I really, really like this guy.  Thank you, Andy.

“Bollocks”. I mean there ARE people who will say that kind of thing. Quite why the Brits are so frightened of a member of their number being ambitious, creative and inspired eludes me. But hey, I’m used to it and its water off a duck’s back to me. You can call it elitist because I did something I could do, I pushed myself, I went further than I had to. If that’s elitism then I’m guilty of it and so are the people who listen to it. But I am a musically uneducated person who started off in a punk band and got better and more varied in what I do. I wanted more, music itself led me there. I was not in any kind of “elite” when I started, and becoming part of one has never been the goal, so really it’s just the old 70’s and 80s journos whose over use of words like “pretentious”, “elitist” and “pompous” were simply expostulations of not knowing how to review “Tales” when they got the job to write reviews of “Keep On Runnin'”.

You can’t level the “Dinosaur” band accusation at me. The Tangent has had a hard life of little comfort, very, very little financial reward, no mainstream media support. We took on a musical form that is possibly the most difficult to do well, most difficult to market, most difficult to play live and even most difficult to explain to others.

I speak with a broad Yorkshire accent. I’m a Scargillite lefty and advocate of sensible anarchy, totally down to earth in nearly every way apart from believing that music is more than 2 minute romps of pop, punk or thrash. I’m naive, fragile and irritable and I’m a struggling artist not a failed Rock Star. There’s a huge difference.

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.  It will be well worth your time.

To pre-order the album (and you should), click here.

[Additional, added June 18, 2013.  With apologies, I should have mentioned that Eric Perry conducted the interview.  Excellent job, Eric!]