"Positive Vibes VS Sad Sacks" ~ Under The Radar With The Planet Smashers

A mainstay of the Canadian Music Scene and one of the first Ska Bands in Canada to make some noise, The Planet Smashers are about to hit the road! Vocalist/Guitarist, Matt Collyer, joined Daly on Under The Radar to chat about how touring is different after over 20 years, experiences in Northern Ontario, forgetting how to play your own songs and a lot more!

Start your week with some new music and enjoy the interview!

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Daly: Tell me the kind of person who would not have a good time at a Planet Smashers show and then the kind of person who would have a great time at a Planet Smashers show.

Matt: Wow man, well I think a sad sack would have a bad time. I mean you gotta be a pretty sad person. It’s hard not to have a good time, it’s a party atmosphere people get pretty happy and dance a lot and kind of freak out so it’s a good time.

Daly: So anyone who would have a good time is just not a sad sack then?

Matt: I think that’s it! If you have a good time at a Smashers show, then you are offically not a sad sack

Daly: That’s a good right of passage to not being a sad sack [laughs]

Matt: It is, should test it out.

Daly: The Planet Smashers have been playing shows for over 20 years now so I don’t mean to make you sound seasoned but I think it’s safe to say you’re veterans of the Canadian Music Scene.

Matt: Oh yeah.

Daly: With all these shows under your belt, besides simply showing up, is there anything you guys have learned needs to happen to ensure the show goes well? Or any pre show rituals?

Matt: I think it’s really just positive vibes. There’s a lot of times when you’re on the road for a while and you’re kind of grumpy when you get out of that van or the car. You just have to shake it off and realize people are here to have a good time and it’s not so much about you. You got to do your job. I think that’s the secret for Planet Smashers; don’t step on that stage without being able to shake off any worries you have and have some fun.

Daly: With you playing shows and having a good time everywhere – and knowing at this point we’re all guys with jobs and responsibilities – What’s the difference between booking shows in cities you know you’ll get a good show out of opposed to places you haven’t played in a long time or even have yet to play? Do you weigh the options on that when you’re booking shows?

Matt: A little, it’s a little bit of both. It’s kinda like, we’re curious to see what these places are like, but at the same time we’re not sure if it’s going to be a good show. And because, like you said, we’re not a full time touring band anymore…we want to play shows that are going to be good. So it’s a balance, trying to find the inbetween.

And I have to say Timmins is kind of that experiment right now. We haven’t played Timmins since I think, Snow Jam 2001. We played at some big Rec Center with AFI, Death By Stereo, and Sick of It All. All these hardcore bands…And then us [laughs].

Daly: So 15 years later time to make the triumphant return

Matt: There it is. The only other time we played Timmins we played some really cool like “liquor bar” and we got completely destroyed and I think we got scabies at the end, I don’t know for sure.

Daly: That sounds like a pretty big switch from Snow Jam!

Matt: The guy’s like, “Hey I can’t pay you BUT you can have as much liquor as you want”. So we said OK and went there, and it was my Birthday and I got completely hammered. I remember I could either play guitar or I could sing but I couldn’t do both. So it didn’t really make for a professional set that night.

Daly: How to keep a band happy when you can’t pay them…Get them drunk

Matt: Yup! That was it. I think the next morning we went back to get our gear and the guy was still passed out on a table using his Planet Smashers shirt as a pillow. It was a disaster. But we were young man, I think that was 97, we could do anything back then. These days, our partying is a little more calculated.

Daly: I noticed on the upcoming shows you have back to back nights in Toronto and Quebec, why the back to back shows?

Matt: It’s something we wanted to try. They’re smaller clubs than we would normally play in those cities. So we thought we would do Life Of The Party on one night and then something special the next night, in Toronto we’re doing a request night and then in Quebec City we’re going to do The Specials self titled top to bottom. That one will be interesting because I don’t think it will be very tight, but it will be interesting.

Daly: I’m glad you mentioned doing different sets for different shows, because I was just looking over your set from Pouzza Fest and there’s obviously too many Planet Smashers songs to go through in one show, but is there anything you won’t play live?

Matt: I wouldn’t say songs we won’t play just songs we’re not playing right now. The songs like 10-13 or like the last few songs on any album, you generally don’t play.  There’s a little dark spot there on any album, you try not to make that happen but that tends to be the interesting part of the album where you put songs on that you wouldn’t normally do and those are songs we tend to not play because they’re more experimental and don’t come across as well live.

But with that said I think it’s safe to say, from No Self Control, we will not play “She’s Late”. There you go

Daly: Is there a specific reason why?

Matt: We don’t know how to play it! I don’t think we’ve ever played it live. I got to be honest, I don’t think we’ve ever played that song live. Even for songs off of Life Of The Party, there was songs we hadn’t played live until Pouzza. So maybe “She’s Late” could be in the set 4 months from now, it couldn’t creep in. I have no idea. We have 7 albums, 12-14 songs on each album, there’s a lot to choose from.

Daly: Ska music it’s deintiely an underground scene. I mean you’ll hear elements of it in pop music or some mainstream rock but it’s kind of shied away from the mainstream. So when are The Planet Smashers going to sell out and write a generic radio rock song?

Matt: Oh we try to all the time.

Daly: Oh!

Matt: [Laughs] I don’t know man like you said we’ve been around for 20 years, and we’ve flirted with commercial radio, back when Ska was popular in the late 90s, we had songs on Alt Rock stations.

But it doesn’t need to be on the radio, to be honest. It’s like a lot of other types of music, there’s an underground scene or subculture that supports it. Back in the old days it was newsletters that supported it, then emails and now with Facebook and everything it’s never been easier to get the word out with what’s going on.

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As usual, we left a LOT for the podcast. To hear about the process of picking Cities to tour, why small shows are the best shows and a lot more listen below and don’t forget to subscribe to the program on iTunes!

THE PLANET SMASHERS

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*If you would like to have you or your band featured on Under The Radar, email Daly @ ryan.daly@timminsradio.rogers.com with the subject “Under The Radar”*

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