ComEnts

AK: Michael Hefferan plays guitar for Reading cartoon-metallers Sonic Undermind, was (and probably still is) the most regular poster on the Berkslive message board - although these days he is a moderator - and has been a reviewing/gigging associate of mine for about two years. In a desperate attempt to try and make the most of this blog, I thought it was about time we found out about the real Heff, one of Reading's music scene's most amiable and least-stupid characters.

Mike: Cartoon metallers indeed. Sepultura are a metal band, Slayer are a metal band. School for the Gifted or Malefice are metal bands. We might have heavy guitars but so do many other bands that aren't metal. Nikhil occasionally might sneak a metal riff into one of our songs but very rarely. Not that I mind us being called a metal band, and we do well on metal bills, I just think it's misleading. Cartoon on the other hand, I certainly hope so. Mind you cartoons range all the way from Itchy and Scratchy to Akira so what does that really mean?

AK: *shouts* I’M ASKINK ZE QUESTIONS!!!!!!! I was simply referring to the subject matter of most of your songs. “Chimpcopter" (“Catch the simian! catch the simian!") and “Zombie Wedding" would be prime examples of the creative and engaging writing style you seem to enjoy. If you were a cartoon, I think you’d either be “Transformers" or “Ulysses 18-30". You’re all action, but based on some quite trippy cognitive reasoning. So, Mikey; what brings you to be playing guitar-based music in Reading?

Mike: Guitar based? We're a drum based band, just ask Rob (our drummer).

AK: Yeah, maybe I should have interviewed the organ-grinder… but don’t let me interrupt you. *shuts up*

Mike: A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Earley, I was at school and started playing guitar. I walked to school with Nikhil (SU lead guitarist) who happened to live across the road from me and was in the year below me at school. He started a band and I joined. I was about 16 probably. Couldn't play the guitar at all, had only just barely mastered barre chords! (I know, nothing's changed right?!) We were called The Unholy and we had a great time playing music. We didn't care that we were rubbish, it was a great fun time and kept us out of trouble. "Yeah... right!" I hear all those that know us from back then say, but imagine the trouble we might have got in otherwise? We did a few gigs at "The Stage" which was in that youth club by Asda. 50p to get in, everyone getting drunk outside. Brilliant. Then we all went to uni and split up. A few years ago we were all drunk at a party and probably listening to one of our old Unholy tapes when our mate Phil said we should get the band back together. Rob and Sam (bass player) were there and they used to play bass and drums together in a band so they got roped in. Phil said he'd give singing a go. The Unholy were back!

AK: How long have Sonic Undermind been going? How did you get together?

Mike: Well, we pissed around as The Unholy for a year or more. Managed to write about 5 songs. Our crappy 3 track demo even got played in the After Dark. Rob recorded it and the DJ said that we were a lot better than he expected and he didn't believe it was recorded on a 4 track. Rob's very good. Left Side Brain also heard it and loved it. They booked us for a gig in Frome which scared us into actually rehearsing well enough to actually perform. Phil had a lot of other stuff going on at the time and the band going from a very infrequent laugh to a regularly rehearsing and gigging band was a big commitment he didn't have time for at the time. With a month to go we were singerless. Pete had been to a few of our early rehearsals and we begged him to come along and do this gig for us on a temporary basis. We played the gig in Frome, Pete was great and everyone was surprised at how un-shit we were. We wanted to do more gigs but the name "The Unholy" was turning people off so we had to change it. After months of arguments we came up with Sonic Undermind. At around that time I got to know Luisa through writing for her new Unsigned Showcase magazine. She booked us for Bar Oz, we filled the place and she booked us again. The rest is history (as was that).

AK: What do you think of the Berkshire "scene"? Where do you think it will be in five years' time?

Mike: I think it's amazing. Compared to where it was 18 months ago when we started playing it's unrecogniseable. There are regular nights at venues all over town. We have touring bands back at The Fez. When I started reviewing you'd be lucky to get one average gig a fortnight. Now you get at least one good one a week, often more. Who can tell about 5 years time. It could all collapse again, it could carry on getting stronger. If the promoters we have keep pushing things the way they are or one or more of the bands from the local scene make it on some level then hopefully it'll blossom even more.

