by James Korba
So yeah, Head Hits Concrete are playing the Frames Arts Gallery this Saturday March 15th with Cetascean and guests. You should go because it’s gonna be punishing as all hell. Stylus had a chance to talik to vocalist Mike Alexander about their impending doom, I mean “tour.” Yeah, tour!
Stylus: It seems HHC has been playing a lot lately. Has this brutal winter stoked your creative fires?
Mike Alexander: Yeah, we wrote a bunch of new songs last summer and once the weather started changing for the worse, we decided it was time to take this band to a level it hasn’t been in a long time. To be a fully functioning wrecking machine complete with value-priced merchandise and a take no prisoner’s attitude. We realized that this was the right time to organize ourselves to prepare for the goal of making it out on the road for a couple of weeks. So in order to dig ourselves out of the tomb, we needed to raise some funds and try some new songs as well as some oldies. So far so good.
Stylus: You plan on playing a lot of early material at the March 15th show? How early are we talking here?
Mike A: We’ll be doing a few old ones going as far back as the split 10” with My Minds Mine. There will be five or so songs from the split 7” with Bodies Lay Broken. A little bit of each release, I’d say. Definitely a few things that we haven’t played in a decade.
Stylus: What are you looking forward to the most about touring with Cetascean? Any new recordings in the works?
Mike A: I’m sure everyone is looking forward to moments of self-doubt, distrust, alienation and social withdrawal inside that van. But even more importantly, I think it’s great to tag team with a band as great as those guys. They are definitely one of the city’s finer exports. They’ve toured out that way before and all the feedback I’ve ever heard has been exceedingly positive. So we all have the sense that the shows will be great. As for new stuff, Mercy of Slumber Records will be putting out a tape for us since we disobeyed the rules that clearly state that you should only tour on a new release. This tour came up so fast that we didn’t really have the time to figure out much more than a tape, which is totally fine. We threw our most recent 7” on it along with the most recent demo material and some live stuff from 2004 on it. I think it will turn out fine.
Stylus: Are you going to be spreading Bomber gospel throughout BC?
Mike A: No one I know in BC cares about the Lions, so I figure it would be like the time I tried telling jokes with my other band on stage in Poland. No one knew what that hell I was talking about and it was terrible. I know a couple people along the way who will want to talk CFL which is cool, but overall I don’t expect anyone to be excited about the fact that the Cup is coming home in 2014.
Stylus: Did you think you would still be doing this with HHC when you first started 10 plus years ago?
Mike A: I don’t really plan for anything that far ahead. Having said that, my closest friends are all lifers when it comes to this scene and the bands that continue to wage war on good taste. I guess it’s not very surprising that HHC are all 40 year old men who would rather be doing nothing more than kicking eardrums in the ass with this music. Do we have another 10 years in us? Who knows? For now this is what makes us happy and creatively satisfied.