus some good entertainment to boot. Not to mention that it does seem like they are having fun, which in turn spreads to the audience like a virus. Thus live they both sing and play their instruments expertedly, they add theatrics, and they put the joy in the experience as well. Plus just that little dash of mayhem when they end it in the audience with ‘Satisfaction’. What more do you need, really?

2. Blood Orange @ Primavera Sound

I vividly remember this young fellow sitting right in front of the mic stand by his lonesome self a good half hour before the show. After the gig, I knew why. Blood Orange, the funk outfit led by the prolific Dev Hynes, really turns up the groove live. The sound at the start of the gig was a tad dodgy, but that ship was righted after about a song and a half or so, and then it’s all fabulosity from there on. You’ve got the funky guitar of Hynes, the female vocals, the horns, the tight rhythm section: it all just works. Add some good, groovy tunes in there, a Solange cover, and Hynes busting a move like he’s Mr. Jackson himself, and you’ve just got this deliciously fun & funky show on the “small” Pitchfork stage at the Spanish Primavera Sound festival.

3. Darkside @ 05 Days Off

I would remember this show only for the girls trying to squeeze their way through the audience a minute before the start. Getting loads of dirty looks as they push their way up front, one of them agitatedly remarks “why the heck are they looking so angrily at us. It’s not like they reserved these places or something”. Ehrm, yes we did, the moment we arrived at the place an hour before kick-off time to make sure we’re close to where the action is. Oh well. I already loved the album by the duo of Dave Harrington and Nicolas Jaar, and what they do live so well is that they just add a bit more oomph to the beats to get a bit of a dance vibe going. Add that to the fact that they are craftsmen in their respective fields, and that they nail the vibe perfectly, and then this show maybe epitomizes the year 2014, if only because apparently the lads have (at least temporarily) retired the Darkside moniker.

4. Future Islands @ Melkweg

Next to the fact that I just love the album and the songs, live they do add exactly those things that you want a band to add. Extra emotion, extra theatrics, extra effort, and this whilst still performing the songs as tight as on album. Frontman Samuel Herring really takes over. He looks like a real proper bloke, and sometimes he almost grunts as if in a metal band and nearly charges into the audience aggressively. Moments later though, he is shaking his booty or is doing that leg thing those girls in Western saloons always do (though slightly distorted, slightly more manic). And then he suddenly tries to touch the sky with his finger as he is almost teary-eyed. The guy really knows how to perform. Luckily the lads back him up in as solid a way as possible, so if you just love the songs, you’re not getting short-changed on that either. A must see live band, if only because next to all of this, they also do seem genuinely grateful and humble that they can perform for whatever audience is in front of them.

5. Slowdive @ Primavera Sound

Two major blokes just fainted during this show! True story, though I’m not sure if that’s because of how much they love Slowdive or whether something else was in play (probably the latter, though it was in the open air, so it wasn’t a shortage of oxygen or whatever). Slowdive have reunited for a string of gigs (and, next year, an album apparently), and they didn’t make a mockery of their former selves, performing as tight as a band with so many guitars can possible perform. Dreamy shoegaze performed to perfection, the band just weave this intricate web of guitars and other sounds, with on top of that these dreamy male and female vocals. From the word go they managed to completely mesmerize me, and as someone who missed them during their first go around I’m happy they’re not only back, but that they have matured rather than aged (not that they were teenagers when they stopped or anything, but you get my drift).

This list is Stef Siepel’s, writer of, amongst others, the Weekly Froth column that goes live every Friday. It does in no way reflect the collective Musos Guide opinion.

My 10 Favourite Albums of 2014:

I love lists, I really do. If only because it is just so easy to miss an album or artist with so much excellent music being created. Then, reading all these lists of people’s favorite albums, maybe it points you to an artist you missed at first, or which you discarded a bit too hastily after you listened to it once on the day that your cat died. Sometimes it can also be awesome to just see that people agree with you on their love for an album, or maybe it tells you why some people do like a certain album that you just didn’t fancy at all. So hopefully this list will do one of these things (or has some other use or purpose), as these are my ten favourite albums of what I thought to be a pretty splendid year in music.

