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It’s all Gone a bit Clint Boon!

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After negotiating with the car park attendant for permission to stay in the XFM car park, I managed to make my way through the rotating doors with a hand full of red heads, a camera and my tripod.

I was then greeted by a pleasantly plump bloke in a suit who very kindly advised me to make my way up to the first floor.

I finally entered the XFM studios where I was surprised to see two members of The Cribs sat in the waiting area! (I decided not to pester them with any interview techniques!).

Clint Boon soon arrived and after making a cup of tea we chatted for almost an hour about Clint’s favorite bands, his life with the Inspiral Carpets and most importantly his new events — Clint seems to be taking over the music scene in Manchester!

Check out further events organized by Clint Boon on line at Moho Live, The Ruby Lounge and the basement night club known as South .

Clint surprisingly has lots of party antics planned for the autumn and winter. You can check out more information on the latest events by taking a look at the first half of the interview on the Manchester City Life web page here.

Read on below to find out more about Mr Boon’s very busy life style:

Michelle Heighway: How do you get the bands to play at the events and how do you advertise?

Clint Boon: You can get us on face book on Mrs boons cakes and tea parties. The way I get the bands in is because I’m in a band . Mostly it’s people I know from years ago and a lot of them I’ve met from the radio.

I’ve been doing radio full time now for five years and I’ve been at XFM for four years now so there are a lot of the bands that I come in to contact with and I’ve become friendly with them over the years. I phone them and they say yes because I’ve supported them since day one. A lot of it is we are returning favours to some extent.

When I explain the concept of the tea party to some bands. It’s like something they have never seen and they instantly want to be a part of it. We didn’t devise a business plan it just happened spontaneously and I think all the best things do. You know me joining The Inspiral Carpets it was complete set of accidents the way that all came about.

MH: How did the band get together — was it by accident?

CB: The band already existed. They needed some rehearsal space and they came to my little studio to do some rehearsing and asked me to record some demos. I fell in love with band. They were a great punk band at that time. Your talking 1985 and I basically started jamming with them on the organ and that was it I was in, it wasn’t like a group of lads that just sat down and thought lets form a garage band that’s really catchy with a very prominent organ sounds. It just happened accidentally you know what mean.

Because of that it made it more enjoyable .It was something we did for nothing cause we loved it. Suddenly it became our career. And it’s like the same things happened with the tea party. My wife and me love it .We are passionate about it. Our kids love it and suddenly it became this incredible business. I think it will be the family business for years.

The Inspiral carpets it’s still on going we don’t do it full time. Every 18 months or so we go on tour around Britain and its still the same five people and the same brilliant chemistry. We are very close friends and were probably closer now than we have ever been to be honest with you. Were not living in each other’s pockets day in day out we don’t have any issues or falling out. We have no ego problems and we manage our selves and that’s like a holiday for us. A gentleman’s club on the road you know. We don’t tell our wive’s that. So that’s great.

South nightclub, I do these on Saturday nights and that justs going from strength to strength. And I don’t envisage stopping that I’ll probably do that until the day I die. Or until the audience start shouting Clint your too old knock it on the head.

And that could happen anytime now actually couldn’t it but I enjoy it they enjoy it; it’s a phenomenal night.To keep a weekly night for eight years in Manchester without any advertising is pretty special that.

MH: So do you have a tour scheduled for Inspiral Carpets ?

CB:The inspirals well the way it is really is that we haven’t done anything for a year now and we usually get a night out and go to China Town in Manchester and book a Chinese restaurant and get a meal and discuss what were going to do next. It s very relaxed but we can be now.

Our lives don’t depend on selling records with Inspiral carpets written on them. Its almost like it is our hobbie. We all have other things that we do to make a living out of. We have our own priority jobs like XFM. XFM is my main job at the moment. So it means when we do Inspiral Carpets we can be very relaxed about it and enjoy it. We still make a lot of money out of it when we do it cause we don’t have a manager taking 20% or an agent taking 12 % or these middlemen. We do it all our selves, which is nice.

So its so much more relaxed now. Yeah the only problem we have now is we bruise more easily. We all got back together in 2003. We had not played for years and years. I went from doing no key boarding at all to rehearsing for weeks and weeks on end. Suddenly my fingers and my arms were working and I ended up with tennis elbow and I got that really bad. Graham the guitarist was obviously playing guitar every day and he got bad problems in his back and Tom had problems with his knees. So the only problems we get really are we cant really throw our selves about as much as we did.

