INTERVIEW
FRONTKICK
by Christer Davidsson, April 2006

Hi! How’s it going?

Marti Neurotic: Fine,Thanks!!!

What have you been doing since the release of “Underground Stories” and how was the album recieved by the crowd?

-Well, that was already a couple of years ago, it was released at the end of 2004 and well, we got a really good feedback from it, we cannot complain really. We have been playing pretty much, we have toured Spain and played many shows across Germany on two tours, one with our Swedish friends from Smalltown and another one with Boston’s finest Street Dogs, but still a lot of things happened in between.
Our former drummer left the band and the same with Hardy H. (the guitar player from the Underground Stories), so we have two new members. Vovka M. who is our drummer and an old friend of the band and Martin B. who took over Hardy H. at the guitars. That’s why we were on standby for a couple of months, but now we’re rolling again, writing for our new album and planning a lot of  tourdates.

There’s a Clash cover on that album. How come you decided to record “Career
Opportunities”? Big Clash fans?

-I actually wanted to do a Clash cover since I started up with music, they’ve been my favourite band ever, and for the underground stories sessions we had two clash numbers prepared, but Career Opportunities was the one that worked out better. We’re all clash fans and they’ve been and are a big influence in our music. I definitely want to do another Clash version in the future.

I really like the song “Out of Tune”! Tell me about and the new split 7” with Radio Dead Ones.

-The guys from RDO have been pretty active in our history, Rik Oldman played guitar with us before Hardy H. joined the band, and TV Mörk played drums with us like half a year or so when we didn’t have a drummer. Also I’ve played the guitar with them for like a year and recorded their first single with ‘em. Right now I’m kind of an inactive member of RDO and a big fan, so are we all. We did share a rehearsal room and all that so we have a close history, and of course we decided to do a split 7”! 
The idea of doing a cover of “Out of Tune” came up long ago when I was playing with them. Beverly’s voice is much more rough and so is the original version, I thought that we could bring that melodic touch that I sensed in that song. Right now we’re pretty happy with it and play it as it was our own, of course not forgetting  that it is from them, but of course so they did with our “Broken Skull”.

I’ve been listening to the band since the “Berlin Rejects” 7” and the sound have changed quite a bit over the years. I think you sound better and better for each record. In what way would you say you have changed during this time?

-The evolution that we’ve been suffering was the most logical and the one that we couldn’t really avoid, since our 1st  singer left us I was the only one to carry on with the vocal part and my voice is much more melodic than his! Actually we’re playing the same music that we wanted to do with him but I think that now the ingredients are the proper ones to put out the songs that we want to. Also a lot in our lives has changed since back then, and for me, personally, what I live day by day becomes a much bigger influence on the music than music itself. But as I always say: we’re always looking for our sound and we’re every day a step closer to get there. Right now we’re finding ourselves so much and we are having a lot of fun, so I hope we can surprise ourselves in the next month while we’re writing our new stuff.

You are writing songs for your next album, how is that going? What can we expect from it and when will it be out?

-Really, I have a very unclear view of what is it going to be like, but then yet a big hope and expectations as well as a vision of how we want to put this record together, we’re throwing away many ideas that we’re not really happy with, more than in the other records, I don’t really know if that’s good or bad, but I know that we’re putting a lot of effort and feelings into this one and we want it to work.
We are starting with the pre-production now and well, I don’t know yet when will it come out, but we’re looking forward to go in to the studio, and well, the only thing I can promise is that is going to be a pure Frontkick record. Nothing more and nothing less.

How’s Berlin nowdays? I know you still have Wild at Heart, any other good clubs? What about bands from Berlin, anything you would recommend?

-Well, Wild at Heart, Trinkteufel, Franken Bar and a huge etc. Basically what has been around in Kreuzberg since ever, also our Stephan has since a year a club and concert hall called Clash (good name isn’t it?). I can name you a couple of bands like Radio Dead Ones of course and the Situations, bands like the Shocks and a big bunch of others...

Tell me about Neurotic TV.

-Neurotic TV is a project that started 2 years ago when I was playing with the Radio Dead Ones, they got a new portable studio and me and TV Mörk started to figure out how it worked, so we recorded a song. It was pretty good so we thought that we should go on recording tunes and ideas that wouldn’t fit into our real bands and maybe someday bring out a 7” or so.
We’re not gonna play live, it’s merely a record project, right now we have a lot of music and we’re longing to bring out a record sometime, but still we gotta find time to do it because we’re both pretty busy with our own bands. Still I have a lot of fun doing that because TV is an awesome drummer and a great songwriter.

I did an interview with Chip Hanna a few weeks ago and I saw you on some photos with him. Are you good friends? I heard you backed him up when he was doing his solo-tour.

-We’ve been friends since we were on tour with One Man Army some years ago. I saw him  solo for the first time in the aftershow party from an U.S. Bombs show a year ago or so and he blew me away, awesome voice! Then afterwards I saw him at the Wild at Heart when he was playing his solo tour and I offered him a last show for the tour at Stephan’s club, I told him that we’re gonna support him because we, every now and then do acoustic shows and it ended up to be an awesome show and experience. Chip is a really cool dude, and on the show he had some live guest as Tex and Andy from Mad Sin or even myself. I joined him to play “Another Night” from One Man Army. I had the time of my life, afterwards I only remember waking up in the toilet completely drunk and wasted. But it was worth it, a big hug goes
out to Chip and Eryn!

So, will the release of the new split be followed-up by a tour? What are your plans, except for the new album?

-Right now we have some dates, we’re planning on going to Sweden with Smalltown, and a tour with the Generators was planed but their booking agency was not really in the mood of having us on the bill so now we’re expecting at least to play some shows from that tour because Ace and the Gens wanted us to support them, lets see , with the RDO boys, I guess we’re gonna play some shows in the future but we don’t have any upcoming dates yet. I don’t know, we’ll keep going I guess!

Thanks a lot for answering the questions, anything you would like to say to the ones reading this interview?

-Of course thanx to you for the interview and to all of you that read this, hope to see you soon in your town and have a great time!

Links:

http://www.frontkick.de

http://www.frontkick.net

http://www.myspace.com/frontkick

http://www.myspace.com/neurotictv