1. In A Dream - The Juan MacLean

I love The Juan MacLean because they bring house into the realm of the alienated city dweller. And I love both of those vibes. I love the house vibe because it epitomizes losing control, love, broken hearts, sex, and all other lustings and things we so desperately need in life. I love that Robert Longo Men in the Cities vibe as well, because it shows how we are captured in conventions and life itself. The two are seemingly opposite sides of the coin, as in the dancing (or falling) we are free from the latter. To incorporate both sides simultaniously, now that’s a feat in itself, and Whang and MacLean pull it off. It starts space disco, it ends with this slow burner of a track, and about everything in between hits the spot just exactly right. The duality is perhaps perfectly encapsulated in their catchiest track ‘A Simple Design’, where Whang sings that What you’re hoping to find/ it is not a simple design / but a headache / and everything you’ve built comes falling down. But then again, if you open your mind and heart for the slips in the design, then Everything you need falls to you. Can’t wait for them to start doing the live shows again over here in Europe.

2. Power - Fryars

I loved Fryars the first go around, and I’m definitely still doing that on his return. The man has made this year’s walking-the-city-at-midnight album for me, and that is a vibe I’m always looking for. It’s dark, it’s smart, and it hits both the need for contact (all I want is an IRL) or lust, the alienation (I like to think that I’m the solitary type / with less conviction when the loneliness bites), and all the sordid affairs that come with both of them, even if it is just in our minds (though the mixtape probably has the cuts that were too dark to put on a selling record). I also love the creativity, not only in the songs and lyrics, but also in the whole concept, with the short film, the mixtape, the spoken word bits, and everything. Having worked with Mika and Lily Allen this guy knows how to make something that’s “pop”, but thankfully on his own work he mixes that with the quirks and smarts needed to give it this depth and this lovely slant that makes this album stand out. No, I can’t stop loving this, indeed.

3. Moodymann - Moodymann

Moodymann can create house music, that we already know. And soulful house music at that. What he adds on this album though is a great concept, loads of variety, and plenty of heart. And it all culminates to an ode of the rise and fall of Detroit, with plenty to dance to, but also with loads of things that perfectly work to glue this thing together into a cohesive unit, instead of this being “just”  a dance album. It’s almost a pastiche, with the pastiche being the mixing of different elements of the city’s history that we both recognize as being of a time prior to our current one, but which still works as the thing it references to. So you get some almost old school swing soul, you get some spoken word (including some Richard Pryor), and you get some cheeky lyrics in the songs which seem to be taken straight out of those B-flicks about guys and their girls doing their drugs. But whilst that all is going on, the house music also just works as house music, and that maybe is the most imrportant thing.

4. Singles - Future Islands

If anyone is wondering whether or not “doing a tv show” is still effective in this day and age, one might want to have a word with the lads from Future Islands. Their Letterman appearance went viral, which admittedly had a lot to do with the all-out performance of the band’s frontman. That is nothing (no, no, no nothing) if the song isn’t up to scratch, and ‘Seasons (Waiting On You)’ is that as well. The whole package that the band has to offer was put on full display there, with catchy synths, emotional lyrics,  mixed with laddish raw power but also more “effeminate” dancing and theatrics. Almost all the songs on this album stick out one way or another, and the band gets away with some lyrics that border on the corny. And if you’re able to write those trite truisms and make them not sound like that, then you know you’re on the winning team.

5. They Want My Soul - Spoon

Here’s an admission that will probably make people throw stones at me, but often times I have trouble liking an entire Spoon album. On every album I have my favorites that I love to listen to, but usually I don’t listen to their albums as a whole. Enter They Want My Soul, which I not only listen to, but I listen to it all, and I listen to it all the time. I love the snarling vocals, but I also love the fact that they seemingly go from guitar led indie rock to bass led songs with a groove. From the ballad ‘Inside Out’ to the more rock-ish ‘Rent I Pay’ to the catchy ‘New York Kiss’; this album has it all. And then there’s my favorite, ‘Outlier’, with those dagger lines “Ahh I remember you walked out of Garden State / You had taste, you had taste, you had no time to waste. / Awww, what happened to you kid?”. That cuts right through to the heart, that.