MH: So what made you get back together in 2003?

CB: A series of get togethers. We had lost contact and gone our own ways to the extent that we weren’t in daily contact with each other or weekly or even monthly.

We had to have a couple of meetings to discuss things. You know any band when you create a back catalogue. There comes a point where the publishing deal expires and you need to negotiate a new publishing deal. So yeah we had to meet up regarding the publishing deal and we all got on really well and slotted back in to that mentality 1989 you know taking the piss out of Tom the lead singer and that kind of stuff and it felt like we had not been apart.

Eventually the question came up, who fancied doing some gigs and all five wanted to it so that it happened. So again it was a spontaneous thing. The chemistry and the friend ship of the five individuals is what lead to the band getting back together so that was nice.

MH: Do you post regular bulletins on what’s on?

CB: I’m really bad on the PR side I get all the ideas but I don’t have time you instigate them or let people know what’s going on, a lot of the time I just use my mobile phone and I have lots of groups on here for tea party invites so I sent a couple hundred texts out every Friday saying who’s on. But recently I did open a twitter account and a face book. There is a danger now that we will get completely inundated with all these events but that something that’s easy to sort out if the problem arises, its exiting times. There’s a lot happening.

Its funny because at the Christmas just gone I was in hospital, it was serious. I had a ruptured appendix for two or three weeks and it was serious to the point were I thought look I nearly died there. I was in hospital and I thought I really need to calm down cause I’m doing too much and that thought lasted about ten minutes and I then I thought life’s too short. You better get more done. The result of this is that I came out of hospital with a lot more ideas of things that I wanted to do. And one is to create a strong family business and also help get bands out on the radio and on stage. You can help people and have fun at the same time. And that’s the sort of what I do really. I have a right good crack to help people up the ladder a little bit.

MH: Do you feel you have achieved everything that you would like to have achieved in your lifetime?

CB: No way. I’ve got a lot of ambitions that I know I wont get round to doing and a lot of them are just simple little things really but I wont get to do everything I want to do. I wont even get to do some of the simple things I want to do. I like the idea of writing a book. I’d like to make documentaries for TV and I’d like to more radio. Different kinds of radio. So I have ideas all the time.

I think the good thing with me is I’ve already achieved quiet a lot and created quiet a lot and helped a lot of people so if I cop for it tomorrow I’ve done alright really no regrets but I do like to thing I’ll still be here in twenty years time as a seventy year old helping people and talking shit.

I’m also involved in film projects. Grittish films have been putting a film together called down our way and I’ve got a small part in that. Bruce Jones has the main part in it. You know Les Battersby.

So it’s been exciting that I’ve been part of that. I was also involved with Angels with Manky Faces . It’s just been on at the library theatre. It’s a stage play based on a book on the gangs of Manchester that has been put together by mad theatre.

MH: Who are you favourate bands at the moment?

CB: My two favourite bands are Munford and Sons and Sigh No More. That’s a great album. I don’t think they’ve finished their artwork for the album yet but that’s going to make a massive impact on Britain that album.

And threes a band from Australia called The Temper Trap. They are a really exiting rock band and it’s like a really driving guitar rock band but with this beautify falsetto male voice on I and that’s just beautiful stuff. A lot of other stuff I’m in to we plays on XFM. I love the Bloc Party single and I love Florence and the Machine and I love the new Pearl Jam records even though I’m not a pearl jam fan. There’s a lot of good music about at the moment.

XFM is a good filter for new music- the best stuff gets played on XFM. Some people don’t like the fact we play stuff on high rotation but that’s what radio stations do. The play list is to built familiarity in the listener’s head and that way we create hit records and that makes bands like Florence and the Machine get a career.

Dates to remember!

BOON ARMY @ MOHO LIVE

All the best local bands plus headliners’¦

1st October Howard Marks

5th November Very special guests!!!

MRS BOON’S FABULOUS TEA PARTY @ THE RUBY LOUNGE

3^rd October Heal The Last Stand

10th October The Lovely Eggs

17th October The Sonic Boom Six plus VERY SPECIAL GUESTS!!!

Interview with Clint