"Alright, I'm a big fucking sell-out!" Mighty Mighty Bosstones frontman Dicky Barrett barked over the telephone from his home outside Boston.

"I think that anybody who chooses to evaluate past the fact that we wear plaid suits and there is a horn section can see that it's a lot deeper," he said. "I'm not bummed out that people don't think I'm as deep as your fucking boy from Stone Temple Pilots, or as shallow as that guy, one way or the other."

It's been a whirlwind of a year for the Bosstones. The end of 1994 saw the release of their fourth full length LP, Question the Answers. On the strength of the recording and their live show, Perry Farrell invited them to join the Lollapalooza lineup where they opened for the likes of Cypress Hill, Sonic Youth and Pavement. In the meantime, they managed to land a minor role playing themselves in last summer's Alicia Silverstone vehicle, Clueless. And if that's not enough, when they wrap up their current tour, it's back to the studio to finish up their next album to be released on their own label, Big Rig Records.

Probably best known for their fusion of ska-core, the Bosstones have been one of the most influential ska bands in recent years and have been front-runners in bringing ska to the mainstream.

"Rancid will probably do more for it [ska] than we will," Barrett said. "Good music is good music and people should pay attention to it. It deserves to be heralded and put on the radio and all that other shit that people get all scared of. "If because of what we did, any attention was given to ska bands, I think that's great; but if we're the complete torch carriers for ska music, then I think something's wrong because we're not very good at ska. I think there are bands that play it better than we do, it's just one of the things that we add to our musical stew, but it's not the first thing we do."

Playing everything from hard-core to reggae to punk to ska,

the Bosstones have created their own genre of music in the time they've been together, Barrett said.

"We draw from a lot of different things," Barrett said. "We've got eight guys in the band with lots of different musical influences. I don't know how to describe it...eight guys trying to have some fun?"

The Bosstones got their first chance to have fun on a national level when they appeared in a Converse shoe ad in the mid `80s. While still struggling to make it in the fledgling Boston bar scene, Converse approached the band to be the poster children for their new line of plaid Chuck Taylor's.

"Converse came to us and said, `You guys can do these commercials and all it involves is selling yourself more than selling the sneaker.' So we did it," Barrett said. "It was great for us and I don't think it was too great for the sneaker company. I don't know how many pairs of shoes they sold because we were pitching them."

However, Barrett insisted that it was more important than ever, after the sneaker spots aired, to prove themselves as a band and convince they could still deliver by embarking on numerous tours.

"It takes a tough band to overcome being `the sneaker band,'" Barrett said. "The bottom line is that we write songs and perform them and I think that if you do that, well, that's what you're held accountable for. The other stuff, a day shooting videos if you want, that's not where our hearts are. We're not great sneaker salesmen, we're not great motion picture stars, and we're not really great at making videos but I think we're pretty damn great at live shows and making Bosstones albums."

With this attitude, the band has managed to stay down to earth; at the very mention of the term "rock star," Barrett cringes. "The way my life is right now, it's very good," he said. "It's not bad being me. The thing I'm most proud about is that people like us for what it is that we do, something we've created. I don't want to be a Tommy Lee where people say, `Oh! He's in a band!' I want to be held accountable for what it is we do and evaluated on that scale, anything short of that doesn't really interest me."