6. The Feast Of The Broken Hearted - Hercules And Love Affair

I’ve got a soft spot for the boys and girls of Hercules and Love Affair, I’m not going to lie. This album is their most straight up house album that they’ve ever done, having plenty of that catchy stuff to dance to for sure. And everything either with an emotional story, with attitude and pizzazz, or with some other quirk that makes it stand apart from the generic. How about John Grant’s moving tale of HIV Aids in ‘I Try To Talk To You’, singing “Is this what you deserve? You are a man, you’re a human being”. But there’s also the attitude laden track ‘My Offence’, where they take and redefine the word “cunt” and run away with it. “My essence is my offence”, they sing, as apparently who they are is what causes the offence. But, who cares, just let yourself be as cunt as you can get. This album just has the heart of house, and the music to make all the boys and girls in the club work it.

7. Nikki Nack - Tune-Yards

Probably this is the album in her oeuvre that’s easiest to get into, with plenty of catchy songs and percussion bits. For me personally, some of her earlier output, though always intriguing and interesting, wasn’t always easy to listen to on repeat but this album takes that obstacle away for me. Which leaves an intriguing, interesting album that musically is put together with excellent vision and all kinds of sounds that show where she gets her inspiration from. Her voice sounds so powerful as she screams, sings, or speaks lines that are funny, but that also put the finger on the sore spot. “I come from the land of slaves / Let’s go Redskins! Let’s go Braves!” is one, though I always have to chuckle at the lovely aside in “he gave me a dollar, a blood-soaked dollar / but that’s okay it still works at the store”. The little short story in there is funny, biting, and with a nice bit of punch to it as well, and the live show is strong, self-assured, and as hilarious as it has ever been.

8. Hylas - Thomas Azier

Dutch fella Thomas Azier went to Berlin to work on his album, and years later he can finally present the fruits of his labour. The album has a lot of Berlin in it too, with stories about alienation in the big city, through which Azier powers with loads of synths and drumpads. He definitely isn’t afraid to pull out the big guns and shoot for the sky, as was evident when he appeared on Dutch television with a church choir to help him out during his performance. There’s plenty of variety in pace, though, with some “power” ballads, some “pop” songs, but the last song (one of my personal favority) really is the ideal end to his live set. ‘Sirens of the Citylight’ has got almost a dance element to it, and Azier certainly puts a pack of emotion in there. Have seen this guy live two times this year, and each time he gave his all, and that is actually also a characteristic you can hear back in his recorded output as well. Gotta show a bit of love for the “locals” here.

9. The Way - Macy Gray

There’s something about this woman that I just really like and that only she can get away with. The inimitable Macy Gray hasn’t really been at the top of her game for a while (at least, it’s been quite some time since I’ve really paid attention to and enjoyed that what she was putting out), but this takes her right back to the land of quality again. With her heart on her sleeve she runs through admissions like the fact that she doesn’t care about her relationship having ended, but boy does she miss the sex. She goes from a fragile narrative about her really experiencing true love on ‘First Time’, to the elaborately orchestrated tale of her being the “Queen of the Big Hurt” with a fabulously strong chorus, and she does all this in her characteristically raspy voice. Though probably that is what puts it apart from the herd, all the songs are also put together as you would expect a proper soul album to be put together, as all those boys and girls in the orchestra really have her back. I’ve always fancied Gray since ‘I Try’, and finally she’s got me excited again with this one.

10. Seeds - TV On The Radio

There’s something about TV On The Radio that makes me just love them. It’s the fuzzy production with the guitars, the double vocals, the catchy-yet-still-decidedly-rock feel; it’s just the complete package really. I loved Dear Science, and after that I haven’t really been feeling what they’ve been putting out. Luckily, Seeds is something which I’ve been listening to ad nauseam again. ‘Happy Idiot’ has definitely grown on me to the point I’m really anticipating its turn in the batting order, and they freely go from slow ballads to fast-paced rockers to wall-o-sound fuzzness, though the latter maybe less than on earlier work (though you could argue there’s nothing quite as pop as ‘Golden Age’ on here either). Maybe the lyrics aren’t as overtly political or critiquing anymore as on some of their earlier output, with the band putting up more general lines in there that everyone can interpret however, but they are just one of those bands that will always have me intrigued about what they come up with next, and I’m happy that, after their last album, they’ve brought me back on board again with this one.

This list is Stef Siepel’s, writer of, amongst others, The Weekly Froth! column that goes live every Friday. It does in no way reflect the collective Musos' Guide opinion.

