After the usual introductary pleasentries, Ken inquires about what Chester is exactly. A hasty reply (hey, even I'm not sure) leads to a discussion about music labels, britpop and mods...

" It's quite funny actually, we've seemed to have been adopted by the Sydney Mods. We played with the band The Earthmen one time and a couple of mods who were there to see them came up to us and said "We came to see the Earthmen" but you guys are much better. (laughs) We regularly get a line up of vespers outside our shows. One of our mates in particular, this guy Tony is regularly in film parts and photos because he has a camouflaged painted vesper, and everything. But he's been into it for years."

I heard a rumour that Johnny Dean (Meanswear) stayed with the lead singer of the Earthmen over Christmas. Is this true?

"Yeah. We went down (to Melbourne) to do a show and it was Rail, Mr. Blonde, Earthmen and Frente and he was actually at that gig and at the club afterwards. I don't know how they know each other, but there he was in his shiny suit. I've got to say he's a well dressed bastard"

Yes, if nothing else. It easy to think Mr. Blonde are an overnight success, and while they have been rather fortunate the idea for Mr. Blonde has been in gestation for a while now, as Ken explains.

"I started off in NZ and I was playing in a few bands there, but NZ is quite limited ultimately, it's a beautiful place but there's not a lot of people there. So I went off to London to live for a while and ending up living there for five years which went very quickly. I did all sorts of bizarre things over there from working for record companies, working at the Marquee Club and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. I saw heaps of bands of course. I saw Blur when they were called Seymour, it was there eighth gig. There weren't that much different really, just jumping around like they usually do."

"A lot of Mr.Blonde's songs comes from over there (UK), Particularly in performance. Bands in the UK tend to have something quite magical on stage. "

The new EP is styliscally more direct and instant than their first offering, more in a punk- pop vein than Meet Mr Blonde, with influences like The Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Specials, and The Sex Pistols to name a few. With the EP Mr. Blonde also follow the punk ethic of short, direct songs as no songs are over 3 minutes, which was the intention from the outset.

"The idea of the Rubber Bullets EP was to make a CD and just put some tracks down rapid fire. We tried to make it sharp and snappy, like a live EP and just try to capture some of the more exciting songs in our sets. It's sort of the prelude if you like, to something like an album which obviously you're going to spend a bit more time on, spend a bit more effort developing a bigger sound or recording in greater depth. These were recorded in two days flat in Studio in Kings Cross after the Tyranny of Distance shows, so we were all tremendously hung over and felt like complete crap."

One of may favourites on the EP is the anthemic "Stars and Stripes"

"Well that one was funny. It was the one wild card. I went into the studio about a week before we were going to record the EP, just me with a drum machine, guitar and amp. I turned the drum machine up to 160bpm and did a pretty basic riff and then put a few Nah, Nah, Nah vocals on it, and now it's a bit of a favourite live. I mean those songs are really fun to play and people when they see us live get a lot out of them. We're usually pogoing or jumping around and the crowd tends to get into it as well. I think if we tried to do an EP like the first one - do one slow one, one heavy one, one mid-tempo and one melodic - it would've been more of the same. This one's more stylized"

I suggest to Ken that you can do that sort of thing with EPs more, as LPs tend to get labelled rather unpleasently as "concept albums".

Ken agrees, "I've listened to a couple of the Ash EPs and they're all similar. The Girl from Mars one is quite cool as the other songs are loosely connected to space. Our whole modicum when we started off, was 'heavy pop'. I tried to make all the lyrics to do with bizarre assassinations or weird shit that goes down throughout this bizarre planet of ours."

America also plays a large part in the lyrics and the whole theme of the band, from their very name, taken from Reservoir Dog's infamous ear slicer, to songs such as "(I'm a) Disease", subtitled "To live and die fast in L.A.", and "Stars and Stripes" subtitled "America, America, so much to answer for."

"Yeah, well the lyrics to those songs are sort of tongue in cheek as well. I've been reading a lot of the James Ellroy tabloids and America is such an intriguing country. Musically I like a lot of American bands but think I'm more influenced by the UK scene. Lately I haven't really been into grunge stuff. The overall culture is bizzare. I remember I was in New York once, channel surfing, and there was a game show who's host was this ex-heavy metal dude with a couple of breast implanted bimbos in bikini's and his whole thing was to abuse the audience and bring up these real sensitive issues, and be a real arsehole to everyone. And that was entertainment?

The X-Files is one thing but games shows with bikini clad women...Please!"