Michael McKeegan on the state of rock

Therapy? have been busy of late – they’ve toured their seminal LP Troublegum, played follow-up Infernal Love to a packed crowd at Sonsiphere and have found time to record fierce new recording Disquiet. They bring tunes from that LP and the back catalogue to the Marble factory on Friday 27 March. Tickets are available here. Michael McKeegan (bass) took five minutes to answer a few questions for us…

B24/7 Quick fire round to warm up – pick one of each of the following:

Judge Dredd or Batman?

Judge Dredd

The Undertones or Stiff Little Fingers?

Close, but The Undertones have it for me.

Glastonbury or Download?

Download

Proper grown up questions. Sort of…

The NME, Kerrang!, Mojo, Classic Rock – how important is print media to a working band in the digital age?

I think there’s defiantly a place for it and I think good print media needs to have a ‘specific’ angle or approach to make it work. There’s no way a monthly magazine can be as up to date with news etc as the internet music/media sites but I think if the journalism is good and the subject matter interesting people are always going to buy and read magazines. Personally I like a mix of stuff; I get my day to day music news, streams & videos online and then have subscriptions to a few magazines also. I suppose the good thing now is that there are a lot of options, there are myriad ways of accessing info and great avenues for younger/newer writers and journalists as well.

You’ve stuck with Nigel Rolfe for the art work for new recording, Disquiet. How important is artwork in the digital age?

We kind of grew up with physical copy for albums so I like vinyl and seeing proper artwork and stuff like that. I’m not such a Luddite that I don’t appreciate the convenience of digital media now but I don’t really have space for any more cds or vinyl in my house. I think Nigel is one of the artists that we like that sort of encapsulates the physical, intense, dark surreal world that T? songs deal with.

Bristol’s the first date on the UK leg of this tour. How’ve we treated you in the past?

Bristol has always been good to us over the years, I think we played the Thekla pretty early on and one of our first shows outside Ireland was supporting the Virgin Prunes in the Fleece. Got a lot of good friends down there as well so always fun to visit.

You’ve played complete albums of your own. Meanwhile, prog-metallers Dream Theater are renowned for playing other people’s albums in their entirety. Would you ever consider playing someone else’s LP in full? If so, can you agree on an album you’d all like to play or world it be one each?

Haha…not sure if we’d do another band’s album justice. I’d like to do something slightly non-rock like maybe a take on Suicide’s debut but off the top of my head I’d say the first Undertones album, its chock full of classic songs…hook after hook, be a pleasure to play.

Sonisphere’s not happening this year; do you think the country’s reached saturation point with festivals? Part of the problem is allegedly the small pool of bands that organisers believe are capable of headlining – fair point?

Possibly. I do see a lot of the same line-ups doing the same summer run each year. Then again, a lot of it is to do with logistics and who’s available, or touring, or out of rehab that summer. I like going to big festivals to hang out and see the mega-acts and I also like going to smaller more specialised festivals as well, where I can see stuff I rarely get to see in NI and to hopefully hear a few new artists. I’m going to Temples in Bristol this year and that’s the sort of interesting, unique line-up I really dig, it’s certainly not for the ‘casual rock fan’ but of course that’s not the point. I think festivals with more of ‘focussed/curated’ line-up like Temples are the ones that will do well and grow in a nice organic way, avoiding hype and keeping it fresh each year.

Fourteen LPs in to you career now, is there a runt in the litter that you’d like to rework or replace?

I hate to put the boot into it, as I enjoyed recording it and I think there are some killer songs on it, but for me One Cure Fits All could do with a different, ballsier sounding production. For me its sort of neither rough enough nor ‘polished’ enough, falls between the two sonic stools so to speak.

A duo from Brighton have recently been anointed by the fashion police as the saviour of guitar-based rock. The media regularly seem to think guitar based rock needs saving, but I’ve certainly never seen it anywhere near death’s door over the past three decades – what’s your take?

I think every 5 years the mainstream media has a crisis and begins shouting “ROCK IS DEAD” then a few years later it’s “ROCK IS BACK”: it all goes in waves. Normally each wave/scene has a couple of unique sounding bands, then it gets swamped with copyist acts (usually fuelled by desperate A&R men), everything is overloaded with generic bands and people get tired and start to look for something fresh. The scene leaders always survive and continue to be creative and all the dead weight falls away, I think that’s only natural and I think it’s important to have bands that act as catalysts to introduce newer or younger music fans to the heavier stuff. I didn’t really know much about rock music until I heard AC/DC, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, which then led me on to discover thrash metal and punk rock and then on into black metal, post-punk and more underground (at the time) scenes.