AK: Tell us about your own musical development;

Mike: I'm almost the opposite of you when it comes to musicianship. Where you might spend long hours practicing and perfecting your skills and playing everything possible the thing that interests me about the guitar is picking it up and just playing. Seeing what weird sounds come out and how they fit together with other ones. It's very much a luxury to be able to do that. Ok, I do know a lot of the basics that you need to be able to do anything and I can play tightly in time but I'm lucky to have a band that can deal with whatever weird stuff I might be playing and fit around it or improve what I'm playing when we write. I came to the guitar pretty late, around 16, and didn't play very much at all at university so it's only really since Sonic Undermind came back that I've been actually developing in any way. I consider myself very much a novice but prefer to learn by experimenting with sounds and then learning what it is I've been playing rather than learning to play something then hearing how it sounds.

AK: Who are your favourite bands at the moment?

Mike: The last few months I have mostly been listening to Coheed and Cambria, Mew, Velvet Underground, Apartment 26, Dizzee Rascal. Many others but those are the ones that really stand out. Locally Yankee Nine-Niner, Return to Zero, Rebus and Pete and the Pirates are the ones that really stand out for me. My all time favourite bands are At the Drive-In, Smashing Pumpkins and Rage Against the Machine. My biggest recent guitar influence is Queens of the Stone Age. If I had to force everyone who didn't get Sonic Undermind to listen to one album it'd be Dr Octagyneacologist by Dr Octagon (AKA Kool Keith). Actually it's interesting that you, as one of our biggest fans, already loved that album.

AK: You like a tipple: where are your favourite places to imbibe in Reading?

Mike: Bar Oz local bands night on a Thursday, the BBBs at the weekend and, of course, The Legendary After Dark Club. It's always been an ambition of mine to play there.

AK: How do you feel about Reading, the jewel in Berkshire's crown?

AK: It's not as shit as Bracknell, Slough or Swindon. I am very fond of Reading despite it's shitness, I was born here and have lived here most of my life. Since the local scene got back into shape it's also started to be a nice place to go out again.

AK: What would you change/like to see happen to Reading?

Mike: Sesame Street at the After Dark to get over the obsession with "The" bands and back to being mainly proper rock like it did a couple of years back. Ok, that's just fashion. It'll come and go, other than that... more decent independent shops.

Does your husband play in a band, too?

Only joking Mike - I hope you feel better soon!

I used to think that I was on a pretty sweet deal, but now I'm not so sure. The piece of musical obligation that I am currently chewing is slowly starting to get larger and larger, and I'm wondering if I will be able to chew it for much longer.

When I came back to Reading after my student years, I kind of dragged my feet musically for a year or so, before putting ads and contacts out to try and find a band to play guitar for. I went to a few auditions, tried out a couple of different bands before I found one that I enjoyed and wanted to pursue - this was All Wrapped Up, a locally-based function band. Keyboard player Tony dropped off 3 CD's of material that they played in their set for me to learn, and I turned up to rehearse with them a week later. They were nice people, really talented musicians and performers, and they played some songs that I really liked (interspersed with ones I didn't really like much, but they stretched me as a musician and took me out of the "comfort" zone", which was all good). So, three years down the line and my AWU gigs are ticking along nicely, plus I get to sing backing vocals - something I love doing, but rarely get to do. We learn new material regularly, but because we've gigged so much we don't have to rehearse all the time, just enough to maintain a tightness and a professional attitude.

Then I got asked to audition for Yankee Nine Niner, who were playing bluesy, classic rock with a lot of funk influences. Well, I just knew straight away that I wanted in on this one, and we set about rehearsing, writing and trying to record whenever possible. The band are now also my close mates, more like a family than mates really, and I'll always want to play guitar in Yankee Nine Niner. Cool, I had found a rock band! I was looking for something slightly more thrash metal, but I wouldn't swap Y99er for any other band at the moment.

Then, a few weeks after I had met Y99er, I got an email from Natalie O'Neill asking me if I was available to play guitar for her new band, Red Antennae. They were based in London, but I hadn't seen Nat for a few years and wanted to catch up and see what she was up to, so I said I'd come down and take a look. Before going to university I had played in a trip-hop/techno band called Breeze, and had really enjoyed writing and recording songs based on loops, samples and computer-aided creativity. I'd been clubbing in London since I was about 17, and the dance culture was the one I most closely associated with; I'd grown up listening to all sorts of music, but in terms of who I was and the times I was living in, I dreamt of playing guitar for the Prodigy, Underworld, Leftfield, Orbital - bands who were DJ-based but who would have been using live instruments in their shows. Well, maybe not Orbital so much, but you get the idea. I liked to dance, I liked to play guitar, I wanted to merge the two. When I heard what Red Antennae were doing I knew I had to be involved, as although they were still closer to the traditional "band" format than they were to The Prodigy, the tunes were great, Nat's vocals were amazing and all they needed was someone to play guitar without making too much of a racket.

