Interview: Missed You At The Show @ HMV Ritz – April 4

By Kevin Benson

Following a crowd-pleasing performance at Manchester’s HMV Ritz, the boys from Missed You At The Show took some time out to chat back stage with MM’s Kevin Benson.

The band are – Mike Poplawski, Sergio Llopis Pascual, Suthee Phoncheewin, Aaron Colton, and Shaun Holland.

So you last spoke with MM in January after your charity gig, what have you been up to since then?

AARON – We’ve been on a world tour, just taking some time out to do a favour for SJM concerts here tonight..ha...no I’m not going to lie, we’ve just been working really hard on our degrees and playing as many gigs as we can really.

Are you all from different parts of the country then?

AARON – No were from different parts of the world!

Interesting, tell me about that.

MIKE – Well I’m from Canada, Sergio is from Spain, Suthee is from Thailand and Shaun and Aaron are from the UK. We all met at Salford Uni and we all study music together. We formed in our first year after getting together at one of the first social events. We just started talking about music and we all decided that we kind of wanted to create something together.

Being from different parts of the world you must have varying tastes in music and differing influences, how does that all come together in the music you create?

MIKE – I think it works out well. Even though we all love American pop-rock and stuff like that , we all have different kinds of music that we love so we all pitch in our ideas and then one of us kind of moderates and decides which ideas work best. I think it works out well.

Manchester obviously has a lot of history with music and a number of successful bands, any favourites amongst them?

MIKE – I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of us came to Manchester, because its so buzzing with music. For me, when I first came here I watched a film called 24 Hour Party People and so I was acquainted with the Happy Mondays and bands like that. I saw James too and they are an amazing band.

AARON – We got to meet them too at an XFM live gig which was brilliant.

A lot of bands now coming out of Manchester probably don’t want to be tarred with that brush of the whole ‘Madchester’ thing, what do you think the city will produce in the next decade?

AARON – There are a few bands around, like The Rain Band for example, who are trying to be that Manchester band, in fact they are that Manchester band. Bands like ours could never be that, we’ve not grown up in Manchester, we’re not from Manchester.

MIKE – Sometimes the fact that we are based in Manchester will give people the wrong impression of us. We had a woman at a radio station once who wouldn’t play our song because she thought I was faking the American accent.

What is your favourite venue that you have played in so far? In particular where have you seen the best reaction to your songs?

AARON - This one! (laughs). We had a great gig recently at the Night and Day for our single launch. There were over 180 people there which was a lot considering it was just us who were playing.

Any plans for the summer?

AARON – We are playing the ‘Futures Perfect Festival’ which is on May 12. Other than that we have a lot of writing to do. We have around 6 or 7 songs that we are working on and we want to get that up to around 12. We have got a lot of hard work to do before launching our album in September.

Will that be preceded by a single?

It will be launched concurrently with the last single from that album.

How does Manchester’s music scene compare to the scenes back home?

AARON – Well I’m from Stockport so there really isn’t a scene there. In fact, I wouldn’t even like to ‘be seen’ there. I think Manchester’s music scene is great. There are a lot of good promoters here and people doing a lot if interesting different things. Compared to somewhere like London which is really fragmented, Manchester is much better in terms of the distance between all the major venues.

What do you do when you are not playing music?

AARON – Errrmm, play music.

MIKE – I watch youtube.

SHAUN – I watch the Big Bang Theory.

And finally, where is your favourite place to eat in Manchester?

ALL – TAI WU!

AARON – The Tai Wu Chinese buffet on Oxford Road is amazing. On a weekday between 12 and 5 its £5.40 for a buffet and a soft drink and it’s an absolute bargain!