It's a familiar scene. It's press day for both M People and The Grid, and Dave Smith and I are waiting in the foyer of the Sebel town house watching media people flitting around trying to make things actually happen on time in the order they were supposed to. We were supposed to be on first, but it seems our meeting with The Grid didn't actually make it on to their day-schedule, so we are left chatting to their publicist and hoping they will come back early from their shopping expedition. Eventually Richard Norris arrives with a cough and a runny nose and since time is running out and Dave Ball is still nowhere to be seen, we retire to the drawing room with some tissues and a vodka and tonic.

David Smith: Do you like touring or do you just see it as a necessity to flog records?

Richard Norris: I like it when it's our tour. This one's a bit weird because we've never supported anyone before. It's a bit odd. There's a lot of rock n' roll tricksgoing on, you know the usual bollocks about support bands. The whole attitude of the people we know that do clubs and promotions and magazines, you know the whole industry that's built up after acid house, it's being fairly supportive of each other, and suddenly we're back in this old rock and roll bollocks where you can't get a dressing room or a soundcheck. It's a shame really, I don't think it's to do with M people particularly, it's just that old attitude that crews have. If we toured again we'd [do it] as a big groovy event. The gigs we do best in the UK are like Megadog where you get seven bands. On New Years Eve there were 5000 people at the Brixton academy and we were headlining. It was brilliant.

Stewart Lawler: You should come down for the Big Day Out next year, that's a fun tour.

Norris: We were going to come this year ... We've been wanting to come for a while but I think someone couldn't afford it.

Lawler: You went to Japan before you came here, how was that?

Norris: We were a bit worried about that because we didn't know what they'd think of us there. We'd heard the people are quite austere and fairly timid when it comes to the crowds, but as soon as we got to the first hotel there were loads of people waiting to see us, although they all looked kind of like accountants. At the gigs they were crowd surfing and going completely mad. Really keen. There's lots of weird stuff there, like the toilet roll holders - you'd pull 'em and a tune would come out. There were these loos where there were little butterflies on the taps - when the water came out they'd flap their wings. Heaps of completely mad TV as well. There was one show we saw where the guy looked like a chat show Hitler, he had the little moustache, and there were all these girls lined up with really short skirts with fishing line attached and he'd ask them a question and if they got it wrong the skirts would get just a little bit higher. And that was the show...you'd never get away with that one at home.

Smith: So is there any [odd] things like that about Australian culture that you've found?

Norris: We've come across the rocker mentality a bit too much basically. I just find that really repressive.

[We had witnessed an ugly scene at soundcheck the night before. As Norris and Bell were leaving the stage a roadie looked up from his dinner just long enough to make a loud and rude comment about The Grids' musical style that was not meant to go unheard. Words were quietly said, but it was obvious to us then that there were elements within the (local) production team that were playing put-down-the-support-band, and that this had been going for some time before we joined the tour. To be fair, we were treated very well by the crew so perhaps there was something else going on that we were unaware of. However, we have done enough support gigs ourselves to know that the attitude of the crew plays a major role in making the tour an enjoyable experience for all. Yes, it is proper to afford the headline act a certain amount of respect, but that shouldn't come at the expense of common decency toward the support bands.]

Enough of the soapbox, lets talk about dancing.

Smith: The interesting thing is, it's difficult for us to understand the connection between the music scenes here and in London, I mean here it's completely polarised. You might have the Aphex Twin remixing, you know, whoever, whereas here, things like that a really rare. People are very judgemental of dance music as a separate thing.

Norris: It reminds me of what England was like at the beginning of the dance thing, you know people were very "oh, it's just music made by machines, anyone can do it, it's not real music" but that's really changed in the UK, what was avante garde 5 years ago, that is the mainstream now.

Lawler: What's happening here is the dance stuff that's charting is tending to be very cliche, the formula stuff.

Smith: I remember in an interview you said the thing about Swamp Thing is it's actually done well. That's a very different thing to "Here's Johnny" which is, well...

Lawler: It's number 1.

Norris: Nobody knows about that in the UK at all.

Smith: You're kidding, that's just a hit here?

Norris: Yeah, no-one's heard of that record.

Smith: Hardcore's very popular here, in the suburbs

Norris: A lot of those records just don't come across in the UK. That one particularly. It's crap. I heard it on the radio yesterday and I thought, "What the Hell is this?".

Smith: So you don't find tracks like that charting over there?

Norris: Oh you do, but not that particular one. A lot of the real lowest common denominator stuff does get in the top 20 but you know, Orbital's last album debuted at number 4, Leftfield went in at number 3. There's quite a reasonable crossover where you can do records that are less mainstream but still get away with it.

Lawler: There's the novelty record factor of course. Severed Heads went top twenty for the first time just recently. It's a remix of Dead Eyes Opened which is a very old track of theirs, but even Tom Ellard himself says it sold because it's a novelty record. I mean, here's a band that's been around for nearly 15 years but it took that to get them on the radio.

Norris: Yeah, it's weird that. People have said that about Swamp Thing, but I think the difference is with that, it became a novelty record because it was a hit. It wasn't a novelty record to start with, we didn't think it would chart, we thought we were taking the piss basically. The fact that it charted was a bonus. I think the novelty aspect comes from the popularity rather than what we wanted to do you know, we just wanted to try something new that no-one had done before.

Smith: I just think it's the difference between a good idea and a crap sample

(General mumbles of agreement)

Smith: Have you been doing any remixing lately?

Norris: Prince's office rang up the other week. They said they rang five other people so I guess we didn't get it, but it's useful that they know who we are. We did Yello just before Christmas, Vicious Games.

Lawler: I saw that in a shop the other day.

Norris: It's out already? I must get a copy.

Smith: Did you pick that track yourself or did they ask you to do it?

Norris: We chose it, because we thought we could do a good New York kind of garage interpretation.

Smith: Did you like The Orb remixes of Crystal Clear?

Norris: Not really, no. I mean, I think they're all right, but I think the Orb are in danger of disappearing very far up their own behinds. I just think there's a point where you can be really open and dubby and groovy and creating a mood, and loose sounding, and then there's a point where it's just people that have smoked too much dope and it's got self-indulgent and it's just fucking about. I mean that's fine to do that, but don't inflict it on the public! You've got double and triple albums, I mean my whole experience of why I wanted to get into music first was punk rock and was trying to kill Yes triple albums and progressive rock. To see FSOL and The Orb do this pompous intellectual bollocks ... sure they've done some good stuff, but a lot of it is just boys with toys who smoke dope.

Smith: I think they reach a dangerous line when they do that "we are artists" stuff.

Norris: I'd just quite like them to record a song, you know?

Smith: It's about having a concise idea, really.

Norris: I don't think they'll be around much longer. I could be wrong, they could like, turn into Tangerine Dream and be around for fifty years or something...

At this point our friendly publicist interrupts because time has run out. It's probably a good thing because we could go on bitching about other bands all day, so instead we find the missing Dave Ball and head upstairs for photos. Mr Ball is a largish man with a personality to match. He seems more impressed with the topless bathers by the pool than having his photo taken with two guys in some band he's never heard of. He can be forgiven, he's been around long enough to know the best way to deal with tour madness is to act like you're not interested. We can only hope to be in his position one day too.

Boxcar was last seen heading for a pub somewhere in London.