Article from Daily Arts Writer by Mark Carlson

After spending the summer playing to millions of hip Lollapalooza goers, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones are already making the club rounds again. According to head Bosstone Dicky Barrett, the super alterna-tour went much better than they could have expected.

"It went all right," said Barrett by phone Monday afternoon. "It went a lot better than I imagined it would. It was fun, the people on the tour were great. We got along really well with the guys in the Jesus Lizard and Pavement. Cypress Hill were cool too." Barrett also emphasized the relaxed atmosphere of the summer tour, adding that "It freed us up and allowed us to go with our plan of getting some stuff written. We played 45 minutes in the middle of the afternoon, and the rest of the day was ours, so we took advantage of it and were creative and sat together and wrote. It was a nice way to spend the summer."

The band may have a lot of new material ready to play, but don't expect a new album for a while. "For this album, we want to get together and reacquaint ourselves with each other, get in our practice space and think about what we're writing," said Barrett. "We're not gonna put this album out until we know for a fact that it's the best possible way to skin whatever cat it is we want to skin."

Catching their breath and getting into the studio is a long way off for the Bosstones, though. Right now they're concentrating on what is most important to them: Touring themselves into an early grave. Said Barrett about their endless touring schedule: "We're not conventional in the sense that we say, `let's go out and make an album and then tour to promote it.' We're a continually touring band and occasionally we take some time out to record an album. I think that we're primarily a touring band and we're always striving to be a better recorded band, but they're two entirely separate things for us. We don't achieve what we achieve live in the studio. We play stuff from all our albums, we don't go `we're finished with the album, let's go tour to sell it.'"

Barrett is right on the money about not being able to recreate their live shows on record. How could they, when their live shows usually include more excitement than a three ring circus, a Monday Night Football game, a rockin' house party, and a swingin' jazz club, all put together? Bosstones shows have become legendary to all who have survived them, in part due to how great the band sounds, and in part due to the absolute lunacy that occurs when the band politely asks the bouncers to go away and allow people to do whatever they want, including dancing with the band and stage diving.

According to Barrett, all of this chaos really just gets back to one simple point of logic. "A lot of times there's bouncers and security that don't know what the hell's going on, and in attempting to stop somebody who's trying to frantically get on stage, which we don't really mind, he ends up hurting himself or the person that's trying to get up there," Barrett said. "If somebody feels the need to get up on stage and express themselves in any way they want to, it doesn't bother me."

The band is always happy to spend a little time dancing with anybody that can make it through the jumbled pile of bodies at the foot of the stage and climb into the spotlight. Barrett does hope, however, that guests on stage do not outstay their welcome. "We don't encourage people to stay up there the whole show, `cause that would mean they're part of the band, and I wouldn't feel right about it. I'd have to pay them, then. To tell you the truth, that's how we got Ben, and we wouldn't want that to happen again," commented Barrett, referring to the band's official "dancer" Ben Carr. "He was just a mad stage diver who wouldn't get off the stage, so we kept him around."

Carr has been with the band since the beginning, back in the early days of just hanging out in Boston punk clubs. Said Barrett about the beginnings of the band, "We were just a bunch of kids that were going to all the shows, and we devised a way to get in free, which was to form a band."

The Bosstones have come a long way from there, and their unique blend of ska, punk, and metal, and their incredible live shows have won them a large, devoted following. "When you start out with the really simple minded plan to get free beer, and the next thing you know, Aerosmith wants you to open for them at Boston Gardens, it's kinda crazy," explained Barrett. "We hoped that we could finish our songs at the Rat in Boston before someone would yell `they suck' and then throw us out, and when we achieved that, we peaked. That was the only goal we had set for ourselves, and everything after that has been gravy, and there's been a lot of gravy."