Minor incident

7:00pm Sunday 13th July 2008

Classically-trained punk rock band Elliot Minor will be hitting the shores of Bournemouth on Wednesday as their Skimpies and Aviators tour rolls into town.

Sam Revell caught up with vocalist and guitarist Ed Minton from the band to chat about the forthcoming gig, having rocks chucked at him on stage and all the fun of Bournemouth pier.

"We've been to Bournemouth a couple of times before and supported McFly when they played at the BIC." Said Ed. "It was a great gig and the place was sold out. We got a chance to see a bit of the town and loved going into the arcades and playing about."

"When we're touring we tend to get to places early in the morning and get a chance to explore the towns, so we'll definitely be doing that down in Bournemouth and having a play in the arcades on the pier again."

Elliot Minor are a five piece band from York who have shot to fame in the last year, occupying Radio One's play list for months with their high-tempo pop-punk tunes including Parallel Worlds and Jessica.

Classifying the band's genre is a tricky business but Ed has a go anyway. "We've been saying that our music is a mixture of rock and classical. We've got the classical orchestration and that side of things comes through in our vocal harmonies. We all sang in choirs as youngsters."

"We were sent to music school by our parents so we kind of had to do the classical music side of things, but the cool thing was always to be in a rock band, so that's what we really wanted to do."

"Me and Alex (Davies) started a band together at school when we were younger and to be honest we were terrible. Alex bought a guitar and I bought a bass, but we were awful."

"Things really started properly I guess when we in our last two years of school, so we were about 17 or 18 years old. Alex and I formed an acoustic duo and we played at the school, in front of our friends, that sort of thing and it went pretty well."

After adding Dan Hetherton (drums), Ali Paul (keyboards) and Teddy Hetherton (bass), Elliot Minor was formed, and the band haven't looked back since, enjoying a successful first year.

"This last year has been great, but a bit up and down I guess. Parallel Worlds went in to the charts at 31, then our next song went to 19, but then the next one went in at 27.

"But it's been great, we've been touring loads lately and we've still got loads left ahead of us this year."

The band have just returned from supporting Simple Plan on their European tour and recently played at the infamous Download Festival. "Download was interesting. It was a real fun experience to play there and the festival was great, but we had rocks chucked at us by two guys while we were playing on stage, and obviously bottles of urine which you expect at Download."

The question most people want answering, is where does the band's name come from?

"The first part of the name is about Elliott from Scrubs, we're big fans of the show and of her, and then the minor bit is because we use a lot of minor chords in our music. But basically we wanted a name that was going to be as unique as possible and wasn't going to get lost on page 2000 of Google or anything."

Elliot Minor's success has seen them travelling over to America to record their album and the video for their new single.

"We were in LA recently recording our album and shooting the video for Time After Time. We got to work with the producer who'd previously worked with Hooberstank and Something Corporate who are a massive influence of ours, so that was great. We then came back to England and he followed us over here to work with us some more, so we must have made a good impression on him."

Their new single Time After Time was released on June 23 and Ed is hopeful for the song.

"I'm not really sure what would be successful for the song, but if it makes the top 40 then obviously we'll be happy."

Now back on home soil the band are ready to kick off their Skimpies and Aviators Tour across the coast of England.

"We came up with the name Skimpies and Aviators because we just wanted a fun name for the tour and we thought it would be cool if people would dress up to come and see us."

I'm sure Ed won't be disappointed if the girls of Bournemouth follow his request and turn up to Landmarc on the July 16 bikini clad and ready to have fun.