Keep On Dancing

It seems that the walls of punk rock are encompassed by two major extremes these days. On one side, we have the radio-friendly mall-rock of bands like Good Charlotte and Yellowcard, and on the other, bands like Pennywise and NOFX, who feel that loud, fast, songs are still the true nature of punk. Well what ever happened to a happy medium? Madcap is well on their way to filling that void with the release of their third album, Under Suspicion - a loud, fast punk album that you can sing and dance to. The Synthesis spoke with lead singer Johnny Madcap, to ask a little more about his band’s direction and their role in the punk scene.

I saw that you guys have a ton of dates coming up in the UK. How is the reaction to your music overseas?
The good sign is that I’ve received e-mail from kids over there, saying that they like us and stuff, and we haven’t even been there yet. I also think our music will go over well because a lot of the bands we’re influenced by originated over there. I think kids are going to dig us because they grew up on English punk.

Are you guys playing Warped Tour this year?
No, we’re taking a break from Warped Tour this year. It’s a great thing to play, don’t get me wrong. It’s just really hard to get kids to come see you play when you’re competing with 30 to 40 other bands.

You recently left your old label, SideOneDummy for Victory Records. How is that working out?
It’s working out well. Victory has definitely been the best experience I’ve ever had with a label, and I’ve dealt with a lot of them. They remind me of a band trying to help other bands. Plus, there’s not many other bands on Victory that sound like us, and that’s cool because it makes things more diverse.

Your music, especially this album, has a really strong party vibe to it. What is a Madcap show like?
We promote dancing. Moshing is cool too. I mean, it’s a little more violent form of getting out aggression, and I totally understand that. But there has been a lot more straight dancing lately. The bands we’re influenced by, like Elvis Costello, for example, it’s not really music you can be violent to. We want our shows to be more like a party.

Was the ‘80s feel on Under Suspicion something you guys set out to do, or did it just keep popping up as you were writing the songs?
It was kind of a natural progression. I have been listening to a lot of that stuff for the past year, and I got into a lot of the ‘80s stuff like Costello, The Police, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. Plus, all of us listen to so many types of music that it makes for a great album.

Do you feel like you still have a lot of room for musical growth without abandoning the genre you guys have come up in?
Definitely. I think there is always room to grow. I’ve never wanted to be pigeon-holed into playing one type of music. I mean, yeah, we’ll always be a punk rock band, but a lot of that just comes from the way we think about things, not necessarily the music we play. We have our sound, you know? No matter what we’re playing, you can tell that it’s Madcap.

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