ninehertz

On the 17th March 2004, after an ever-impressive support slot from Winnebago Deal, the mighty Nebula played an awesome set at the Fez Club, Sheffield. Ninehertz managed to interview the band before the gig.

Interview by Podge

Right, hang on I've got to re-read all the questions, I've been at work all day, my friends have given me a list of things to ask and not to ask.

Eddie Glass - Let me guess, it says 'don't ask them about Fu Manchu'?

Er, yeah that's the first thing on the list!

EG - [Laughing] Nah man I don't care ask what you want.

You currently have a split EP out with Winnebago Deal, how did that come about?

EG - We did a tour back in November all over Europe, the label that we released it on, Sweet Nothing, wanted to put it out, they came up with putting this single together after we did the tour.

And are you happy to be on the split with a band like Winnebago Deal?

EG - Yeah, it was kinda a label idea, I dunno? Whose idea was it to do the split, Simon? Yeah, so after we did that European tour, why not?

You've just come off tour with Clutch and Mastodon, which must have been some tour?

EG -Yeah, we played every night all over the US.

I think most people in England were hoping that you would bring the tour over here.

EG - We could have man, we get on with those guys, it's a possibility we could do that, Mastodon have played here before right? Clutch like to play all the little shows, all over the US.

You've put out records on all sorts of different labels. Do you go looking for certain ones or do you just accept who ever come along and go with it?

EG - We're just happy with any that will give us tour support and put our record out, we were lucky to find SubPop for our first two records then we've been with Sweet Nothing for all of our full lengths, they've done a good job at putting it out in Europe and the UK so... we were also on Century Media so we were covered in Europe and the US.

What about the Dos EP?

EG - Yeah that was out on Meteor City, that's another label we've worked with. Simon from Sweet Nothing is good he's been putting the records out for a while.

I don't know what its like in America but over here were getting a lot of garage rock; Winnebago Deal could be classed as the harsher end of that, is it the same over there?

EG - Yeah, we've had it for a while, The Hives, The White Stripes, a lot of "The" bands. But yeah that's been going on for years, its been like San Diego since the early 90's there has been that garage thing, I like that fast stuff.

You've had a couple of line up changes in a short time, do you think you are settled now or is Isaiah getting the boot after these shows?

EG - It's all up to him.

Isaiah Mitchell - I'm getting the boot, the bout... the boot, how do you say it?

So do you want to stay?

IM - Yeah, I'm having a good time, it's a good experience to travel, do the things you want to do when you're a kid, its pretty fun.

You had a couple of bands before, do any of them compare to travelling Europe with Nebula?

IM - Yeah I've got a band back home, we've never made it over here, were just getting to do a little bit of touring, its working out, things are excelling, we'll get there some day, we really wanna go to Japan, it's a lot of work, but yeah I'd love to get the stuff out there and see what people think of it.

So how did you hook up with these guys?

IM - Well my band back at home called Earthless I play guitar for, were from San Diego, and when Nebula used to come down we'd always be booked on the same bill, so we knew each other, I used to look up to Nebula before I even knew them. So I was stoked to be on a bill with them and the first person to come up to us after stage was this guy (Eddie) so I thought that was pretty cool, and he was like "whoa man that was cool" and I'm like 'yeah man thank you', so I dunno we were just friends in music and we have mutual friends.

On your website you have the bootlegs section were you encourage fans to send in live recordings of the band, that's pretty unusual and almost controversial should any of your record companies want to put out a live album. What's your take on the whole downloading mp3s?

IM - I think its good people are listening to it you know, as long as their not mass producing it and selling it that's cool, that's the difference with big bands, were still being heard, its promotion for us, so many people are making fancy covers for it and selling it on eBay, but even to me with that I don't give a shit, I'd buy it if I like the cover, but not for like 20 bucks, you can buy a record for that. But I'm all for that, we don't get many royalties anyway so...

Your one of the more well known but smaller bands in what people tend to call stoner, you seem to have done pretty well with the small amount of releases you've put out, do you put that down to the amount of touring you do or what?

IM - Well we've never been a part of that whole thing, we were a band before I heard the term, we were doing our own thing and we put our first record and I'd start hearing the term stoner rock once in a while. It seemed to come from Europe, every magazine was like stoner rock stoner rock stoner rock, it's a way of making people define what type of rock music it is. In America it's all different, its so far between what is stoner rock, you could say one thing and people think you sound like the Melvins, heavy bong head sort of stuff like Electric Wizard, High On Fire, they are stoner rock and were nothing like them. Its just guitar based music that people have to find a term for. Were not grunge and were not punk rock, I don't take any of my influences from stoner rock.

So what were your influences?

IM - I grew up listening to a load of English bands, Paul Weller, the Jam, Sex Pistols, and the Clash. But then I'd hear all the American band trying to sound English and all the English bands trying to sound American and I'd be like what's going on, all swapping and changing. Cos I grew up around the Black Flag, Circle Jerks and all the LA punk stuff. But it seemed like the English bands were playing their instruments more, being more musical. But then round the 80's I started listening to Dinosaur JR, they were a big influence, Sonic Youth, and through them into Hendrix, I kinda went backwards from new music to the older Black Sabbath and stuff. Now I'm digging up old records and hunting stuff out like the blues you know.

Final question... what's the main difference you see between touring Europe and America?

IM - Well America is a lot bigger, we have our van that we tour round in and between each city is a big long drive, it can vary between the east and the west coasts, it's the same here but on a smaller scale, like you can go from London to Glasgow and it's a different country just 8 hours, in America every show could be 8 hours away.

Cheers

IM - Cool man, enjoy the show.