So I was in 3 bands. Fine if you are a full-time musican, slightly more complicated if you have a full-time job to hold down because you made a decision that you would support yourself through your music (i.e. not go on the dole, not have to starve on a regular basis, etc.) because you could, and because you didn't want to end up playing songs I hated with people I didn't like in order to pay the bills. I gave up playing rugby in order to try and make life easier on my fingers, as well as my schedule. So now I was starting to make real sacrifices for my music. I had played rugby since I was 14, and loved the game; I represented Oxfordshire at Under 21's level, as well as playing for local clubs and at university. Oh well, if I was going to take my music seriously (I figured the more I took it seriously, the more I would enjoy it - this turned out to be true!) I thought I could always go back and play rugby later in life. No biggie.

However, now I find myself having to write songs for the two bands, as well as learn new material for the function band (which is pretty easy usually, but as I'm trying to play jazz "properly" as much as I can, there is a bit of studying and figuring out to do). I'm also about to start writing for a secret project I've been invited to contribute towards which will hopefully be up and running in a couple of months, and summer always means lots of gigs and shows, so I'm basically looking at no free time for the next 3 months.

I think bands and musicians worry too much about what they are doing and the way they are doing it. I always advise people to work with as many other musicians as they can, to find out about how they like to work, how they like to play different music, who they like to play it with and most importantly to learn how to develop and grow as musicians and performers. You can never get too much of the right experience. I play in several bands because I want to play lots of different music, and I wouldn't be able to do that in just one band. But I guess you have to work a lot harder to remember 5 different sets of music, and be able to rehearse them whenever necessary. I seem to have sacrificed my summer this year to do just that! But how many bands split up because of "musical differences"? Would that happen if they had other bands to play in? If they did, surely bands would stay together because of musical similarities?

Anyway - my point is this; a musician who doesn't play a variety of music with a variety of different people is like a chef who only ever cooks one meal. Not much of a chef. But be prepared to have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen; not such a bad place to be, but not much fun if you'd rather be out and about in the garden enjoying the summer. There's a great ancient Greek expression - "Everything in moderation". But you have to remember that this should also include moderation.

I normally have a big(ish) stack of random CDs sitting on my desk at work, I took them all home on Friday so I could replace them with a different stack of stuff, otherwise I just listen to the same album over and over again for weeks. Recently that album has been the excellent In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 by Coheed and Cambria which I recommend everyone buys. Anyway, I forgot to bring any CDs with me this morning so I am going through my mp3 collection (all legal!) on random. A track by Miss Black America came on. An event that triggered the thought: "Oooh, Miss Black America, I wonder what they've been up to recently?". Which, in turn, took me to their website, and that answered my question regarding what they have been doing.

Amongst other things they've appeared on a recent Anti Racism compilation and associated tour. I suddenly got to thinking. Most of the time when you have bands who are overtly political they are pretty left wing, rebellious and anti-authority. I'm thinking the Manics, Rage Against the Machine, Asian Dub Foundation, System of a Down and any number of others. Even Sonic Undermind considered getting in on the act with the "Save the Sparrow" campaign. Until we found out that it was already a real campaign and sparrows were actually endangered which removed any humour value.

You hardly ever get very politically active bands that are vocally expousing really dull middle of the road politics. Ok, so kids do tend to be quite radically idealistic before world weary cynicism starts taking it's relentless toll, and kids do tend to buy a lot of records so maybe that answers my question. Or maybe it's just that it's only the rabidly political that feel they need to get their message across in their music. I get quite annoyed by people preaching. Even if I agree with them. You're a band, why should I care any more about what someone in a band thinks about some political situation than what a random person on the street thinks?

So, I don't really like it when bands are being overly political but I have a problem. I happen to be in a band, if I start going around saying that I think all bands should keep their opinions to themselves then the very act of expressing such an opinion would clearly make me a total hypocrite. Also I generally agree with a lot of the ideas that the bands I mentioned are supporting. So I should shut up.

For those of you concerned at my lack of CDs situation I have attempted to solve it by ordering (at long last) the amazing Frengers album by Mew.

The Sonic Undermind songwriting session on Friday night didn't go exactly as planned, despite great inspiration from the King's Road Crane Angel. We did manage to get the bonus track for the EP recorded, sans vocals, but creatively we had one of those frustrating evenings where everyone was going in different directions. Being in a band with 4 people with completely different music tastes to each other is great because you have a huge variety of influences to draw on. On the other hand it's terrible because you can start writing something that half the band love and half the band absolutely hate. It's good because you get plenty of different perspectives on what you are writing and you get to be quite ruthless about cutting out the bad stuff, on the other hand sometimes something great will be discarded because it doesn't fit with what people like playing. Anyway, Friday was a little frustrating. Loads of interesting ideas were pouring out but they were pouring in four seperate directions. We couldn't pull it all together to make any of it work as a song. Unless anyone out there really wants a tedious and confused heavy drum'n'bass indy metal track. Rob summed it up best with "it just isn't Sonic Undermind" and he was right.

