When Rob Solly offered us a lift to our accommodation, the 27-year-old lead singer from upcoming rock band Johnny Panic had no idea what he'd let himself in for...
Date: 8th July 2006
Place: In Rob's car somewhere between Yeovil (Somerset) and Bristol
Eggs or fish?
.......Eggs or fish? Eggs.
Do you have any pets, and if so, are any of them named Bill?
No... no.
Ted?
[laugh] No, I don't have any pets.
If a monkey is running up a hill at 20 miles an hour, and China is where Australians come from, what colour are your socks?
Seriously, I'm going to drop you guys off at the side of the road, because there's... I think you're taking drugs in the back of my car. Seriously, there's just... my socks are black. Like my souuuul and heart.
What colour is the sky?
Well. At the minute... yeah, it's gotta be a grey with a blue tint - a hue of blue.
True or false: you are actually a duck.
...False.
So what animal are you?
I'm a homosapian. Homoerectus.
If a ninja jumped out at you, brandishing a sword and screaming 'WAIIEEE!!!', what would your response be?
I'd probably... evaluate the situation quickly, and sum up whether I could beat them up... and if I could, I'd punch him, or use my stealth and cunning martial arts, or run. But I'd have to actually see the situation to judge.
What's your favourite beer?
Well, I don't drink beer, so...
What's your favourite alcoholic drink?
Oh, I like those chocolate vodka mudshakes. You know the one? That, and I like... I don't mind a shandy that's got beer in it, Foster's Shandy, and I'm not really... I don't really drink. But then when I start drinking, I'll drink anything.
What are your views on religion? [oh boy, was I about to regret asking this one...]
You know, there's a difference between religion... first, that is a massive question. You're definitely talking to the right person, because I really think that as human beings, we need toput the idea of religion to one side. I think there's, you know, God and faith, and then there's religion, and then there's a separate thing, which is the church, the mosque. These are things which just... are so stale to me, and they teach this institutional bollocks. You know like, to shut the Muslims up, or Islam, you know to keep them in line... we're talking about 600 years ago, they created only 3 to 4 branches of a religion, and there used to be over hundreds. Hundreds of different interpretations of Islam, and so it was reduced just to control people. The same goes with Catholicism, what basically happened there. There used to be this religion where these people believed in two Gods. Have you ever seen For Your Eyes Only, the James Bond film? Where there's a monestary on top of a building? It's a very old building, about 500A.D. These guys... and girls... they lived up there, and they were forced from their town, massacred. And what they believed was, they believed in the Bible, they believed the Old Testament was the bad God, and the New Testament was the new God. And I actually think if you read them, it makes a little bit of sense. But the Catholic church actually wrote, I think it was known as the pupil war or something like that, against it. Yeah, and they were killed and I don't understand what that has to do with faith, or belief in God. I also think that, going back to Islam and Christianity, those are the two religions that are perhaps on the news or more involved in our lives anyway, is that... church, Sundays. You can't do anything on Sundays, you know... going back 50 years ago, people had nothing to do, they had to sit at home on a Sunday, they couldn't go shopping, it would have to be the hispanic day, and I don't get all this control and these rules. And I also think a God that wants to be worshipped four times a day is a God of some ego. And that's seen as quite a sacrilegious thing, but why would God want worshipping? He created the things that he wants, why does he want people to go, 'yeah, you're the best, God. You're better than everyone else. You rule.'? You know, I personally really, really don't get that. And I actually think that it's probably quite an un-Godlike thing to do it... or an unhumanitarian thing. For all the time we could be praying, we could actually be making a difference to people's lives. Perhaps God - or religion - would have been better saying 'hey, four times a day, rather than praying for me, go and do a good deed.' So... yes, you've opened up a whole can of worms on religion. But I think it really holds humanity back. I really do. I think it's easy. It's easy as pie - there's right and there's wrong. That's it. You know, humanity... that's my religion.
If you could sleep with any celebrity, who would it be?
Ahh fuck! So many! I would love to... Cheryl Tweedy would be good. Uuuma Thurrrman, wowww! Ohhh, God. That's gotta be a harder question than the one before! Or it creates hard connotations anyway. Ohh dear... who's my ultimate... I like Claire Goose as well. I like Kate from Lost. [thinks for a few seconds] ...Fuck.[laughs] Oh, God. Can I come back to that one?
An actual normal question... what can we expect from you in the next year?
In the next year, you can expect a really, really, really good second album. You know, like it's obvious do or die time, in how the album is received and how it goes down and is accepted, whether we'll make a third album. I genuinely, genuinely hope we do, we've already started writing it. You know, hopefully that'll bring good things, bigger things, better things and as a result, lots of gigging. And not just lots of gigging, but lots of gigging under the right conditions so we can really show what Johnny Panic is about from the idea. Borrowing very much from Nash, and some of the ideas he has, and the way Johnny Panic should be presented as an artistic, band sound. So what are you hoping for? We're all hoping for great things.