Bad Manners: It's A Bust.

Bad Manners play the Troccadero at Surfers Paradise on Friday, all ages at The Healer Saturday afternoon, The Waterloo Hotel Saturday night and the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay on Sunday.

“It sounds like you’re just next door, laughs Bad Manners front man Buster Bloodvessel. The reception is very good.”

Buster has fronted legendary ska band Bad Manners for over the last 25 years, he’s known in many countries by various names like The Singing Sumo, Buddha In Docs and Lord Of The Jellyfish just to name a few… he’s one very larger than life person. Last time we talked he’d just been at a health farm, cycling, swimming and not eating too much in an effort to improve his health. I ask if he’s still on his health kick?

“I’ve come off the health kick and I’m relying on good old-fashioned rock n roll. They can’t operate on me as my hernia being so big and me being so big they won’t operate. So I’ve just said ‘fine’ and I’ve gone back to my normal healthy life of being in Bad manners again. I’m fit in myself no doubt about it and I’ve gone through a massive recording career for this year as well. We’re planning to release sixty albums.”

Sixty albums! That’s quite a feet!

“We’re certainly going to record sixty albums in one year, yeah. It’s pretty un believable, we’ve started and we’re about up to number eleven. They’re all on different subjects that mean something to Bad manners. I’ll give you a list shall I?”

Be my guest.

“There’s the crooners album, the football album, the rock album, the sex album, the dub album, the alcohol album, the classical album, the fat album, the skinhead album, the cowboys album, the instrumental album, the rugby album, the horror album, the mambo album, the boat album, the party album, the mad album, the silly album, the northern soul album, the two-tone album, the punk, country and boots album, money, gangsters and hooligan album, the love, war and hate album…”

What’s your favourite at he moment?

“My favourite at the moment would have to be the crooners album.”

Are they your own songs or are they covers?

“Yeah lots of covers and lots of our own songs and lots of our old back catalogue is coming along. You get to hear old songs new songs, songs written by us, covers and back catalogue.  The crooners album is an excellent album it starts of with in the mood.”

Who do you think is the all-time best crooners?

“For me it would have to be Dean Martin. We actually do a couple of Dean Martin covers, Gentle on my mind and Little Old Wine Drinker Me,” Buster serenades me down the phone. “We do them all in the ska vein of course. Dean Martin was the type of music my parents forced upon me and at the time I really hated it. As I grew older I sort of rebelled against that type of music until about two years ago when I fell in love with it and I decided that I was going to do a ska album of crooners songs and then it went on. We decided to do a football album with all football songs in a ska vein, then we started to do an alcohol album with songs we’ve sung in the past and songs we’ve wanted to sing that had alcohol in mind. Then we decided to do a rock album. All of them have just come out so good.”

I heard you were going to venture into a solo career doing something called scrap metal?

“That’s all been thrown into the heap so to speak. In the rock world we’ve picked some great covers to do that no one really thinks of doing like the Ace of Spades. There’s some strange ones on there. Our version of Ace Of Spades is weird as hell.”

Will you been playing any of these songs in your set this tour?

“Definitely, we’ll be playing bits and pieces of all the new albums and plus will play all the Bad Manners stuff. So overall an hour and a half on stage worth of songs.”

Bad Manners only toured last year are you excited to be coming back so soon?

“Very much so, if we have our way we’ll be coming back every year. It’s something we do in a lot of countries and something we have done for some time. Of course it builds a good fan base and it gives people the opportunity that have missed us over the years to come see us. I’m very excited. A very important thing about Bad manners is that we may be old and feeble but it’s really important to us and the reason that we’re still going is that young blood still comes through and come to our shows. Without that we’d vegetate, I think. It keeps us thinking that we have to appeal to the younger market as well as the Bad Manners fan market.”