Queues around the square of St. John’s Church tonight, for that most nerdy of events, the ‘live album listen’. Although generally such events consist of nine men in jumpers and one woman (also in a jumper) sitting glass-eyed in the upstairs room of a pub looking at the ceiling while a 12” of Trout Mask Replica spins on a record player in the corner, tonight is a rather more baroque affair. Because OH MY BLOODY DAYS the BLOODY Scott Walker and BLOODY Sunn O))) collaboration has ONLY BLOODY GONE AND arrived. So we’re in a church. Obviously.

As the audience shuffles into the church* with the kind of awestruck terror one would expect from a group of people about to get tinnitus forever, some take their seats in the main audience in the centre, chairs pointing at two eight foot speaker stacks on the stage. This makes proceedings more sinister, a congregation seated in a church looking up at two huge, black stacks. Others walk up the stairs to sit in the pews overlooking the stage, next to the twenty foot high gothic organ that stands on a pulpit like a yawning Elder. The album artwork is displayed on a projector screen downstairs. Traditionally Sunn O))), it’s a textured, monochrome close-up, shapeless, organic, because the thing about Sunn O))) is they embrace the sublime as well as the uncanny. There is no shape, no form, because in fact, as Lovecraft was well aware back in the early twentieth century, formlessness is terrifying. In the same way as Sunn O))) albums have no discernible structure, when you can’t see the shape of something, it’s quite scary. The sound guy walks to the front, kneels at the altar, and presses a button. There is a collective intake of breath. The album starts. The first note. And oh my god, change of direction! It sounds a lot like The Shins! Only joking - it’s doom, and it’s really fucking scary.

From the first note, we have Walker’s ecstatic, bombastic wail "OHHHH, THE WIIIIDDEEE MISSSOOOURRRIII", followed by a, let’s be honest - pretty massive riff from Tos Nieuwenhuizen. The pews are shaking. It’s like someone asked Van Halen to switch to a minor key for a bit just to freak everyone out. The crowd stare at the speakers, and Walker’s disembodied voice sings, “Never enough... never enough”. Then... the money shot. DUUUURRRRRNNNNNNNNNN. That de-tuned drone C note, gained up and held for eternity, and what’s that sound in the background? Oh of course - it’s a bull whip.** “A beating would do me the world of good” sings Scott. Everyone’s mouths are open.

With the staccato titles of Soused - ‘Fetish’, ‘Bull’, ‘Herod 2014’ - no one thought they were for an easy listen.*** As perverse as anything on The Drift, Soused is conceptual Scott Walker drenched in Sunn O))). The 71 year old former-crooner turned auteur**** has spat out a terrifying album of concepts about euthanasia, infanticide, fetishised objectification, and Sunn O))) are the ‘primal noise’ that wraps around it. Plus, the album still sounds menacing, even when it’s not cranked up to a murderous volume or performed by a live band with thirty Model Ts behind them. “When you stepped into the studio,” says Walker of the recording of Soused, “it came up to your knees”. ‘Soused’ means dipped into something, like witches in a river, and here the noise is like a bath. The audience at St. John’s stare up at the black monoliths on the stage, an abyss breathing out sound, and the abyss stares back.

* Is it possible not to ‘shuffle’ into a church?  I mean I’ve never ‘gambolled’ into a church, for example.

** The performance of which Walker credits his friend ‘Pete the whipper’, from Bristol.

*** Although they are a bit easier on the tongue than previous Sunn O))) efforts. Monoliths And Dimensions’ ‘Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért’, for example.

**** Fun fact corner: Scott also spent several years in the Seventies, being trained in Gregorian chanting by monks.

Soused is available from amazon and iTunes.

August is here, and with it has come festival season. For those of us who without sufficient funds for four days of live music and the wanton destruction of brain cells, there is some consolation in the form of the number of bands fitting in small tours and one off gigs around their festival commitments. Last Wednesday, a pre-Rebellion warm up saw East End Riot, Bishop’s Green, Reagan Youth and the Street Dogs tear up the Underworld in Camden. I caught up with frontman Mike McColgan, bassist Johnny Rioux and drummer Pete Sosa while they washed down the jetlag with caffeine to discuss festivals, side projects, country music and booze.

MG: Hi guys. So this is the first day of the tour, how does it feel for it to be with one of the forefathers of East Coast punk Reagan Youth?

