Interview for HBO's show, Reverb.

Three members of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones--Dicky Barrett (vocals), Tim Burton (saxophone) and Joe Gittleman (bass)--talked to Reverb from the art-deco women's room at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.

Reverb: Do all of you contribute to the songwriting?

Joe Gittleman: Sure. I think that we all have similar goals, hopes, aspirations, dreams. You know, this is really the culmination of a dream, actually.

Dicky Barrett: We're not huge dreamers, but a long time ago we dreamed that maybe some day we'd be in the bathroom of a famous ballroom.

Tim Burton: You can hear Ethel Merman echo down through the hallways.

Joe: [Imitating Ethel] "Do you have any paper? Spare paper?"

Dicky: "Somebody bring some TP."

All:[singing] "I'm just wild about Harry."

Dicky: Yeah, it's the history, really. Vaudeville, you know. We come from vaudevillian families. Joe's great-grandfather was actually a fire-spitter. It doesn't mean he put any fire in his mouth. He just spit.

Tim: Spit on fires. Trying to put them out.

Reverb: Is there a current single from the Bosstones?

Joe: There's a song on a soundtrack that's coming out soon, called "The Wrong Thing Right Then." That's the name of the song. It's a single.

Reverb: And the name of the soundtrack is?

Joe: The one with our song on it. I don't know the name of the soundtrack. It's from the movie called MEET THE DEEDLES.

Reverb: Can you give us a quick history of the Mighty Bosstones?

Dicky: We've been a band for quite a while. We're not part of any current trend or anything.

Joe: We're not really cool enough to be part of that.

Dicky: We tried to join but they wouldn't let us in. But we love a lot of the bands that exist today, like the Pie Tasters. There's a band in Boston called the Shods that we're really fond of. I know that's not the question, but whatever. I felt like saying it, anyway.

Joe: Some of us were in high school when we started--we've been in the band for over 12 years. You know, we started playing around 1985 or '86.

Dicky: If the history of the Bosstones was interesting or any good, we'd certainly be happy to tell you about it. You know, it's just been exciting to us, but probably not exciting when you talk about it.

Reverb:You had to have been there, really.

Joe: It's built on repetition. Tour, tour, tour, record, tour, tour. It's worked well for us thus far, ten years.

Reverb: How many albums have you made?

Joe: Five full-length albums and three EPs. Our first album didn't come out until '89, so those first few years were kind of spent around the Boston clubs and stuff.

Reverb: But now you do a lot of touring.

Dicky: We always have, though, since the beginning. You know, when we first started touring, the first year, when we headed out with Murphy's Law years ago, we did about 300-and-something shows that year. And it's been the same almost every year. We try to play 300 every year.

Joe: People didn't necessarily come to any, but we were out there.

Dicky: And some nights we just had a show right in our basement.

Reverb: Did you say you toured with Murphy's Law? That's an interesting lineup.

Dicky: Why? Maybe you're talking about a different Murphy's Law. This is a New York City hardcore band.

Reverb: I just thought of them as more metal than hardcore.

Dicky: No, they're cut from the same cloth as us. Sadly.

Reverb: How do you describe your music?

Dicky: We don't. We let other people describe our music. At one point, because we were so tired of people asking us what it is we're doing, we named one of our albums SKA-CORE, THE DEVIL, AND MORE, and the word "ska-core "became popular. There's actually a lot of ska-core bands now. We take credit for coining that phrase, I think rightfully so. But the label we really prefer, if you need to call us anything, we want to be called the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, because we spent a little time thinking it up.

Reverb: What kind of touring do you do? I mean, there's not a million ska or hardcore bands.

Dicky: We tour with everybody. We tour with bands we like.

Joe: We tour with ska bands and punk bands. So there's just a really wide spectrum there.

Reverb: What's the stage show like?

Dicky: I don't know. It's drag queens and transvestites. Smoke and mirrors, mostly. It's a lot of silly nonsense, but kids love it.

Joe: Are you familiar with Gallagher? Yeah, it's a lot like that.

Dicky: Has he ever done an HBO special?

Joe: I'm sure he has. They're still cleaning up from that one.

Reverb: What are your fans like?

Dicky: They're a bunch of guys in raincoats.

Joe: Trying to avoid smashed watermelons. Our fans--they're everybody. We've always wanted our shows to be for anybody.

Reverb: You guys dress up for sound checks. That's pretty impressive.

Dicky: We dress up for life. Some of us. Others don't.

Joe: It's the nostalgia of this place [the Roseland] for us.

Dicky: If you were building a club now, you wouldn't do this to a woman's room.

Joe: You wouldn't put in these tables. People would be doing blow off these tables all night long.

Dicky: During the '80s I'm sure they were. But the point is that times have changed, and people don't dress up. They don't take the time to put a tile floor in like this.

Reverb: Style is important.

Dicky: Style is probably the most important thing in the world. Without fashion I would have no reason to go on. Without style I'd probably jump off a bridge. And I suggest that if you're style-less, do that, because you really shouldn't exist.

Tim: We like to dress up, you know, and we always have. It's just been part of what we do. It's kind of a tribute to the ska age.

Joe: I think that if people are going to pay $10 or $15 to see a show, the least you can do is put on a snazzy suit and look like you fucking care that they've come, you know.

Tim: It's hard for us to understand why more people don't try to look nice. I think a lot of it is a function of poverty. You go to other countries that have better economies and people seem to dress nicer. You don't see people wearing like, Marlboro t-shirts in Japan.

Reverb: Have you toured worldwide?

Joe: Yes, we have. We're international.

Reverb: You have a tour planned now?

Joe: Yes. We're going to Canada tomorrow for three weeks, then we're going to Europe for another month.

Dicky: Talk about international.

Tim: Edmonton, Saskatoon, Calgary, Kamloops. It's unbelievable!

Reverb: A serious question. What is ARA?

Dicky: The Anti-Racist Action Group. A group of really, really nice and dedicated people we met in Columbus, Ohio, a few years back.

Tim: A bunch of communist street fighters, I think, who go out and fight Nazis. Actually, I don't think they have any communist affiliation.

Dicky: They fight racism but, you know, if you aren't communist, you aren't excluded from the ARA. It doesn't matter. If you want to fight Nazis, you're welcome to come down.

Tim: They put actions where their mouths are.

Dicky: Yes, they bust up Klan rallies.

Tim: They spread the word, but they also get out there and confront people. They're very brave.

Reverb:How are the Bosstones involved with it?

Dicky: We allow the ARA to come to our shows and set up booths and hand out information.

Joe: I think they're people better qualified to speak on these subjects than us. That's why we have them. We're a racially diverse group ourselves, and I think we, more than anything else, probably lead by example.

Dicky: We have a lot of, you know, racial problems within the band. So we got the ARA in there to work them out for us.

Joe: Dicky is a Catholic and Tim here is a Protestant.

Dicky: And that was terrible. At one point we couldn't even be in the same room together. Tim walked by the dressing room one day and I whipped a Molotov cocktail by him.

Tim: We settled it by both of us aligning ourselves with Satan.

Dicky: Through Satan we figured out that we had peace and love.

Tim: If you can find common ground through Satan, it will all work out.

Joe: Can you think of a better way to end the piece?

Dicky: No, I think that about says it.