Alan Dearling chats with the members of MC16:
Drums – Duffy; Bass – Quinn; Guitar/Vocals – Carson.
(‘Life is A Way of Punk’)
Gerry from Mule Freedom sent me a copy of the new, MC16: ‘We’re Gonna Need a Milkman’ album. Hey, I thought, as listened to it, this is a bit different from lots of punk albums and bands that I get to watch and review. It’s full of catchy sing-alongs, but still raucous, sneering and in yerr face. I’ve just returned from a punky festival, Firedance, and I mentioned MC16 to one of the organisers, Andy Burden from the band Amass. I said was pretty impressed, because your new album offers a fair helping of originality. Andy agreed, and said that he’d played alongside your band and thought you were really good.
So, a few questions:
Alan: It strikes me that you try to create quite personal songs, songs and tunes that are written from the perspective of the underclass. Is that part of your motivation?
MC16: We find we can only write when we are angry. If someone asks us to write something in someone’s birthday card we literally go blank and just write ‘Have a nice day!’ or something rubbish like that, but when something on the news or internet makes us angry, we literally hyperventilate with words. Not that we love being angry but we love writing and they seem to be interlinked. Usually though like you noted it is some injustice or inequality that sets us off.
Alan: The lyrics and arrangements take you into the territory of mid 1970s, with pub rock colliding with punk and reggae and the likes of Ian Dury and the RUTS. Is that part of your musical landscape and history?
MC16: Good spots! Jah War is one of my favourite songs of all time and Ian Drury is a Top 3 for my brother Tim (The Repealers). I had what might seem like an unusual upbringing with no TV or telephone, living self-sufficiently in the middle of nowhere so music was all we had. I learnt to play the guitar listening to Irish ‘folk’ songs and I would play lead guitar copying birds’ singing noises.
Alan: There’s quite a lot of musicality, and variety, in the tracks and an earful of power chords. How would you describe your music and approach?
MC16: We always write together in the rehearsal room and it’s as spontaneous as possible, so, really a song can start and end anywhere depending on what we have been listening too. We all live a couple of hours away from the rehearsal room so it can depend on what we are listening to in the car on the way to rehearsal (Submit’s album ‘Soup’ for me currently! Superb album!).
Alan: Track 2 on the album is titled ‘Cheerful’ and ‘Reasons to be cheerful’ is the chorus…’We love a fight’, ‘Another life’. Tell me a bit about the genesis of the song. It seems to be a celebration of being Working Class.
MC16: The dour working classes? They don’t pay me enough to smile! Old grumpy over there! The joy of life is so complex at times and whether you look happy or not can be someone’s opening line of attack on you and a reason to look down on you.
Alan: In fact, the whole album is about the life of ordinary folk, celebrating some bits of their lives, weekends, an escape from the drudgery. Plenty of Working Class anthems for an ‘instant fix’ and sorting out your ‘headspace’. The track, ‘Trooper’ is absolutely great. ‘Eat, sleep’ and I couldn’t catch the next words…
MC16: Thank you! Yeah, it’s ‘Eat Sleep Shoot Repeat’. ‘Trooper’ is a very personal song about someone we knew but we wrote the song so we could give them a much happier outcome. She got into a very bad relationship, he got her hooked on drugs, and then she took drugs on the weekend just to escape him and feel alive. Sadly she didn’t make it but the song helps us think she did.
Alan: I liked the album title, and reason for it. Tell folks, why we need a milkman.
MC16: Ah, well it’s a lyric from one of the songs on the album called ‘Mars’. Basically we ruin our planet, move to Mars, build lots of houses and then of course we need a milkman, We also kind of liked the idea that more people trust their milkman than the police, so for cost-cutting purposes, community policing gets given to the milkmen and milkwomen. They could even have armed milk carts and you can actually fit an empty milk bottle in a handcuff to carry it, so it kind of works on an equipment level too. We are just trying to save the country some money.
Alan: Can you give me a bit of background about the band and some of the gigs you’ve played, music that you have released so far?
MC16: Essentially we are just 3 gig-goers who kept going to the same gigs and got to know each other. JD used to be in Ultraviolet and La used to be in Death Warmed Up. We formed a band and have been privileged enough to play Rebellion Punk Festival, Morecambe Punk Festival and Moseley Punk Festival and supported Spear of Destiny, 999, Dirtbox Disco, Hung Like Hanratty, Knock Off amongst others. We released our full-length debut album last February and were overwhelmed to see it in the Top 50 albums of 2025 in Vive Le Rock magazine.
Alan: And who would you cite as the bands/musos who you have really loved and been influenced by? And which current bands do you rate and listen to?
MC16: Definitely under the spell of bands like Fugazi, Dead Kennedys, The Ruts, and Ian Dury. Current bands, we are blessed with so many great ones, but in my car right now I have CD albums by Submit, Choked, Desperate Measures and Rats from a Sinking Ship (sadly no more).
Alan: One of the main reasons that I admire the new album is that unlike too many punk albums, you haven’t gone for simple slogan-eering, many of the tracks seem way more thoughtful and thought-provoking. I’m guessing that’s intentional?
MC16: We aren’t really known for our high level of music theory so we have to feel our way through a new song idea and to feel it we must have some emotional tie with it, or, we end up drifting into a long-winded reggae jam when a new idea isn’t working. That emotional tie then kind of feeds the lyrics as it needs to be something that has got into our head or under our skin or both. This is going to sound horribly pretentious but the song needs to be a religion we can believe in or we just become idea-atheists (although admittedly better at playing reggae).
Alan: And current and future plans?
MC16: It’s all about the release of the album at the moment but we are booked back in the studio with the incredible Dave Draper in October. We have never done a gig overseas either so would love to cross that one off the bucket list.
Alan: And, can you give me some on-line hyperlinks to some videos that anyone can watch, please.
MC16:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n679wHyCKfM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THzKhY2-74w
Alan: Thanks for your time. Mucho appreciated.
MC16: Bigger thank you for listening to our album and caring enough about it to contact us. Hopefully see you at Firedance next year?
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