JR: We were super excited, we didn’t actually realise it until we got off the plane. It was a crazy surprise – whenever that happens with our group, we kind of think ‘man, we should be on their show’, know what I mean?

MM: I remember in ’82, it was controversial having a band called Reagan Youth…ya know, it was a pretty conservative time in America. I was never a fan of Ronald Reagan, not at all. For those guys to take on that name and write songs about how disaffected they were, pissed off they were, it was a pretty bold move. For them to start back up and right back at it, it shows that they really mean it –for a band to be around that long, it’s pretty inspiring.

MG: I didn’t even know they were still touring, so I was hyped to see them on the bill! You’re both also playing Rebellion next weekend, where I saw you guys play a killer set last year – how many times have you played there? Are you hyped to be going back?

JR: It’s our third or fourth?

MM: I believe it’s our third time. The good thing about Rebellion is that I think they always have their finger on the pulse – with regards to what purists, or lifelong punks, or new punk kids like. They do a good job with the bands on the bill and its always exciting to play if the crowd’s great, the people are great, and the line-up is too. The bands you get to see, as a fan of the music…its always great to come and play Blackpool.

JR: You get to see people who are our age too…people find babysitters. (Laughter)

MG: This tour takes in quite a bit of the festival circuit, are there any other particular European festivals that stand out for you?

JR: Well Rebellion is the main one, without Rebellion I don’t even know if we’d be on tour right now. The other one we’re excited about doing is Endless Summer in Germany, there’s a lot of friends’ bands on that.

MM: It’ll be cool to see Agnostic Front, the Casuals, you know Lars’ band, and we’re looking forward to seeing Stomper 98 as well.

MG: The Crooked Drunken Sons EP was a return to the fray after a break - did it feel good to get back on it? Is the EP a precursor to a new full length?

JR: We’re currently sitting on a bunch of songs. We need to get into another writing session before we jump back into the studio, but we’re all keenly aware that before we can do any extended touring we need a new record. That’ll be the next move for sure before we plan out another in depth tour.

MM: Songs like ‘Crooked Drunken Sons’, or ‘Rustbelt Nation’ from the Rustbelt Nation EP, are songs that deserve to be re-approached. They say a lot, I think they’re capable of going to a higher level and being done better. I think all of us agree with that – there’s nothing wrong with what we did, but it could be better.

JR: It felt awesome to do that because we did it in my garage, we’d never recorded like that at all and it was fun to do something kind of lo fi with a DIY ethic too. But like Mike said, a bunch of those songs will probably make it on to the full length and I’m excited to hear how much more they jump out.

MM: A song like ‘Eighteen for Life’ is screaming out to be on a full length record, and it could be better. That’s the thing, when you’re in a band and you put something down, after its completed, you always hear additional things that you didn’t hear when you were doing it…but then you’re on timelines, things of that nature. So in a way it’s good that we released them as EP’s and we can listen to ourselves critically and say ‘we could do this or that better’.

MG: Almost like a test run?

MM: Yea, and the good thing about this band is, we can work fast in a DIY fashion, or we can work over an extended period of time. We’ve recorded under a number of different circumstances since starting the group, so it behoves us to have that type of versatility; to move quickly or to lie back, give something time to breathe and think it out. We worked with Ted Hutt – Ted Hutt was the kind of guy that would be searching for ideas right up until the last moment, to the very, very end. That was a new approach compared to other people I had worked with, who would say ‘right, this is how things are gunna be’, while with him it was always trying to push it. I think that’s rubbed off on all of us, which is good.

MG: The FM359 side project and Johnny Rioux’s solo album both bought an Americana element to the fore. Who in particular influences you with regards to Americana roots/folk/country music? (This is followed by general approval of the question, with a sense of relish at the chance to talk music that is clearly close to their hearts)

JR: There’s a lot of good, rootsy modern stuff, like Lucero and Ryan Adams and Wilko. Steve Earle is more of a classic example, Townes Van Zandt. Chuck Ragan back on the newer side, there’s just so many good ones. For the Cowboi thing, that goes back to the late 80s and early 90s, I found rockabilly music to be really uplifting – I was so immersed in the punk rock scene and it was a pretty depressive and negative thing for the most part. Then somebody gave me a Stray Cats record and I was like ‘wow, this makes me happy!’ ‘It’s talking about girls!’ And this and that. I always had a soft spot in my heart for rockabilly, Eddie Cochrane, Gene Vincent, Johnny Cash, stuff like that. Pete, what’ve you got?

