Mixed grill: Howlin' Pelle, The Hives

Were you happy with the decision to move your Dublin gig from a headliner at the Ambassador to a support slot with Muse? And will you still be playing a full set on the night? – Richie, Limerick.

“The way we thought about it was, the first gig was sold out, and the only way to get more people in was to move it up to that place (Dublin Castle). But I don’t really think of it as us supporting Muse, because if that was the case, we don’t really want to run around supporting bands, that’s not really what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to get everybody who wants to see the show into the show. We’ll be playing a full set on the night.

“One of the demands we had was Muse couldn’t limit anything about the length of the show or the sound level in the PA or anything, so it’s not a support slot in any way. If they don’t like Muse they can leave after we play, we have no problem with that!”

I can understand the matching suits and ties. To be fair, they look pretty sophisticated etc. But the white shoes?!! There is no excusing it! Explain yourselves!! – Anna Kavanagh.

“I think white shoes are pretty much the coolest thing in the world. Hard to keep clean though. It’s really hard, jumping around, doing what you do, they get dirty quite quickly. We always had black and white, and what’s fun about black shoes? I mean, come on! Everybody’s got black shoes!”

It’s a point of taboo though, white shoes.

“I guess so, but you should never be afraid of that. You’d be a silly rock ‘n’ roll band to care about those things: ‘No, I can’t do that, that’s too much.’”

Who do you like, Blur or Oasis, or does Alan McGee make you listen to Oasis? – Demon.

“McGee doesn’t make us listen to Oasis. I think I like Oasis more than Blur, but it’s not like it matters to me. I have other people to compare, like James Brown versus Elvis. If I have to choose, I’ll choose Oasis, half of it because of that Gorillaz thing – what’s that all about? I don’t really dislike it, I think it’s a cool idea to have like a comic book band, but I didn’t really get the music.”

Have you heard ‘Hindu Times’ yet?

“Not really. I saw the video, but I didn’t have any sound on the TV, it didn’t work. It’s not like I turned it down.”

Which Abba song would you record as a cover? – Hilary.

“Probably none. I don’t really know, you English (sic) people probably have more of a relationship to Abba songs than I do. I don’t really know which one is which. Probably ‘Money, Money, Money’ that’s a good one.”

Were you ever a Hanoi Rocks fan? - Slurpy, Wexford.

“No. To this day I have not heard Hanoi Rocks.”

What bands/artists are on your current playlist? – Rowan.

“There’s a band called Reigning Sound from Memphis. Who else? Lee Hazelwood. I bought a bunch of Cheap Trick records and I’m playing those. I just bought the records for the equivalent of 70p each. Some of it is really good. Have I ever listened to mAKE UP? People started comparing us to them and I went to a show actually, and then I heard one of their records and I noticed that the International Noise Conspiracy are very influenced by them. But I never even heard them until months before they broke up. We got compared to them a bit and I thought I should check them out. It wasn’t really what I expected. It was good, though.”

What’s your policy on groupies? Do you share? – Juliet.

“We don’t have a policy on groupies, but we share everything!”

Do you have a tailor or do you buy off the rack? – Tom.

“That’s a secret. The thing is that we don’t really want to go around advertising stuff. They’re our clothes, we got them, we bought them, no matter how we got a hold of them, if we stole them or whatever, they’re our clothes.”

Does it bother you when people harp on about the clothes all the time?

“Sometimes. It doesn’t really bother me that they talk about whether we dress this or that way. It bothers me when… I don’t really know how people get that it should take away from the music. I mean the music is still the same, it’s not like it gets worse once you put on a tie.”