So, a Reading band is starting to climb the charts - fantastic! I hope they open the way for other local bands to start making a name for themselves with a wider audience. Especially mine!

Hey! What a great Saturday! I'm off to Bristol in the sunshine, bottles of tequila rattling around in the back of my car - lovely stuff. I'm sending a review if Kaldera's CD to Kev to post on Josaka too - hope it makes you all want to go out and see them, play live and buy their CD's.

Peas. Owt.

Mike: Opening paragraph of this blog take #67. Will AK ever be satisfied or is he going to bitch and moan until I let him start the blog off?

AK: I just think we should have at least done "Paper, scissors, stoned" in true Jim Bowes style to decide who would launch the opening salvo, that's all. But the die has been cast, and now an unstoppable flow of drivel shall spew forth from our new blog column. Unstoppable flows spewing forth from our columns? It's good to start as we mean to go on! Fnarr! Fnarr!

Mike: First come first served!

It's slowly dawning on me that we can talk about pretty much anything on this blog, music stuff, local scene issues. Our views on whatever the current Berkshire Live scandle the message board heroes are stirring up. Local music scene gossip. Britney's sexy new image... There are too many potential topics, it's making my tiny brain overload.

AK: Well, we can talk about the racial issues brought up by Big Ron's recent remarks, or Tony Blair's slide down the greasy pole of popularity, but I think most visitors to Josaka will want us to mull over the important issues of the day such as "Is the weather warm enough for Rebus to go out without their scarves, or will they still catch a chill in April?"

Mike: Which nicely links to an interesting local music topic. Those cheeky little scamps have got themselves a support slot at the Fez with The Ordinary Boys. Good work! Only downside is that it's next Friday on the same night as the awesome Yumi Yumi (I am right! Always right!) at Club Velocity. Not sure whether to try and catch Rebus then go to Club V. I'm totally not bothered about seeing The Ordinary Boys.

AK: No! Really? Did I make a link there without even knowing/trying? Wow! I'm better at this than I thought! I'm reviewing the Ordinary Boys for the entirely delightful Linda Serck, so I shall be going to that, and missing Yumi Yumi for the umpteenth time. There's a rumour going around that Yumi Yumi are the best band in the world, so T'Ordinary Lads will have to work pretty hard to stop my review reading "Wish I'd gone to see Yumi Yumi". I'm morally against "fashionable" bands like T'Ordinary Blokes, anyway; the music is limp and insipid, the image is just too coolier-than-thou. And I made that statement without even knowing what T'Ordinary Chappies look or sound like. I heard their single on the radio, and turned it off after about four bars, so underwhelmed was I. But then I like to rock, not whinge and moan and despair that I'm not as good as The Smiths.

Mike: It's good to see that you are going into it with an open mind. In the interests of professional research I've been to their website for a look. No music to download on their site! I hate that, how am I supposed to find out what they sound like from the site? The music that plays over the flash intro to the site is pretty good though. I did also find their latest video on NME.com. I cannot disagree with your Smiths comment.

AK: Fair play to Rebus though - that's a cool gig.

Mike: Indeed. We, Sonic Undermind, are off to Impact for a songwriting jam tonight. 10 to midnight. In other words getting drunk with instruments. Last time we did this we came up with Chimpcopter.

AK: You'd think you'd have learnt your lesson by now; what are you hoping to achieve this time? I did find that newspaper report about the Rhino-car love-tryst quite unnerving though, I'm beginning to think that Sonic Undermind may well be the prophets of the apocalypse, and not just the amusing piss-heads that people mistake you for.

Mike: It's terrifying. We haven't got any ideas yet. Going to the pub first so who knows what we'll come up with. You up to any musical delights this weekend?

AK: I'll be doing my usual fret-board workouts, and writing songs for my new - and highly top-secret - chanteuse. Yes, I wasn't being challenged by being in three different bands, so I thought I'd branch out. Again. But I'm not gigging this weekend, or rehearsing - it's one of my lesser-spotted weekends off, and well deserved, too. I'm getting drunk in Bristol on Sat, and feeling rough at home all day Sunday. Ooh, there's European cup rugby semi-finals that will need watching, mustn't forget to do that.