PS: I’m more of a classic – Hank Williams Sr., Patsy Kline and Loretta Lynn type stuff, Grand Ol’ Opry and Nashville stuff.

J: He’s the true Texan we got here.

MM: Speaking of Pete, when we’re talking FM359 and Street Dogs, he gives us our versatility to work with any type of song…he isn’t a one trick pony. With FM359, things were approached very differently from any Street Dogs recording process. Street Dogs for the most part is spitfire, then anthem, then there might be a couple of folk songs thrown in there. With FM359 the parameters were wider and nothing was excluded, everything was bought to the table. As soon as songs were worked up, they were tracked. They weren’t poured over in a pre-production way. When we record a song with the Street Dogs, we hammer it and hammer it, but with FM359 being so spontaneous and so fast…

JR: You know the first time we actually played together in a room to play those songs was the first time we played a show. We never jammed or practiced or anything.

MM: Street Dogs is so disciplined, so set out, it’s almost like boot camp in a way. With FM, I don’t even know if it was a conscious thing but we just wanted to do something different – we sat back, collected ourselves and fucking breathed, wrote songs then tracked them. We weren’t even mapping shit out, it was way different than anything I’ve ever done – we were sitting back fucking drinking coffee, guys were smoking cigars, then just banging tunes out and something special came of it. Hugh Morrison was a major, major contributor to the process – he wrote what I consider to be the best songs on it and he made what would have been a fair/good record…

JR: He bought in a lot of the Celtic influences on there.

MG: Will Cowboi or Truth, Love and Liberty have follow up records, or are they likely to be one offs?

MM: I wouldn’t rule it out. I mean we don’t have any immediate plans on the horizon, but that’s something that could be re-approached in the future. Street Dogs is a bit more organised, the mothership so to speak, and FM is sorta like…I mean if someone said one day ‘I’ve got a bunch of songs, let’s just sit down and knock these out’, I would probably do it, but right now we’re kind of focusing on other areas.

JR: With the Cowboi record I don’t know, I was thinking about it; I want to do originals in the same vein, but then I also would be keen to do some other punk rock songs, I enjoy doing that too. I’ve always done that, taking a punk or a hardcore song and doing something different with it.

MG: Speaking of which, how much of an influence has growing up somewhere with the OG hardcore credentials of Boston had on your music?

JR: Honestly, throughout the late 80s and early 90s there were so many great bands in Boston, but around the mid-90s it started to feel really stale; bands were sounding the same all the way through. Then the Dropkick Murphys hit, and when that happened…Jeff Erna, the drummer, was doing these 8 note things, and Rick Barton on the guitar was playing downstrokes ’77 style. Before it was all that classic sort of Oi! thing, then the Dropkicks came along and Mike didn’t sing ‘thought thought thought’, growling it, but he was singing it; singing a line into a line and bringing a totally different style in to Boston. Beforehand it was the same across the board and when the Dropkicks came in it was like the sun shone, and bands started popping up doing things differently.

MM: In fairness to the Bruisers, when the Dropkicks came around at that time the Bruisers were making headway. They’d slugged it out for a considerably longer time than we had and you could see they were making headway when we played with them. You could see it in the emotional impact they had on the hardest of the hard dudes when they would play anthems and stuff which was pretty powerful. It was influential on DKM. The 90s was a special time – I thought about this the other day when I was in a coffee shop, I heard some stuff come on the radio…it was just a whirlwind time. There was so much going on and so many bands, the energy was just fucking insane. There were so many shows…we got swept up, DKM was in the right place at the right time. In all fairness the Pogues were the first band to really take punk rock and take classic Irish music and create a hybrid.

