Started in the mid-80's, the Bosstones honed their skills, releasing several well-received albums on the Boston indie Taang! before getting picked up by Mercury. The band is inspired by a wide cross-section of the coolest music from the late 70's-early 80's (y'know, stuff that should have been on the "Reality Bites" soundtrack). Quoting everything from punk to metal to the original Two-Tone bands, their sound is loud, fast and explosive, making them one of the most exciting live "alternative" acts ever. And they know what a melody is. The Bosstones' major label debut Don't Know How To Party was produced by Tony Platt, who, with Bob Marley, Cheap Trick, and AC/DC on his resume, was an ideal match. It sold enough to make the Bosstones a household name. Now happily ensconced at Mercury, their next album, Question The Answers has been released. (The LP will also be made available on vinyl via the band's own Big Rig records.) In addition to incorporating other musical styles into their ska mix, Question The Answers is a multi-producer album: The Bosstones brought in the Butcher Bros. (Urge Overkill, Cypress Hill), Paul Q. Kolderie (who produced their first two Taang! albums), and their live sound engineer.
The effort the Bosstones put into getting a variety of flavors on the album pay big dividends. Check out "Dogs and Chaplains": a heavy heavy intro yields into a sweet, neat segue into a hip-hop flava that effortlessly flows into traditional pogo-happy Bosstone ska. When you get to the kind of hyper-niche bands that genres like ska and death metal create, it can be very limiting. Question The Answers is absolutely, unmistakably a Bosstones album, yet it's definitely breaking new ground.
NET recently caught up with Joe Gittleman, key songwriter and bassist extraordinaire, between sessions for the new Bosstones album, and later with whiskey-voiced lead singer/lyricist Dicky Barrett and sax man Tim "Johnny Vegas" Burton.
Joe Gittleman: A lot of hard work. We were very happy on Taang! Records. And we were out there touring to the point where our shows were getting big enough that people started to take notice. We weren't getting played on the radio, we weren't getting played on MTV, we weren't selling a whole lot of records, but our shows were getting bigger and bigger.
The label weasels started sniffing around, but we were happy. Then six months prior to our signing, we sold a lot more records and we weren't being paid. Half the band was sleeping on people's couches back in Boston and we needed to eat.
So we had to move elsewhere, so we could continue being the Bosstones and have fun doing it.
NET: Where did the Might Mighty sound come from?
JG: We stole from pretty much everybody we grew up with. Bad Manners, Madness, the Specials were a big ska influence. At the same time, we'd listen to the Clash and Stiff Little Fingers. I liked AD/DC then. I like Motorhead and you hear all that stuff in the band.
NET: What was the first album you ever bought?
JG: Barry Manilow Live. He was also the first live concert I ever saw. After that the next one was probably Black Flag or something.
NET: What gets you writing, and what do you write about?
JG: I never find myself 'inspired' to write music -- I like to write things that sound good to me. It's not like something happens to me and I feel the need to play the guitar about it. Uh, that's sounds kind of crappy -- I think it should be something from my soul but it just isn't.
NET: How does such a large voting body approve songs or decide who gets to sit in the front of the bus?
JG: A large band really makes life easier. It's a lot of fun going out on the road with a whole bunch of your friends. We're like a traveling good time. I feel like we bring Boston with us wherever we go.
Dicky Barrett: We were touring sporadically as we wrote, and we'd get a fistful of good songs together and record that as opposed to going in with some ideas and writing in the studio.
Tim Burton: We're happy with {Don't Know How to Party} but we wanted to do something different. We felt there was a sameness in the production of the previous albums. The producer would put a chart on the wall with a checklist of things to do, and that to us, wasn't a way to approach the creative process.
NET: Where did the new direction come from?
DB: We always do it our way, from our heads to our hearts. But we're over-examining something that we went into ass-backwards in the first place. People who say they liked the first album better, fine. They are welcome to any album they want, but it would be pretty damn boring if we stuck to what was successful the last time.
TB: We like to perform these songs in front of people -- recording is just an attempt to capture these songs.
DB: Live and studio playing are two different monsters. Once you learn that, you can better control them. We know it's good if the eight of us like it. We run away from formulas. We're all basically musical idiots, so we'll try anything, and nine times out of ten, anything works.
NET: Touring with Fishbone is a natural, but playing with bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Aerosmith and Black Train Jack?
DB: Agh, they're just trying to buy some credibility...Black Train is actually a band we really love. They have a good message, it fits with our overall message, basically unity and using your fucking brains. Plus it makes for an interesting show when the bands we tour with are different from us.
TB: It wasn't just a couple of managers and label people sitting down and brainstorming, it was up to us.
DB: STP and Aerosmith, they were trying to buy themselves some credibility.
TB: We take it on an individual basis. If STP asked us to tour the US with them we'd say 'No thank you,' but since it was some cities in Europe we'd never seen, it seemed like a lot of fun. With Aerosmith, it was Boston, it was New Year's Eve, it was kind of a traditional thing . . .
DB: . . .and we like to throw people off and confuse them and it obviously worked.
NET: What spurred you to write the anti-gun "Hell of a Hat"?
DB: Being older than most of the kids that come to our shows. When I was their age it didn't seem necessary to carry a gun, but now a gun is part of your high school wardrobe. We don't see the need for it. There's enough of that stuff out there that will fuck you up without carrying a powerful weapon of destruction.
NET: What's the story behind the rocker "Sad Silence?"
Then he started doing this on a regular basis. After he'd punch me we'd hang out, play pool. I never died or anything, but it stuck with me. Sometimes I'd dream about it, so I wrote about what I put up with to be accepted. It sucked, but when I was writing the song I felt like I was on Sally Jesse, and I haven't had the dream since. I'm going to write a song about having braces.
NET: Are you including lyrics with Question the Answers?
TB: Yes, we've learned our lesson. People corner us backstage and ask us to sing lyrics to songs off our first album . . .
DB: I'm not afraid to bare my shit anymore, so I have no problem including lyrics.