JR: The biggest thing I’m proud of in my involvement in the Boston punk rock scene is that our thing is a lot different from, say, what I’ve seen in Europe. You would have bands that were ska bands, or punk bands, or hardcore bands, or just crazy bands, and everybody supported each other. You’d have a bill with say, the Kings of Nuthin or Bim Skala Bim, just these different bands doing different things and everyone was supporting each other. I don’t see that in many other places, where it’s like ‘I’m a hardcore kid, I’m gunna sit over here with the hardcore kids – you weird punk kids go sit over there’. But we had the Cambridge Quarter, different bars where everyone would bro down and hang out, set up shows…

MM: Or at the Rat – you would see punks, hardcore kids, everyday Joes, crusties, whatever, all in the same building. I never remember there being any static about it either - I always thought there would be but there was no static. I remember going to shows at Local 186, or going to Access, and it seemed like in those places things would get secular, or divided – but the Rat was kind of the epicentre of the scene at the time, and it was special. There was always a feeling in the air that four or five bands were gunna rise out of it and everybody else was just gunna fall off…that was just my thought process watching it all go down, and pretty much the four or five I thought were gunna pull out did pull out, make a mark and keep doing things. It was a special time.

MG: Your records have a thematic balance between good time drinking songs and serious social commentary. With regards to the former, what’s everyone’s’ tipple of choice?

JR: I’ve always been an Irish whiskey guy, that’s definitely my drink of choice – Bushmills or Jameson’s.

MM: Back when I wasn’t on the wagon, I liked Heineken a lot, I liked Guinness a lot. What we used to do was drink six Heinekens, then turn around and have a Guinness. It seemed like having a buzz on made the Guinness go down smoother. If you started out having Guinness and knock back three, you fucking can’t drink anymore because you feel weighed down. But if you turn around, have six Heinekens, or Budweisers, or Moulsons – Moulsons was pretty popular – and everyone seemed to do that, knock back five or six beers then have a Guinness, because you didn’t feel the weight of it when you had a good buzz on. Plus Guinness has a great fucking taste…except when it comes back up, when it projectiles out of you.

MG: With the latter, what issues do you find most influencing your songwriting at the moment? Has your focus changed over the years?

JR: For me, I’ve got a bit of a writer’s block…I went through some terrible shit with divorce and rehab, all kinds of shit in the last year, so I’d write all kinds of nasty, negative shit. Now I’m out on the other side of all that crap, I’m like ‘what the fuck do I write about?’ So I’m having a bit of a writer’s block with that, but I’m sure it’ll come to me at some point.

MM: I’m back in Boston, I’ve moved back and I’ll mention at least five or six times a day how much I love it there and how it feels like coming home in every part of my being. I don’t want to go overboard being all ‘Boston Boston, raa raa raa’, I just want to write human condition songs and not make it too quaint but just capture that somehow and make it into a good song…take real life experiences that I’m going through and make it universal. One of the biggest things that continues to move me and I’m compelled to write about is income inequality in America, it’s completely fucking hideous and grotesque and obscene and its at unprecedented levels. Then the political process is completely bought and sold, it’s transparent even to those who have pretty much checked out of politics and what’s going on in America. It’s sad, like Citizens United, that Supreme Court case about a lot of corporations giving unlimited resources to politicians – it’s fucking absolutely pathetic. With the Street Dogs, I’ve had people say ‘you need to reign it in a bit, stay out of politics and don’t write about that stuff, you guys are pigeonholing yourselves a bit, shutting yourself off to a wider audience’. Well fuck that - FUCK that – what am I gunna do, reign in how I truly feel to write some bullshit song? About tra la la, life’s good, don’t worry be happy? No, fuck that. Would Joe Strummer do that? No! Would Johnny Cash do that? No!

MG: Too right! So as a final, lighter question, have you got any good or insane tour story that has stood out over the years?

MM: Ooh! So we’re in Finland on the bus, we’ve never been before, it’s cold as fuck and we’re all kind of mystified looking out. Paul Rucker, who drummed with us on Fading American Dream and State of Grace had disappeared. Turns out he was on top of this double decker bus – you know in Teen Wolf, when he was on top of the van? Rucker’s completely shitfaced out of his mind, doing his best impression.

JR: He was smoking a bowl up there too.

MM: Yea, smoking a bowl, doing that. There was a load of high, electrical stuff…if he’d hit one of those wires, he’d have been done, crispy. Then the cops, when they pulled us over I thought for sure Rucker’s getting strung up, but we told them we were in a band and they just wanted to go to the show.

JR: They came to the show and checked us out too!

MM: It was either Norway or Finland, I’m pretty sure it was Finland though. Those are the only type of cops that would be that cool, most people would be like ‘get the fuck down, you’re locked up for the night.’

MG: That is a good one! Thanks very much guys.